[Engineering Feature] Design Autopsy: Dissecting BoMs To Defuse Costs
These days, shrinking a product's price tag usually involves cutting the cost of service-related elements, the performance level, or the number of bells and whistles. But these may not be the only options, nor the most viable. Too often, we neglect to...
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Jonathan Cassell
[Technology Report] New Breed Of ASICs Melds The Best Of Two Worlds
Over the last half decade, a new class of configurable ASICs has made inroads by bridging the performance and cost gap between designs based on full custom ASICs and high-density FPGAs. Known as platform and structured ASICs, these system-on-a-chip...
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Dave Bursky
[Leapfrog: First Look] Adaptive Logic Molds Faster, More Efficient FPGAs
Many of today's SRAM-based FPGAs employ four-input lookup tables (LUTs) to implement basic logic functions. But for complex logic functions that expand beyond a single LUT or simple functions that occupy only a fraction of an LUT, the basic four-input...
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Dave Bursky
[Leapfrog: First Look] Go Concurrent, Not Sequential, In ESL SoC Design
Complexity is forcing many embedded-system designers to consider virtual platforms for concurrent hardware and software development. The typical sequential process for writing and validating software, which usually happens only after a hardware...
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David Maliniak
[Ideas For Design] Isolated DC-DC Converter Sports Dual Outputs
Presented here is an isolated 6-W dc-dc converter optimized to provide low-cost and efficient isolated power across a 2500-V ac potential barrier. The converter, which incorporates inexpensive, readily available components, can provide either two...
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Sam Ochi
[Ideas For Design] Novel Series-Boost Circuit Uses Flying Inductor
The power supply that's described here boosts the voltage from a 1.5-V flashlight cell to 3.5 V across an LED, while the LED and flashlight cell are in series with the power supply. What spawned this circuit was the need to make an LED retrofit kit...
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Dick Cappels
[Editorial] New Crimes For New Times: Blazing A Trail To Jail
Here in New Jersey and in neighboring New York, there are laws against using handheld cell phones while driving. With 25% of auto accidents attributed to motorists distracted by nondriving activities, I think the laws make some sense. (But have I...
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Mark David
[POV: Point Of View] Addictions Cause Problems In The Board Business
The board business is changing dramatically, not just technologically, but fundamentally. By "board business," I mean off-the-shelf circuit boards meeting PCI, CompactPCI, and VME specifications and standards. In the 1990s, the primary board...
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Ray Alderman
[Pease Porridge] Bob's Mailbox
Dear Bob: As I'm sure you know, field service work often requires extreme engineering. But sometimes, the quick fix doesn't do the trick. Some years ago, we were in a situation where we needed about 18 V ac from a 220-V source. A junior...
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Bob Pease
[TechView: The Industry] Nano Research Receives Mega Funding
Nanotech research is exploding as universities scramble to uncover the mysteries of tiny technologies. These institutions don't have to work alone and depend solely on their departmental budgets, though. The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the...
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Richard Gawel
[TechView: Communications] UWB Continues To Linger On The Horizon
Ultra wideband (UWB), the short-range wireless technology that offers the highest potential data rate of any other wireless technology (>110 Mbits/s with a 10-meter range), continues to gestate as various companies squabble and jockey for position...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[TechView: Embedded] PCI Express Links InfiniBand
Combine two serial bus architectures into a host bridge chip and you get Mellanox's third-generation InfiniHost III EX. This dual-port, 10-Gbit/s InfiniBand host controller links the host processor to an 83 PCI Express interface. It also provides a...
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William Wong
[TechView: Embedded] A Change In The Wind (River)
The bastion of proprietary platforms, Wind River, is changing the form and function of its entire product line. Wind River's Enterprise Licensing Model (ELM) has a traditional royalty as well as a pure per-seat development subscription model, bringing...
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William Wong
[TechView: Embedded] ARM9 MCU Hits Secure Highs And Lows
A pair of ARM9-based Microcontrollers complete with security expand Cirrus Logic's ARM-based processor line. Both the entry-level EP9301 and the high-end EP9315 employ Cirrus Logic's MaverickKey security technology and secure boot ROM. The EP9315 also...
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William Wong
[TechView: EDA] ARM, Synopsys Partner For SystemVerilog Verification
A reference methodology to define a coverage-driven verification architecture using SystemVerilog is in the works from ARM and Synopsys. The companies will publish the methodology in the co-authored SystemVerilog Verification Methodology Manual (VMM),...
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David Maliniak
[TechView: EDA] EDA Roundup
• TSMC'S libraries will now be distributed through Synopsys' DesignWare IP library. Over 25,000 DesignWare users gain desktop access at no added cost to standard-cell and I/O libraries created by TSMC and optimized for its 0.15- and...
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David Maliniak
[TechScope] Going Up? First To Commercial Space Travel Nets $10 Million
Space tourism may be closer to reality than you think. A private foundation has put together a $10 million prize with the goal of inspiring commercial space travel. The first team to privately finance, build, and launch a spaceship that can carry...
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Richard Gawel
[TechScope] Back Up Your PC Games
Parents of gamers—and grown-up gamers, too—needn't worry anymore about losing or damaging their favorite PC games. With the Games X Copy software from 321 Studios, they can copy games to their hard drive or onto blank CDs and DVDs. Games X...
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Richard Gawel
[Basics Of Design] Embedded Flash Memory Sponsored by: RENESAS TECHNOLOGY CORP.
Embedded flash-memory-based MCUs are dominating new system designs. This is true even in high-volume production because of flash memory’s flexibility and reprogrammability. Improved performance, life, and reliability have been pivotal to flash...
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William Wong
