November 25, 2002 Magazine Archive

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ISSUE DATE: NOVEMBER 25, 2002

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SoC interconnect IP, Flash-based microcontrollers, Optical test, Designing a testable SoC

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Browse Archived Articles By: Issue | Author | Department | Topic

November 25, 2002 - In This Issue

[Technology Report]
Flash-Based Microcontrollers Are Rapidly Taking Charge
Flash memory-based microcontrollers have changed the landscape for embedded applications. Programming speeds and access times have improved. Flash reliability is no longer a concern in all but the most demanding environments. Flash memory-based... — William Wong

[Technology Report]
Instruments Race To Stay Abreast Of Advances In Fiber Optics
It weighs in at a scant one ounce per kilometer. Yet just one fiber-optic strand, smaller than a human hair, can carry all the telephone traffic in the U.S. at the peak busy period of the year. With such credentials, it's understandable why fiber is... — Stephen Grossman

[Product Innovation]
Interconnect IP Steers SoC Integration Into The Fast Lane
Intellectual property (ip), and its reuse, is expected to rev up soc development from conception to reality. And on paper, it does. But rarely do those selling IP cores tell you just how grueling their integration can be. System-on-a-chip (SoC) design... — David Maliniak

[Product Innovation]
32-Bit Microcontroller Combines CAN And Ethernet Interfaces
The ColdFire processor architecture, a popular embedded platform, is now available as a single-chip microcontroller. Motorola's ColdFire MCF5282 packs 512 kbytes of flash memory, 2 kbytes of instruction cache, and a complete complement of... — William Wong

[Design Application]
Yes, You Can Get A Testable SoC Design To Market On Time
Meeting time-to-market windows and finding ways to improve the profitability of new products is not only important, but a matter of survival, especially given the current economic conditions and market instability. With cost-cutting measures in place... — Greg Aldrich

[Ideas For Design]
For Just Pennies, Boost Current From Negatimve Linear Regulator
Adding four components to a negative linear regulator (U1 in the figure) increases the load current by 60%. The additional pass transistor and associated resistors cost less than $0.17 in 1000-unit... — Chad L. Olson

[Ideas For Design]
Ease Capacitor ESL/ESR Measurement With Mercury-Wetted Relay
Capacitor discharge circuits are used extensively in fast pulse generation. In such applications, the capacitor's stray inductance (or equivalent series inductance) and series resistance play an important role in determining performance of the... — S.V. Nakhe

[Ideas For Design]
Build A Smart Battery Charger Using A Single-Transistor Circuit
The following automatic battery-charger design is created with a circuit that could qualify as the simplest window comparator ever built around a single transistor (see the figure). It starts charging... — Ejaz ur Rehman

[Editorial]
Cross Communications And Sharing Information Have Become Mandatory
"Always be prepared" has been the long-time theme of the Boy Scouts and U.S. Marines. Unfortunately, tragedies such as the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and the recent sniper shootings in the Washington, D.C., area have ... — Dave Bursky

[Pease Porridge]
Bob's Mailbox
Dear Bob: We routinely use stainless steel welding rod for crude shunts. It comes in a variety of diameters and we pick a size and length based on the "try-it-and-see" approach. We're not looking for exact calibrations, but rather a... — Bob Pease

[Viewpoint]
Play Your Cards Right In This Recession And You Can Win Market Share
The 2002 recession in the U.S. communications infrastructure equipment sales is a difficult period for communications semiconductor vendors. History shows, however, that such times provide the biggest opportunities for market-share gains for the... — Robert O'Dell

[Editor's Notebook]
If Performance And Cost Are Key, Why Overdo The Integration?
The advent of the 90-nm CMOS processes enables a boatload of logic and memory within a single IC, measured in tens of millions of gates. The first-order thinking is that it's always possible to add a little more circuitry into the mix and eventually... — Tets Maniwa

[Celebrating 50 Years]
Flashback
FLASHBACK > 10 YEARS AGO NOVEMBER 25, 1992 THIS DECADE MAY WELL BE CALLED THE decade of convergence. The merging of computing and communication technologies, the convergence of professional and... — Staff

[Letters]
Letters
Your Original Format Is A Winner I've been a long-time fan of Electronic Design for nearly three decades. In that time, I've seen lots of anniversary issues, but none better than your 50th. Before we knew it... — Various

[Forefront]
Cost-Conscious FPGAs Quadruple Logic Density
Nearly four times the logic density of previous low-cost FPGA families—that's the earmark of the just-released Cyclone FPGA family. With a logic architecture redesigned from the ground up, Altera now can price the logic at about $1.50 per 1000... — Dave Bursky

[Forefront]
New Approach To Backup Power Raises Levels Of Redundancy
Enterprise systems require varying levels of backup power protection. In systems where the cost of a UPS can't be justified, designers may rely on a second phase of the ac mains for backup power. Such instances will need ac switching equipment. Other... — David G. Morrison

[Forefront]
650-MHz Embedded Server Blade Packs Dual Gigabit Ethernet Interfaces
Beyond its 650 MHz of processing power, the CPSB-560 UltraSPARC-IIi+ embedded server blade features full PICMG 2.16 CompactPCI packet-switching backplane (cPSB) compliance. Complete with dual Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, the board also includes up to... — Lisa Fakhry

[Forefront]
SSI Mezzanne Card Simplifies Position, Motion Monitoring
Monitoring and controlling shafts and other moving parts in automation systems, test equipment, machine tools, and other applications can be rather daunting. The M47, a synchronous serial interface (SSI) M-Module mezzanine card, can help facilitate... — Lisa Fakhry

[Forefront]
Low-Cost Production Of Broadband MEMS Switches Moves Closer To Realty
A surface-micromachined, all-metal wafer-bonding process has been used with high-resistivity silicon to develop an electrostatically actuated broadband microswitch with impressive performance characteristics for dc to RF applications. Device yields of... — Roger Allan

[Forefront]
Logarithmic Scheme Executes Multiply, Divide, Square, Or Square Root In A Single Cycle
Lots of division, square-root, or squaring operations often require multiple clock cycles to execute—which engineers would like to avoid in their designs. A logarithmic-based computational scheme by QSigma of San Jose, Calif., lets such... — Dave Bursky

[Forefront]
8- And 32-Bit MCUs Share Peripheral Architecture
Upgrading from an 8-bit to a 32-bit microcontroller (MCU) typically requires substantial software changes, even when a high-level language like C is employed, because the peripheral architectures are usually different. Not so with NEC Electronics' KX1... — William Wong

[Forefront]
PC-Board Signal Integrity Tool Supports Multiple Model Formats
When putting together a suite of models for high-speed pc-board simulation, you'll rarely, if ever, come up with a set of models that are all in the same format or language. Intellectual-property vendors further compound the issue, as they never seem... — David Maliniak

[Forefront]
10-A POL Converters Combine 95% Efficiency With 107-W/in.³ Density
The SIL10 series of ultra-efficient, 10-A point-of-load (POL) converters includes models capable of 95% conversion efficiency. The dc-dc converters' high efficiency and compact size generate an industry-leading power density figure of 107... — Lisa Fakhry

[New Products]

• Internal AC Adapter Module Supports Home Networking — Lisa Fakhry

• Converters Deliver Up To 25 A In 60% Smaller Package — Lisa Fakhry

• Battery Endows Meter Readers With 20% Longer Life — Lisa Fakhry

• 1/8-Brick Power Converters Supply Up To 30 A — Lisa Fakhry

• 5-W DC-DC Converters Come In 24-Pin DIP — Lisa Fakhry

• 15-W Power Converters Enable All-Surface-Mount Assembly — Lisa Fakhry

• Open-Frame Converters Power Itanium 2 Processors — Lisa Fakhry

• 6U DSP Board Extends Processing Power To 24 GFLOPS — Lisa Fakhry

• Controller Core Module Boosts Processing Power For Embedded Apps — Lisa Fakhry

• PowerPC Computer Yields Flexibility In Embedded Industrial Control — Lisa Fakhry

• System Controller, Peripheral, Satellite: PMC Host Board Does All Three — Lisa Fakhry

• PCI/ISA Single-Board Computer Tackles Applied Computing Challenges — Lisa Fakhry

• Board Helps Squeeze Multiprocessor Systems Into 19-in. Racks — Lisa Fakhry

• Flexible SBC Packs Processing Power Into 3.5-in. Form Factor — Lisa Fakhry

• Write, Emulate, Debug: All With One MCU Starter Kit — Lisa Fakhry

• 3U VME Processor Board Delivers 450 Million Instructions/s — Lisa Fakhry

• PowerPC/VME Board Combo Takes On Vector Processing — Lisa Fakhry

• Higher Bandwidth Comes Via 600-MHz DSP Card — Lisa Fakhry

• Color-Coded Stereo Jacks Implement An RFI/EMI Shield — Lisa Fakhry

• Three Phono Jacks, S-Video Connector Merge Into One Package — Lisa Fakhry

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