Electronic Design UPDATE: January 28, 2004

Jan. 28, 2004
Editor's View -- The Customization Of COTS by William Wong, Embedded /Systems /Software Editor. The Bus and Board Show in Long Beach, Calif., produced a plethora of COTS products...
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Electronic Design UPDATE e-Newsletter Electronic Design Magazine PlanetEE ==> www.planetee.com January 28, 2004

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*************************ADVERTISEMENT************************** Yours Free - the new Newark InOne Catalog 121 The best catalog in the industry showcases the broadest selection of electronics from 400+ top manufacturers and 50,000 just-added products - semis, passives, power, test and more. With supplies limited, order your copy now. http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eePC0DJhUf0EmQ0BDHU0Aw **************************************************************** Today's Table Of Contents: 1. Editor's View * The Customization Of COTS 2. Focus On DSP * Digital Media Processors Gain Windows Media 9 Certification 3. News From The Editors * High-Performance PCI Cards Acquire, Analyze Signals * Led By Embedded Applications, DSP Market Is Booming * Partnership Adds Low-Power Memories To Cell Library 4. Upcoming Industry Events * International Workshop on Timing Issues in the Specification and Synthesis of Digital Systems * DesignCon West * Third Flexible Displays & Microelectronics Conference * International Solid-State Circuits Conference * Design Automation and Test in Europe 5. Magazine Highlights: January 19, 2004 * Cover Story: Engineering Feature -- Don't Get Ensnared By Design's Legal Issues * Leapfrog: Industry First -- Power-Supply ICs Propel Switchers Into Non-Isolated Applications * Design View / Design Solution -- Get A Grip On Clamps, Bias, And AC-Coupled Video Signals Electronic Design UPDATE edited by John Novellino **************************************************************** BE SURE TO VISIT www.elecdesign.com, where the power of Electronic Design is a mouse click away! Read our Web exclusives, discover Featured Vendors, access our archives, share viewpoints in our Forums, explore our e-newsletters, and more. TAKE OUR CURRENT QUICK POLL: Tell our editors: How useful are the trade magazines serving EEs to you on the job? Go to Electronic Design ==> http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eePC0DJhUf0EmQ03Hf0Aq Technology Editor Wanted: Electronic Design, the leading worldwide design engineering publication, is looking for an experienced technical editor to join our team. You will be responsible for front-line writing for Electronic Design and associated e-media properties. You also will develop and write major features and departments, including sectional editing responsibility, writing assignments, and columns. As a member of our select team of editors, you'll interview the "movers and shakers" of the electronics engineering world and attend the top trade shows and symposiums to gather details on the leading edge of technology. Send your resume to our Editor-in-Chief, Mark David . BRAND NEW: PowerDesign365! Find the latest on power products. Go to http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eePC0DJhUf0EmQ0BFAH0Ae and experience the EOEM's premier online resource for power design content with the latest power-related products and services from the world's leading vendors. Brought to you by the Penton Electronics Group, PowerDesign365 runs 24/7 all year long, so it's available when you need it. Also, visit our Job Board at http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eePC0DJhUf0EmQ0BEmq0A3 which ties to the Defense Talent Network for thousands of defense, aerospace, and homeland security postings. **************************************************************** ********************** 1. Editor's View -- Exclusive to Electronic Design UPDATE ********************** The Customization Of COTS By William Wong, Embedded /Systems /Software Editor The Bus and Board Show in Long Beach, Calif., produced a plethora of COTS products. Of course, COTS means commmercial-off-the-shelf, but it should really mean custom-off-the-shelf. Many vendors I spoke with described their product catalogs as mere starting points. That's not surprising given the volume and costs of products destined for the military and communications markets. VME, CompactPCI, and AdvancedTCA were out in force at the show. While most of the announcements and product releases were related to the latest serial buses and switch fabrics, one chip announcement from Tundra made a big splash in the VME community. The Tundra Tsi148 pushes the parallel VME bus into the future by implementing the 2eSST protocol developed by the VMEbus International Trade Association (VITA, www.vita.com). It represents and eight-fold improvement over conventional VME. The 320-Mbyte/s bandwidth can be sustained, and the approach is backwards-compatible. The chip bridges between the VME bus and a PCI or PCI-X bus. The Tsi148 will help keep COTS custom by providing a well understood and highly reliable parallel bus while developers take time to get a handle on the faster but more complex switch fabrics. A slightly different trend is the increasing use of high-performance FPGAs with embedded processors, such as the Xilinx Virtex II Pro, which contains one or more PowerPC 405 cores. Custom moves a step further by allowing developers to embed custom intellectual property on COTS boards. The forthcoming Advance Mezzanine Card (AMC) specification received a good deal of play at the Bus and Board Show. Mark Summers presented an overview of AMC (check out www.vita.com for the presentation), and a number of vendors were showing prototypes. AMC uses shielded differential pairs suitable for high-speed serial interconnects like PCI Express, 10-Gbit Ethernet, and InfiniBand. Also key is a dedicated IPMI bus. AMCs will have hot-swap capabilities as well. The standard is expected to be approved by the middle of this year. The specification is optimized for AdvancedTCA boards. Check out the March 1 issue of Electronic Design for the complete lowdown on the Bus and Board Show, including new product announcements and coverage of switch fabric. To comment on this Editor's View, go to Reader Comments at the foot of the Web page: Electronic Design UPDATE ==> http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eePC0DJhUf0EmQ0BFAI0Af ********************** 2. Focus On DSP ********************** ***Digital Media Processors Gain Windows Media 9 Certification Digital media processors based on the TMS320C64x DSP core have won the first certification for real-time video and audio encoder and decoder applications on the Microsoft Windows Media 9 Series platform. The first-to-market certification means developers can design products today that deliver end-to-end streaming multimedia. The WM9 platform delivers high-fidelity audio and video quality at any bit rate, from dial-up to broadband, for streaming, download-and-play, and delivery of content on physical media. The player includes compression improvements over other technologies of 20% for audio and 15% to 50% for video. The TMS320C64x digital media processors can provide real-time D1 (720-by-480) resolution encode and decode at 30 frames/s on the WM9 series platform. Additional performance improvements, including high-definition decode, along with standard-definition encoder and decoder certification, will be demonstrated later this quarter. Texas Instruments Inc. ==> http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eePC0DJhUf0EmQ0BFAJ0Ag ********************** 3. News -- From The Editors ********************** ***High-Performance PCI Cards Acquire, Analyze Signals A series of PCI-based or CompactPCI-based digitizer and analyzer cards uses proprietary technology to perform critical data-acquisition functions, including front-end signal conditioning and amplification, analog-to-digital conversion and channel interleaving, a high-precision time base for clock and trigger distribution, and memory and acquisition control. The cards allow easy integration into OEM products. Included are the 12-bit DP310/308/306 and 8-bit DP240/235/214 digitizers and the AP240/235/201/200 analyzer. Sampling rates run from 100 Msamples/s to 4 Gsamples/s and bandwidths to 1 GHz. Prices start at $3990 for the digitizer cards and $9990 for the analyzer cards. Delivery is three weeks ARO. Acqiris USA ==> http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eePC0DJhUf0EmQ0BFAK0Ah ***Led By Embedded Applications, DSP Market Is Booming The general-purpose DSP chip market hit $6 billion in 2003 -- a 24% jump over 2002 -- and is expected to climb another 25% this year, according to a market study by Forward Concepts of Tempe, Ariz. An even larger market for DSP technology is in embedded applications, where DSP chip sales reached $10.4 billion last year and should experience 25% growth this year, says the study, which was authored by Will Strauss, Forward Concepts president and principal analyst. "There is a fundamental technological shift taking place in the electronics industry," says Strauss. "It is moving from the personal-computer era to a new era driven by connectivity and multimedia. And, digital signal processing technology is central to both multimedia implementation and those connections -- both wired and wireless." The 325-page study costs $3895 in hard copy and is available electronically for a worldwide enterprise license fee of $8000. Forward Concepts ==> http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eePC0DJhUf0EmQ0BFAL0Ai ***Partnership Adds Low-Power Memories To Cell Library A partnership between Mosys Corp and Virtual Silicon Technology allows VST to collectively offer a comprehensive low-power intellectual-property (IP) solution for TSMC's 130-nm processes. VST will contribute its VIP PowerSaver standard cells, interface IP (basic I/O, application-specific I/O, and phase-locked loop), and power-management IP. MoSys plans to add its new low-power, single-port and dual-port 6T-SRAM-R compiled memories, as well as its high-density, low-power 1T-SRAM-M memory technology. Mosys Inc. ==> http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eePC0DJhUf0EmQ07Il0A2 Virtual Silicon Technology Inc. ==> http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eePC0DJhUf0EmQ06LV0Ah ********************** 4. Upcoming Industry Events ********************** Feb. 2-3, ACM/IEEE International Workshop on Timing Issues in the Specification and Synthesis of Digital Systems Austin, Texas http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eePC0DJhUf0EmQ0BEmw0AA Feb. 2-5, DesignCon West Santa Clara, Calif. http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eePC0DJhUf0EmQ05cn0AT Feb. 10-12, Third Flexible Displays & Microelectronics Conference Phoenix, Ariz. http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eePC0DJhUf0EmQ0BCmD0AH Feb. 14-19, International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) San Francisco, Calif. http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eePC0DJhUf0EmQ0BFAM0Aj Feb. 16-20, Design Automation and Test in Europe (DATE) Paris, France http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eePC0DJhUf0EmQ07ci0AQ ********************** 5. Magazine Highlights ********************** In case you missed them, here are some of the high points of our most recent issue. January 19, 2004: * Cover Story: Engineering Feature -- Don't Get Ensnared By Design's Legal Issues How can designers protect their company's intellectual property, and what is their role in product liability? * Leapfrog: Industry First -- Power-Supply ICs Propel Switchers Into Non-Isolated Applications Offline switching chips remove cost barriers associated with low-power switching supplies, opening the door to appliances and industrial controls. * Design View / Design Solution -- Get A Grip On Clamps, Bias, And AC-Coupled Video Signals For the complete Table of Contents, go to Electronic Design ==> http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eePC0DJhUf0EmQ0BFAN0Ak

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CONTACTS: Electronic Design UPDATE e-NEWSLETTER

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Editorial: Lucinda Mattera, Associate Chief Editor: mailto:[email protected] Advertising/Sponsorship Opportunities: Bill Baumann, Associate Publisher: mailto:[email protected]

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