[Engineering Feature] It Isn't Easy Being Green
Now that the dust is beginning to settle on the European Union’s Restrictions on Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive, what’s next? What new environmental legislation will change the way the indus- try designs its products? It pretty much comes down to two key words: energy efficiency. The EU will phase in its Energy-Using Products (EuP) directive beginning in August 2007. Like RoHS when it was first introduced, the EU is still tweaking the language...
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Ron Schneiderman
[Technology Report] Wanna Boost Functionality? Cut Costs? Try A Reference Design
Once you’ve got an idea, how long does it take to turn that idea into a product? That depends on a large number of factors, including the developer’s expertise. Starting from scratch is always an option. Alternatively, building on a broader base can shorten delivery schedules, increase functionality, and possibly reduce end-product costs. Enter the reference design. Vendors deliver reference designs to highlight their chips, modules, software, or...
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William Wong
[Design View / Design Solution] Analog/Mixed-Signal Foundries Address Technology Convergence
With a new breed of analog/mixed-signal foundries arriving on the scene, fabless and fab-lite companies can create a huge variety of high-yielding designs. As a result, these fabless and fab-lite companies are able to successfully compete with the IDMs in the analog/mixed-signal market. These companies offer something different than traditional CMOS foundries with analog libraries, and it's useful to understand the difference. Pure-play CMOS...
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Volker Herbig
[Ideas For Design] Sequence Generator Delays Bias Voltages To LCDs
Many graphic (passive/active (TFT)) LCDs require multiple positive and negative supply voltages. At “power on” and “power off,” these bias voltages must be sequenced properly, along with the LCD’s data and control signals, to prevent damage to the LCDs. Figure 1 shows a circuit that can provide the needed sequencing. The inverters are 74HC14 Schmitt types. The resistor-diode-capacitor...
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Kannan N
[Editorial] Smart Meters Could Revolutionize Summer Living
It’s summertime, but the living isn’t easy. All the talk about global climate change— coupled with soaring summer electric rates—is keeping me from keeping my cool. According to the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), 60% of a typical summer electric bill is devoted to air conditioning, and that could jump to 75% based on the weather. I live in a century home, and I don’t have central air. Between the attic fan, the dehumidifier in...
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Mark David
[POV: Point Of View] How To Succeed In An Era Of Globalization
Globalization has brought many countries of the world together as competitors. Information technology, computer tools, and communication systems developed by members of our profession enable today’s engineer to contribute anywhere on the globe. Offshore companies initially involved in manufacturing jobs are competing more and more in leading-edge product development. The need to be in countries where products are sold, and economic factors such as...
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John Meredith
[Pease Porridge] Bob's Mailbox
Bob: An induction motor pulls nameplate current at nam-plate rpm. If it is being used as a generator, the slip is opposite what is experienced when the device is used as a motor, but rated power is produced at about the same absolute slip. If connection is made between the mains and motor/generator at any speed between rated motor full-load rpm and synchronous speed plus rated slip, the current must be equal to or less than nameplate current. The service factor rating even...
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Bob Pease
[TechView: The Industry] Bluetooth EMS Units Streamline Cardiovascular Intervention
Heart attacks start with a percolating cold sweat. Nausea ripples through your body. Your chest tightens and you can hardly breathe. Rationality and thought leave you when crippling pain in your stomach sends you helplessly to the floor as you struggle to stay conscious. Paramedics burst through your door and whisk you into an ambulance. They quickly administer an electrocardiogram (EKG) to monitor your heart. But when they get you to the hospital, the team...
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John Arkontaky
[TechView: Analog & Power] Clock Generator Chip Raises Jitter Performance Bar
The CDCE421 low-phase-noise low- voltage positive emitter coupled logic/low-voltage differential signaling (LVPECL/LVDS) clock generator from Texas Instruments provides 380-fs (rms at 10 kHz to 20 MHz) jitter performance (see the figure). The generator’s crystal-oscillator/frequency synthesizer supports output frequencies from 10.9 to 766.7 MHz and from 875.2 to 1175 MHz for Ethernet, Fibre Channel, PCI...
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Don Tuite
[TechView: Analog & Power] 16-Port Transceiver Provides Cost-Per-Port Economies
The DS26519 from Dallas Semiconductor reduces cost per port in channel service units, data service units, multiplexers, switches, routers, channel banks, and test equipment. This 16-port, T1/E1/J1 long- and short-haul transceiver doesn’t need any mechanical relays for redundancy protection because it uses what Dallas calls “hitless protection switching,” which presents high impedance at transmit outputs and receive inputs whenever there’s no...
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Don Tuite
[TechView: Analog & Power] LVPECL/LVDS Clock Distribution Chips Conquer Metastability
Metastability, which essentially means chaotic output behavior resulting from input glitches, can be a source of system failures in clock distribution. Input glitches are inevitable in hot-swap applications. Micrel’s latest LVPECL/LVDS fanout buffers, though, prevent unwanted oscillations and maintain output stability when an input signal’s swing collapses or disappears. The “Fail-Safe Input” (FSI) family includes the SY89467U (LVPECL) ...
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Don Tuite
[TechView: Communications] Controller Relieves Your Host Server For True 10GE LAN Performance
While 10-Gbit Ethernet (10GE) has been available for a few years, cost and implementation methods have slowed its adoption. Yet as Internet connections have increased, the use of storage networks has expanded. And as the sheer volume of data to be moved in almost any networking transaction has become greater, the pressure is on to increase server and network speeds. In servers, increasing the network speed to 10 Gbits/s increases the load on the host server CPU,...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[TechView: Communications] Hit iWARP Speed In Networking, Storage, And Clustering Apps
NetEffect was the first company to offer the Internet Engineering Task Force’s iWARP standard implementation for 10-Gbit Ethernet (10GE). The company’s second-generation product, the NE020, continues to pro- vide the same high performance in key networking applications while reducing power consumption. Thanks to NetEffect’s patented Virtual Pipeline Architecture, the NE020 adapter delivers the highest performance for the least CPU overhead...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[TechView: Digital] Prevent Terrorist Attacks By Upgrading 60-Year-Old Technology
Even today, many airports still rely on grainy, analog video surveillance. “Why is 60-year-old analog technology that is not up to the standards needed in the post-9/11 world still being used predominantly, instead of digital technology, which is the standard in just about every other arena?” asks Peter McKee, international director of marketing for Mobotix, which manufactures digital network cameras. Analog closed-circuit television (CCTV)...
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Daniel Harris
[TechView: EDA] SoC/ASIC Prototyping System Targets Designs Up To 9 Mgates
Designed to debug and verify system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs of diverse styles up to 9 million ASIC gates in size, GiDEL’s PROC9M prototyping system operates at system clock speeds up to 300 MHz. Each system includes an enclosed card cage for one to three of GiDEL’s recon- figurable PROC3M FPGA boards, rated at 3 million ASIC gates. Each board has a pair of interconnected, high-speed Altera Stratix II EP2S180 FPGAs and 256 Mbytes of onboard DRAM or...
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David Maliniak
[TechView: EDA] FPGA Design Suite Supports Graphical Block-Based Design Entry
With an eye toward easing the system-level FPGA design process, version 8.0 of Actel’s Libero integrated design environment (IDE) enables users to design at a higher level of abstraction. Actel’s Smart- Design technology lets users visually create and then automatically abstract block-based system designs into synthesis-ready VHDL or Verilog components. The graphical block-based design entry supports prefabricated blocks from Actel’s extensive...
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David Maliniak
[Component View] 1/8-Brick Module Boasts High Power Density
With a 40-A output at 3.3 V, the PKB4110C 1/8-brick dc-dc converter from Ericsson Power Modules delivers up to 60% more power than previously released modules of similar size. The converter comes in two versions—through-hole and surface-mount. A third option features a broader baseplate to accommodate higher operating temperatures in applications where airflow is restricted. The use of a secondary digital monitoring circuit allows control of an infinite ...
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John Novellino
[Web Exclusive] You Need RAID For High-Speed Data Streaming In Instrumentation Systems
As the sampling rate of analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) has continued to increase, it has become practical to test, measure, and analyze RF and high-speed serial data from communications interfaces like Sonet, Giagbit and 10-Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel, Serial ATA (SATA), PCI Express (PCIe), RapidIO, and a batch of others.
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Web Exclusive] Get Green To Win Green in a $100,000 Design Contest
Check out Live-Edge-Electronic Design for the Global Environment, an international design competition sponsored by Premier Farnell plc. Newark, the company’s Chicago-area-based distributor, will support the competition throughout the Americas.
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Staff
[Engineering Essentials] Preparing for Power over Ethernet Plus
The draft standard for IEEE 802.3at Power over Ethernet Plus (PoE Plus) remains on track for an August release. The original 802.3af PoE standard offered a fairly straightforward way to supply loads with 13 W or so of usable power delivered at 48 V dc. But IEEE 802.3at PoE Plus, which ups usable power to something over 50 W, introduces some wrinkles that designers and even IT managers must understand. One catch is that designers can still supply power in a limited...
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Don Tuite
