[Engineering Feature] Think Small: Can You Meet The Design Challenges At 90 nm And Below?
Transitioning from 130 to 90 nm didn't initially present the challenges that popped up when going from 180 to 130 nm. But as more designs move to 90 nm (0.09 µm), engineers are once again running into various anomalies and quirks. "Many of the issues raised at 130 nm are now very evident at 90 nm," says Primal Buch, general manager of the Analysis Business Unit at Magma Design Automation. More functional and physical design issues are appearing as...
—
Roger Allan
[Technology Report] Power Integrity Comes Home To Roost At 90 nm
IC designers know the litany backwards and forwards: Area, power, and speed are the primary tradeoffs when it comes to optimizing your designs. You can usually have two out of the three, but a design rarely manages to optimize all of them. Which of the three is most important to you? Ordinarily, that depends on the IC's end application. However, if you're on the verge of moving to a 90-nm process technology for your next design, the choice has already been made for...
—
David Maliniak
[Leapfrog: First Look] DSOs Reveal Serial I/O Secrets
Engineers who design the latest high-speed serial-data products based on standards such as PCI-Express, Serial ATA, Ethernet, XAUI, Fibre Channel, InfiniBand, and Serial Attached SCSI must jump a number of hurdles to prove that those products conform with the standards. Early in the development cycle, that means testing the physical layer (PHY) using pseudorandom bit sequences or repeating test patterns to ensure signal integrity and timing...
—
Don Tuite
[Leapfrog: First Look] Class D Amplifiers Challenge "Golden Ears"
Conventional wisdom has it that class D amplifiers occupy an applications niche in which efficiency is paramount, and that several factors compromise sound quality. The latter includes difficulty in implementing feedback, mediocre power-supply rejection ratio (PSRR), and the drawbacks of constant switching-frequency pulse-width modulators (PWMs). Countering the conventional wisdom, Analog Devices (ADI) integrated a delta-sigma modulator with its AD1991 class D...
—
Don Tuite
[Design View / Design Solution] Design-For-Test The Smart Way: dFT With A "Big T" And A "Little d"
Design-for-test, or DFT, should facilitate high-quality test, not change the design. Test techniques and strategies need to supply a high-quality test that screens out defective devices, avoiding their shipment to customers. Any change to the design, or special design requirements for test, will make an impact on scheduling. Moreover, any additional logic and routing will lower the product yield. Fortunately, many test technologies that have little or no impact on the design are already...
—
Ron Press
[Ideas For Design] Just One Microcontroller Pin Sets Programmable Timer's Interval
Most digital timers require a set of dip switches or rotary BCD encoders to preset their interval. But those techniques consume eight or more inputs from a microcontroller's (MCU's) I/O lines. To alleviate the problem, this circuit forms a digital timer that only requires one input pin of the PIC16F872 MCU to adjust its interval (see the figure). The MCU performs all of the functions, a-d converting, timing, and decoding to drive...
—
Ricardo Jimenez
, et al.
[Ideas For Design] Use Excel To Develop A Traceability Matrix
In large projects, a single contractual document often known as the Contract End Item (CEI) governs the final product design. Each requirement of the contract is individually numbered to allow for performance verification of the end item. Because the projects are usually complex, this set of requirements is broken down and allocated to different subsystems. These subsystems also have a set of requirements, and each requirement must be traceable to a requirement above...
—
Aubrey Kagan
[POV: Point Of View] The Trouble With Debuggers
You know what has bugged me for years? Software debuggers, the applications engineers use when debugging anything from embedded systems to server applications and beyond. Now, don't misunderstand me, my livelihood depends on these things and the need for them. But we're living in the 21st century. Debuggers are still back in the 20th. Take a look at any debugger, whether for an embedded system or not. Look at the screen that the software designer is using....
—
Craig A. Haller
[Editorial] You Were The Star At CES Even If You Didn't Get To Go
How many of you got the chance to visit the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month? A Quick Poll question on our Web site showed that almost a third of you made the trek. Previous research shows that CES is the event our readers would most like to attend. Indeed, you should have been there. Where else are electronics feted in such celebratory style? True, many feel that engineers no longer get the same respect as in the past. (Surely some engineers are...
—
Mark David
[Pease Porridge] What's All This Comparator Stuff, Anyhow?
There are many comparators that you can buy to provide quick (sub-microsecond) response when a large signal changes and crosses a threshold voltage, such as a reference voltage. Unfortunately, comparators don't work well when the input signals are very small. The ability to respond correctly, without offset, drift, or noise, is normally impossible to do with a comparator unless the signal is moving more than a millivolt beyond the reference voltage. And with a comparator, you can't add a...
—
Bob Pease
[TechView: The Industry] Conference Sheds Light On Takeback Laws
Ecological concerns about electronic waste materials are growing in the industry. The European Union (EU), China, Canada, and other countries are all regulating electronic waste. So is California. OEMs are concerned about how these rules will be enforced and what compliance actions are now necessary. One place to get a handle on these new packaging and e-waste "takeback" regulations is Take It Back 2005. Now in its ninth year, the "producer responsibility" conference...
—
John Novellino
[TechView: The Industry] LED Market Shines As LEDs Replace Light Bulbs
Recent developments in ultra-high-brightness LEDs have opened the door for the technology to invade territory traditionally dominated by the light bulb. Suppliers have made tremendous advances in packaging technologies and materials processing, leading to LEDs with luminous intensities of hundreds of candelas. These LEDs are now available in multiple spectral colors from several suppliers. As LED performance improves, innumerable applications continue to emerge. In many...
—
Jagdish Rebello
[TechView: Analog & Power] Combo Enables Three-Month Development Cycles
Analog engineers are in short supply. Yet IC makers prudent enough to have substantially invested in analog EEs, particularly those who can straddle the digital and analog domains, are using their talents to win business with consumer-products OEMs and to lock out competitors. More and more, these efforts are making themselves evident in chips that require a minimum of experience in analog layout and interfacing coupled with accompanying reference designs that more or less...
—
Don Tuite
[TechView: Analog & Power] Converter Process Marries 5-V CMOS, High-Voltage Bipolar
A new process technology allows system designers to avoid adding external signal conditioning, signal biasing, and external op amps in industrial-control and medical applications. Analog Devices calls this process iCMOS, and the company has used it to launch a 15-chip family. An iCMOS chip can mix and match 5-V CMOS elements with higher-voltage 16-, 24-, or 30-V CMOS circuitry. The resulting products combine small size, low power, and high performance. The...
—
Don Tuite
[TechView: Analog & Power] ADC's Conversion Chains Tag-Team To Boost Throughput
Rather than waste months of engineering time on tricky applications with low to moderate production volumes—like digital X-ray equipment, digital telescopes, military imaging, and sonar and radar—try an off-the shelf analog-to-digital converter (ADC). Datel's ADSD-1410 dual, 14-bit, 10-MHz, sampling ADC features buffered outputs as well as two 30-MHz sample-and-hold amplifiers and two independently clocked, 14-bit, 10-Msample/s ADCs. An ASIC provides timing and...
—
Don Tuite
[TechView: Digital] High-Def Interface Streamlines HDTV Video Processor
A high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) has finally been integrated into a video processor, namely the Sil 8100. Developed by Silicon Image, the processor targets mainstream direct-view digital televisions (DTVs) like low-cost LCD and CRT-based TVs. This fully integrated system incorporates HDMI with high-bandwidth digital content protection (HDCP) and a high-definition (HD) component video input, as well as advanced image and video processing. Included on-chip are...
—
Dave Bursky
[TechView: Digital] Budget-Conscious Flash FPGAs Meet Volume Demands
Due to the short production lives of many of today's consumer and communication products, it's essential for the logic used to implement the functions to be flexible. And, this flexibility must be available without a cost premium to keep the products competitive. The third-generation ProASIC family of flash-based FPGAs, the ProASIC3 and 3E series from Actel, combines logic densities ranging from 30k to 1M system gates (ProASIC3) and 600k to 3 million system gates...
—
Dave Bursky
[TechView: Digital] Low-Power CPU Drives Next-Generation Portable Video
The Alchemy Au1200 processor gives system designers a low-power, high-performance system-on-a-chip that provides living-room quality video entertainment for on-the-go consumers. Optimized for personal media players, Advanced Micro Devices' Au1200 enables a new generation of conveniences and features. These include scalable DVD-quality displays, effortless video content transfers directly from digital video recorders, and long-lasting battery life so consumers can stay...
—
Dave Bursky
[TechView: Test] Real-Time Spectrum Analyzer Handles 36-MHz Bandwidth
RF signals aren't just becoming more prevalent in consumer and industrial designs, they're also becoming more complex and transient. Frequency hopping, bursting, and modulation can help systems avoid interference, maximize peak power, and avoid detection. But everything comes at a price. These signals create problems that are difficult to troubleshoot. The RSA3408A real-time spectrum analyzer from Tektronix targets those problems. Unlike swept-spectrum analyzers, which...
—
John Novellino
[TechView: Test] Analyzers Offer Advanced Sonet/SDH Jitter Testing
The J7233A and J7231B OmniBER Optical Transport Network (OTN) analyzers deliver accurate and repeatable jitter with ITU-T O.172 jitter accuracy maps and advanced next-generation Sonet/SDH (NG Sonet) capability in one instrument. This capability reduces the cost of testing for chip-set designers, network equipment manufacturers, and service providers. Each unit supports interface rates up to 2.5 and 10 Gbits/s. According to their manufacturer, Agilent Technologies, they're...
—
Roger Allan
[TechView: EDA] Design Out Soft-Error Susceptibility
Soft errors--which are induced by cosmic rays, alpha particles, and thermal neutrons--increasingly dominate IC reliability at nanometer geometries. Yet a new design platform from iRoC Technologies gives designers a way to accurately project the risks of soft errors in their designs. The first entrant in iRoC's Soft Error Design Solution Platform, SoCFIT 1.0, helps fabless semiconductor and system-on-a-chip (SoC) houses get a handle on how soft errors impact their design....
—
David Maliniak
[TechView: EDA] Design Platform Beefs Up Its Wireless Resume
According to recent industry data, analog/mixed-signal and RF content occupies some 5% to 10% of the area of an increasing number of systems-on-a-chip and systems-in-a-package. However, that percentage alone can chew up 50% of the design effort and trigger 50% of the re-spins. To address the need for productivity and silicon accuracy, Cadence has rolled out new capabilities under its Virtuoso custom design platform. Analog/mixed-signal and RF designers face core challenges...
—
David Maliniak
[TechView: EDA] EDA Roundup
Validation of OCP-IP cores is easier than ever with the Open Core Protocol International Partnership's CoreCreator 4.0. The tool provides a single graphical or command-line-based environment for creating and validating OCP-IP implementations. With support for OCP 2.0, the tool can import existing intellectual-property cores or assist in creating new ones. It also endows either with OCP protocol and physical constraint compliance. CoreCreator 4.0 is available to OCP-IP members through...
—
David Maliniak
[TechView: Wireless] "Black Box" Platform Relieves Bluetooth Design Woes
Bluetooth chips are shipping at a rate of over 3 million per month, more than all other wireless chips combined. But while the chips are inexpensive, simple to use, and highly interoperable thanks to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group's standards, creating a Bluetooth-enabled device can be a programmer's nightmare. Bluetooth stacks are available from multiple sources, yet it still takes thousands of programmer hours to produce a successful Bluetooth profile and application....
—
Louis E. Frenzel
[Embedded in Electronic Design] XML: Flexibility Where It Counts
XML (eXtended Markup Language) is the hottest thing since HTML. In embedded applications, flexibility is more important than efficiency. Text-based XML is simply a way to encode structured information. It looks a lot like Lisp symbolic expressions with lots of angle brackets instead of parentheses. It's used in configuration files for applications like Eclipse, and it is the basis for exchanging commands and results in SOAP (simple object access protocol). A host of protocols are built...
—
William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] CAN MCU Tinier Than Ever
Controller-area-network (CAN) microcontrollers (MCUs) continue to shrink, judging from the release of Microchip's 28-pin PIC18Fxx80 CAN MCU. It comes in a 6- by 6-mm QFN package. The family incorporates an ECAN controller to offload the 8-bit PIC processor. The processor has 16 to 32 kbytes of flash, 1.5 kbytes of RAM, and 256 bytes of EEPROM. The chip can use its internal 32-MHz clock or an external source. Peripherals include a 10-bit, 11-channel analog-to-digital converter (ADC),...
—
William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Media Gateway Module Integrates VoIP Apps
The MTN4300 Media Gateway Module series targets wired and wireless carrier-grade media applications. The PCI mezzanine module (PMC) boards can handle up to 2000 ports. Performance Technology's MTN4300 works with the company's NexusWare Linux-based software and UniPorte media and voice processing software. It handles IPv4 and IPv6 traffic. A coprocessor manages IPsec traffic. The board complies with the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) without requiring...
—
William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] XML Basics For Embedded Apps
XML, or the Extensible Markup Language, is a standard managed by the World Wide Web Consortium. The flexible text format was initially designed for data exchange on the Internet. Yet it's become much more, despite having simple syntax and semantics (Fig. 1). With XML, designers can bracket data with a pair of user-defined tags marked by angle brackets. The closing tag text starts with a slash character, and it must match the text in...
—
William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] PC/104 Plus Performs A Wireless Act
The PPM-Wireless, a PC/104-Plus module from WinSystems, supports 802.11b and 802.11g. It contains a Mini-PCI card socket for wireless interfaces like Intel's PRO/Wireless 2200BG Mini-PCI card. The PPM-Wireless is shipped without the Mini-PCI card. An SMA external connector provides access to an external antenna, while an optional second connector enables more flexible antenna configurations. The PPM-Wireless costs $149. www.winsystems.com...
—
William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Module Made For .Net Embedded CLR Development
The $199 .netcpu development platform is well suited for .Net embedded-based applications that use the Common Language Runtime (CLR) engine. Created by .netcpu Corp., the module has a 27-MHz ARM7TDMI processor with 384 kbytes of SRAM and 4 Mbytes of flash. The 32-pin module also contains a real-time clock, 24 GPIO ports multiplexed with eight VTU ports, dual serial ports with I2C, serial-peripheral-interface support, and a USB interface. The module comes with Microsoft .Net...
—
William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] 2U ATCA Development Chassis Targets Prototyping
Elma Electronic's 2U ATCA chassis features a two-slot full mesh backplane with point-to-point connections plus ac input and 500-W, 48-V dc output. A single removable fan tray and filter is standard. Dual fan trays are optional. The chassis complies with PICMG 3.0, and it costs less than $2000. www.elma.com...
—
William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] USB 2.0 Adapter Handles High-Current Devices
High-speed, 480-Mbit/s USB 2.0 transfers are just the ticket for the USB104+PC/104Plus board. These include transfers from high-current-draw devices. Two downstream ports provide 500 mA, while the remaining two ports handle up to 2000 mA. Parvus' board costs $230, and it is compatible with a range of operating systems. www.parvus.com...
—
William Wong
[Basics Of Design] PFC Takes The Stress Out Of Power Applications Sponsored by: FAIRCHILD SEMICONDUCTOR
Conventional offline switch-mode power converters create nonsinusoidal input currents with a high harmonic content. This causes stress for the power wiring, circuit breakers, and electric utility. In addition, these harmonics can affect other electronic equipment connected to the same power line. Active power factor correction (PFC) that reshapes the input current before its application to the switch-mode supply solves this problem. PFC has become important since the European...
—
Sam Davis
[Design FAQs] Boost Converter ICs Step Up To The Plate Sponsored by: NATIONAL SEMICONDUCTOR
What are the types of boost converter topologies? Primarily, boost converter ICs are used in battery-operated or portable electronic devices to "boost" or "step-up" the battery voltage to a higher level. These non-isolated converters employ an inductor. Also, there is a galvanic path between the input and output. A charge pump (switched capacitor) converter would be another transformer-less approach. Here, we will only consider the switch-mode boost converter. We'll...
—
Sam Davis
