[Technology Report] 45 nm Is On The Way—Can EDA Methodoogies Cope?
With 65-nm IC processes up and running, designers are nervously eyeing the 45-nm node. The physical design challenges at 45 nm are exponentially greater than they are at 65 nm. Gate-oxide thicknesses are only atoms wide. A variance of just a few atoms can mean a 20% difference in leakage current. To respond to the growing predominance of leakage power and interconnect delays, the next generation of tools must deliver as much hard physical data as possible into the front end of...
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David Maliniak
[Technology Report] Interconnects Make The Cut With The Right Fabrics
Fabric backplanes are rolling off production lines. Also, maturing technologies continue to move systems from evaluation to deployment, creating very large blade clusters. This one-two punch sums up today's ever-evolving field of interconnects. However, the software still needs to catch up to the hardware. Once that occurs, processor networks will be able to tackle problems that were impossible in the past, as well as offer higher reliability plus higher performance. ...
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William Wong
[Technology Report] Flight Of The ZigBee: A Top Hit For 2006
Ushering in a new technology or standard to the market always seems to take longer than expected. In fact, the time between concept and actual adoption often can be measured with a stack of calendars. ZigBee is no exception. For years now, followers of wireless technology have heard about the enormous effort to develop the ZigBee standard and its applications. Now that the silicon and software are available, we can expect real-world products this year. While the entire...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Technology Report] Portables Eye Micro Fuel Cells To Replace Batteries
Once commercialized, micro fuel cells promise more backup "green power" at lower costs than competing battery technologies. Batteries, closing in on their performance limit, may fall short in the next generation of powerhungry cell phones, laptops, digital cameras, camcorders, PDAs, and military applications. The task of recharging delineates batteries and micro fuel cells. Users can recharge batteries by supplying them with the appropriate voltage and current. However, users...
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Sam Davis
[Technology Report] LCD, LED, OLED Advances Fuel Flat-Panel Market
Aggressive pursuit. That sums up the development climate for display technologies in myriad application categories. Many of these segments involve flat panels in diagonal sizes from less than an inch to several feet. Optimistic market figures support the trend. Many analysts foresee multi-billion-dollar global display markets within the next few years. In TV displays alone, market research firm iSuppli Corp. predicts global LCD flat-panel TV set sales of 17.1 million units in 2009,...
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Roger Allan
[Technology Report] MCUs Look Between The Blurred Lines
What's the state of microcontrollers? They've become more prevalent across the board. Low-end chips continue to shrink and consume less power. Developers gaining confidence in desktop PC programming are turning to 32-bit microcontrollers as their platform of choice. Likewise, high-level-language compilers dominate microcontroller development—even on smaller architectures—primarily due to the increase in flash-memory capacity. BLURRING THE...
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William Wong
[Technology Report] Wireless Speaks Volumes In Communications/Networking
If you're talking communications and networking, you're likely talking wireless. Cell phones represent one of the bestselling consumer products of all time. Meanwhile, short-range wireless technologies are penetrating every application. Wi-Fi, WiMAX, Bluetooth, ZigBee, RFID, and other wireless methods are enjoying unprecedented growth as new chips, products, and applications arrive daily. The wired side can't be left out of the mix, though, as the industry presses forward with...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Technology Report] PMBus: The New Power-Management Paradigm
PMBus Rocks The System-Power-Management World. Such a headline may seem trite. But not since embedded computer systems moved to the distributed power architecture (DPA) and intermediate bus architecture (IBA) has this arena seen such a change. The change was needed, though. Once DPA and IBA matured, it became apparent that one link was missing—the ability to control, monitor, and maintain the power-management subsystem. The PMBus (power management bus) standard...
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Sam Davis
[Technology Report] Embedded Software: An Open-Source Territory
Open-source continues to propel embedded software growth, despite the fact that it's augmented by services or proprietary extensions. Open-source software brings a level of compatibility to operating systems, tools, and middleware that simplifies the choice of platforms and integration of networked solutions. Software growth is expected to steadily rise across the board (Fig. 1). Likewise, the price of software is dropping...
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William Wong
[Technology Report] New Consumer Apps Hop Into The Driver's Seat
If you want to know what's going on, ask the folks with the most feet on the street. I spoke with engineers at several major companies to get a feel for what's in store for the analog/mixed-signal arena in 2006. Once again, consumer applications are the big drivers. This year, new video modalities are pushing innovation. Flat-panel display technology prices continue to plummet, but big screens come with big challenges. Artifacts created in the imaging, compression, decompression,...
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Don Tuite
[Technology Report] Delta-Sigma Rocks RF, As ADC Designers Jump On Jitter
One significant development in the world of analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) has nothing to do with how they're built and everything to do with how they're supported. Companies now recognize that the entire conversion signal chain—front end, clock, and data converter—must work together. So, they're providing comprehensive tools that help ensure a successful design. Some of these tools are Web-based, like National's Webench and Analog Devices' simADC and simCLK....
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Don Tuite
[Technology Report] Multichannel Audio, DDS Keep DACs Humming
To borrow a line from the Talking Heads' David Byrne, the basic digital-to-analog converter (DAC) is the same as it ever was. In today's designs, though, DACs rarely stand alone. They tend to be integrated into codecs and directdigital-synthesis (DDS) chips. Codecs constitute a major new market for dc-enabled baseband devices, particularly for signal decompression in cell phones and personal media players. Meanwhile, one thing is new. Engineers are pushing DACs to...
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Don Tuite
[Technology Report] Amps In 2006: Bargain Prices And Quieter Class D
Let's begin with some broad observations. Precision amplifiers, originally designed for test and measurement equipment, recently migrated to sensor monitoring in automotive and industrial applications. The latest performance-monitoring subsystems in cars and factories need the precision amps' low-input offset voltage and offset current with low temperature coefficients and noise characteristics. High-speed amps, traditionally boasting at least 50 MHz of bandwidth and at least...
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Don Tuite
[Technology Report] RF Instruments Must Cope With Massive Market
Test and measurement's greatest challenges lie in the RF spectrum. RF transmissions come from myriad sources, from cell phones to wireless local-area networks to RF identification. All of it permeates the shrinking communications frequency spectrum. And it's going to get worse, as the numbers of cell phones and RFID tags skyrocket. Designers once characterized the clock frequencies of high-speed logic devices running on pc-board planes as microwave frequencies. But RF systems now...
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Roger Allan
[Technology Report] New Apps, Rising Clock Rates Test The T&M Arena
It's a pressure cooker for today's test-and-measurement equipment manufacturers. With electronics penetrating further into automotive, consumer, medical, industrial, and military applications, innovative test equipment is essential to ensure success in today's competitive marketplace. T&M equipment users demand more capabilities, but they don't want to pay higher prices. That's why low-cost PC-based instruments are flourishing. But there's no substitute for the latest gear in...
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Roger Allan
[Technology Report] DFM And Low-Power Design Will Dominate The Back End
Yield is on everyone's minds these days, particularly as 65-nm processes ramp up. Consequently, this year's big push in the implementation flow will be toward tools and methodologies that maximize yield and manufacturability. Overall, the IC implementation market continues to expand, even though the number of IC designers continues to dwindle (see the figure). A secondary thrust will concentrate on low-power design. ...
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David Maliniak
[Technology Report] Add Arrows To Your Quivers To Meet UDSM Challenges
Design in the era of ultra-deep submicron (UDSM) silicon is a constantly moving target. To hit the bullseye, you've got to fill many more gates per given amount of area, verify that much more functionality, and know that almost anything can go wrong when you're deep into the umpteenth simulation run. An expanding palette of tools, methodologies, and languages can be combined in innovative ways to find the right solution. Among other things, the design challenges will call for...
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David Maliniak
[Technology Report] The Cell Phone—Simply Irresistible
Pop quiz: Choose the most important electronic device in your business arsenal. Is it your laptop? Your PDA? Your iPod? Nah, none of the above. It's gotta be your cell phone. Nowadays, your cell phone can handle your laptop's job, your PDA's job, your iPod's job, and so much more. The consumer market agrees. Last year, 810 million cell phones were sold worldwide (Fig. 1). That's up 13.6% from 2004's 713 million tally, according to...
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Roger Allan
[Technology Report] There's A Bright Light At The End Of The Fiber
Down in the dumps for so long, the fiber-optics industry nearly became a forgotten entity. But after years of low sales, bankruptcies, and consolidation, life is returning. All sectors are seeing a major upturn in sales, and new developments make optical even more attractive (Fig. 1). No other media offers the high speed, security, and lack of noise of fiber optics. And while its inherent higher cost has held it back in some applications,...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Technology Report] Portables Prepare For New Power Challenges
Big changes loom on the power horizon. For instance, the new PMBus power-management bus standard is going mainstream in 2006. Also, alternative power sources like direct-methanol fuel cells are on the way, though they may take a bit longer. In November, the International Civil Aviation Organization decided that air passengers would be able to carry on two spare methanol containers for their microcell-powered laptops starting in 2007. Meanwhile, laptop supplies need a boost....
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Don Tuite
[Technology Report] T&M Takes The Standard Route
Much of the goings-on in test and measurement this year, and for years to come, will center on standardization. More than ever, the electronics industry depends on standards for communications systems and computer buses. Overall, this is a good thing. However, it leaves designers looking for ways to ensure their projects' compliance with complex, high-performance specifications. Designers also strive to move greater amounts of information faster. That means future test equipment...
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John Novellino
[Technology Report] Where Is Embedded Headed?
Ubiquity defines embedded systems. You may not know it, though, because you'll never see them. Flash memory and compact hard drives lead the way, filling the void with ever-larger capacities. Flash memory is the low-power winner, but hard drives hold the edge when it comes to capacity. Both have changed the way mobile devices are designed, driving the growth of a plethora of devices, from cell phones to digital cameras to MP3 players. In fact, choosing from the variety of hardware...
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William Wong
[Technology Report] Bored With Boards? Not This Year
Embedded designs often center around boards and modules. Expect both to be big this year. With time-to-market pressures reaching frenzied levels, buying a board or module can cut down development time. High-speed serial interfaces and fabrics drive new standards like MicroTCA and EPIC Express. Likewise, devices from hard disks to keyboards now use serial interfaces such as SATA-II and USB 2.0. This will be a transition year, with the availability of boards and modules...
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William Wong
[Technology Report] Memory Density Gains Drive Potent Portables
About every two years, chip memory doubles?or even quadruples. Often, DRAMs set that pace. Of late, though, nonvolatile flash NAND memories are creating the benchmark for capacity. This year, we'll see several 8-Gbit devices from various vendors. Also on tap are 16-Gbit NAND memory chips from Samsung Semiconductor. To achieve its record-setting density, Samsung developed a novel 3D cell structure and employed features as small as 50 nm to fabricate 16.4 billion transistors on-chip....
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Dave Bursky
[Technology Report] No Shortage Of Options For Short-Range Wireless
Wireless abounds, and we're addicted to all of it. Sure, we love our cell phones. But don't forget the TV remote, the garage door opener, and remote keyless entry. Or your Wi-Fi laptop and Bluetooth headset. You can't leave out your desktop, which looks neat without those cords for your keyboard, mouse, and printer. The air pressure gauges in your car and security sensors in your house provide peace of mind, too. Short-range wireless installation seems simpler, faster, and cheaper...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Technology Report] FPGA Advances Pave The Way Toward True SoC Solutions
Move over, full-custom digital ASICs. Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are taking over many applications once considered the exclusive domain of those full-custom chips. FPGAs have usurped the ASICs by increasing gate counts by more than three orders of magnitude since their inception about two decades ago. Also, they've added high-speed I/Os, embedded memories, dedicated phase-locked loops (PLLs), and in a few cases, embedded processors. An important aspect of designing with FPGAs is...
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Dave Bursky
[Technology Report] Components Meld Mini Forms With Max Functions
Honey, I Shrunk The Components is now playing at a manufacturer near you. But this "picture" isn't merely freeze-framed within the world of discrete components. The packages and interconnects that shape them into a final product are following suit, too. Don't let their size fool you into thinking they're less capable, though, because they feature more functionality than ever. You can pack a tantalum chip capacitor with 10 F of capacitance into a 0402 (1 by 0.5 by 0.35 mm)...
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Roger Allan
[Technology Report] Different Design Routes Solve Packaging Woes
Squeeze more functions onto a silicon chip—so what else is new? Getting that circuitry in ever smaller packages, though, can be a real head-scratcher. Two major hurdles stand in the way of these twin goals that, when met, can lead to a product's mass-market success: keeping costs and weights down, and bringing a product to market rapidly. As devices become smaller and operate at higher clock frequencies, they edge into the RF arena and dissipate more power. Getting a better...
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Roger Allan
[Technology Report] It's No Longer A Game Of Just Speed And Architecture
Over 1 billion transistors on a logic chip. Over 16 billion on the latest flash memories. Logic clock speeds of 3 GHz and higher. Such numbers are the fruits of advances in lithography, metallization, and other aspects of semiconductor manufacturing. Yet the power dissipated by so many circuits switching so rapidly has finally forced CPU and system-on-a-chip (SoC) designers to rethink their approach. Just improving the architecture and increasing the clock...
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Dave Bursky
[Technology Report] Cash In Your Chips By Going Multicore
It's time to place your bets. What's going to create the most buzz this year? Heavy odds say it will be multi-core processors and multi-core system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions. Some multi-core products will be implemented as standard products, while others will be crafted as application-specific standard products (ASSPs). Still other implementations will be full-custom application-specific ICs (ASICs) specific to a single customer. It's getting harder to maintain the power envelope...
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Dave Bursky
[Technology Report] Audio And Video DSPs Do Everything, Go Everywhere
Applications that don't leverage some form of digital-signal processing are like the proverbial hen's teeth. DSP capability surfaces in standalone DSP chips, one or multiple DSP cores integrated into an ASIC, general-purpose CPUs enhanced to run DSP algorithms, and even FPGAs configured to execute key algorithms. As DSP-related algorithms and tasks gain in complexity, DSP engines must clock faster, do more during each clock cycle, or manage both feats. Increasing the clock speed...
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Dave Bursky
[POV: Point Of View] Artifical Intelligence Eyes A Smart Future
The early days of the new century were tough on the IT industry. The dot-com crash hit just about every market sector, and the field is still recovering. Yet the artifical-intelligence industry largely dodged the crash, because it didn't primarily focus on the Web and Web-related areas. Instead of exploiting the current Web, many AI companies are changing it. That's why they didn't need to shift gears in their ongoing research when the bubble burst. Specifically, they're developing...
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James Hendler
[POV: Point Of View] Medical Device Design Must Adhere To Safety-Critical Criteria
The increased dependence on multiprocessor systems employing embedded microprocessors, microcontrollers, and DSPs present opportunities as well as challenges to medical electronics designers. This trend has led to a heavier reliance on software for safety-critical functions and elevated the need to manage electromagnetic compliance (EMC) through design. Such concerns place broad demands on engineers as they plan, design, verify, and scale up their next-generation products. Although...
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Richard Nazarian
[POV: Point Of View] Complex Auto Systems Must Have The Right Software
Future applications for automobile systems will require much higher levels of configurational flexibility and scalability. Even though about 80% of all innovations in the automotive industry are related to their embedded electronic systems, today's mostly static systems cannot handle new technical challenges. That's because the configuration is defined during the development process, and it remains stable over the vehicle's lifetime. Compounding the issue, the typical embedded...
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Nicklas Gustafson
[POV: Point Of View] Hot Tech Happens In Vegas, But It Won't Stay There
Growth in the consumer electronics industry over the past year has been phenomenal. Total 2005 factory sales of consumer electronics products surpassed $125 billion, up 11% from $112 billion in 2004. Future growth looks promising as well. Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) Market Research forecasts a healthy 7% growth in 2006 as consumers continue to embrace the ever-increasing array of ?must-have? products and technologies produced by this dynamic industry. Five Technologies to...
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Sean Wargo
[POV: Point Of View] The Reverse Engineer's View
There's hype, and then there's reality. When it comes to leading-edge chips, the chasm between the two is rather wide. Reverse engineers tear these technologies apart for a perspective that often diverges far from commentaries offered by the chipmakers and other industry mavens. Processors Last year was full of hype about the impending release of 65-nm devices, particularly in the microprocessor and consumer arenas. Intel shipped its dual-core Yonah...
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Dick James
, et al.
[POV: Point Of View] Broadband Wireless: Promise And Reality
There's nothing like information technology. Has any other industry sector transformed the world so rapidly and pervasively? It's unlikely, particularly considering wireless telephony and Internet connectivity. Growth in the number of people using these services in the decade straddling the new millenium is staggering. From 1995 to 2005, the number of cell-phone subscribers rose from the low tens of millions, mostly in the U.S., to almost 2 billion?nearly a third of the world's...
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Andrew J. Viterbi
[Editorial] Finding Your Niche In '06
Predictions are upbeat for the electronics market this year, based on semiconductor consumption forecasts. Targeting a growth rate of 17.5% for 2006, market research firm Semico says key consumption drivers include the torrent of new digital content, shorter technology adoption curves, and a perceived need for quicker hardware upgrades. Semiconductor sales are tracking to hit an impressive $260 billion in 2006. But with the lion's share of growth coming from Asia, you may be...
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Mark David
[Pease Porridge] What's All This Future Stuff, Anyhow?
I was down at an "Arrowfest" in Plano, Texas, a few months ago. We had a little panel session about the future with Bill Klein of Texas Instruments, Arnold Williams from Analog Devices, and myself. Most of the audience agreed with the three of us (and the moderator)—the future will have a lot of analog. When we see that the power-supply drain of a fast processor at 0.09 µm is largely related to the device leakages—which aren't very predictable and can't be...
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Bob Pease
[Design FAQs] FlexRay
What is FlexRay? FlexRay is a high-performance network designed for determinism, safety, and reliability. It supports single or dual-channel operation to provide fault tolerance, and it can be configured as a star or in a passive bus configuration. Mixed configurations are possible. What is FlexRay used for? FlexRay is a high-performance network technology designed for automotive applications such as x-by-wire and engine control. What are...
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William Wong
[Design FAQs] Flash FPGAs And Mixed-Signal Design
Where do I need analog and flash memory in a digital system? Many systems accomplish most of their tasks using digital logic. But the logic chips themselves?FPGAs, ASICs, ASSPs, etc.?all require some analog support. That support takes the form of power-sequencing control, voltage sensing to detect brownout conditions, power management, and temperature sensing to provide dynamic control of fan speed, clock speed, and even operating voltage. For example, power...
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Dave Bursky
[Design FAQs] ASICs, Structured ASICs, And FPGAs
How close in performance and integration are FPGAs and ASICs? Advances in FPGA architectures and the use of 90-nm process rules have allowed the latest generation of FPGAs to achieve levels of integration and performance comparable to many ASICs. The latest SRAM-based FPGAs can deliver multihundred-megahertz operating speeds. The basic logic fabric can contain millions of configurable logic gates, several million bits of RAM, dedicated multiplier-accumulator blocks,...
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Dave Bursky
[Design FAQs] Precision Op Amps
What applications require precision op amps? Precision amplifiers originally evolved to fill the needs of the test and measurement community. This arena demanded test system elements with much more precision than the original instruments were intended to make. They also required a set of specifications and ways of verifying those specs that unquestionably demonstrated that superiority. Today, precision amps are widely used in automotive and industrial applications,...
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Don Tuite
