Incorporate flexible configurations into card and system designs with mezzanine connectors from Amphenol TCS. The XCede® Stacker enables parallel board-to-board designs up to 20 Gbps with the highest levels of reliability. The XCede Stacker provides the density and mechanical robustness needed to address increasing I/O counts. Its modular construction and different guidance options allow length to be optimized for each application. Several heights are available, ideal for scaling stackable systems based on 1U increments.
Scrappy IC Startup Challenges Big Guns WIth Lossy-Compression ADC For Ultrasound
By Don Tuite, Analog/Power Editor
With TI and Analog Devices duking it out for dominance in the front ends of the world’s ultrasound medical devices, it would take some audacity for a fabless startup to design its first product for the same market. But Samplify Systems has announced chips based on a lossy data-compression algorithm.
With analog content on the rise in all manner of systems, it is more important than ever to integrate analog and mixed-signal capabilities into design and verification methodologies. What that means is an increasing reliance on Spice simulation for shakeout of the interface between the analog and digital domains of designs.
Environmental Fund Asks Congress To Update Toxic Substances Act
By Ron Schneiderman, Contributing Editor
With at least several hundred companies in the United States producing or importing chemicals designated as hazardous by the European Union (EU), the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) has issued a report calling on the U.S. Congress to update the nation’s 32-year-old Toxic Substances Control Act.
Survey: Environmental Program Doesn’t Have Much REACH
By Ron Schneiderman, Contributing Editor
A survey of electronics companies by the IPC, a trade association whose 2700 member companies represent virtually all facets of the electronics industry, has found that more than 40% of manufacturing and purchasing personnel have no understanding of the European Union’s Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) environmental program as it affects their companies, even though the pre-registration of chemicals was required from June 1.
A focused look at what design engineers need to know about Power Over Ethernet – a protocol for transmitting power and data signals over standard LAN infrastructure. The Guide comprises an engineering analysis by Technical Editors of Penton Media’s Electronic Design Group and includes a subset of market-analysis data from VDC Research’s 2008 PoE study.
On November 6, this webcast will discuss the trends in multicore technologies; considerations beyond raw CPU/MFLOP performance that are important to the user when running high-memory bandwidth applications; affordable and easy to deploy “supercomputing-in-a-boxâ€쳌 that can augment the scientific and engineering workgroup; and a special Q&A session.
Your Ideas For Design Can Win $500 Send us your Ideas for Design and we'll pay you $150 for every Idea for Design that we publish. In addition, the year's top design as selected by our readers will earn an additional $500, with two runners-up each receiving $250. You can submit your Ideas for Design via e-mail to dbs@penton.com, or you can mail your material to: Ideas for Design Electronic Design 45 Eisenhower Dr., Suite 550 Paramus, NJ 07652 Click here for our guidelines on Ideas for Design.
WHITE PAPER: Create Complex Sequences with a DC Power Supply Products with list mode can provide more complex sequences with additional triggering functionality without the need for additional test equipment. Learn the benefits of using list mode to create complex sequences and for improved testing and reduced test time. Read today.
IFD of the week |
"Greener" Rectifier Loses The Diodes, Adds Power MOSFETs, Efficiency
By Christian Rausch, Toptica Photonics AG
A major cause of losses in a conventional power supply using a 50/60-Hz transformer is the bridge rectifier. This article shows how to build a “greenerâ€쳌 rectifier, substantially reducing losses by eliminating the diodes in the bridge rectifier and substituting modern low-RDS(ON) power MOSFETs.
Tektronix's Dave Farrell takes Electronic Design's David Maliniak through the high points of Tek's MSO2000 mixed-signal and DPO2000 digital phosphor oscilloscopes. Watch it now...
Infineon and Auto Electronics sponsored the Rev Up Fuel Efficiency Design Contest, where engineers took the "green challenge" to design a solution using Infineon products that enables or improves energy efficiency for automotive applications. The goal: increase the car fleet fuel efficiency from today's 26.6 mpg to 35 mpg by 2012. When analyzing the differences between more or less fuel-efficient cars, the list of technologies that add up to the difference can be surprisingly long. This in turn provides room for creativity and ideas how to approach this engineering "elephant" from different angles, using different techniques.
news from the editors |
SFF-SIG Addresses Mass Storage For Small Embedded Systems
The Small Form Factor Special Interest Group (SFF-SIG) will adopt and enhance SiliconSystems’ SiliconDrive II Blade Specification for use with small, rugged subsystems such as mass storage and other I/O technologies.
Autoliv Inc. has selected Infineon as the sole supplier of power semiconductors for Autoliv’s next-generation seatbelt pretension systems, called Active Seatbelts.
The quantifiable impact of imitation battery packs to the OEM includes increased safety risks for customers, greater product returns due to non-performing batteries, reduced customer satisfaction, and reduced revenue for batteries supplied by the original manufacturer. This interactive eBook provides an analysis of several counterfeit batteries and details some of the safety issues found.
Major economic downturns often lead to significant innovations. If history repeats itself, where will the next breakthrough come from?
Communications
Computing
Medical electronics
Military electronics
Consumer electronics
Software
Power
Other
Click here to take the poll. Remember to scroll down. The poll is at the bottom of the page.
focus product |
FPGAs Break Size And Power Barriers
Groomed for virtually all manner of portables, nano versions of Actel’s IGLOO FPGAs take power consumption down to 2 µW and package sizes to as small as 3 by 3 mm. With power consumption as low 2 µW, the IGLOO nano FPGAs range in densities from 10k to 250k system gates.
Most developers use only one debugger but it is quite handy to know about others. Likewise, you might want to consider a move from gdb to Eclipse or vice-versa depending upon the platform you might be debugging. This book provides an excellent contrast between each by showing how to perform the same function in each environment.
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