Welcome to our Best
Electronic Design
issue, and what a
year it was. A blockbuster
consumer
product came on the
scene in January and took the world by
storm when it was released in June. Thatâ??s
the Apple iPhone, of course. And it went
far beyond the hype to become a great
example of innovation in consumer electronics
engineeringâ??and then some.
Who can forget teenager George Hotz,
who gained international attention by
hacking the iPhone? Then there was the
story of the 250,000 iPhones that Apple
said people purchased with the intention
of unlocking them. But for engineers, the
most interesting writeups probably were
the teardowns that showed which vendors
had gotten designed into this remarkable
device. Lou Frenzel writes more about the
iPhone in his Best Designs of the Year
piece on communications.
Weâ??ve divided this issue into two key
sections: Best Technologies of the Year
as they relate to the beats covered by our
technology editors and the Best Designs
of the Year in vertical markets such as
communications, computers, and automotive
electronics. Then, we look at the
Best Leapfrog, Ideas for Design, and
other newsworthy events in 2007.
TECHNOLOGY TRIUMPHS
Don
Tuite offers his perspective on analogto-
digital converters and how the best of
them fared for different applications
this year. Then, Dan Harris gets back to
basics with his take on important developments
in transistor technology, which
led to the launch of the new Intel Penryn
multicore processors.
For accomplishments in EDA, Dave
Maliniak explains why the best of the
year may be tools for working with
FPGAs, such as GateRocketâ??s Rocket
Drives. Sam Davis calls National Semiconductorâ??s
PowerWise technology the
best in power as he covers the wide variety
of parts that use it.
Bill Wong has prepared a whirlwind
tour of embedded systems and software
as he points out the best in class among
boards, development platforms, and
embedded multicore processors. In
communications, Lou Frenzel focuses
on the Multimedia over Coax Alliance
(MoCA), which promises to deliver the
quality of service required for tripleplay
services via the coax wiring already
available in most homes.
For test and measurement, Lou notes
that general-purpose instruments now
have performance specs that are quite
good, and there is no better example
this year than the Tektronix MSO4000
mixed-signal oscilloscopes. As he
writes, these bench instruments make
complex measurements a snap. And in
components, Mat Dirjish acknowledges
display technologies such as Immersionâ??s
TouchSense technology for LCDs
and Clairvoyanteâ??s PenTile technology
for OLEDs.
VERTICAL VICTORS
In the vertical
markets, Mark David presents Hellaâ??s
lane-change warning system as the
best automotive design and describes a
few runners up as well. The Hella system
communicates with the driver via
warning lights in the side-view mirrorsâ??
valuable information to avoid
accidentally encroaching on another
driverâ??s space.
In computers, Bill Wong goes through
the top performers this year in motherboards,
hard-disk drives, video adapters,
and other parts of a computing system
that almost every one of us would like to
own. Then, Bill assembles a high-def
dreamscape as he reviews the best
HDTVs, DVD players, and remote controls
in the consumer products space.
As Bill says, consumer products are
driving the success of the electronics
industry. According to the Consumer
Electronics Association (CEA), consumer
electronics represent a $160 billion
industry in this country and $600
billion worldwide.
For industrial applications, I selected
two MEMS components that have significantly
improved on previous-generation
products. One is an inclinometer from
Analog Devices and the other a flow sensor
from Omron Electronic Components.
In medical technology, Dan Harris gives
the nod to advances in medical imaging,
remote-controlled robots, and devices
that address congestive heart failure.
Guest editor Jack Browne of
Microwaves & RF offers an overview of
some of the advances in military technology
and then hones in on some
equipment that had a significant impact
this year, such as the Micro Air Vehicle
(MAV), a circular-ducted-fan unmanned
aerial vehicle (UAV) from Honeywell.
For the communications industry, Lou
Frenzel cites the Apple iPhone for setting
standards across all categories. As Lou
puts it, the iPhone was more than the best
cell phone of 2007. It also was the best
consumer technology and perhaps the
best overall innovation of the year.
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