[Product Innovation] PIC MCU Grows To 16 Bits, Adds A DSP
Core embedded applications increasingly demand more processing power, higher math capability, and faster processors. Driving these needs is a shift to more processing power to replace expensive sensors, to achieve closer motor control, and to...
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Ray Weiss
[Editorial] Lessons Learned And Lessons Not Learned
The economic ups and (recent) downs keep us constantly on our toes, forever fending off challenges to lower a product's cost, develop a new generation of products, or just make a product more attractive in a tough market. Over the past 30 years or...
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Dave Bursky
[Editor's Notebook] Home Networking: What, When, And How It Can Bloom
The idea of home networking isn't new. In fact, I had my first home network in 1995, and so did others. But it's even easier today because the technology and the products are here. What's lacking is the market. It will take three major breakthroughs...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Breaking Rules
Downsizing, reduced markets, layoffs, and drops in stock prices dominate today's news. Companies have a choicethey can either ride the curve down, or try to innovate and sell their way up. Bad times call for good engineering and...
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Ray Weiss
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Software Products
Embedded Linux Gains MPC8260 Development Tool As more vendors support more platforms, the embedded Linux environment continues improving. New to the list is the CodeWarrior for Embedix Development System for the...
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William Wong
[Letters] Letters
Benefits Of Man-In-Space Program I always enjoy your articles, but I somewhat disagree with "Man-In-Space Is An Ambition Whose Time Has Passed" [April 2, p. 152] and want to point out something that you may...
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Various
[40 Years Ago] Disks Race For "Fastest With Mostest"
A new disk file has joined the race to provide vast amounts of digital storage with very fast access times. The newcomer is the IBM 1301 storage unit, the fourth important development in disk files in less than a year. It is IBM's dramatic advance...
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Steve Scrupski
[40 Years Ago] Molecular Digital Computer In Design At Westinghouse
A miniature digital computer that would use functional blocks is reportedly under development at Westinghouse Electric Corp.'s Air Arm Div., Baltimore. To be ready for testing in about 18 months, the computer is planned to have an expandable...
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Steve Scrupski
[Forefront] DSP Corrects Switch-Mode Power Factors
With the advent of high-speed, low-cost DSPs, the interest in using digital control in switch-mode power supplies (SMPS) has risen significantly. This has prompted researchers at Texas A&M University's Power Electronics and Power Quality...
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Ashok Bindra
[Forefront] TDR Detects Defects In BGA Packages
TDA Systems Inc. of Portland, Ore., is developing a time domain reflectometry (TDR) software prototype for detecting defects in ball-grid-array (BGA) IC packages. TDR measurement is recognized as an effective, nondestructive method for fault...
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Stephen Grossman
[Forefront] Alternative Fuel Cells Gain Efficiency
With rising gas prices and dwindling resources, alternative energy may be the key to transportation's future. Current fuel-cell technology has its merits, but it also has several flaws that must be resolved before it gains widespread acceptance and...
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Richard Gawel
[Forefront] Optical Wireless Technology Bumps LANs To 100 Mbits/s
There's a new way to get 100-Mbit/s speeds in a LAN: optical wireless. Wireless LANs certainly aren't new, but they've never even come close to replacing the old-style wired LAN. The new 802.11b Ethernet wireless LAN standard shows great promise for...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Forefront] Industrial Temperature Controller Market Rings Up $1 Billion
What would you do if you had $857.2 million dollars? While some beachfront property in the Caribbean would probably look pretty good to you, the electronics industry took that money and spent it on industrial temperature controllers last year. It's...
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Richard Gawel
[Forefront] Bridge PCI-X To PCI, And PCI-X To PCI-X
The question is simple. Will PCI-X, the Special Interest Group (SIG) extension to PCI, become a mainstream standard? Increasingly, the answer seems to be yes. The tide is shifting toward PCI-X as PCI's successor. Driving this shift to the...
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Ray Weiss
[Forefront] Fully Automated System Puts Optical MEMS Production To The Test
The industry's first fully automated production tester, Etec's M/STeP-o, specifically targets wafer/die microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and micro-optoelectromechanical systems (MOEMS). Its users can test and characterize a wide range of MOEMS...
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Roger Allan
[Forefront] One-Chip MP3 Player Includes USB Controller
Keeping MP3 players small and inexpensive requires a one-chip solution like the STMP3400 audio decoder from Sigmatel. This device packs everything, except some passive components and the flash media, into a single chip. It drives an LCD display and...
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William Wong
[Forefront] Run RS-485 Connections At 35 Mbaud
Older serial and parallel buses aren't going away. Instead, they are speeding up. It's now possible to get a 40-Mbaud RS-485 serial connectionthat's 5 Mbytes/s. With those serial bus speeds, designers can upgrade their PROFIBUS and RS-485...
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Ray Weiss