[Engineering Feature] Engineers Give Back 2008 Gains In 2009
The news media is constantly hyping the latest poll. Whether it’s what people think about healthcare, Afghanistan, or the latest contestants on So You Think You Can Dance, someone somewhere is always telling us what somebody else is thinking. But here at Electronic Design, we know what really matters to you. That’s why we conduct our engineering salary and opinion survey every year. Our annual survey provides the industry’s most complete...
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Jay McSherry
[Engineering Feature] Where Are All The Jobs?
Federal Reserve chairman Ben S. Bernanke caused a bit of a stir last month when he said that from a “technical perspective,” the recession is “very likely” over at this point. From a less technical perspective, he added that it could be months before unemployment rates dropped significantly. In fact, the Consumer Electronics Association’s U.S. Economic Forecast is projecting the unemployment rate for the country at 9.9% in 2010 and expects it to improve to only...
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Ron Schneiderman
[Technology Report] Playing The Board Game: Stack' em, Pack 'em, And Rack 'em
Stacking architectures such as PC/104 and computer-on-module (COM) rule when it comes to customizing compact, rugged systems. With standardization, boards from one vendor can plug into another, providing a host of options. As a result, developers can seize processing power from vendors with single-board computers (SBCs) and I/O boards from another vendor. The typical stacking system, such as PC/104, paves the way for simple expansion and offers ruggedization...
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William Wong
[Leapfrog: First Look] STT Technology Puts A New Spin On MRAM
MRAM’s full potential has been one of the electronics industry’s holy grails—until now. Maybe. Its promise includes nonvolatility, fast read and write times, and unlimited endurance. Power requirements and density have been limitations in the past, though current MRAM technology has succeeded in a number of niche applications. MRAM is complementary with technologies it may replace, including SRAM, DRAM, and flash memory. Crocus...
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William Wong
[Design View / Design Solution] Break Through The TCP/IP Bottleneck With iWARP
T he online economy, particularly e-business, entertainment, and collaboration, continues to dramatically and rapidly increase the amount of Internet traffic to and from enterprise servers. Most of this data is going through the transmission control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP) stack and Ethernet controllers. As a result, Ethernet controllers are experiencing heavy network traffic, which requires more system resources to process network packets. The...
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Sweta Bhatt
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[Ideas For Design] Simple Circuit Provides Latching Fault Protection
Most switching power-supply controllers provide non-latching fault protection. Satisfying a requirement for a latchoff response to a fault often requires the addition of excessive and redundant circuitry. For power-supply controllers with an external soft-start pin, however, a simple circuit can be added to convert its non-latching fault protection into one with latched protection. For typical controllers, the startup sequence begins by charging the VDD...
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Brian King
[Ideas For Design] Calculator Provides Quick Rectifier Ripple Approximation
The standard practice for calculating the ripple voltage of a simple rectifier circuit with a reservoir capacitor (Fig. 1) is to linearize the problem. A linear approximation of the voltage across the reservoir capacitor (Fig. 2) assumes that the discharge time is equal to the period of the input sine wave, which is only approximately true for...
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Hugo Coolens
[Editorial] Salary Aside, Engineering Remains A Great Profession
There has been a lot of bad economic news for engineers and almost everyone else since the financial meltdown of 2008. Hiring and salary freezes have become the order of the day, and benefits like 401(k) matches have been taken away. Add unprecedented reductions in salaries, whether as a flat percentage pullback or a via a shorter workweek, and employees are really feeling the pinch. Many of these occurrences are documented in this year’s salary survey,...
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Joseph Desposito
[TechView: Analog & Power] Tree-To-Earth pH Difference May Generate Harvestable Energy
An experimental wireless mesh network for monitoring forests for fire danger was recently demonstrated while being powered by the trees themselves during the Global Semiconductor Alliance Emerging Opportunities Expo & Conference, held earlier this month in Santa Clara, Calif. The demonstration used energy-harvesting hardware developed by a Massachusetts company called Voltree Power. The test took place at the National Interagency Fire Center...
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Don Tuite
[TechView: Components & Test] Low-Power Actuator Suits In-Vivo Biomedical Apps
Fabricated using silicon-oninsulator micromachining techniques, Imec’s latest actuator operates with ultralow power. It’s also watertight, making it viable for use in in-vivo biomedical devices and other applications that need to combine a long autonomy with small batteries (see the figure). The prototype integrates a micro needle, which is steerable by the actuator, and combines a...
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Mat Dirjish
[Engineering Essentials] High-End Probes Actively Improve Test Results
A steady stream of advances has elevated test and measurement instruments to the point where they can reveal minute details of signals with lightning-quick rise and fall times. So, then, what about test probes? The last thing test engineers want or need is a probe that’s going to influence their measurements or fail to deliver the full bandwidth that’s available to them on the scope. Fortunately, today’s high-end probes are constructed to sidestep these...
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David Maliniak
[Electronic Design Products] Select The Right Ultracapacitor Solution
Like all capacitors, ultracapacitors have a high power density. Yet unlike their traditional counterparts, electrolytic capacitors, ultracapacitors offer high energy density, allowing them to store a vast amount of energy in a small package. The capacitors that most design engineers are familiar with have very short time constants, which means their voltage cycles quickly. Ultracapacitor arrays, though, have time constants on the order of tens of seconds to...
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Alex Patsos
[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...
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William Wong
