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ISSUE DATE: JULY 7, 2003 OPTIONS
Semiconductor memory, Graphics engines for handhelds, Software simulation debugger, Embedded in ED

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July 7, 2003 - In This Issue


New Products: More Digital ICs /DSP
8-Mbit Low-Power Flash Memory; Serial Flash Memories Target Data And Parameter Storage; Cross-Connect Switch Grooms Up To 240 Gbits/s Of Sonet/SDH Traffic; 64-Bit RISC CPUs Run At 400 MHz And Just 600 mW; Reference Kit Checks Out Progressive Scan TVs.  — Dave Bursky


New Products: More Embedded
Low-Cost Development Kit Targets 8- And 14-Pin Flash MCUs; Alchemy Processor Gains Windows CE 4.2 Board Support Package; VoIP Libraries; IPv6 Protocol Stack; Embedded DOS; Test Tools Meets DO-178B Certification; Multimedia MCUs; Virtual Instruments.  — William Wong


Leapfrog: First Look -- More On Graphics Coprocessors
By adding a graphics coprocessor to an existing system architecture, designers can gain a significant performance improvement over graphics that use the host CPU to perform the basic computations. The use of a coprocessor to offload and thus speed up...  — Dave Bursky


New Products: More Analog & Power
Solid-State Line Switches Control Small Appliances; 5000-W Supply Pushes Power Density Beyond 12 W/in.³.  — David G. Morrison


New Products: More Communications
Security Processor With IPsec Or SSL Tops Out At 10 Gbits/s; Timing Synchronization Gets A Lift From Low-Jitter Clock; Cell-Phone SiGe Power Amps Elevate Price/Performance Ratio; Software Speeds Development Of ARM-Based Handhelds.  — Louis E. Frenzel


New Products: More Components
Low-Cost Desktop LCD Monitors; Military-Grade Foil Resistors Extend Resistance Range; Reliable Solid-State Relay Homes In On I/O Applications; Miniature Ceramic EMI Filters; Latching-Relay I/O Module Holds Output If Power Is Lost.  — Roger Allan

[Technology Report]
Nonvolatile Memory: More Than A Flash In The Pan
Flash memory, the dominant technology for nonvolatile storage, has constantly improved over the last 20 years, with still further enhancements expected over the next decade. But emerging nonvolatile technologies promise to deliver higher performance...  — Dave Bursky

[Leapfrog: First Look]
Graphics Engines Soup Up Handhelds
The latest cell phones and PDAs are very video-centric. When not being used as communication or information appliances, they provide entertainment. Previously, most chip sets designed for use in cell phones or PDAs included a basic 2D graphics...  — Dave Bursky

[Design View / Design Solution]
Software Simulation Blasts Bugs In Network Hardware Designs
Conventional hardware debugging techniques can't keep up with today's complex network products. As a result, design bugs remain unseen until system hardware is prototyped. Fortunately, designers have a better alternative...  — Michael J. Miller

[Ideas For Design]
Latching Current Sink Responds To Narrow Trigger Pulses
The thyristor or silicon-controlled rectifier (SCR) provides a convenient latching mechanism for switching power to a load. However, once the thyristor is triggered into conduction, it supplies no means of controlling the current flow, which is...  — Anthony H. Smith

[Ideas For Design]
Single-Pin MCU Gets Three Colors From Two-Color LED
There's a need in many applications to indicate more than two states from a single LED. One obvious solution is to employ an LED with more than two colors. But such LEDs require more than one control pin to produce these colors. The simple...  — Chandra Shekar Reddy

[Editorial]
Electronic Design Metes Out Its Own Justice To Convicted Murderer
We appreciate loyalty in our readers, but we do expect you to follow certain rules. The Associated Press recently released a story about an imprisoned convicted double-murderer, Steven Jacob, who also happens to be a demanding—and...  — Mark David

[POV: Point Of View]
A Noisy System Can Trump A Quiet DC-DC Converter
A common misconception in the industry is that if all the components designed into a system pass different agency standards for radiated, conducted, and common-mode noise, then the system will also pass the required noise standards. Wrong! This lesson...  — Anastasios Simopolous

[Pease Porridge]
What's All This Goodbye Stuff, Anyhow?
Okay, friends, recently I was hit by unpleasant surprises: Three of my good old friends died. One got badly injured in a car crash and never recovered. Lung cancer struck another—quite unfair because he never smoked. The third was fighting kidney...  — Bob Pease

[TechView: The Industry]
Transistor Promises Dense, Fast 30-nm ICs
Researchers at many companies have proposed a host of different transistor structures that can deliver high performance as dimensions shrink to 60 nm and below. At June's Symposium on VLSI Technology and Circuits in Kyoto, Japan, Intel Corp. showed...  — Dave Bursky

[TechView: The Industry]
Hot Product
Taking aim at mobile applications, a pair of fast-cycle DRAMs developed by Fujitsu Microelectronics America Inc. enables digital-camera video data streaming for 3G cellular phones. The MB82DBS02163C and...  — Dave Bursky

[TechView: Analog & Power]
Flywheel Power System Beefs Up Reliability For UPSs
A backup power source that can complement or in some instances replace conventional battery-backed uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) is possible thanks to a novel flywheel power system. When used with a battery-backed UPS, Pentadyne's Voltage...  — David G. Morrison

[TechView: Analog & Power]
Integrated Power-Over-LAN Controller Meets IEEE Standard
The MAX5922 is a fully integrated single-port 48-V power switch that fully complies with the IEEE 802.3af standard for Power-over-Ethernet (PoE, also known as Power over Local-Area Network, or LAN) systems. Designed specifically for use in...  — David G. Morrison

[TechView: Analog & Power]
Breaking News
The ceiling has been raised on output current capability for quarter bricks. With its latest additions to the Typhoon series, Atesyn Technologies offers 80 A of output at 1.8 V or 100 A at 1.2 V. The 0.3-in. high, open-frame dc-dc converters' new...  — David G. Morrison

[TechView: Communications]
Transceiver Chip Shrinks Cell-Phone Size, Design Time
The Si4206 Aero I GSM/GPRS transceiver (TX) integrates all radio functions into a single package, except for the input surface-acoustic-wave (SAW) filters, output power amplifiers, and the antenna switch (see...  — Louis E. Frenzel

[TechView: Communications]
Fully Integrated Controller-Monitor For Laser Drivers Is A First
Semiconductor lasers used in fiber-optic transmission systems are expensive and temperamental and require special driving circuitry. Those drivers typically use feedback from one or more monitored quantities to ensure optimum performance....  — Louis E. Frenzel

[TechView: Components & Test]
LCDs Boast Digitizer Tablet And Built-In Image Capture
At the recent Society for Information Displays Conference, Toshiba America Electronic Components announced that it is expanding its line of Kangaroo LCD modules for tablet PCs with a 12.1-in. thin-film transistor (TFT) LCD, the LTD121KA0S....  — Roger Allan

[TechView: Components & Test]
Resistive LCD Panels Improve Sunlight Readability
New four- and seven-wire resistive circularly polarized touch panels use transmissive LCDs to eliminate over 60% of reflected ambient light while maintaining 79% luminance transmissivity. The FID-554 series from Fujitsu Components America is designed...  — Roger Allan

[TechView: Components & Test]
Market News
An analysis from Frost & Sullivan reveals that North American automotive revenues for fractional-horsepower electric motors could reach $2.17 billion in 2009, up from last year's $2.01 billion figure. "Besides power mirrors, door locks,...  — Roger Allan

[TechView: Digital]
VLIW Processor Core Simplifies Complex Math
The easiest way to get more performance from a DSP engine is to crank up the speed. But between process and architectural limitations, clock speeds can only go up so far. As the circuits run faster, they consume more power, significantly limiting...  — Dave Bursky

[TechView: Digital]
Breaking News
A next-generation synthesizable MIPS RISC architecture known as Topaz (24K) promises higher throughput and reduced operating power. Developed by MIPS Technologies, the processor core can scale to features below 0.13µ m while maintaining...  — Dave Bursky

[TechView: EDA]
Online Knowledge Database Comes To Tool Users' Aid
Customer service is critical in many businesses, but its importance in EDA is even greater. Engineers work around the clock in sites all over the world. No EDA vendor has the resources to have technically astute help available 24 hours a day. But when...  — David Maliniak

[TechView: EDA]
"Sugar" Sweetens System-Level Verficiation Flow
It's shaping up as the summer of assertion-based verification. Summit Design has debuted an assertion-based flow linking the Property Specification Language (formerly IBM's Sugar 2.0) with its Visual Elite functional modeling and verification...  — David Maliniak

[TechView: EDA]
EDA Tool Update
The OpenAccess application programming interface and database has seen another successful port. Cadence's Virtuoso Chip Editor chip finisher, which takes ICs through the final stage of design implementation, exploits the OpenAccess interface to...  — David Maliniak

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
Finding The Right Solution
<b>Write once with no bugs. That's every programmer's dream.</b> <pre>Unfortunately, it doesn't usually work in practice. Fixing a problem requires finding the problem, then applying an appropriate fix. In many cases, there's...  — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
Test Tools Target Popular PCI Express
PCI Express developers now have a suite of test tools available from Agilent. The E2960 series handles PCI Express x1 through x8 channels, with the channels running at 2.5 Gbits/s. The tools include a Protocol Analyzer, a Protocol Exerciser, and a...  — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
JTAG Emulator Pushes Past 3-Mbyte/s Code Download
Developers of MIPS-based products can take advantage of the new Turbo System. The PCI-1149.1/Turbo System can handle a sustained test clock frequency of 80 MHz. That translates to more than 3 Mbytes/s of throughput for a tenfold improvement over the...  — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
Next Nexus Delivers Debug Data
The Nexus 5001 Forum enhanced its IEEE ISTO 5001-1999 debug specification with an upward-compatible implementation that provides higher throughput and increased efficiency. The 2003 revision incorporates new connector specifications, especially for...  — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
Life-Cycle Portal Eases Product Development
Keeping track of product development is more than just tracking a schedule with a project-management application. The development cycle generates thousands or even millions of artifacts, from meeting notes to application source code. I-Logix's...  — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
Modules Pack System Into Mezzanine Slot
Men Micro is delivering systems on a new platform it calls Embedded System Modules (ESMs). ESMs plug into mezzanine card slots, providing single-board-computing (SBC) power in a small space. Boards can usually support multiple ESMs. Men Micro provides...  — William Wong

[New Products]

• Single Chip Handles Voice Recording And Playback  — Dave Bursky

• USB Transceiver Trims Board Space Thanks To Micro-Leadframe  — Dave Bursky

• Get The Latest Open-Source Development Platform Now  — William Wong

• uClinux Supports ColdFire MCF5282 And More  — William Wong

• 10GE Transceiver Delivers Top Speed Over 25-m Copper Link  — Louis E. Frenzel

• Fully Integrated Fiber-Optic Receiver Delivers High Sensitivity  — Louis E. Frenzel

• Tiny Dual-Band Microwave Antenna Is In Tune With WLAN Equipment  — Louis E. Frenzel

• Point-Of-Load DC-DC Converters Generate 10 To 15 A In SIP Or SMD  — David G. Morrison

• 14-Bit DAC Packs 16 Channels In Chip-Scale Package  — David G. Morrison

• Highly Integrated Audio Amplifiers Are A Sound Upgrade For Portables  — David G. Morrison

• 16-Bit DAC Squeezes Eight Channels Into SO-8 Footprint  — David G. Morrison

• 16-Bit Delta-Sigma ADC Boosts Speed To 5 Msamples/s  — David G. Morrison

• BGA-Style Bus Converter Delivers 200 W For Intermediate Voltage Bus  — David G. Morrison

• Pressure-Sensing Pad Takes Real-Time Measurements  — Roger Allan

• High-Performance Light Guides Lower Backlighting Costs  — Roger Allan





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