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ISSUE DATE: FEBRUARY 7, 2000 OPTIONS
LDMOS power amps, Li-ion batteries, Deep-submicron tools, Quad-data-rate SRAMs

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February 7, 2000 - In This Issue

[Technology Report]
RF Power Amplifiers Flex LDMOS Muscle In Wireless Equipment
Makers of wireless infrastructure equipment and cellular handsets are constantly pressured to beef up performance while cutting the size and cost of their systems. The emerging third generation (3G) of mobile communications applications is only...  — Ashok Bindra

[Technology Report]
Thinner Li-Ion Batteries Power Next-Generation Portable Devices
Power-management issues are fundamental concerns in the design of portable electronic equipment. They affect all elements that make a design portable, influencing device performance, run time, size, and weight. While power management encompasses...  — David G. Morrison

[Product Innovation]
Bridge Chip Imparts A Universal Spin To CompactPCI Single-Board Computer
Until now, CompactPCI boards have lacked a certain degree of flexibility. For instance, system host boards were designed to work in the system slot of a CompactPCI backplane, while peripheral boards filled peripheral slots. But the PowerCore...  — Joseph Desposito

[Product Innovation]
Transceiver Chip Replaces Parallel Backplanes With High-Speed Serial Links
With parallel backplanes plagued by a variety of problems, new serial architectures are poised to take over in high-end network and computer systems. Fortunately, along comes the 21Z01 OctalPHY transceiver, which facilitates the design of high-speed...  — Joseph Desposito

[Design Application]
Why Tools Are Failing Designers Of Deep-Submicron Chips
Until recently, integrated-circuit design and manufacturing methods have scaled successfully. They allowed designers and fabs to make incremental changes while continuing to use existing tools. But traditional design methods are running out of steam...  — John Harrington

[Design Application]
Quad-Data-Rate SRAM Subsystems Maximize System Performance
Demand for higher-speed systems is a direct result of the Internet boom. RISC CPU speeds are hitting clock rates of 500 MHz and beyond. But static-memory subsystems are still hard-pressed to keep pace, even with the appearance of double-data-rate...  — Rajesh Manapat , et al.

[Ideas For Design]
Roll Your Own Electronic Lock
Electronic security locks, popularly known as “dongles,” are commonly used to deter software piracy. This idea describes a simple yet-powerful design of such a security lock using the linear feedback shift register (LFSR) principle. The lock, which is...  — Dhananjay V. Gadre

[Ideas For Design]
High-Current, Low-Voltage Shunt Regulator
This design idea describes a high-current (up to 8 A) shunt-regulator built around the TLV431 low-voltage, adjustable, precision shunt-regulator IC. Special attention was paid to implementing this design as a "two-terminal" circuit block, greatly...  — Robert N. Buono

[Ideas For Design]
3.3-V Supply Taps Power From The ­12-V PCI Bus
The backplanes of popular multi-supply buses (such as VME, VXI, and PCI) each provide power-limited outputs of 3.3 V, 5 V, and ±12 V (or ±24 V). If adding line cards to these systems increases the requirements for 3.3- or 5-V power, the...  — Damian Anzaldo , et al.

[Ideas For Design]
Current Loop Has 5-kV Isolation
This Idea for Design was originally published Jan. 7, 1993, p. 113. By using an AD7245A DACPORT, a linear optoisolator, and a discrete V-I converter to control loop current, a 4-to-20-mA isolated current loop may be digitally...  — Matt Smith

[Editorial]
Gadgets, Time-Wasters, And Bright Ideas
After returning from last month's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nev., I was struck by the wide variety of products that I'd seen on display. Next to basic telephones were full PBX-like systems for the small-office, home-office (SOHO)...  — Dave Bursky

[Pease Porridge]
What's All This Amelia Stuff, Anyhow?
I suppose I could've called this, "What's All This Baby Stuff?" But in this case, I think it's fair to particularize, not generalize. Last year, our younger son and his wife had a nice healthy baby. At the time, my wife and I were hiking up at...  — Bob Pease

[Viewpoint]
Multiple Technologies Create Debate Over Storage-Networking
A debate hovers over the appropriate use of SCSI, Fibre Channel, and Ethernet technologies in the server and workstation storage subsystem. Unfortunately, the respective proponents of those technologies are applying them to an overlapping set of...  — Robert Soderbery

[Editor's Notebook]
The ISSCC Sets The Tone For Twenty-First Century ICs
While the IEDM is a harbinger of device and process advances, the ISSCC is a precursor to cutting-edge IC designs that exploit the latest developments in transistor structures and fabrication technologies. ISSCC 2000, which starts this week at the...  — Ashok Bindra

[Letters]
Letters
Whither Or Whether DTV? Right now, most of the public doesn't realize that Congress has mandated that their TV sets become obsolete so that it can make money by reselling the current TV spectrum. The electronics...  — Various

[The Design Factory]
Watch Your Step! Here Comes The Megaproject Trap
A new president had just taken over the Bison Valley Ax Works. He was selected by the Board of Directors because he had "vision." Ogg, the Cro-Magnon design engineer, was skeptical. He asked his colleague Grnk, "Did they say he had vision, or...  — Don Reinertsen

[40 Years Ago]
Digital Readout Scope
Digital readout of voltage and time, joystick positioning controls, and modular construction are but a few of the features which make the 35-mc, 50-mv/cm DuMont 425 a most unusual oscilloscope. Manufactured by Allen B. DuMont Laboratories of...  — Steve Scrupski

[40 Years Ago]
New Literature: Games For Electronic Computers
This 12-page booklet describes 12 games for matching the machine against the human operator. Adaptation of the games to various computers, including the company's Sexiac electronic digital computer kit, is also explained. Willis G. McCormick Co.,...  — Steve Scrupski

[Forefront]
From The Labs
Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, think they may have found a way to track weather in space—a remarkable feat considering that a single blast of solar wind particles has the potential to knock out a...  — Staff

[Forefront]
Company Wire
Tool-Less Plastic Technologies LLC has obtained a manufacturing license from TTK Kunststoff-Technologle GmbH to use its TTK-Box technology in the U.S. TTK-Box is a fully integrated manufacturing system that applies basic sheet-metal...  — Staff

[Forefront]
Capacitive Technology Filters And Decouples With Fewer Parts
Signal-integrity challenges at the system level continue to grow as signal speeds increase, signal levels drop, and component densities on the pc board rise. Designers must ensure that their circuits function properly and meet various EMC...  — David G. Morrison

[Forefront]
Superconductivity Research Looks At Higher Temps
Researchers from Stanford University, Menlo Park, Calif., and the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, Calif., are working to uncover clues to high-temperature (Tc) superconductivity. This data may help resolve a...  — Cheryl Ajluni

[Forefront]
Give Your IP A Unique ID With Silicon Fingerprinting
One of the challenges created by today's proliferation of intellectual property (IP) is keeping track of it in the field. If I create a core and sell it to a third party, how do I verify that it is being used in accordance with the licensing...  — Cheryl Ajluni

[Forefront]
Plasma Engine Will Support Development Of Plasma Displays
MiTAC Industrial Corp., Fremont, Calif., a manufacturer of industrial computers and components, is joining forces with display vendor NEC Technologies of Itasca, Ill. They will develop an engine for plasma displays. Called the MPE-101N, the plasma...  — David G. Morrison

[Forefront]
Joint Effort To Investigate Linear Electron Collider
The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), Menlo Park, Calif., has signed a formal memorandum of understanding with the Tsukuba-based High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) in Japan. Together, they will develop a common design for a...  — Cheryl Ajluni

[Forefront]
Three-Charge-Body Scattering Problem May Have Solution
Charged particle collision and the resulting scattering effect is considered to be one of the most fundamental phenomena in atomic physics. This kind of interaction is everywhere. But despite its abundance, researchers and theorists have...  — Cheryl Ajluni

[Forefront]
System I/O Gets A New Name And A Flurry Of New Sponsors
The InfiniBand Trade Association, formerly known as System I/O, has announced the addition of eight sponsoring member companies: 3Com, Adaptec, Cisco, Fujitsu-Siemens, Hitachi, Lucent, NEC, and Nortel Networks. The trade association is...  — Joseph Desposito

[Forefront]
Micromirrors May Ride With Next-Generation Space Telescope
Micromirrors constructed from silicon may one day be part of the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST). Tentatively scheduled for launch in 2008, the NGST is the successor to the Hubble telescope. It will peruse the universe, looking for remnants...  — Joseph Desposito

[Forefront]
Global Semiconductor Market Grows By Nearly 18% In 1999
According to a recent study, the worldwide semiconductor market experienced double-digit growth in 1999. Data from GartnerGroup's Dataquest survey indicates that last year's total revenue topped $160 billion. That's a 17.6% increase over 1998's...  — Richard Gawel

[Forefront]
Software Suite Addresses MEMS Device And System Design
MEMCAD 4.6 is an enhanced version of the MEMCAD suite of software products for complex MEMS device and system design. This version extends the suite's device, system, and packaging design capabilities with improvements to model electrostatic spring...  — Richard Gawel

[Forefront]
3D Graphics Accelerator Core Delivers Workstation-Class Performance
Based on a proprietary tiling architecture that only processes polygons seen by the user on the screen, the GP-1 3D graphics accelerator can deliver workstation-quality graphics at PC prices. The accelerator comes in the form of a block...  — Dave Bursky

[Forefront]
High-Performance Disk Drives Pack Plenty Of Fast Storage
A combination of high rotational speeds and some of the highest bit-packing densities (7.7 Gbits/in.2) in use by commercial disk drives lets the Atlas 10K II series of drives deliver capacities of up to 73.4 Gbytes while dropping the seek...  — Dave Bursky

[Forefront]
3G 1394 Chip Needs A Third Less Power
The TSB12LV26 is a third-generation IEEE-1394 open host controller interface (OHCI) link-layer device. Compared to the previous generation, this device has lower power consumption and improved price/performance. Using the company's most advanced...  — Joseph Desposito

[Forefront]
14-Bit, 800-kword/s I/O Boards Boast On-Board Intelligence
Two PCI DAP boards optimized for 32-bit real-time processing, local or remote, acquire data with 14-bit resolution. Dubbed the DAP 4000a, these models have on-board intelligence implemented as the DAPL 2000—a 32-bit multitasking real-time...  — Richard Gawel

[Forefront]
FPGA Family Takes On Speed-Critical DSP Applications
Although DSP functions can be implemented in field-programmable gate arrays, their full potential can't be realized due to the general nature of the FPGA architecture. To overcome that, the recently developed QuickDSP family of FPGAs provides a...  — Dave Bursky

[Real-World Engineering]
Revel In Your New Ideas Despite Negative Feedback
I claim competence to take up your time with this column because I'm an inventor and entrepreneur with a pretty good track record in new ideas. So I speak from real-world experience. And bruises. Take it from me: Most people are hostile...  — Lawrence J. Kamm

[Heads Up]
Memory Cards Enhance Digital Products
I've just returned from this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. It's an amazing show with so many new gadgets, I can't possibly describe them all. Therefore, I'll focus on one aspect, removable solid-state memory cards. This show...  — Chris Chinnock

[New Products]

• Single Supply 4.5-ns Comparator Operates From 2.7 To 10.5 V  — Richard Gawel

• Differential Amplifier's Inputs Can Be Raised Or Lowered By 250 V  — Richard Gawel

• CMOS Instrumentation Amp Features Rail-To-Rail Output  — Richard Gawel

• Complete SOT-23 Current-Sense Amplifier Consumes 30 μA  — Richard Gawel

• 14-Bit, 135-MSPS DAC Optimized For Wireless Base Stations  — Richard Gawel

• 75-Ω Video Driver IC Designed For Low-Power Portable Devices  — Richard Gawel

• Additional Wires Integrated Into Single Fiber-Optic Cable  — Richard Gawel

• RC Network Saves On Board Space And Assembly Costs  — Richard Gawel

• Analog And Digital I/O Board Tackles Harsh Industrial Environments  — Richard Gawel

• Industrial Computer Series Eliminates Need For Hard Disks  — Richard Gawel

• Wireless System Provides Robotic Control Of Remote PCs  — Richard Gawel

• Unit Provides Compact Interface For Rack-Mounted Computers  — Richard Gawel

• Real-Time Networking System Improves Speed And Determinism  — Richard Gawel

• Power Supply Boasts Many Features In Minute Package  — Richard Gawel

• MOSFET Family Shields Devices From SEEs In Space  — Richard Gawel

• System Supplies High-Current Power For 10,000-A Loads  — Richard Gawel

• Small Open Frame Switcher Efficiently Puts Out 300 W  — Richard Gawel





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