Our January 13 Technology Forecast was a monumental effort. Along with the great stuff in print, look for commentaries by our staff and industry pros online at www.elecdesign.com. I'd also like to thank the folks who spent hours briefing me: Linear Technology's Robert Dobkin; Analogic Tech's Richard Williams; ADI's Lew Counts, Steve Sockolov, and Eric Nolan; Intersil's Simon Dutton; Artesyn's Todd Hendrix; True Circuit's John Maneatis; IR's Steve Clemente; ON Semi's Jeff Olsen; Power-One's Dave Hage; Vicor's Patrizio Vinciarelli; and Virtual Silicon's John Ford.
Meanwhile, the annual Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exhibition (www.apec-conf.org) will hit Austin, Texas, March 6-10. Two highlights are worth noting.
A new, full-registration package lets you see everything—seminars, sessions, social events, and exhibit hall—and gets you a CD-ROM of the proceedings plus a copy of the seminar workbook. It costs $50 less than the separate costs of individual passes to the seminars and sessions. Register by Feb. 5, and you'll save $75 or $100 on any of the packages. (IEEE lifers and students pay half the early registration rate at any time.)
APEC also will present the ever-popular MicroMouse contest, which premiered at the 1977 IEEE show in New York. The grand prize was presented by Claude Shannon, who amazed us all with the original MicroMouse, built at Bell Labs in 1949. It explored and remembered its way through a reconfigurable maze using a rack full of telephone switching relays.
Click here to download the PDF version of this entire article.