May 12, 2003 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: MAY 12, 2003

OPTIONS

Time management, ASIC timing tool, Multimedia DSP engines, SOI technology, Embedded in ED

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

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

May 12, 2003 - In This Issue

[Engineering Feature]
Time Management: EEs Challenged By Layoffs And Hiring Freezes
Although time management has always been a big issue for engineers and engineering managers, they're now working longer and harder. After many months of layoffs and hiring freezes, companies are doing the same amount of work, or more, with fewer... — Ron Schneiderman

[Technology Report]
Programmable Media Processors Deliver Flexible Solution
Low-cost dedicated and programmable video engines deliver the performance and flexibility needed to handle the plethora of standards that decode or encode the expanding video capabilities within consumer and business applications. Most high-end... — Dave Bursky

[Leapfrog: Industry First]
Tool Tightens Timing In ASICs' Critical Paths
Deftly optimizing ASIC critical paths, this tool rides atop existing cell-based flows to improve timing while leaving physical design largely undisturbed. Timing closure for ASIC design has always been difficult to achieve. But as IC process... — David Maliniak

[Design View / Design Solution]
Silicon-On-Insulator Technology Bumps Up SoC Performance
Full article begins on Page 2 As the semiconductor industry shifts to 0.13-µm and smaller devices, IC designers must strongly consider materials issues. The substrate material upon which chips are built can profoundly... — André Auberton-Hervé , et al.

[Ideas For Design]
Position Sensor Exploits Faraday's Law
Consider two resistors, R1 (1 kΩ) and R2 (3 kΩ), connected in parallel (Fig. 1a). According to Faraday's Law, a time-varying magnetic field H, increasing linearly with time, induces a... — Ken Yang

[Ideas For Design]
Easy-To-Build AC Power Meter
If your goal is to save on electricity, you must first measure the ac current flowing through your appliances. The formula for power is the product of the ac line voltage and the measured current. Presented here is a demonstration of how to build an... — D. Prabakaran

[Editorial]
How Is The SARS Virus Infecting The Supply Chain? WIll You Be Affected?
China is the global hot spot for growth in the electronics industry. Right now, it is also the epicenter for the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) epidemic. In Asia, concern about the spread of this illness has meant travel cancellations, plant... — Mark David

[POV: Point Of View]
In Nanometer IC Design, Accurate Wiring Details Hold The Key To Success
One characteristic of the evolution of digital chip design methodology is that new silicon generations require new EDA technologies but rarely abandon old ones. In deep-submicron designs, engineers performed timing closure with cell placement instead... — Eric Filseth

[Pease Porridge]
What's All This Analog Computing Stuff, Anyhow? (Part 4)
In the little analog computer example shown last month (April 14, p. 24), if we wanted to change the mass of the "car," we could change the feedback capacitance for A4. But it's inconvenient to adjust the value of capacitors or change... — Bob Pease

[TechView: The Industry]
Chip Set Sends Power Over Ethernet Cables
A new IC family lets designers share data and dc power on the same Ethernet cable. Meeting all of the IEEE 802.3af standard's requirements, Texas Instruments' TPS2370 and TPS2383 chips can deliver or source dc power over the same data lines used in... — Dave Bursky

[TechView: The Industry]
Tester Improves Radar Pulse Stability Measurement
Aiming squarely at replacing home-brew radar stability test systems, Aeroflex's PN9002 promises high-end dynamic range at a greatly reduced cost. This modular, standalone system provides pulsed signals to the unit under test and analyzes the received... — John Novellino

[TechView: Analog & Power]
High-Frequency Filters Meet Their Monolithic Match
To build active filters for high-frequency RF applications, designers may construct discrete designs using op amps and passives. When matched filters are required, this can become costly, as it requires precision resistors, capacitors, and... — David G. Morrison

[TechView: Analog & Power]
News Briefs
> The QPS series quarter-brick dc-dc converters from NetPower deliver 70 A at outputs of 1.2 V or less. Efficiency at 1.2-V and 70-A output is typically 86%. Other models in this series deliver 65 A at 1.5 or 1.8 V; 60 A at 2.5 or 2 V; or... — David G. Morrison

[TechView: Analog & Power]
Buck Regulator Boosts Efficiency At Low Currents
The MIC2204, a 2-MHz pulse-width-modulation buck regulator in a 3- by 3-mm MLF, uses a proprietary gate-drive scheme to achieve high efficiency at low currents. Operating from a 2.3- to 5.5-V input, the buck converter generates up to 600 mA of output... — David G. Morrison

[TechView: Analog & Power]
Video Buffer Shrinks Size, Shuts Down At 150 nA
Designed for 3- or 5-V operation, the MAX4090 video buffer targets battery-powered applications by offering a shutdown current of just 150 nA. Competitive units may draw 30 µA or more in shutdown. Within a six-pin SC-70 or SOT-23 package, the... — David G. Morrison

[TechView: Communications]
Cell-Phone Reference Design Perks Up 2.5G
More intense competition coupled with geometrically increasing complexity leaves the cell-phone handset market begging for solutions to slash development time and cost. One potential answer could come in the form of Motorola's i.Smart reference... — Louis E. Frenzel

[TechView: Communications]
Optical Modules Offer Improved 10-Gbit Networking Option
The 12km XFP optical networking module from Network Elements gives optical-networking-equipment vendors an enhanced option for implementing 10-Gbit/s networking equipment. Company CEO Bruce Murdock expects the first applications to be in Sonet... — Louis E. Frenzel

[TechView: Components & Test]
2U Horizontal Chassis Plugs Into Motherboards
Designed for communications applications where minimizing downtime is critical, Elma Electronic's 39M 2U horizontal chassis lets designers quickly swap motherboards in a rack-mount environment. Traditional fixed-mounted motherboards can be mounted on... — Roger Allan

[TechView: Components & Test]
Over 100 Measurement Examples Squeezed Onto Free DAQ CD
Over 100 measurement examples squeezed onto free DAQ CD The latest version of the free National Instruments DAQ Designer configuration advisor CD is now available. With more than 100 measurement example programs, its easy-to-use data-acquisition (DAQ)... — Roger Allan

[TechView: Components & Test]
Step-Motion Processors Eye Low-Cost Applications
The MC2500 Navigator series welcomes three new stepper-motor motion-controller processors designed for less demanding cost-sensitive applications. Available in one-axis (MC2512), two-axis (MC2522), and four-axis (MC2542) configurations, the 5-V MC2502... — Roger Allan

[TechView: Digital]
CPU With Vector Accelerator Delivers Unmatched Speed
Increasingly demanding signal-processing tasks steadily take the steam out of the compute resources on commodity DSP chips and high-performance general-purpose CPUs. Complex math operations, such as those needed in wireless communications, medical... — Dave Bursky

[TechView: Digital]
DSP Industry Association Debuts "Synergy" Forum
DSP Valley, a recently formed organization based in Belgium, provides a forum for companies developing DSPs and related design tools and intellectual property. It hopes to stimulate growth among its members by exploiting the synergy and cooperation... — Dave Bursky

[TechView: EDA]
Hybrid Verification Tool Unravels Digital IC Designs
High-end digital IC designs pose numerous verification challenges. For one, static analysis methods alone will often fail to turn up potentially fatal timing problems that are due to nanometer effects. For another, too many simulation vectors exist... — David Maliniak

[TechView: EDA]
IC Layout Tool Plays By The Rules
Layout for ICs at process geometries of 90 nm and below becomes a very dicey affair. Even at 180 nm, the number of design rules that must be enforced for an ASIC or system-on-a-chip to be manufacturable are exploding. At 90 nm, the interdependency... — David Maliniak

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
Narrow SCSI Flash HD Hits 35 Gbytes
M-Systems' 3.5-in. ultra-narrow SCSI flash disk drives target harsh embedded environments. The drives can also replace conventional disk drives. The FFD drivers are available in sizes from 10 to 35 Gbytes. Sustained read/write throughput is 17... — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
RTOS Arms OMAP
The Nucleus real-time operating system and development tools from Accelerated Technology, a division of Mentor Graphics, support Texas Instruments' OMAP DSP/ARM system-on-a-chip. Nucleus runs on the ARM and supports TCP/IP. Royalty-free licenses start... — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
RTOS Drives RapidIO On PowerQUICC III
OSE Systems' OSE real-time operating system now supports the Motorola PowerQUICC III architecture, including the MPC8560 and MPC8540 communications processors. OSE supports the processor's RapidIO switched-fabric interconnect for processor-based... — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
Dual PowerPC G4 Runs SMP Linux
Artis Microsystems delivers dual 1-GHz PowerPC G4 processors running Linux on a standard-size PCI card. The A7400-PCI comes with 8 Mbytes of flash memory and up to 1 Gbyte of PC133 SDRAM using two SODIMM sockets. There are two 10/100-BaseT Ethernet... — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
USB Driver Tool Works With WinCE And Linux
Jungo SoftwareTechnologies' WinDriver 6.0 includes Universal Serial Bus support for Windows CE.NET and Linux. WinDriver simplifies device driver creation. It includes hardware diagnostic utilities along with a standard application programming... — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
The Need For Speed
Hardware designers go to great lengths to increase performance. They make extensive efforts to ensure that standard processor designs are as flexible as possible, but even the best designs don't fit all applications. Custom and reconfigurable... — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
Seeing Your Phone Call
Cameras that look like 2.5G phones are easier to design with the i.IM20 imaging module. This multichip Motorola device is only 6.5 mm high. It incorporates a VGA CMOS image sensor (640 by 480 pixels) with an MC30300 digital image preprocessor that... — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
AspecJ Gets Eclipsed
Embedded developers are discovering the benefits of aspect-oriented programming. Java programmers using the Eclipse (www.eclipse.org) integrated development environment will now be able to take advantage of AspectJ, a Java implementation of... — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
Dual PowerPC SBC Targets Defense And Aerospace
Harsh environments need rugged solutions like Dy 4 Systems' SVME/DMV-182. This single-board computer (SBC) sports dual 700-MHz Motorola 7455 processors with Altivec technology and on-chip L2 cache. The board comes with six serial ports, two USB 2.0... — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
RapidIO: Embedded Interconnect
Now an ECMA standard (ECMA-342), RapidIO is poised to make an impact in embedded environments. It incorporates features like error management and reco-very and support for global shared-memory architectures. RapidIO is a switch-fabric... — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
Anatomy Of An IDE
Developers have found Eclipse to be a great IDE for application development, but its modular, microkernel design equally suits it for applications unrelated to programming, like system management. Looking inside the Java-based Eclipse environment... — William Wong

[New Products]

• Gas Plasma Devices Zero In On Power And Data-Protection Apps — Lisa Fakhry

• True Color Sensor’s Modulated Light Produces Accurate Color Results — Lisa Fakhry

• LED Range Of Up To 800 Feet Possible With Panel Indicator — Lisa Fakhry

• RF Oscillator Offers Option To Those Bugged By Jitter Or Phase Noise — Lisa Fakhry

• Illuminated Toggle Switches Enhance LED Light Sources — Lisa Fakhry

• Compact Transmissive Switch Touts Infrared Sidelookers — Lisa Fakhry

• Differential-Pair Signaling Defines Serial ATA Connectors — Lisa Fakhry

• PowerPC VME Board Races To 1-GHz Speeds With High-End Processor — Lisa Fakhry

• Cellular-Processor Audio/Power Chip Rings True For GSM/GPRS Handsets — Lisa Fakhry

• 50% Higher Performance At 25% Less Power Equals A Robust SBC — Lisa Fakhry

• Application Development Platform Welcomes Linux OS — Lisa Fakhry

• Data-Acquisition Device Rests On High-Power ADC — Lisa Fakhry

• Space-Saver Quarter-Brick Converters Output Up To 30 A — Lisa Fakhry

• High Power In Small Package: VRLA Battery Brings 165 Ah — Lisa Fakhry

• Power MOSFET Controller Integrates High-Side Driver — Lisa Fakhry

• Heat-Resistant Photocouplers Meet New Soldering Profiles — Lisa Fakhry

• EL Lamp/HBLED Backlight Driver Saves Space In Handhelds — Lisa Fakhry

• High Power Leverages Wirewound Resistors For Multiple Applications — Lisa Fakhry

• Power LED A-Glow-Glow: Luminous Intensity Reaches 1250 mcd — Lisa Fakhry

• Embedded Systems Cases Feature EMC Shielding — Lisa Fakhry

• Flashlight Doubles As AC Voltage Detector — Lisa Fakhry

• AC-DC Switching Power Supplies Rocket Power Density To 6 W/in.³ — Lisa Fakhry

PartFinder

GlobalSpec

PART SEARCH :
	Powered by: