Bill is a staff editor for Electronic Design focusing on embedded,
software, and systems. He is also the editor for the Embedded in Electronic Design department and the weekly hands-on column, EiED Online. He prefers press releases via email and images should be at least 300dpi. Links to product photos is prefered. Email address: bwong@penton.com Web site: http://www.elecdesign.com/Departments/DepartmentID/67/67.html
2154 results found for William Wong, displaying items 1 - 20
November 18, 2009
[Leapfrog: First Look] It's A Multimedia CPU Feeding Frenzy!
The ARM Cortex-A5 and MIPS M14K and M14Kc lines are new architectures that the customers of these vendors will be using to build new chips. Meanwhile, ZiiLabs and VIA Technologies are offering new chips—the ZMS-08 multimedia processor and the Nano 300, respectively—using their own designs.
November 16, 2009[Leapfrog: First Look] Low-Energy Microcontroller Takes It To The Limit
What do you get when you don’t run Energy Micro’s 32-bit Cortex-M3 processor (Fig. 1) at full speed (mode 0)? A very low energy bill. In most instances, this 32-bit microcontroller sips less power than ultra-low-power 8-bit microcontrollers, so why not take advantage of 32-bit performance? Extensive clock gating within the chip design is a major factor in reducing power requirements, but so is...
November 16, 2009[Lab Bench] Will Android Open The Set-Top Box?
Comcast’s final move to all-digital transmission in my area means I need a set-top box (STB) for all of my devices. This puts Comcast on par with other HDTV service providers such as Verizon and Dish Networks. Viewers can still get local channels via Comcast cable with a TV or HDTV tuner, but they’re just a fraction of all of the available channels. This doesn’t make much of a difference for viewers with one or two televisions. But I have a few more, ...
November 16, 2009[Engineering Feature] Science Fiction Meets Science Fact In Today's Robot Research
Real robots have capturedthe imagination of young and old engineers, designers, and programmers alike. For example, techies can get their hands dirty with iRobot’s Roomba Create or take part in competitions like FIRST Robotics. Robots also are changing how war is waged and how we protect people on and off the battlefield. And, they’re working with doctors and patients. Though we’re far from the intelligent androids found in science fiction, robot deployment and...
November 16, 2009[Engineering Feature] Taking A Hand At Robot Control
Tele-operated and semi-autonomous robots are often handled by conventional joysticks and mice. This is fine for rolling robots with two degrees of freedom. But higher-complexity robots capable of more varied movements have led to everything from 3D mice to thought control (brainwaves), though that has yet to be used for precise control. The AcceleGlove from AnthroTronix uses Freescale’s 3D microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) accelerometers (...
November 11, 2009
[Lab Bench Online] E Ink Talks About ePaper
Bill Wong chats with Sriram Peruvemba, Vice President of Marketing for E Ink Corp., about E Ink and ePaper.
November 5, 2009[Leapfrog: First Look] Hard Drive Delivers SATA-III 6-Gbit/s Transfer Rate
Peripheral transfer rate is the typical bottleneck for many applications, especially as processors split into multiple cores. SATA-III’s 6-Gbit/s transfer rate provides significantly more bandwidth, assuming the hard drives and motherboards can keep up. Seagate’s 2-Tbyte ST32000641AS Barracuda XT hard drive delivers on the peripheral side. This is enough space for up to 45 hours of 1080i HD DVCPRO-encoded video (see the...
November 5, 2009[Embedded in Electronic Design] Tracing The Almost Perfect Program
Those of you who write perfect programs the first time around may leave the room. Now for the rest of us, what debug tools do you use? The crude but effective printf (for C and C++) is probably at the top of everyone’s list. Variations include watch variables in debuggers and control panels for graphical environments like National Instruments’ LabVIEW, but the idea is the same—see what the program is doing and then figure out what’s going...
November 5, 2009[Embedded in Electronic Design] DSF Targets Complex Debugging Chores
The open-source Eclipse project has turned into one of the primary software development platforms for Web services, embedded systems, and other applications. Embedded developers typically take advantage of the Java-based Eclipse integrated development environment (IDE) using the C/ C++ Development Tool (CDT). Embedded tool vendors quickly adopted the CDT because it enabled incorporation of the GNU toolchain as well as proprietary toolchains including...
November 5, 2009[Lab Bench] Rambus And SPMT Offer A Memory Of Things To Come
Memory is more than double data rate (DDR), as any embedded designer will attest. Memory technology is also one of the arenas where there is an ongoing conflict between standards and innovation. Volume keeps memory costs down, but it also means standards need to exist so parts are interchangeable. Plenty of memory technologies are out now, with more on the drawing board. Two new possibilities, multithreaded DDR RAM from Rambus and serial port memory from the...
November 5, 2009[Engineering Essentials] Motor-Control Resources
A good general view of field-oriented control (FOC) can be found in Texas Instruments’ 1998 white paper, “Field Orientated Control of 3-Phase AC Motors”, which can be downloaded for free. For a more recent treatment, though its references go back at least as far as 1980, readers can check out “A Seamless Whole Speed Range Control of Interior PM Synchronous Machine without Position Transducer” by Filka, Balazovic, and...
November 5, 2009[Engineering Essentials] A Multi-Level Approach Makes Understanding Motor Control Easier
Regardless of their primary field, sooner or later, most designers have to deal with motor controls. Broadly speaking, there are two methods to incorporating these components in your design. First, designers can start with one of the many choices of microcontrollers that are available and then address the challenges of making the control do what they want. Or second, designers can start at the other end and examine the interaction between motors and...
October 21, 2009
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Combo Handles Touch And Proximity Tasks
Silicon Labs is making capacitive touch and promixity tasks easier to implement with its QuickSense portfolio. This includes the Si1120 infrared sensor and the C8051Fxx/C8051F8xx 8-bit microcontrollers.
October 21, 2009
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Time To Move To Windows?
Embedded developers looking to jump over Microsoft Windows Vista are in luck. Based on the Windows 7 kernel, Windows Embedded Standard 2011 will supersede Windows XP Embedded, currently known as Windows Embedded Standard 2009.
October 21, 2009
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Transceivers Boast More Automotive Interfaces
SMSC has expanded its TrueAuto offering with the USB83340 USB 2.0 transceiver with high-performance ESD protection and overvoltage protection up to 30 V. The LAN8930 10/100 three-port managed Ethernet switch has a pair of ports with PHYs and one MII interface.
October 21, 2009
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Get Linux In An RJ-45 Module
Lantronix’s XPortPro with its 32-bit processor is built to run Linux and Lantronix’s own Evolution operating system (OS). The Evolution turnkey sysem supports Lantronix’s ManageLinx with VIP Access.
October 21, 2009
[Embedded in Electronic Design] High-Availability Carrier-Grade Linux Does DRDB
One of the many new features of MontaVista’s Carrier Grade Edition (CGE) Linux 5.1 is support for disk replication within a cluster via open-source Distributed Replicated Block Device (DRDB) software. DRDB uses high-speed network links to provide RAID-like operation in a high-availability (HA) environment.
October 22, 2009[Lab Bench] Developers Can Expect To See Everyware Everywhere
Building a system from the ground up including all the software can be rewarding, but it’s a timeconsuming process that’s prone to errors. That’s why developers utilize off-the-shelf processor boards, operating systems, and run-time systems. Systems that aren’t built with a significant amount of off-theshelf hardware and software are rare. On the software side, C remains the dominant programming language of choice, with C++ bringing up the rear. C++ has...
Bill is a staff editor for Electronic Design focusing on embedded,
software, and systems. He is also the editor for the Embedded in Electronic Design department and the weekly hands-on column, EiED Online. He prefers press releases via email and images should be at least 300dpi. Links to product photos is prefered.
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