[Engineering Feature] Automotive Infotainment: Get The Show On The Road
These days, drivers and passengers want—and tend to expect—all of the technological comforts of home out on the road. But consumer demand for traditional in-vehicle infotainment systems like CD players is giving way to products that support downloadable content. Nowadays, cars better be compatible with cell phones, MP3 players, GPS devices, and other portable media platforms. PORTABLE AND WIRELESS CONNECTIVITY The...
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Roger Allan
[Technology Report] It's Z-One Vs. PMBus In Digital Power Management
Sure, designers of embedded computer systems know digital techniques. But they may not be intimately familiar with the digital management of the power supplies used by their systems. Two methods reign when it comes to implementing digital power management. Yet it's not clear which method will win the favor of system designers—or the favor of the courts. Power-One's proprietary Z-One system was the first method to arrive. Then came the open-standard Power...
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Sam Davis
[Leapfrog: First Look] Simulate Multicore Systems Before Silicon
It's still a bit early to start expounding on Freescale's new multicore Power architecture-based communications platform (see the figure). But with the help of Virtutech's Simics development platform, Freescale developers can access functional platforms well in advance of silicon. SIMULATION ADVANTAGES Virtutech has worked with Freescale on platform simulation for some time, including ...
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William Wong
[Design View / Design Solution] The Benefits—And Hazards—Of Scan Compression
IC designers now have a powerful weapon in the struggle against rising test costs: commercially available EDA solutions that provide fast and effective means to implement scan compression on-chip. By reducing the amount of data needed to thoroughly test digital circuits, compression frees up enough tester memory to add tests (e.g., transition delay pattern sets) that further improve quality. Because off-the-shelf tools have become increasingly automated and easier to...
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Chris Allsup
[Ideas For Design] Control Multiple Stepper Motors Through A PC's USB Port
The USB's many advantages have led designers to come up with a wide range of applications for the bus. For example, the figure shows a USB-based controller for four stepper motors built using inexpensive off-the-shelf components. The circuit requires no microcontroller or DSP. It uses simple logic circuitry and application software to control selection of the stepper motors, their clockwise or counter-clockwise motion, and the...
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E. Logashanmugam
, et al.
[Ideas For Design] Analog Switch Connects One I2C Bus Master To Multiple SFP Modules
Telecom and data-communications equipment commonly use small-formfactor pluggable (SFP) modules for the physical-layer interface. Also common in these systems is an I2C bus for the management data input/output (MDIO) interface. But when several SFP modules are used, they all have the same I2C address. As a result, they can't all connect to the same I2C bus. To avoid the need for multiple I2C bus masters in that situation, ...
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Kevin Bilke
, et al.
[POV: Point Of View] Industry Giants Want To Weaken Our Patent System
If you're a seasoned or aspiring inventor, you should be concerned about the current attack that large patent-intensive corporations are making on our venerable patent system, which has effectively protected the intellectual property of inventors for more than two centuries. Indeed, the so-called Patent Reform Act proposes major changes to the law governing how patents are obtained and enforced. Ironically, these changes are being promoted by the most powerful and...
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Dan Leckrone
[Editorial] Going On Vacation? Don't Forget Your Battery Charger
I just returned from a two-week family vacation driving through Italy and Greece, exploring the roots of Western civilization. While I was on the road, I realized how power-addicted we Westerners have become, as each night's rest stop included a ritual of lithium-ion (Li-ion) charge-ups. I remembered to buy a 220- to 110-V converter before leaving on the trip. But I didn't realize that there was going to be a nightly "charging queue" with five of us in the family, each...
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Mark David
[Pease Porridge] Bob's Mailbox
Bob: Several years ago, an acquaintance bought a very expensive "high-end" audio system. The speakers were huge. The amplifiers were 350-W "mono blocks" using eight 6550s in a push-pull parallel configuration. The wires were about $100 per foot. Within a minute of first operating the system, the amplifiers were releasing smoke. He called the amplifier manufacturer. Their first question was "What cable are you using?" The strange impedance of the fancy cables...
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Bob Pease
[TechView: The Industry] Nanowires Get Bent Out Of Shape For New Technology
While most electronics research has its twists and turns, a project currently under way at the Georgia Institute of Technology offers more than its share of new angles. That's because the research is entirely focused on bending things. Georgia Tech researchers are investigating how simple bends made in nanowires, using a kind of molecular origami, can lead to a completely new class of electronic parts. "We're utilizing the coupling of piezoelectric and...
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John Edwards
[TechView: Analog & Power] Tri-Axis Inertial-Measurement Units Combine Performance And Low Cost
Previously, selecting high-precision rate and acceleration sensors with six degrees of freedom involved painful cost/performance tradeoffs and elaborate implementation and calibration processes. Now, Analog Devices' ADIS16355 inertial measurement unit (IMU) combines three axes of angular rate sensing and three axes of acceleration sensing with 50 times more accuracy than other off-the-shelf inertial sensors. And it comes pre-calibrated. One version comes...
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Don Tuite
[TechView: Digital] On The Other Hand, It's Myoelectric
Healthcare solutions need to be affordable as well as effective. That's what a team of engineering students from ITESO graduate school at the Universidad Jesuita de Guadalajara in Guadalajara, Mexico, decided when they entered their latest project in Freescale Semiconductor's Black Widow $10,000 Design Challenge. The team's myoelectric prosthetic hand not only maintains user comfort and functionality, it also minimizes costs (see...
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Daniel Harris
[TechView: EDA] Graph-Based Test-Synthesis Tool Creates Verification Plans
The complexity of today's system-on-a-chip designs creates serious verification challenges in various respects. It's increasingly difficult to write an effective and comprehensive verification plan. Developing a set of test vectors is itself an enormous undertaking, with as many as 10 lines of code needed for each line of RTL in the design under test. One way to approach this problem is a graph-based technique that breaks the verification problem down into a...
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David Maliniak
[TechView: Wireless] WiMAX Chip Sets Address Exploding Broadband Wireless Market
WiMAX no longer means endless hype or a wireless broadband dream. Services are rolling out from companies like Clearwire and Sprint Nextel. This means a growing number of WiMAX subscribers and the rising demand for set-top boxes, home gateways and routers, PC cards, laptops, and other devices. Multiple companies are responding to this need, like Beceem Communications and Maxim Integrated Products. EVERYTHING YOU NEED ...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Component View] Current Transducer Runs On Single 5-V Supply
The HMS current transducer from LEM S.A. integrates a primary conductor into a surface-mount package measuring only 0.630 by 0.531 by 0.472 in. The device operates from a single 5-V supply. Four standard versions cover nominal ac, dc, pulsed, and mixed isolated current measurement of 5, 10, 15, or 20 A rms, up to 50 kHz, with a measuring span of up to ±3 times IPN. A version for through-hole mounting will be available shortly. The internal...
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John Novellino
[Engineering Essentials] Avoid The Bird Flu With Proper FPGA Migration
Once upon a time, designers could throw FPGA migration over the fence and wash their hands of it. Sure, they may have worked out a few details like optimal pinout along the way. But chances are they didn't lose any sleep over the process. Nowadays, heads might roll if the migration caused downstream board spins and product delays, especially if the migration was planned from the beginning. Planned or not, migrating FPGAs to structured ASICs, ASICs, or ASSPs can be smooth...
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Daniel Harris
