[Technology Report] Controller ICs Energize Power-Supply Design
Build or buy? That question tops the list when systems designers decide how to supply dc power at the growing number of voltage and current levels present in virtually every type of electronic system. As supply voltage levels drop and currents rise,...
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Gene Heftman
[Leapfrog: First Look] Mobile Jukebox Engine Jazzes Up Digital Audio, JPEGs
Handheld digital music jukeboxes storing thousands of songs have quickly created a burgeoning market segment. But simple audio capture and playback leaves little room for differentiation. Now, a second-generation solution from PortalPlayer adds image...
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William Wong
[Editorial] Protect American Jobs By Winning At Global R&D
It was a reality check to hear recently from so many of you who are feeling down on engineering as a career. Many of you fear that too much engineering is moving offshore and that the future of your profession in the U.S. is bleak. The...
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Mark David
[Pease Porridge] What's All This Mnemonic Stuff, Anyhow?
"On Old Olympus' Topmost Top, A Fat-Eared German Viewed A Hop." Isn't it amazing? I read that back in '56 in Sinclair Lewis' Arrowsmith. That is a little rhyme to help medical students remember all the nerves in the head. I never learned all...
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Bob Pease
[TechView: Digital] Mini CPU Ramps Up Throughput At Low Power
Taking aim at high-performance embedded applications, the ARC-700 CPU core from ARC International delivers the smallest chip area for a 400-MHz, 32-bit RISC processor. This configurable and extendible core can be tailored for speed, area, and power...
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Dave Bursky
[TechView: Digital] Pentium 4 Line Expands To 2.8- To 3.4-GHz Editions
A half-dozen high-speed processors have been added to Intel's Pentium 4 family. They sport 800-MHz front-side buses, hyperthreading technology, and clock speeds of 2.8, 3.0, 3.2, and 3.4 GHz. Manufactured with the company's 130-nm process,...
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Dave Bursky
[TechView: Digital] Memory-Interface Cores Push Data At 1.6 Gbits/s
Reaching new memory-interface performance levels for graphics memories, the GDDR (graphics double-data-rate) III memory controller can handle data rates of up to 1.6 Gbits/s per I/O pin. Developed by TriCN, it employs the JEDEC standard...
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Dave Bursky
[TechView: EDA] Tool Tweaks Algorithms For Low-Power Operation
It's no secret that the performance of digital systems relies heavily on the memory subsystem and the algorithms that control memory accesses. The catch is that these memory accesses consume a great deal of power. Two tools from startup PowerEscape...
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David Maliniak
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Rugged Pentium M Found In SBS
SBS Technologies' CR9 incorporates a 1.6-GHz Pentium M in a rugged, CompactPCI 6U board. It features dual Gbit Ethernet PICMG 2.16-compatible links and two PMC slots. Storage includes up to 2 Gbytes of DDR SDRAM and a 2.5-in. hard-disk or flash-memory...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] PMC FPGA Handles Data Acquisition
The PMC-FPDP from Thales Computers is a rugged, air-cooled PMC card with a front-panel VITA-17-compliant data port. A PLX PCI 9656 interface chip links the 64-bit, 66-MHz PCI bus to an Altera EP1S10 FPGA. Drivers for LynxOS are provided. It costs...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Enclosure Manages AdvancedTCA
A five-slot AdvancedTCA system from Schroff provides a full mesh backplane with two hub slots. Its cooling support equals up to 200 W per slot. The Shelf Manager Mezzanine Module comes from Pigeon Point. Cost starts at under $500....
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] FPGA Is The Key To RACE++ I/O Board
The PowerRace-3 delivers processing performance and FPGA customization in a 6U VME board. A dual RACE++ switch fabric ties a pair of 533-MHz 440GX PowerPC processors and a pair of Xilinx Virtex Pro VP30 FPGAs to the rest of the system. The FPGAs have...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Excuse Me For Interrupting
Hard real-time operating systems help designers meet hard goals. Keeping interrupt latency low is only one of the ways that hard RTOSs make a difference. Reservation-based RTOSs make it easier to guarantee that jobs get done on time and that resources...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] VME A/D Board Drives Dual PowerPC FPGAs
Analog Devices' 210-MHz AD9430 feeds a pair of Xilinx Virtex II Pro FPGAs on Pentek's 6U 6821. Each FPGA incorporates a pair of PowerPC 405 cores. The FPGAs and quad processors can process the analog input and deliver it to front- or rear-panel,...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Pentium M Drives Processor Blade Pair
Diversified Technology's cPB-4610 and cPB-4616 contain a Pentium M with a 400-MHz front-side bus. They can handle the 1.1- to 1.7-GHz processor thanks to an 855PM chip set. The cPB-4610 has two PMC sites, a serial port, a parallel port, an SCSI and...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] IP News Roundup
The first IP library to support the creation of power islands is Virtual Silicon's VIP PowerSaver. Targeted at TSMC's 130-nm process, this standard-cell library lets SoC designers use power islands to dynamically control voltage and frequency for...
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David Maliniak
[TechScope] Robots, Start Your Engines!
Twenty-five robots will meet in Barstow, Calif., on March 13 to compete for a million bucks in the DARPA Grand Challenge, a 250-mile-or-so on- and off-road race from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. There's only one catch, though. There will be no drivers...
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Richard Gawel
[TechScope] Software Instantly Activates PC Entertainment
The deaf and hard-of-hearing are no longer tied to just their teletypewriter (TTY) devices for telephone calls. The Sorenson VP-100 videophone now makes these calls as simple as turning on the TV. It also enables real-time communication that conveys...
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Richard Gawel
[TechScope] Videophone System Enables ASL Communication
Why waste all that time booting up your PC to just watch a movie or look at some snapshots? InterVideo's InstantON software eliminates the wait. Users can access consumer PC-entertainment applications after a mere 10-second boot-up in Linux. Then,...
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Richard Gawel
[Basics Of Design] Power Distribution Sponsored by: CELESTICA INC.
Logic designers hate two things: analog and power. Many designs don ’t require analog, but power is needed everywhere. Proper distribution of power across a system is critical to a product’s success. An improperly designed system could...
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William Wong
