August 4, 2003 Magazine Archive

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ISSUE DATE: AUGUST 4, 2003

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Intellectual property; Ready-to-use PCB tools; Telematics processors; Powering high-speed CMOS; Embedded in ED

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August 4, 2003 - In This Issue

New Products: More EDA & IP
Free PC-Board Design Software Includes Link To Fabrication Offering everything needed to design two- and four-layer printed-circuit boards, PCB123’s board-design software is freely downloadable from the company’s Web site. The software... — David Maliniak

New Products: More Analog & Power
Modular Power Supplies Span 400- To 600-W Range The ESP4 series of modular ac-dc power supplies includes a 400-W and a 600-W chassis, both offered in 2.56- by 5- by 10.63-in. packages. Five single-output and two dual-output modules can... — David G. Morrison

New Products: More Packaging/Interconnects/Materials
Compliant Pin-Interface Headers Prove Reliable For High Densities Designed for high-density applications, the Micro-Fit 3.0 compliant pin-interface headers target servers, fan tray assemblies, backplanes, and other applications. These... — Roger Allan

TechView: The Industry -- More On Automated Measurement System For Compliance Testing
Compliance and analysis software, Tektronix oscilloscopes, and leading probes, combine to expedite critical compliance and validation testing of leading serial buses. "The new RT-Eye package and the P7350SMA probe will save precious time for... — Roger Allan

TechView: Analog & Power -- First HPA07 Product: The Speedy OPA300 Op Amp
The first product manufactured in the new HPA07 CMOS process is the OPA300 low-noise, high-speed op amp. This amplifier features the fast settling time (150 ns to 0.0015%) required to buffer high-speed 16-bit successive-approximation-register (SAR)... — David G. Morrison

Design Briefs: Equations for determining common-mode performance
Using Equation 2 (below) with Excel can be a useful tool in determining a range of possible CMRR values given a resistor tolerance. First, generate a set of random numbers with a normal distribution based on the tolerance you intend to use in... — Art Kay

TechView: Analog & Power -- Controller Chips Rise To PoE Challenges
Satisfying the requirements set forth in the IEEE 802.3af standard for Power over Ethernet (PoE) isn't a trivial task, particularly with respect to the power-management operations required of power sourcing equipment (PSE). According to IEEE 802.3af,... — David G. Morrison

[Engineering Feature]
Intellectual Property—What's Yours Is Mine
Over the years, Kilby has won lots of recognition and several important awards for inventing the IC, including the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics. But what about personal remuneration? Other than his salary, how much has Kilby actually earned from his... — Ron Schneiderman

[Leapfrog: First Look]
MIPS-Laden Processors Hit The Road Running
Over the past decade, the amount of in-cabin electronic systems in a car has exploded. Due to cost concerns, many telematics systems have been added like patches in a quilt, each containing a low-cost processor, memory, communications interface, and... — Dave Bursky

[Design View / Design Solution]
Designers Must Take Care When Powering High-Speed CMOS
The frenetic pace of advances made in semiconductor process technologies inevitably increases the speed and density of IC devices. Many of these devices, such as DSP-based communication and digital TV ICs, are being designed into systems that... — Robert M. Hanrahan

[Ideas For Design]
Increase Common-Mode Range For Fully Differential Amplifiers
Fully differential amplifiers have grown in popularity because of their low distortion, excellent noise rejection, and the simplicity of interfacing them with differential analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). This application shows how to increase the... — Art Kay

[Ideas For Design]
Handy Circuit Gives Systems Flexible Fault Protection
Many applications must include a capability to automatically disconnect power from an operating circuit. Such applications include thermal shutdown of high-voltage power supplies in radar and X-ray systems, shutdown to limit inrush current during... — Mark Pearson

[Editorial]
Innovative Electronics Mitigate Roadkill Risks
I just finished a cross-country driving marathon, moving the family from Seattle to New Jersey. It was six days of nomadic adventure with my wife, three kids, three cats, and the dog packed into a minivan. Low points included a 24-hour stomach flu... — Mark David

[POV: Point Of View]
FPGA Designers Are Heavyweights Too
ASIC designers were, at one time, the uncontested heavyweight champions of the electronics design community—the top of the food chain. Their chips were much larger and difficult to design and verify, and they invested with abandon to solve... — Dino Caporossi

[Pease Porridge]
What's All This Refrigerator Stuff, Anyhow? (Part 2)
A friend of mine was cleaning expired medicines out of his first aid kit. Fine. But when he threw out the salt pills, I got mad. How can salt pills lose potency? I grabbed up all the medicines that had expired just a couple weeks ago and threw them in... — Bob Pease

[TechView: The Industry]
Ready-To-Use PCB Tools Swing For Sweet Spot
In just about any software market, one can construct a "pyramid" diagram of users: power users at the top, mainstream users in the middle, and entry, "ready-to-use," or "shrinkwrap" users forming the foundation. With a trio of... — David Maliniak

[TechView: The Industry]
Automated Measurement System Speeds PCI Express Compliance Testing
The RT-EYE serial data compliance and analysis software from Tektronix (option RTE for the TDS6000 and TDS/CSA7000 oscilloscopes) and the P7350SMA differential probe can be combined to provide an uncompromised signal probing environment in both... — Roger Allan

[TechView: Analog & Power]
Design Tool Automates PID Controller Development
Development of analog proportional integral derivative (PID) control loops can now be automated thanks to a new EDA tool from Anadigm. With AnadigmPID, users can build an analog PID control loop within one of the company's field-programmable analog... — David G. Morrison

[TechView: Analog & Power]
PoE Controllers Manage Power Autonomously
The LTC4258/59 quad powered Ethernet controllers perform all of the power-management operations required to implement the IEEE 802.3af Power over Ethernet (PoE) standard in power sourcing equipment (PSE). Unlike some existing PoE controllers, these... — David G. Morrison

[TechView: Analog & Power]
8-in. Wafers For High-End Analog CMOS Process Cut Cost, Boost Performance
The HPA07 high-performance CMOS semiconductor process from Texas Instruments will foster development of advanced analog chips, including analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters, op amps, and power amplifiers. Chips built in this process... — David G. Morrison

[TechView: Communications]
1394b Chips Simplify Home-Networking Assembly
Putting together complete home networks for PCs, consumer electronics, and audio/video devices is easier with Texas Instruments' next-generation 1394b interface chips. The TSB41BA3, a three-port bilingual physical-layer device, is capable of speeds up... — Louis E. Frenzel

[TechView: Communications]
Directional Coupler Boosts GSM Power Amp
Designed for GSM cell phones of all types, the quad band ADL5552 X-PA power-amplifier chip covers the European 900-MHz, U.S. 850-MHz, European DCS 1800-MHz, and U.S. PCS 1900-MHz bands. It also supports GPRS to level 12. The amplifier circuitry's... — Louis E. Frenzel

[TechView: Communications]
All-In-One SP6T Switch Smoothes GSM Cell Phone Design
THE MASWSS0091 single-pole, six-throw (SP6T) gallium-arsenide (GaAs) switch simplifies multiband GSM cell phones. Dual, tri, and quad band GSM phones necessitate a complex mix of transmit-receive (Tx-Rx) switches. With this single-chip SP6T switch,... — Louis E. Frenzel

[TechView: Components & Test]
Spectrum Analyzer Handles WLAN Modulation Analysis
Wireless local-area networks (WLANs) can now take advantage of the Advantest R3681 test tool for analyzing spectrum and broadband modulation. It features an average noise level of −156 dBm/Hz, 26-dBm typical third-order intermodulation... — Roger Allan

[TechView: Components & Test]
Compact LabView-Based System Brings Vision To Industrial Sites
Making cameras smarter by extending LabView's power into low-cost, rugged machine-vision applications is the idea behind the NI CVS-1454 industrial compact vision system from National Instruments. It features three IEEE 1394 (FireWire) ports for... — Roger Allan

[TechView: Components & Test]
Optical-Loss Assembly Test Set Targets Multifiber Optical Cables
The model 1300 optical-loss test set from Fiber Systems International tests and verifies the performance of multifiber optic cable assemblies like the TFOCA (Tactical Optic Fiber Connector Assembly), the TFOCA-II, MIL-C-28876 connectors, and standard... — Roger Allan

[TechView: Digital]
DSPs Attack Throughput Needs With 600-MHz Clocks And eDRAM
When it comes to executing algorithms in DSP applications, you can never have enough performance. At least that's what designers at Analog Devices must have felt when they collaborated with IBM Microelectronics Corp. to develop the second generation... — Dave Bursky

[TechView: Digital]
Conference News
If it's August, it's hot—time for the Hot Chips conference (Aug. 17-19) at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. And that's followed by the Hot Interconnects conference, Aug. 20-22. Both shows focus on high-performance chip designs targeting... — Dave Bursky

[TechView: Digital]
Network Search Engine Delivers Up To 266 Million Searches Per Second
Targeted at multiprotocol packet classification and forwarding, the Ayama 10000 network search engine can perform up to 266 million searches/s. Based on a ternary content-addressable-memory architecture with on-chip storage for up to 512k entries (18... — Dave Bursky

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
Setec Astronomy: Too Many Secrets
Sneakers, Chapter 9: Bishop (Robert Redford) and company have their hands on the code-breaking machine from Setec Astronomy. It's a great movie, especially if you are paranoid. In this plot, the government and the mob are both out to get... — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
Accelerator Cards Speed IPsec-Based VPNs
Large corporate virtual private networks (VPNs) demand high-performance encryption power. The PCI-based IPS200A and IPS500A CryptoNetX Accelerator Adapters work to eliminate security bottlenecks in network infrastructure. The boards' sustained... — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
Securing Low-Cost Memory
The CryptoMemory family delivers secure EEPROM with a 1.5-MHz two-wire interface. The family features 1- to 256-kbit memory sizes. It communicates using an authenticated protocol and is implemented via tamper-resistant circuits. The chips come in... — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
IPsec VPN 6U CompactPCI Board Targets Web Servers
Dual Gigabit Ethernet and PCI-X PMC (PCI mezzanine card) slots blast through encrypted data. One or two IBM 750FX PowerPC processors power the XCalibur1000. Extreme Engineering Solutions' board follows the PICMG 2.16 standard. Encryption support is... — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
Scalable Boundary-Scan Controllers Suit Big Flash
JTAG Technologies announced three new members of the DataBlaster family named the JT 37X7 series. They're available in PCI and CompactPCI (3U and 6U) forms, supporting unlimited target flash-memory width at test clock speeds up to 40 MHz. The board... — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
Get The Total View Of Itanium 2
The TotalView 6.2 debugger supports Intel's Itanium 2. TotalView, developed by Etnus LLC, is a source-level, graphical debugger that provides complete control over threaded and parallel applications written in C, C++, or Fortran. The debugger is... — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
USB Flash Media Controller Expands Power Headroom
Consuming less than 55 mA, the USB97C223-bus-powered USB 2.0 memory-card controller leaves plenty of power for additional features. The USB 2.0 standard allows a device to draw up to 100 mA from the bus. The controller supports nine flash media... — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
It's An RJ45 Jack; It's A Web Server
Based on a 32-bit NetSilicon NS7520 microcontroller, Digi's Connect ME looks like a long Ethernet socket. It handles 10/100BaseT Web connections with 5 GPIO and 921-kbit/s serial-port pins, as well as SNMP, SSL/TLS, and 256-bit AES encryption. It... — William Wong

[TechScope]
Pocket Tachometer Grabs Up To 50,000 rpm
If you need a portable, handheld tachometer, take a look at the HT-4100 from Ono Sokki Technology. This completely ergonomic device weighs less than 4 oz, so it slips right into your pocket. Setup is easy. Users simply apply a small piece of... — Richard Gawel

[TechScope]
Focus Sound Just Like A Laser Beam
Imagine broadcasting sound in a targeted and specific manner. Instead of using a bullhorn to speak to a crowd, you could single out one person in that crowd without disturbing anyone else. Or, picture a museum where displays "talk" right to you and... — Richard Gawel

[TechScope]
3D Camera Makes Car Airbags Safer For All Passengers
While airbags have saved thousands of lives, many people fear their inability to distinguish between adult and child passengers. Some folks worry that airbags are ineffective and even dangerous when passengers aren't seated properly, too. Fortunately,... — Richard Gawel

[New Products]

• Rod-Shaped Acrylic Optical Guides Suit Many Lighting Applications — Roger Allan

• Activated Epoxy Has A Better Grip Than Plastic Substrates — Roger Allan

• Side-Stackable BGA Socket Boosts Packaging Densities — Roger Allan

• Spread-Spectrum Oscillator IC Emits 20 dB Less EMI Than Crystals — David G. Morrison

• 16-Bit SAR ADC Achieves 550 ksamples/s In MSOP Package — David G. Morrison

• Highly Integrated Offline Power Switch Shrinks Transformers — David G. Morrison

• BCD Process Unveils Devices That Lower Die Cost And Size — David G. Morrison

• SC70 Boost Converter Leaves Tiny Footprint On Printed-Circuit Board — David G. Morrison

• Step-Up DC-DC Converters Boast 50-W/in.³ Power Density — David G. Morrison

• Static Timing Analyzer Pounds Out Streamlined 5× Performance Upgrade — David Maliniak

• Ultra-High-Density Cell Library Shrinks Area, Power Usage — David Maliniak

• Enhanced RTL Debugger Tacks On Device Support — David Maliniak

• Tool For Documentation Creators Handles Multiple Timing Diagrams — David Maliniak

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