Back to Embedded
3540 results found, displaying items 341 - 360
Wireless Technologies Work Together To Cheat Death
The Grim Reaper isn't a happy fellow these days as technology and medicine continue to keep people around. When you usually hear about someone coming back from the dead and getting a second chance at life, you assume it was dreamt up in Hollywood. Yet thanks to technology from Boston Scientific, people like my friend Tim can continue ticking for the foreseeable future. Diagnosed with congestive heart failure (CHF) many years ago, Tim has had...
Compilers Target Quad-Core CPUs
Version 7.1 of the PGI compilers and tools from the Portland Group, a subsidiary of STMicroelectronics, features a host of improvements including code targeting quad-core AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon processors. The compilers can take advantage of the Opteron's 128-bit wide floating-point units and avoid merge dependencies. The alignment of hot loops lets the compilers take advantage of the expanded 32- byte code fetch window. And, Version 7.1 provides...
PCI Board Handles Four-Axis Stepper And Servo Motion Control
Adlink's PCI-8174 incorporates a DSP with a motion-control ASIC to handle stepper and servo motion-control functions where time-critical motion sequences are common. The board can operate in a standalone mode, and multiple cards can be linked together. Software security protection prevents illegal copying of custom software.The PCI-8174 costs $1190 (see figure). ...
New Generation Of PCIe Switches Brings New Functionality
PLX Technology's latest batch of PCI Express (PCIe) switch chips adds a host of new features, such as dual-cast support in addition to 5-Gbit/s transfer rates. The collection includes the PEX 8648 (48 lanes, 12 ports), PEX 8632 (32 lanes, 12 ports), PEX 8624 (24 lanes, six ports), PEX 8616 (16 lanes, four ports), and PEX 8612 (12 lanes, three ports). Each chip supports PLX's read pacing algorithm to ensure fair sharing of bandwidth. The chips also provide ...
1-2-3-4: What Do We Need More Cores For?
Multicore is here to stay, but how many cores do we need? While more typically is better, AMD is looking to fill a gap between dual- and quad-core chips with the tri-core Phenom for desktops. The Phenom likely will start out as a quadcore chip with one core disabled, but it will be priced between two-core and fourcore chips. It will find a home as long as there remains enough of a price gap between its siblings. Still, power users and servers will...
Autos Getting The Most From MOST150
MOST (Media Oriented System Transport) is creeping into high-end autos to deliver high-performance multimedia to passengers. The MOST150 standard pushes bandwidth to 150 Mbits/s and adds an IP channel to the mix that can carry Ethernet 100BaseT traffic. It also doubles the MOST bandwidth to 50 Mbits/s compared to MOST25 (see figure). MOST addresses fixed-bandwidth applications such as...
Tiny SBC Fits In Tight Places
Tiny SBC Fits In Tight Places VIA Technologies' 10- by 7.2-cm VT6047 Pico-ITX single-board computer (SBC) is designed for compact applications. It can use an x86-based, fanless VIA Eden or a C7 processor. It needs only a 30-W power supply, but it provides standard I/O like Ethernet, serial ports, USB ports, 7.1-channel audio, and DVI interfaces. The board has a SATA and an ATA storage interface. It supports up to 1 Gbyte of DDR2. A TV...
Mini-ITX Sports Dual-Core AMD CPUs
Kontron's KT690/mITX supports AMD's dual-core Turiona and Sempron CPUs while incorporating Radeon X1250 graphics. The board has a Compact Flash slot, a PCI slot, and a mini PCI-Express connector, plus PCI Express x8, VGA, and DVI support. Storage interfaces include four SATA-II ports, RAID support, and an ATA133 interface. There are 10 USB 2.0 ports, two serial ports, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, 7.1 HDA sound, and eight general-purpose I/Os...
Family Extends 8/32-Bit Continuum
Freescale's Flexis line got a boost with a pair of 50-MHz 32-bit MCF51QE32 V1 Cold- Fire chips. They target mobile applications and draw only 370 nA in the lowest-power stop mode. The chips have 8 kbytes of SRAM and 32 kbytes of flash; a 12-bit, 20-channel analog-to-digital converter; two SCI ports, two I2C ports, and two SPI ports; 54 general-purpose I/O (GPIO); and an internal clock. Pricing starts at $1.94. Meanwhile, Freescale released its V2 Coldfire ...
The Five Myths Of Solid-State Storage: Why It’s Not As Expensive As You Think
Embedded system designers need more from a storage system than higher capacities. Today's applications require enhanced performance, reliability, and security, all of which can effectively be met with advanced solid-state storage. This technology offers many tangible benefits, including multiyear product cycles, no product wearout, the ability to accurately forecast usable storage system life, and security options beyond encryption. But OEMs continue to design in substandard...
Freeing Communications
Migration of software to open source is often a well kept secret, even though PR agencies try their best to get the word out. A good example is Enea's LINX. At the SourceForge open-source project Web site, we find that "LINX is a distributed communication protocol stack for transparent internode and interprocess communication for a heterogeneous mix of systems." So why was this project started? LINX is integrated with Enea's OSE real-time operating...
Linux At Home In Mobile Phones
MontaVista's Mobilinux 5.0 brings a host of new features to the mobile-phone space. At the top of the list is Micro-SELinux, MontaVista's subset of the NSA-sponsored SELinux (Security Enhanced Linux). Pruning SELinux allows mandatory, policy-based access control to be implemented on low-end embedded platforms. The basic Mobilinux weighs in under 2 Mbytes, though typical systems are on the order of 16 Mbytes. Mobilinux boots quickly (under 5 s), enabling a cell...
USB Module Supports Low-Cost FPGA Development
DLP Design's $119 USB-based DLPFPGA Module sports a Xilinx Spartan 3E FPGA. It provides a rapid prototyping environment that can be plugged into a host using the 50-pin header. The module can operate off power from the USB interface or from the host. The Spartan 3E XC3S250E has 250k system gates. The module has an SPI flash chip, 128 kbytes of SRAM, and an on-module voltage regulator. Packed with training material and Xilinx's ISE WebPACK...
Embedded 32-Bit Cores Hit 1 GHz
The demands of multimedia are pushing hardware to extremes, requiring advanced architectures and support for multimedia single-instruction, multiple-data (SIMD) instructions. DSP and graphics support also are part of the mix. Yet ARM's Cortex-A9 and MIPS32's 74K 32- bit cores both break the 1-GHz barrier. Chips based on these architectures will wind up in high-volume applications such as residential gateways with Voice over IP (VoIP) support,...
TI Wireless Tech To Connect Medical Devices With HealthVault
For diabetes patients, a quick stick of the finger will soon reveal more than blood sugar levels. With glucometers that can wirelessly connect to Microsoft's HealthVault online health information center, patients can upload their stats and download relevant medical advice anytime, anywhere. Texas Instruments has agreed to bundle software on some of its existing wireless products so companies can produce connected medical devices that will...
COTS LCD Controller Boards Tackle Harsh Environments Like Pros
With the proliferation of devices being deployed to harsh environments, commercial off-theshelf (COTS) parts are needed to keep up with the demand. And since LCDs can be found in just about every new design, it would be nice to have a controller that could handle the environment without batting a logic bit. That's why Digital View added two models to its Harsh Environment (HE) series of COTS LCD controller boards.The HE-1400 and HE-1600 are...
8051 MCU Gives Ferroelectric Memory A Try
The 8051-based VRS51L3072 microcontroller from Ramtron offers 2 kbytes of F-RAM nonvolatile ferroelectric memory. F-RAM memory was added to the Versa 8051 family for a quick and reliable nonvolatile data storage and processing system that's ideal for saving system status, data logging, and storing nonvolatile variables for applications ranging from sensors and meters to industrial controls, instrumentation, ...
Cooperation Leads To Complex, Real-World Simulations
If you build it, they will control it. These days, the building is going on virtually since soft systems are faster and easier to build. Some systems may never be turned into physical entities, but knowing what will work ahead of time can save time and money. Yet the quality of simulations can vary significantly, especially when open-loop or closed-loop control is part of the equation. Likewise, the cost of creating more accurate simulations can be very high. It's...
A Mechatronics Approach To FPGA Development
As field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) continue to drop in price while adding significant capability, their use has expanded greatly in industrial control and monitoring applications. And since FPGAs are in-system/field-programmable and highly flexible, while including a plethora of drop-in functionality, they are ideal for rapid development and upfront system verification. Add the capability of constructing algorithms built from...
Mike Collette: Merging Film And Digital Tech For Superior Pictures
When Mike Collette visits a few of the national parks this fall, he'll be bringing his work with him. As president of Better Light Inc., a digital-imaging technology company he founded 15 years ago, he will shoot breathtaking landscapes on regular film. But he'll be able to preserve them digitally using his company's main product, the digital scanning back. An engineer with a passion for photography, Collette has carved out a dream job for himself developing the...
 prev. page
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
[18]
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
next page 
|
