October 18, 2004 Magazine Archive

Technologies
- Analog
- Communications
- Components
- Digital ICs
- EDA
- Embedded
- Power
- Test
Design Hotspots
- Analog
- Embedded
- Power
- Green Design
Resources
Magazine
eBooks & Whitepapers
Shows
- CES 2009
- electronica
- NI Week
- MTT-S
- DAC
- MD&M
- PCIM
- SID
- ESC
- CTIA
Jobs
More...
- eBooks
- Whitepapers
- Webcasts
- Job Zone
- Newsletters
- Blogs
- Hall of Fame
- RSS
- Subscribe

Click to view this week's ad screen

ISSUE DATE: OCTOBER 18, 2004

OPTIONS

Electronic voting, 32-bit architecture, Next-generation-blade power supply, Power over Ethernet, FPGAs, Interconnect design

• Get a FREE Subscription
• Renew Subscription
• Reprints/Licensing
• Advertiser Index
• Submit Article Ideas

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

October 18, 2004 - In This Issue

[Engineering Feature]
The Ballot Is Open On Electronic Voting
Hanging digits? The digital equivalent to hanging chads is a distinct, and to many, a very disturbing possibility. Recent tests of several electronic voting machines suggest the danger of your vote not being counted in November's national... — Ron Schneiderman

[Technology Report]
Architectural Advances Propel FPGAs Into High-End ASIC Turf
Finer features and architectural enhancements let the latest-generation FPGAs deliver higher gate counts and application-targeted resources to implement complex systems-on-a-chip. The rules of the ASIC game are changing as the cost to... — Dave Bursky

[Technology Report]
Evolving PoE Promises Rich Landscape Of Power Innovation
Developments surrounding Power over Ethernet include a number of unexpected apps, many spec-compliant products from chips to midspan hubs, and efforts to boost the maximum current that's deliverable via Ethernet cable. It has been... — Don Tuite

[Leapfrog: Industry First]
Power Supply Eyes Next Generation Of Blades
Five of these 850-W supplies will fit in a 1U rack enclosure, while I2C monitors volts and amps as well as controls VOUT and fan speed. Blade servers—hot-swappable, independent server cards that fit in a... — Don Tuite

[Leapfrog: Industry First]
32-Bit Architecture Challenges 8-Bit Processors
Can developers utilize a 32-bit architecture with a clear upgrade path even when low power and compact size are high on the list of requirements? Arm Ltd. attempts to answer that question with its Cortex M3 processor, which offers a much smaller... — William Wong

[Design View / Design Solution]
Design Great Interconnects By Treating FPGAs Like Software
The potent combination of FPGA processing and switch-fabric interconnect offers systems designers dramatic increases in both processing throughput and scalable bandwidth¾within existing volume and power constraints. However, FPGA development is still... — Andrew Reddig

[Ideas For Design]
Easily Convert Decimal Numbers To Their Binary And BCD Formats
Here's a C/C++ program that converts decimal numbers ranging from 0 to 99,999 to binary and BCD formats. Using a simple algorithm in conjunction with pointer arithmetic and bitwise shifting increases the conversion speed without introducing... — Edmond Vinarub

[Ideas For Design]
Quadrature Encoder-Decoder Is Implemented In A CPLD
Quadrature encoders have many uses in position-sensing applications. This implementation uses a Xilinx complex programmable logic device (CPLD) to count the pulses from the encoder and determine the direction indicated by those pulses (... — Brad Carlson

[Editorial]
Spirit Of Wescon Lives On: Smaller Stage, Big Picture
Some of my friends who've been in the electronics arena since Wescon's glory days were curious to know if the event is still worth attending. Although it's not the must-attend extravaganza of "back in the day,"my time was well spent at last... — Mark David

[POV: Point Of View]
Taking The Fear Out Of The Jitter Bug
Although the semiconductor industry is seduced by high-performance, multi-gigabit interface technologies like Serial ATA and PCI Express, abandoning our comfort zone of lower-speed signaling and approaching these enigmatic high-speed serial (HSS)... — Tammy McClure

[Pease Porridge]
What's All This "Selective Fit" Stuff, Anyhow?
Back in the late 1950s, George A. Philbrick Researches would cheerfully sell you a $22 K2-W op amp that would swing ±50 V as its rated output (per my old column*), and for $33, a K2-X that would swing ±100 V of output. But there were... — Bob Pease

[TechView: The Industry]
Heat-Sensitive Ink, Heated Probe Improve Nanoscale Lithography
— Dave Bursky

[TechView: The Industry]
Coming Attractions: Attack Of The Killer 3D Displays
If your memories of 3D displays involve B movies and cardboard glasses with red and blue lenses, it's time for another look. New 3D displays are arriving in many different forms, from enhancements to standard flat screens to true volumetric... — Dave Bursky

[TechView: Analog & Power]
16 Bits, Buffers, And Voltage References All Squeeze Into SOT-23-Packaged DACs
Homing in on industrial-control and T&M applications, Analog Devices has extended its portfolio of small-footprint nanoDACs. Eight pin-compatible 12- to 16-bit digital-to-analog converters (DACs) now enter the fray, some for closed-loop... — Don Tuite

[TechView: Analog & Power]
Multiphase Power Converters Gang Up To Add Current
The Achilles heel of all non-isolated voltage-regulator modules and point-of-load converters is the size and cost of the passives that store the energy needed when their loads require a big increase in current. Primarion tackled this problem... — Don Tuite

[TechView: Analog & Power]
Dual-Input, 8-Bit, 1-Gsample/s Fold-And-Interpolate ADC Wrings 7.5-Bit Effective Number Of Bits From 1.6 W
At $219 each in 1000-unit volumes, the ADC08D1000 analog-to-digital converter (ADC) isn't destined for consumer products. But this chip from National Semicondctor can digitize two input signals to 8-bit resolution at sampling rates up to 1... — Don Tuite

[TechView: Communications]
RF/IF Chips Simplify Next-Gen Basestation Designs
As carriers upgrade their basestations to add subscriber capacity and implement new data services, many are considering new designs that also will support 3G and future 4G features. These wideband systems using WCDMA, and eventually orthogonal... — Louis E. Frenzel

[TechView: Communications]
Faster 802.11 WLANs In The Works: A Progress Report
WIRELESS LOCAL-AREA NETWORKS (WLANs) based on the IEEE 802.11 Ethernet standard continue to enjoy growth and success. Such WLANs are widely deployed in large and small organizations, homes, and a growing number of... — Louis E. Frenzel

[TechView: Embedded]
Mezzanine Cards Lighten Server's Secure Network Load
The Internet can be a dangerous place, so exchanging data at high speeds now requires secure communications. Performance Technologies' PMC8300 and FlexTunnel Module bring secure, high-performance Gigabit Ethernet connections to the table without... — William Wong

[TechView: Embedded]
Embedded News
Expert Development Tools Suggest Code Enhancemments Code Composer Studio (CCS) Tuning Edition for TMS320-C6000 DSPs employs trace analysis tools like Compiler Consultant and Code Size Tune to make coding and configuration suggestions to... — William Wong

[TechView: Embedded]
NetBeans Takes On Java 5.0
Eclipse isn't the only open-source development tool for Java. Before Eclipse, it was NetBeans. Now, NetBeans 4 takes on the latest Java 5.0 features. It also incoporates improvements in a number of different areas, such as debugging and J2ME... — William Wong

[TechView: Embedded]
NAT Fits On Small MCUs
The NAT (network address translation) Add-On Option for the CMX TCP/IP stack enables 8- and 16-bit processors to provide firewall services. The option supports Network Address Port Translation (NAPT) and basic NAT. It also supports port blocking.... — William Wong

[TechView: Embedded]
32-Bit MCU Targets 8-Bit Apps
Priced under $3, Atmel's 27-MIPS Smart ARM7 series of microcontrollers brings 32-bit power to 8-bit applications. Versions are available with 32 to 256 kbytes of single-cycle flash memory. Atmel has incorporated a number of enhancements,... — William Wong

[TechView: Embedded]
USB Simplifies JTAG/BDM Debug
The usb2Demon JTAG/BDM (Background Debug Mode) emulator from Macraigor Systems can clock 32- and 64-bit targets at speeds up to 24 MHz. This takes advantage of the usb2Demon's USB 2.0 connection. The emulator can handle a wide range of target... — William Wong

[TechView: Embedded]
EPIC Single-Board Computer Minimizes Power Consumption
The Embedded Platform for Industrial Computing (EPIC) has generated quite a following with vendors targeting different areas. WinSystems is focusing on low-power, fanless environments with its EPX-C3, which is based on a 733-MHz Via Eden... — William Wong

[TechView: Components & Test]
Passive Rotary Optical Encoder Shrugs Off Harsh Environments
No integral electronics can be found within the encoder housing of a novel rotary incremental optical encoder. Micronor's entirely passive MR312 ZapFree encoder has an all-optical design. Thanks to wave-division-multiplexing (WDM) technology,... — Roger Allan

[TechView: Components & Test]
Optical Proximity Sensor Makes It Automatic For Consumer Appliances
Compact mobile devices have a new miniature, low-cost optical proximity sensor at the ready. In mobile phones, for example, the HSDL-9100-021 sensor makes it possible to automatically change from the loudspeaker to the earpiece mode when the... — Roger Allan

[TechView: Components & Test]
BERT Set Options Meet SAN And 10-GbE Demands
New options for Anritsu's MP1763C pulse pattern generator and the MP1764C/D error detector bring 12.5G bit-error-rate test (BERT) sets that accurately evaluate the latest high-speed devices used in storage-area-network (SAN) and 10-Gigabit... — Roger Allan

[TechView: Digital]
Structured ASICs Deliver Pin-Compatible FPGA Replacements
Although large FPGAs are popular when designers create system prototypes, they're often constraining in production due to high per-unit costs. The arrival of a lower-cost, pin-compatible solution for the latest 1.5-V generation FPGAs looks to... — Dave Bursky

[TechView: Digital]
DSP Array Produces WiMAX, HSDPA Solutions From Reference Designs
Thanks to complete software implementations of 802.16 (WiMAX) basestations and High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) picocells, designers can rapidly develop full system solutions using the PC102 communications processor. The PC8520 and PC8218... — Dave Bursky

[TechView: Digital]
DSP Extensions Turn MIPS CPUs Into Media Stars
Adding DSP hardware extensions to the MIPS instruction-set architecture (ISA) boosts CPU throughput by up to 300% when handling signal-processing algorithms for audio and video applications. The improved DSP throughput, coupled with the CPU's... — Dave Bursky

[TechView: EDA]
Platform FPGA Design Suite Exploits New Architecture
Stir together 200,000 logic cells and 500-MHz performance, and you get the Integrated Software Environment (ISE) from Xilinx. Following on its recent announcement of the Virtex-4 family of platform FPGAs, the company rolled out the 6.3i release of... — David Maliniak

[TechView: EDA]
RTL-To-GDSII Flow Rolls For Structured ASICs
A collaboration between Magma Design Automation and ChipX has produced a unified RTL-to-GDSII structured ASIC design flow. Based on Magma's Blast Create and Blast Fusion tools, the flow supports ChipX's CX5000 family of structured-ASIC devices.... — David Maliniak

[TechView: EDA]
EDA Roundup
An open data model is just one of the enhancements to version 12 of Mathcad. The calculation software adopted XML as its native file format. Users can automatically save Mathcad files as XML documents, making them easier to search and share... — David Maliniak

[TechScope]
Spinach-Powered Portables Take "Green" To A New Level
Popeye would be proud. Just a little dash of spinach could help portable devices recharge in the sun, thanks to the world's first solid-state photosynthetic cell. While plants convert sunlight into energy quite efficiently, they require water and... — Richard Gawel

[TechScope]
Volcano Studies Flow Toward Wireless
Tungarahua, a 5016-meter volcano in Ecuador, rumbles while spewing ash and hot gas each day. But when is it going to blow? To get that answer, researchers must rely on wired monitoring systems. Not only are they costly, they also quickly exhaust... — Richard Gawel

[Basics Of Design]
Controlling Distributed Power
Sponsored by: POWER-ONE
Because of their high transistor density and thin gate oxides, the latest high-performance microprocessors, FPGAs, and ASICs combine low operating voltages with currents that swing rapidly from milliamps to tens of amperes and back. To accommodate... — Don Tuite

[Design FAQs]
Power>> Step-Down Regulators—Part 2: Battery-Powered Applications
Sponsored by: NATIONAL SEMICONDUCTOR
Why do you need a voltage regulator when operating from a battery? The battery output voltage goes down over time, so you need a regulator to maintain the required system voltage. Also, the device must provide tight output voltage... — Sam Davis

[Ahead Of The Curve]
Inadequate Test Tools Can Have A Very High Price
An expert viewpoint brought to Electronic Design by Agilent Technologies, Inc. The age-old adage says you can't do the right job without the right tool, but in today's high-performance electronics there's an... — Paul G. Schreier

[New Products]

• Component Specifier: Transformers/Inductors — Richard Gawel

• Test & Measurement: Infiniium-Scope Storage Options Extend Capacity Up To 128 Mpoints — Roger Allan

• Test & Measurement: USB Devices Create Portable And Affordable DAQ — Roger Allan

• Test & Measurement: OTDR Fiber Monitor Modules Slim Down In Size — Roger Allan

• Test & Measurement: Small Temperature Probe Responds Quickly In Harsh Environments — Roger Allan

• Test & Measurement: Digital/Analog Transmitters Measure Humidity And Temperature — Roger Allan

• Test & Measurement: Automated T&M Toolkit Hastens Sequencing/Results Analysis — Roger Allan

• Test & Measurement: 16-Bit PCI DAQ Board Offers Price Break — Roger Allan

• Comunications: 900-MHz RF Modem Delivers Data Over Distances Reaching 20 Miles — Dave Bursky

• Communications: RF Modem Delivers 1-W Conducted Power And 256-Bit Encryption Keys — Dave Bursky

• Communications: Low-Power Bluetooth Core Joins Software Stack For Full Solution — Dave Bursky

• Communications: Swap Digital Filtering IP For Analog Filters In Spectrum Analyzers — Dave Bursky

• Communications: Three-Way Power Splitter Offers Same 3-dB Split On Any Port — Dave Bursky

PartFinder

GlobalSpec

PART SEARCH :
	Powered by: