[Engineering Feature] DAC Gets Wild And Crazy
Like many niches in the electronics industry, EDA has a bit of a split personality. By day, it's typically all about algorithms, languages, standards, and myriad other aspects of putting together cohesive design and verification flows. But EDA also has its wild side, which is most visibly displayed at the annual Design Automation Conference (DAC). This year's 44th DAC (San Diego, June 4-8) will be no different. As night falls and the show floor goes dark, ties are...
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David Maliniak
[Technology Report] Ultra-Mobile PCs Become A "Hotspot" In Portable Electronics
It's no secret that compact, lightweight laptops have seen meteoric rises in popularity and functionality. The same can be said for portable computing platforms like the RIM Blackberry and the Treo 700w (see "Powerful Portables"). Now, the latest ultra-mobile PCs (UMPCs), such as Hanbit's Pepper Pad, are taking advantage of the new lightweight, low-power technology to deliver PC-level...
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William Wong
[Leapfrog: First Look] You Can See Clearly Now With Compact P-OLED Microdisplay
I guess you could call it eye candy. Say hello to what's claimed as the first—and only—polymer organic light-emitting diode (POLED) microdisplay. Developed by Scotland-based MicroEmissive Displays (MED), the "eyescreen" ME3204 is a full-color, high-resolution microdisplay on a chip. The ME3204 delivers ultra-low power dissipation and high-level image quality (in terms of contrast and pixelation). Neither backlighting nor a driver chip is required. Polarization can...
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Roger Allan
[Design View / Design Solution] Leverage AdvancedTCA To Optimize IMS
Until recently, telecommunications equipment manufacturers (TEMs) kept major platform design "close to home" via in-house development of proprietary system components. Later, TEMs started to grapple with the proprietary "make versus buy" decision, weighing the pros and cons of producing such components in-house as opposed to purchasing third-party offerings. Today, TEMs aren't hesitating to "leave home" to enjoy the clear time-to-market and cost benefits provided by non-proprietary,...
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Lior Fite
[Ideas For Design] Eight-Pin Microcontroller Handles Two-Digit Display With Multiple LEDs
Eight-pin microcontrollers offer numerous peripheral features. However, the maximum number of I/O pins available is often limited to six, since two pins would be required for the chip's power supply. So, it can be challenging to design systems based on these devices, especially if they involve a significant display requirement. For instance, controlling a large number of LEDs is a problem with eight-pin microcontrollers, unless you resort to a method called...
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Anurag Chugh
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[Ideas For Design] Simple Circuit Indicates Whether A Signal Is Logic High Or Low
The circuit presented here (see figure) provides users with an indication of a high or low logic state. When the input is a logic 1 (high), the common-cathode display indicates "H." When the input is a logic 0 (low), the display indicates "L." The circuit uses one gate out of four...
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Raj Gorkhali
[Editorial] Tell The Sound Man To Crank It—Electronic Earplugs Are Ready
I recently saw Prince in concert at 3121, the Las Vegas club customized for his show. Having seen a couple of his arena shows, I already knew that Prince was one of the best live performers out there. The opportunity to see him up close was definitely worth the time and cost of getting to Vegas. But I forgot my earplugs. I'll confess that I love it loud, especially when we're talking about Prince's top-end sound system, which was customized for the band and the club. We were...
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Mark David
[POV: Point Of View] Die Stacking Solves The Mobile Device Memory Crunch
The rapid adoption of media-rich applications in portable consumer products is requiring progressively higher memory speeds and capacities, especially for volatile memory that stores data during operation, as in DRAM. The economics of system-on-a-chip (SoC) design and manufacturing are challenging engineers to find new architectural approaches to embedding large blocks of DRAM in a single chip. One attractive path leads off the Moore's Law treadmill to system-in-package (SiP)...
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Naresh Baliga
[Pease Porridge] What's All This Dream Stuff Anyhow?
It's 3:50 a.m. And as I've said before, if I can't get back to sleep after lying there helpless for 45 minutes, I might as well get up. In this case, I had a dream that was even worth typing. I have about two Safeway bags full of handwritten dreams, plus 120 files of dreams typed. Here's the good, wild dream I had recently. I was starting down a dark, twisty road after midnight. A fast car was just ahead of me, and I drove fast to catch up with it. (I actually do this,...
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Bob Pease
[TechView: The Industry] Catch A Wave At The Ultimate Wireless (And Vacation) Event
Hawaii is the hot spot for wireless conferences this summer, with five events spanning June and July. But if you can only afford one of these conferences, this year's IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) conference should be it. Over 10,000 attendees are expected to pack the Honolulu Convention Center when the conference, also known as the International Microwave Symposium, or IMS2007, hits during Microwave Week, June 3-8. Two speakers will...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[TechView: Analog & Power] Analog Heritage Saved From Flood
The floods that hit the Northeast U.S. in April nearly wiped out one of the motherlodes of analog history. Thanks to heroic work, most of the documents at the David Sarnoff Library in Princeton were saved. But it took a major effort and donations from the IEEE, the Antique Radio Club of Illinois, and other private and institutional donors. To really appreciate the library, you have to be an alpha geek like my friend Charlie Osborn. Charlie got deeply involved with the...
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Don Tuite
[TechView: Communications] Clock Multipliers Supply Any-Rate Frequency Synthesis
The wide range of oddball frequencies required by communications equipment these days makes it tough for one IC to deliver even a few of them. Yet Silicon Laboratories has figured out a way to generate almost any desired output frequency for networking, telecommunications, wireless basestations, test and measurement, HDTV video, and data acquisition. The Si53xx series of clock-multiplier chips can generate any output frequency from 2 kHz to 1.4 GHz. The ultra-low jitter...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[TechView: Digital] I Wish My Memory Were As Dynamic As The All-inOne Memory
If only I could organize my thoughts as easily as Silicon Storage Technology's All-in-OneMemory organizes its code and data. This device combines the benefits of NOR and NAND flash, RAM, and built-in controllers, so all your memory needs can coexist under one roof (see the figure, part...
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Daniel Harris
[TechView: EDA] Accelerator/Emulators Speed Verification And Debugging
There's really no getting around it. The complexity of today's chip designs will eventually force you to adopt hardware-assisted verification in some form. Software simulation alone is too slow. Meanwhile, functional verification remains Public Enemy #1 in the design community. Mentor Graphics, which has a long history in the hardware-assisted verification arena, has made its latest splash with the Veloce family of systems. Available in three initial configurations, the...
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David Maliniak
[Embedded in Electronic Design] COTS Going Custom
The commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) market is showing quite a bit of growth. The European Union's Restrictions on Hazardous Substances (RoHS) have had a significant impact on new designs due to the need to find new sources. Purchasing COTS products can cut out a major portion of the design work, decreasing time-to-market. Some platforms like Itox's $465 G5C900-B-G COM Express module assume the custom portion will be supplied in the form of a carrier board with the module...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Design Transfers Between Two USB Storage Devices
Future Technology Devices International Limited's $35 VF2F2 module (see figure) is a reference design utilizing the company's Vinculum VNC1L embedded USB host controller. It can transfer files between a pair of USB disks. The commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) component is usable as is. Or,...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Module On Module
MEN Micro's Universal Submodule (USM) (see figure) can plug into PMC or M-Modules mezzanine boards that plug into standard carrier boards. This allows the standard mezzanine cards to hold FPGAs or compute platforms while interface circuitry is housed on the USM. Custom...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Debug Probe Pushes Data Over 10 Mbits/s
Green Hills Software's Probe V3 can download data at rates in excess of 10 Mbits/s with sustained JTAG TCK rates over 100 MHz. It has Gigabit Ethernet and USB 2.0 interfaces. A Web-based Python scripting interface allows the creation of automation tools typically used in manufacturing environments. The probe currently supports ARM, MIPS, and PowerPC processors. www.ghs.com...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Enhanced Video, Lower Pricetag
Camera prices are falling. So are DSP prices, leading to a massive rise in multichannel video capture applications from video-based security to machine vision. Texas Instruments' DaVinci TMS320 720-MHz DM647 and 900-MHz DM648 DSPs target this area with twice the performance of their predecessors while cutting almost $40 from the typical bill of materials for these types of applications (...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] More Modules
Building with off-the-shelf parts continues to deliver the fastest time-to-market. The trick, of course, is to find the right boards or modules to get there. Ampro's COM 830 and 840 (see figure) are based on the COM Express standard. The COM 840 can run a 2.2-GHz Intel Core...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] 32-Bit Core Shrinks
Atmel's AVR32 line (see "A New Player In The 32-Bit Processor Field") has a more compact sibling, the AT32UC3A. This 66-MHz, 80 MIPS chip cuts the pipeline down to three stages and removes the Java support, but it adds more bit field instructions and better interrupt handling (...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] 64-Lane PCI Express Switch Leads The Way For System Interconnects
IDT's 89PES64H16 64-lane, 16-port PCI Express switch is designed to be the heart of an interdomain PCI Express fabric with multiple hosts and devices. This cooperative multihost environment uses reverse bridging technology to let hosts coexist and share access to devices. There are 48-lane/12-port and 32lane/eight-port versions as well. Hosts with built-in mapping support can operate with the interdomain switches directly. IDT also has interdomain switches, starting with the...
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William Wong
[Component View] Interconnects Fit Tight, Ruged Environments
The Autoheader right-angle interconnects (see figure) suit applications that require solder-free, lead-free assembly in space-restricted, rugged environments, like stacked printed-circuit boards (PCBs), junction-box assemblies, and automotive connector modules and switches. They come in a...
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Staff
[Engineering Essentials] So, What Was That Memory Technology Again?
Fast-forward to the year 2017. You turn on your tablet PC and, like a Palm Pilot, it's instantly up and running right where you called it quits on your last search. There are no buzzing hard drives or fans, and all of the data is written to and read directly from the memory inside the device. You're probably thinking that this isn't any big deal. It may seem like I've simply described a laptop with RAM used for temporary storage and some kind of flash memory replacing the...
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Daniel Harris
