Electronic Design UPDATE: December 29, 2003

Dec. 29, 2003
Editor's View -- Just In Time For Never: A Bigger And Longer Holiday Wish List For The Electronics Industry by David G. Morrison, Analog/Power Editor. Holiday shopping is just behind us now, but with the boxes and wrapping paper still lying about....
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Electronic Design UPDATE e-Newsletter Electronic Design Magazine PlanetEE ==> www.planetee.com December 29, 2003

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Today's Table of Contents: 1. Editor's View * Just In Time For Never: A Bigger And Longer Holiday Wish List For The Electronics Industry 2. News From The Editors * Toolkits Speed Up Communications Test Development * Wind River Learns Linux * But Will There Be Anything Worth Watching? * RapidIO Now An International Standard 3. Upcoming Industry Events * VLSI Design 2004 * Ninth Joint Magnetism and Magnetic Materials Conference * ACM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms * International Conference on Micro Electromechanical Systems 4. Magazine Highlights: December 18, 2003 issue: * Cover Story: Technology Report -- Harness Today's DSPs: Propel Tomorrow's Designs * Leapfrog: First Look -- Eclipse: Write Once, Run Everywhere Platform * Design View / Design Solution -- Consider An ATCA-Based Design For Carrier-Grade OSs 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. ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ATTENTION! David Maliniak, our Electronic Design Automation Editor, would like your feedback for his upcoming Engineering Feature on Favorite Design Tools. Here's your opportunity to sound off and influence the content of his report. My Favorite Design Tools survey ==> http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/ed6m0DJhUf0EmQ0BEdf0Ax TAKE OUR CURRENT QUICK POLL: Our editors ask: How do you think the economy will be for 2004? Go to Electronic Design ==> http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/ed6m0DJhUf0EmQ03Hf0A6 SUBSCRIBE ONLINE TO ELECTRONIC DESIGN If you're reading this e-newsletter, then you are either a current Electronic Design subscriber, or should be (145,000 of your peers are). To apply for or renew a subscription to Electronic Design absolutely FREE and without paperwork or hassle, click on the link below. http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/ed6m0DJhUf0EmQ0BEE30Ab **************************************************************** ********************** 1. Editor's View -- Exclusive to Electronic Design UPDATE ********************** Just In Time For Never: A Bigger And Longer Holiday Wish List For The Electronics Industry By David G. Morrison, Analog /Power Editor Holiday shopping is just behind us now, but with the boxes and wrapping paper still lying about, I still have gifts on my mind. However, I'm not thinking about the presents that come from the local retail stores, but rather two of the intangibles: time and space. What if we had more of each of these? Our opportunities for creativity would expand, leading us in new directions. In the electronics realm, "make it smaller" has been the mantra so long that smaller is nearly always equated with better. That equivalence seems to apply whether you're talking about transistors, ICs, boards, or end products. Another given in this field is that product development cycles must always get shorter. That maxim has led to the proliferation of countless turnkey solutions. Design tools, reference designs, and off-the-shelf power supplies are a few of the popular examples. But what if time and space weren't continually doled out in ever smaller slices? What new, weird, or wonderful things might be possible? In the power area, there really would be some new options. With these thoughts in mind, I have composed my whimsical holiday wish list for next year. Here are a few things I'd like to see, if only for the sake of variety and fun: *A super-sized cell phone. Maybe McDonald's could offer it. Picture a handset as big as the 20-year-old wired one in your den. Say about 8 in. by 2 in. by 1 in. In a phone that big, you might fit a lithium-ion battery with as much capacity as the one in your laptop. You'd also have room for a larger display. If little phones can evolve into "smart phones," then maybe the supersized handsets would become "genius phones." The new device might not fit in your shirt pocket. But really, how many people carry cell phones in their shirt pockets? Does portable mean you have to be able to operate it while running down the street? If the phone has almost as many features as your PC, won't you want to sit down somewhere while using it? *Really cheap commercial real estate. No, I'm not looking to be Donald Trump. I'm just wondering how more space would affect the design of the power plants needed for servers, data storage equipment, and communications gear. With more floor space, end users could install more racks and accommodate larger pieces of equipment. This would, in turn, reduce demands for power supplies with hotter-than-the-sun, high power density. That would ease thermal management for power supplies and their loads. Less money would be spent on cooling the system, reliability would improve, and the surrounding environment would likely be a bit quieter. *A new 730-day calendar. This would double the stretch of days from one holiday season until the next, allowing companies longer schedules to develop products that have to be ready by Christmas. Engineers would work within longer development cycles. Of course, we would all be celebrating half as many holidays. But we could compensate for that by making our holidays and weekends longer. That would give me more free minutes to talk on my new genius phone. Of course, some might argue that a longer calendar year would diminish productivity. But maybe we'd get a few better-designed and better-built products in the bargain. And perhaps for some OEMs, craftsmanship would trump time-to-market. Taking a page from wine-maker Paul Masson, companies might one day exclaim, "We shall sell no design before its time." 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/ed6m0DJhUf0EmQ0BEeb0Au ********************** 2. News -- From The Editors ********************** ***Toolkits Speed Up Communications Test Development The Modulation Toolkit 2.0 and Spectral Measurement Toolkit 2.0 speed up development of spectrum analysis, analog modulation, and digital modulation on National Instruments' existing RF signal analyzer hardware for use in communications applications. The Modulation Toolkit 2.0 helps generate custom measurement applications that can generate, process, and analyze common analog and digital modulation formats like FSK, PSK, QAM, and MSK. Applications include the testing of RF components as well as the design and test of communication devices. The Spectral Measurement Toolkit 2.0 offers tools for spectrum analysis and analog modulation functions. It includes high-level common spectral measurement; averaged, zoom, and continuous FFT functions; and common measurements such as peak power and frequency, adjacent-channel power, power spectral density, and occupied bandwidth. Beside working with the company's RF signal analyzer, high-speed digitizers, arbitrary waveform generators, and S series data-acquisition systems, the tools can be used with traditional instruments from third-party vendors. The Modulation Toolkit 2.0 starts at $1995, and the Spectral Measurements Toolkit 2.0 starts at $1495. National Instruments ==> http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/ed6m0DJhUf0EmQ0BEec0Av ***Wind River Learns Linux Wind River is moving toward the open-source market again. Its last foray started with the introduction of visionPROBE II tools for Linux. The lastest movement is in its professional services group, which will now take Linux to heart instead of attacking it. Wind River has also joined the Eclipse Consortium, so it may take advantage of this IDE development platform in the future. The Tornado IDE and VxWorks remain Wind River's mainstays, but integration with Linux will be easier and encouraged. This leaves only one major software company that does not support Linux in some fashion. Wind River ==> http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/ed6m0DJhUf0EmQ0qOU0Ax ***But Will There Be Anything Worth Watching? Emerging organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display technology will enable an era of ubiquitous television, radically enlarging and reshaping the TV industry, according to T. Scott Edwards, executive vice president for consumer electronics at Gateway Inc. Speaking recently at the iSuppli/Stanford Resources Flat Information Displays (FID) conference in Monterey, Calif., Edwards described a concept he calls UbiqTV. "UbiqTV is a world where TV lovers like me are liberated to watch TV wherever and whenever, because the television finally can be liberated from that big fat box." The first stage of UbiqTV will be the massive proliferation of flat-screen sets, like plasma and LCD TV sets, plus the growth of combination LCD/TV/PCs. The second stage will involve pioneering new areas of thin TV, Edwards said. His idea is to place the TV display inside of something that's already ubiquitous in modern life: glass. Using OLED technology layered between panes of glass and polymer, all types of glass can be transformed into displays, he said. Edwards envisions watching TV on bay windows, playing video games on sliding glass doors, and accessing the Internet on bathroom mirrors. Such displays could show images on every square inch of glass, producing massive screens in every room of a house. "As OLEDs become brighter and cheaper, they are making the possibility of UbiqTV a reality sooner, rather than later," Edwards said. The worldwide OLED market is expected to rise to $3.1 billion by 2009, growing at a compound rate of 56 percent from $62 million in 2003, iSuppli/Stanford Resources predicts. iSuppli Corp. ==> http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/ed6m0DJhUf0EmQ0BCl80AJ ***RapidIO Now An International Standard The International Standards Organization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Committee (IEC) have ratified the RapidIO interconnect specification as ISO/IEC DIS 18372. RapidIO continues to gain support as both a chip and board interconnect. Task groups have also been mapping RapidIO to a wide range of form factors, including Advanced TCA (PICMG 3.5), CompactPCI (PICMG 2.18), VME Switched Serial VXS (VITA 41.2), Switched Mezzanine XMC (VITA 42), and next-generation VME (VITA 46). RapidIO Trade Association ==> http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/ed6m0DJhUf0EmQ0BDXU0AT ********************** 3. Upcoming Industry Events ********************** Jan. 5-9, VLSI Design 2004 Mumbai, India http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/ed6m0DJhUf0EmQ0BEFf0AT Jan. 5-9, Ninth Joint Magnetism and Magnetic Materials Conference (Intermag) Anaheim, Calif. http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/ed6m0DJhUf0EmQ0BEed0Aw Jan. 11-13, ACM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA) New Orleans, La. http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/ed6m0DJhUf0EmQ0BEee0Ax Jan. 25-29, 17th International Conference on Micro Electromechanical Systems (MEMS) Maastrict, the Netherlands http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/ed6m0DJhUf0EmQ0BEef0Ay ********************** 4. Magazine Highlights ********************** In case you missed them, here are some of the high points of our most recent issue. December 18, 2003: * Cover Story: Technology Report -- Harness Today's DSPs: Propel Tomorrow's Designs Resource-rich configurable processors perform billions of operations/s to handle the most demanding DSP algorithms. * Leapfrog: First Look -- Eclipse: Write Once, Run Everywhere Platform A rich Java client from an integrated development environment turns into an application platform. * Design View / Design Solution -- Consider An ATCA-Based Design For Carrier-Grade OSs For the complete Table of Contents, go to Electronic Design ==> http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/ed6m0DJhUf0EmQ0BEeg0Az

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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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