High-Performance Stacking Connectors Increase Design
Flexibility
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. Learn more.
leapfrog |
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.
Startup Sets Sail For Speedier Spice
Simulation By David Maliniak, EDA Editor
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.
Now Available! The Designer’s Guide to PoE
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. Click here to order now.
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.
Read eBook: The Dangers of Counterfeit Battery
Packs
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. Read now.
quick poll |
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.
The Art Of Debugging With GDB, DDD and Eclipse
Norman Matloff and Peter Jay Salzman
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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