[Engineering Feature] The Top 101 Components Take Center Stage
WWhen designers create new devices, they need info about the latest electronic components to hit the market. One of the ways to gather this information is via Products of the Week. This e-newsletter is sent to more than 60,000 subscribers each Monday and covers innovative new products and technologies in the semiconductor, components and assemblies, boards and modules, and design, assembly, and test sectors, with direct links to the manufacturers’...
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Joseph Desposito
[Technology Report] Thanks For The Memory
Every processor needs storage. A few systems may get by with a single type, but more often a hierarchy of technologies is employed, such as a server with a redundant array of disks (RAID) storage system (Fig. 1). Each component brings something to the system, be it high capacity, fast access, or nonvolatility. The mix is changing, too, as new technologies come online and existing technologies change...
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William Wong
[Leapfrog: First Look] Monolithic Programmable Constant Current Source Is A New Basic Building Block
Linear Technology’s LT3092 is a 0.5- to 200-mA, twoterminal, low-temperature-coefficient, constant-current- source IC. Conceptually, it’s simple, but there has never been an IC like it. You can build various circuits to provide the same functionality, yet never before could you have bought a standalone IC that does the job so simply and elegantly. Questions arise. What’s it good for? Why didn’t anybody make one before this? How did Linear come to develop...
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Don Tuite
[Design View / Design Solution] Apply Virtualization To Storage I/O
Virtualization is receiving lots of attention these days. Behind the buzz are some simple, time-tested concepts. But the movement of this technology from the mainframe to the mainstream has brought it into the limelight. At its heart, virtualization is about making something “look” like something else. Typically, this means making an operating system “think” it’s running alone on a computer, when in fact that computer is shared by several...
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Richard Solomon
[Ideas For Design] Current-Mode Multiplier/Divider Design Eschews Passive Components
This circuit design for a current-mode analog multiplier/ divider is based on current-controlled conveyors (CCCII) and a second-generation current conveyor (CCII). No passive components are used. Analog multipliers and dividers are important building blocks in signal processing and are widely used in modulation systems. Also, for the same two inputs, the multiplier changes to a squaring circuit, which provides the energy content of the signal. ...
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Abhirup Lahiri
[Editorial] The E-mail “Bag” Offers Some Interesting Components Tidbits
To commemorate our second annual Top 101 Components report, I read through some of the hundreds of e-mails I get on a daily basis for information related to the kinds of components we typically cover in the Electronic Design Products section, which appears every other issue. Let’s start with resistors. Vishay recently introduced streaming video comparisons of different types of resistors on its Web site....
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Joseph Desposito
[Pease Porridge] Bob's Mailbox
HI BOB, Regarding quad op amps (“Cdesign.com/ArtICles/ArtICleID/20895/20895.html">What’s All This ‘Free Amplifier’ Stuff, Anyhow?”), I thought I’d pass on this tidbit from my early days in the late 1970s. I was working at an industrial controls company on the east coast named Leeds & Northrup Co. (now defunct). (Yeah, I have collaborated...
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Bob Pease
[TechView: Communications] 10GE Controller Transforms Data Centers With Virtualized I/O And Unified Networking
The 82599 10-Gbit/s dual-port Ethernet controller from Intel is designed to address some of the trends driving datacenter upgrades. For example, it includes hardware optimization for I/O virtualization and supports unified networking, allowing local-area network (LAN), storage-area network (SAN), and Internet Protocol communications (IPC) traffic to share the same Ethernet network. With data-center traffic continuing to grow, IT departments ...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Engineering Essentials] Bolster Overcurrent Protection With Chip Fuses
Chip fuses assume two roles in electronics: protecting end users from injury, and preventing damage to circuitry. These functions benefit both the owner and the vendor of a given piece of equipment. Over the last 10 years, market demand for electronic devices serving information technology, mobile, and consumer applications has risen dramatically. Alongside the rapidly increasing demand comes the greater risk of unexpected conditions in electronic...
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Ove Hach
[Electronic Design Products] Proton Polymer: The Key To Double-Layer Supercaps For High-Voltage Applications
The turn of the century saw the debut of a double-layer supercapacitor technology, the proton polymer. Since its introduction, there has been much success in pulse supercapacitor applications due to the intrinsically high conductivity associated with the proton-conducting polymer separators and nanoparticle carbon powders used in these capacitors. These components exhibit a capacitance range from 5 mF to 1 F, equivalent series resistance ...
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Chris C. Reynolds
[Lab Bench] Embedded USB Tower Of Babel
Do you speak USB? If so, then you’re using one or more of the USB classes shown in the table. The most popular classes tend to be the human interface device (HID) and the mass storage device, since these kinds of products are ubiquitous around PCs and mobile devices like digital cameras. Details can be found at the USB Implementers Forum. The class approach works well by allowing device driver and...
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William Wong
[Eye On Europe] Diamonds And Other Technologies Put A Sparkle In The European Market
Despite the global economic slowdown, the electronics sector in Europe is staying quick on its feet. Developments in transistors, communications, and displays are particularly setting the pace. TINY DIAMOND Scientists at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, have developed the world’s smallest diamond transistor. At just 50 nm long, the “gate” of the diamond transistor developed by David Moran of the Department of...
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Paul Whytock
