1124 results found, displaying items 381 - 400

The most recent statistics on conventional nuclear power generation contain some interesting comparative data. For instance, France is the most enthusiastic proponent of nuclear power generation, but the U.S. almost doubles France's output. Germany seems to be abandoning nuclear power, but that assessment may be premature. France operates 59 nuclear reactors that supply more than 420 terawatt-hours per year, or 78% of the country's total consumption. France is the world's...

No subset of technology permeates the electronic industry more than power. More than any other characteristic, it defines the design engineer's job. And it's on the verge of some very big changes. Breakthroughs at several scales are about to alter the power landscape. On the small scale, galvanic battery technology has struggled to get past the limitations of lithium cells. On a larger scale, we're still refining the lead-acid battery, which is inherently handicapped by the...

With our industry still trying to recoup from the dot-com detonation amidst the rush to offshore outsourcing, the China/India impact, and the U.S. engineering graduate falloff, one can't help but wonder what the future holds. Such prognostication is a key element of our Megatrends-themed State Of The Industry issue. Of course, we're not the only ones peering through the telescope. A team of top scientists and engineers at Battelle, a world-renowned technology...

Yogi Berra, the erstwhile N.Y. Yankee catcher, is reputed to have said, "the future ain't what it used to be." Sure, we laughed, but deep down inside we knew what he meant. He was talking about changes. Certainly in the last five years, our industry has been all about changes. In the run-up years preceding this millennium, the electronics industry was on fire. Executives, managers, and engineers received signing bonuses for taking new jobs. There were five job listings for every...

What's next? What will make and shake tomorrow's high-tech markets? Guessing has become more difficult, but some candidates stand out. Like nanotechnology. The list of potential applications for nanotech is already huge and continues to expand throughout a litany of industries. The HPs, IBMs, and Intels are already talking about handheld devices with terabyte memories, and carbon nanotubes replacing silicon-based chips. But these developments may be 10 to 15 years off....

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How do you define "high-voltage" input for power converter ICs? For most power-management subsystem ICs, "high-voltage" input is 30 up to 100 V. The 100-V maximum input rating ensures reliable and safe operation of 48-V bus telecommunication power converters, 42-V automotive systems, and other industrial systems that operate at similar voltages. The normal voltage range is lower than 100 V. However, parasitic inductances and peak noise transients can cause voltage spikes...

In many ways, power-integrity closure can be viewed along the same lines as timing closure or signal-integrity (SI) closure. Getting to the point where you're satisfied that your system-on-a-chip (SoC) design meets power requirements can be just as messy as it can with timing or SI. Not only that, but power, timing, and SI are mutually dependent—so much so that repairs to one of the three can cause problems with the others. With the release of the CoolPower tool, Sequence...

Enhancing its Web-based tools that help engineers design with its products, National Semiconductor has stitched together its power and analog Webench tools into a more or less seamless design environment. The existing Webench switching converter tool now interfaces with a trio of tools that start by matching analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and signal-conditioning amplifiers and go on to complete the signal path with multi-order anti-aliasing filters. The signal path...

The relentless pace of change in electronics design means an increasing number of challenges for product designers, along with shorter development cycles and tighter budgets. One involves a general trend in the electronics industry away from parallel bus-based interconnections, such as PCI and EIDE, toward high-speed serial interconnects, like Ethernet as a backplane fabric, PCI Express, SATA, RapidIO, InfiniBand, and Star Fabric. These fabrics offer better fault resilience and high...

There was a time when you developed your product from scratch. You designed the packaging and circuits, developed the board using off-the-shelf components, and programmed it in-house—and you were still competitive. Today, whether you're building a board for a cordless phone or an embedded controller for a packaging machine, design complexities and short product lifecycles are probably taxing your engineering department beyond its capabilities. If you've...

The proportion of Ethernet switches shipping with Gigabit ports should reach 25% this year and pass 50% in 2007, according to industry analysts IDC. Seizing the opportunity, PowerDsine offers the industry's first Power over Gigabit Ethernet midspan, the 24-port 6024G. It's the initial device in a line of midspan power products for Gigabit Ethernet. PowerDsine believes a desire to merge workers' PCs with feature-loaded Internet Protocol phones is driving new 1000BaseT...

Lithium-ion and lithium-polymer batteries are nearly ubiquitous in portable applications. While catastrophic failures are rare, they can hurt people, grab headlines, and even put OEMs who use the batteries out of business. The SecuraPack line from Micro Power shields OEMs from these dangers by combining custom battery-pack technology and specialized manufacturing processes. Battery-pack design can be daunting. One battery supplier's caution document includes limiting...

Electronic circuit breakers typically rely on the drop across an external resistor to sense overcurrents. Instead, Linear Technology's LTC4213 senses the drop across the on-resistance (RDS(ON)) in the external MOSFET that provides power to the load. It's less precise than the resistor method, but it's simpler and cheaper, and it wastes less power in low-voltage applications. The LTC4213 operates over a bias supply range from 2.3 to 6 V. When bias supply voltage...

What are the available dual-output converter topologies? Dual-output, nonisolated dc-dc converter ICs include switch-mode, lowdropout (LDO), LDO plus switch-mode, and charge pump types. These ICs are non-isolated converters because there is no dc voltage isolation between the input and output. In contrast, isolated converters employ a transformer to provide I/O isolation. What types of dual switch-mode converter ICs are available? In a...

Not Just About POLs When looking at the Intermediate Bus Architecture (IBA), there is a tendency to focus on point-of-load (POL) dc-dc converters and the various control and monitoring schemes while skipping over the upstream bus converter that steps down the front end's 48 V to the bus-distribution voltage. In fact, a great deal can be said about bus converters. Not all bricks are created equal. Input Voltage Range's Big...

The first active-OR controller was introduced last year. Now there are two, and the price has been squeezed down so a controller and MOSFET cost about the same as passive ORing with Schottkys. It has been customary to use multiple ac-dc converters for redundancy in ­48-V dc systems for telco and server applications, isolating them from each other with Schottky diodes. Essentially, the diodes perform a logical-OR function on the supply voltages. This is...

If you're looking for a powerful market, check out dc-dc converters. According to a study by Venture Development Corp., the global merchant market for dc-dc devices tallied $5.5 billion in 2004. On top of that, the field is going to hit $7.8 billion by 2008. VDC cites three factors contributing to this growth. First, the proliferation of lower voltages at higher current levels has fueled an increased use of distributed power architectures with point-of-load converters across more...

The modular Intelligent Battery and Power System (IBPS) battery packs simplify the design of products powered by high-density lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries. The modules control the charge and discharge cycles of an array of batteries and aggregate them into one "Cluster Battery." The controllers charge the batteries at better than 95% efficiency, capturing almost all of the input power and staying cool enough for simple passive cooling. The company also offers Windows-based event...

Three high-efficiency step-down voltage regulators are pin- and size-compatible with older and less efficient LM78xx devices. The 78SR regulators can be used as "drop-in" replacements that reduce the power consumption of applications without circuit redesign. Output options are +5 V/0.5 A, +12 V/0.4 A, and +3.3 V/0.5 A. A 260-kHz switching frequency produces efficiencies as high as 95% for the 12-V part and 85% for the 3.3-V and 5-V regulators. Full-load operation from 9-, 12-, 24-, 28-, or...

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