An interview with Clive "Max" Maxfield – FPGAs and Embedded

"Max’s numerous technical articles have appeared in a wide variety of magazines, including ED, EDN, Chip Design, EE Times, PCB Design, and the electronics and computing hobbyist magazine Everyday Practical Electronics (EPE). Also, he has held contributing editor or executive editor roles at Programmable Logic DesignLine, Chip Design Magazine, SOC Central, and Everyday Practical Electronics. Max has presented papers at technical conferences around the world; e.g., in 2010 he presented at the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) Silicon Valley in April, ESC India in July, and the Embedded Live Conference in London, England in October; in 2012 he gave the keynote presentation at the FPGA Forum in Norway and also a guest lecture at Oslo University in Norway.<p>Max is the author and/or co-author of a number of books, including Designus Maximus Unleashed (Banned in Alabama), Bebop To The Boolean Boogie (An Unconventional Guide to Electronics), Bebop BYTES Back (An Unconventional Guide to Computers), EDA: Where Electronics Begins, 3D Graphics on Windows NT, The Design Warrior’s Guide to FPGAs, FPGAs: Instant Access, and How Computers Do Math.<p>"When I say microcontrollers I mean microprocessors also — both of these are just about the most inefficient way of performing these calculations known to humankind because they do things sequentially, instruction by instruction, which is very slow and very inefficient. The only reason that everything looks so efficient and impressive these days is because we are talking about running out processors with clock frequencies around 2.4 gigahertz, which is pretty much the same frequency we use in a microwave oven. Scary! The end result is that we’ve got processor chips that consume a humongous amount of power.""