January 8, 2001 Magazine Archive

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ISSUE DATE: JANUARY 8, 2001

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Technology Forecast: Silicon In Motion

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January 8, 2001 - In This Issue

[Technology Report]
Smarter, Cleaner, And Safer Transportation Systems Reap The Benefits Of Advances In Semiconductor Technology
All companies in the transportation sector strive to provide safe, economical, and comfortable transportation for passengers and cargo. To accomplish this goal, vehicle manufacturers are increasingly turning to semiconductor-based solutions to make... — Dave Bursky

[Technology Report]
Software And Hardware Standards Help, But In-Vehicle Network Growth Will Be Conservative
Vehicles will be home for some of the most diverse network and multiprocessing technology over the next five years. Standards will help improve acceptance and reduce costs, but the competitive nature of the industry limits the scope of hardware and... — William Wong

[Technology Report]
Sensors To Transform Vehicles Into Electronic Cocoons
While electronics have pervaded almost every aspect of the automobile, the electronic content is only about 8% to 20%. But that scenario is changing rather rapidly. Around the globe, manufacturers of passenger cars and other transportation vehicles... — Ashok Bindra

[Technology Report]
Hybrid-Electric Vehicles Propel Us Toward An 80-MPG Future
Standing at the gas pump, watching the dollar total spin up into the stratosphere, haven't many of us dreamed of owning an electric-powered car that can thumb its hood ornament at the oil companies as it whizzes us ever so quietly by their filling... — Lisa Eccles , et al.

[Technology Report]
An Evolving ITS Paves The Way For Intelligent Highways
The intelligent highway has long been a dream of urban planners everywhere. This is a very efficient highway that permits traffic to flow quickly and effortlessly without congestion. While we have been speaking of this mythical highway for decades,... — Louis E. Frenzel

[Technology Report]
New Auto Electronics Will Deliver More Functions, Performance
Future automotive electronic systems are expected to bring forth high performance and driving pleasure while simultaneously providing safety, economy, and environmental responsibility. To find out more, we interviewed Francis J. Dance, product... — Contributing Author

[Technology Report]
Electronics Technology Will Create Safer And More Reliable Cars
Automotive advances tend to show up in luxury vehicles, mainly because consumers are willing to pay a premium for the latest and best technology. We recently spoke with Peter Patrone, department manager of the Advanced Product Planning Group,... — Contributing Author

[Technology Report]
Wireless Systems Will Speed Data Flow And Lighten The Load
The impact of ongoing innovations in all areas of ground-based electronics results in many questions. We sought answers from Randy Robertson, chief engineer of the Boeing Commercial Aircraft Group at the Boeing Company, regarding innovations in... — Contributing Author

[Ideas For Design]
Circuit Enables Precision Control In Radiant Heating Systems
Successful design of precision temperature-control loops, like all high-performance servo systems, depends on careful management of the usual feedback gain and bandwidth tradeoffs. While always tricky, these interactions can become unmanageable if the... — W. Stephen Woodward

[Ideas For Design]
Circuit Detects When A Shared Telephone Line Is In Use
The circuit shown can detect when a shared telephone line is in use (see the figure). This is particularly useful when an automated device wishes to place an outgoing call without disturbing an... — Contributing Author

[Ideas For Design]
Random Number Generator Has A Predefined Distribution
Many digital designs incorporate high-speed generation of pseudorandom numbers. Typically, pseudorandom number generation is implemented using linear-feedback shift register (LFSR). An LFSR produces a sequence of numbers that appears to be uniformly... — Contributing Author

[Ideas For Design]
Circuit Detects Phone-Line Breaks
Alarm system designs often require circuitry that can detect whether a phone line is active or broken. With this type of design, the primary difficulty is drawing less than 5 µA from the phone line over a line-voltage range of 24 to 58 V as the... — Contributing Author

[Editorial]
Welcome To The New Millennium—And A Shaky Start
As we start the new year (and what most people acknowledge as the real beginning of the new millennium), we can hopefully put all of the legal issues regarding our presidential election to rest and prepare to administer the oath of office to our next... — Dave Bursky

[Pease Porridge]
What's All This Transimpedance Amplifier Stuff, Anyhow? (Part 1)
One of the first things you learn about operational amplifiers (op amps) is that the op amp's gain is very high. Now, let's connect a feedback resistor across it, from the output to the −input. When you put some input current into the... — Bob Pease

[Viewpoint]
When It Comes To Programming In C, It's Better To Be Safe Than Sorry
It doesn't take too many programming classes for budding would-be engineers to realize that within almost any program, anything and everything that they think might go wrong, can and will do so. Once confronted with the quirks of real-world... — Contributing Author

[Editor's Notebook]
It's High Time We Bring Back The Profession Of Engineering Writing
Many career paths in the field of engineering are well marked and widely acknowledged, such as designer, manager, and academician. But for the engineering writer, this isn't so. In fact, those of us who have chosen engineering writing as a career have... — Stephen Grossman

[The Design Factory]
Which Would You Prefer First, The Good News Or The Bad News?
Although Ogg, the Cro-Magnon design engineer, possessed vast experience in engineering, he had received little training in management. Ogg had extensive experience conducting performance evaluations on ax handles and rocks, but he had no experience... — Don Reinertsen

[Letters]
Letters
Why Not Use One Cup Of Water? After reading your article "Energy Independence—Without Pollution—Lies At Our Fingertips" [Nov. 6, 2000, p. 165], I, probably like 10,000 others, wondered, why not use... — Various

[40 Years Ago]
Design '61: Computer Systems
There is virtually no field of business or technology that digital computers will not invade in the next few years. They will share a greater part of the routine paperwork burden, they will control more processes and machine tools, and they will play... — Steve Scrupski

[40 Years Ago]
Design '61: Semiconductor Devices
Skepticism is growing on the predicted role of tunnel diodes in future electronic equipment designs. The devices, available in production quantities for more than a year, still have not found their place in equipment. Engineers working on... — Steve Scrupski

[Forefront]
Company Alliance Develops Micro-Signal DSP Architecture
Stiff competition and very high-performance DSPs demanded by emerging convergence applications have motivated Intel Corp. and Analog Devices Inc. to generate a novel DSP core. Using the companies' respective strengths in data- and signal-processing... — Ashok Bindra

[Forefront]
Fast Turnaround Times Drive Successful Sensor Manufacturers
Designers and investors alike should take a closer look at the proximity and photoelectric sensor market. A recent study by Venture Development Corp., Natick, Mass., says this industry totaled $614 million in 1999. Also, its 6.7% compound average... — Richard Gawel

[Forefront]
OLEDs Have A Bright Future In The Automotive Industry
Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), already at our door-step, should get a big boost from the huge automotive market. "We would love to see the promise of OLEDs pay off," says Robert W. Schumacher, general director of the Mobile Multimedia/Business... — Stephen Grossman

[Forefront]
Direct Digital Amplification Improves Efficiency And Eliminates Heatsinks
Direct Digital Amplification (DDX) boosts digital audio signals without converting them to analog form. This new technique also improves power utilization, eliminating the need for large heatsinks. Employed in the DDX-2000 Controller and DDX-2060... — William Wong

[Forefront]
Triple-Mode Selective Sensor Improves Detection Of Hazardous Wastes
A three-year project funded by the Department of Energy's Environmental Management Science Program (EMSP) has yielded major advancements in sensor technology for hazardous-waste monitoring applications. The new spectroelectrochemical sensor, developed... — Lisa Eccles

[Forefront]
MP3 Developers Win Prestigious German Award
The inventors of the MP3 coding algorithm for compressing audio data—Karlheinz Brandenburg, Bernhard Grill, and Harald Popp—received the German "Zukunftspreis 2000" (Future Award 2000). German Federal president Johannes Rau presented it at... — Stephen Grossman

[Forefront]
From The Labs
A new group within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the National Bioenergy Center, aims to foster development of bioenergy as a globally competitive, environmentally friendly technology that will also generate significant income for... — Staff

[Forefront]
Company Wire
Sky Datamann, Compaq, and Streaming21 have teamed up to deliver broadband streaming services in Hong Kong. Compaq will supply a high-availability infrastructure that uses the company's eight-way ProLiant servers. Meanwhile, the Compaq... — Staff

[Forefront]
Compact SoC Simulation Hardware Fits The Budgets Of Software Developers
Testing software for new system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs prior to delivery of hardware is imperative for companies that want to get products out the door quickly. Unfortunately, even inexpensive SoC simulation hardware normally costs more than... — William Wong

[Forefront]
New Alternator Technology Boosts Power In Future Cars
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems in Cambridge have developed methods to boost the power in upcoming automobiles. Led by David J. Perreault, the scientists have found... — Lisa Eccles

[Forefront]
Upstream Amplifier Targets Set-Top Boxes And Cable Applications
The MicroStreamer MT1530 IC amplifier from Microtune moves data from the user upstream and then back to the head end in a broadband cable system. Designed for set-top boxes, cable modems, cable telephones, and other cable applications, this device... — Louis E. Frenzel

[Forefront]
Query Software Searches The Internet Like A Database
Query software launched by Caesius Software lets users engage in "reverse data mining." The WebQL (Web query language) Business Edition software allows companies to search the Internet like a database. Small to mid-sized businesses may employ the... — Lisa Eccles

[Forefront]
Precision Pulse Generator Offers Complete Programmability
The Model PB-5 precision pulse generator, manufactured by Berkeley Nucleonics Corp., performs well in the areas of resolution, linearity, and stability. With its full-featured, highly flexible ramp generator, this completely programmable plug-in... — Lisa Eccles

[Forefront]
DSP Offers Analog-Based Audio Solution
The TMS320DA250, the fourth-generation DSP created by Texas Instruments, enables up to 70 hours of Internet Audio playtime on only two AA batteries. This analog-based solution is expected to be used in consumer products by Christmas 2001. TI... — Lisa Eccles

[Forefront]
Mobile Chip Set Boasts Integrated Graphics
The 815EM integrates graphics functionality for full-size and thin and light mobile Pentium III and Celeron processor-based mobile PCs. As Intel's latest chip-set solution, it allows for the use of external AGP4X and AGP2X graphic... — Lisa Eccles

[Real-World Engineering]
Do You Possess The Necessary Elements To Successfully Invent?
Technology progresses by a combination of discoveries about nature and inventions using those discoveries. The patent office definition for "invention" is a combination of old elements in which the result equals more than the sum of the individual... — Lawrence J. Kamm

[Heads Up]
New Low-Cost Laser Display Needs Work But Shows Promise
Researchers at the University of Central Florida in Orlando have developed a new type of laser-based display. The early-stage work uses a near-infrared laser to upconvert doped polymer materials embedded in a screen so they emit light in red, green,... — Chris Chinnock

[New Products]

• Sensors — Staff

• Software — Staff

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