Which U.S. Companies create the most engineering opportunities? Our Top 100 lead the way based on design influence, hiring patterns, patent and IP portfolios, and substantial R&D budgets.
Here on this Top 100 Employers web site, you can find the raw data we used to crunch our numbers, detailed analysis of specific company data,
and profiles of some of the top companies to you can get a closer look at how these companies operate.
[Engineering Feature] The Top 100 Employers In Electronic Design
Lists are wildly popular throughout the publishing world. Take the Fortune 500, which is highly influential in business. Others have a real impact on our daily lives—Money's Best Places to Live, U.S. News' Best Colleges list, and Consumer Reports' Best Cars list. But what kind of list would hold import in engineering? How about the Top 100 Employers of Electronic Designers? After collecting reams of relevant data, we weighed various factors to...
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Mark David
[Technology Report] GPS Takes A Global Position In The Portable Market
Wherever You Go, There You Are. That just happens to be the title of Jon Kabat-Zinn's 1994 book on Buddhist meditation. However, you could also apply that description to the U.S. Air Force's Global Positioning System (GPS). This technology knows exactly where you are, even if you don't. Also referred to as Navstar, GPS has been in operation since the early 1990s. It proved invaluable initially in the Gulf War and in all military endeavors since then many times over....
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Leapfrog: First Look] Architecture Maps DSP Flow To Parallel Processing Platform
Programming parallel processors isn't easy, especially when the number of processing elements is large. No single technique applies to all situations. But in its Storm-1 architecture, Stream Processors narrows the focus to make parallel-processing hardware and software design significantly easier (...
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William Wong
[Design View / Design Solution] MCUs Provide Power Control And Intelligence For Lighting Applications
The word is officially out—inefficient light sources are not cool. Pardon the pun, but we’re rapidly becoming aware of the impact our energy consumption has on the environment. Lighting applications consume a large portion of our overall energy consumption. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, lighting consumers 12% of residential energy and 25% of commercial energy. So, there’s certainly a significant amount of energy savings to be made by using lighting technology...
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Steve Bowling
[Ideas For Design] Germanium Dual-Boost Starts At 260 mV
No matter what portable power source you use, the lower the starting voltage your circuitry operates at, the better. A lower startup voltage also maximizes runtime. Furthermore, to completely discharge the power source, circuitry must run on ever-lower voltages and currents. Existing boost circuits can start up and drain a power source down to 1 V, but that still leaves too much unusable energy in a battery. Other power sources, like solar cells or micro-turbines,...
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Clayton B. Grantham
[Editorial] Into The Nano Frontier—Closer Than You Might Think
Getting ready for the annual NanoBusiness Alliance conference, I finished shaving and slathered my skin with nanoparticle-enhanced sunscreen. I pulled on some nanofiber-coated pants, finished getting dressed, and headed out to my car, which gleamed thanks to its shiny nanopaint finish. I stopped at the mailbox and pulled out the latest Red Herring, whose front-cover headline screamed "NANO NO-NO" and asked who will assess the dangers of nanotechnology....
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Mark David
[POV: Point Of View] Change Is The Only Constant In Electronic Components
Electronic components (ECs) are so widely distributed that the EC industry feels every economic shift, twitch, and tremor. That's especially true for small to medium-sized EC companies. Whether it's a change in consumer spending habits, government budgets, or boom and bust cycles in different sectors, small companies always feel the effect first. Three industry trends—supplier consolidation, vendor reduction, and China's emerging economic presence—provide a good...
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Carol Williams
[Pease Porridge] Bob's Mailbox
Hello Bob: I'm designing wideband photodiode amplifiers and using Jerald Graeme's excellent book (Photodiode Amplifiers—Op Amp Solutions) as a reference. In the case of a composite transimpedance amplifier (TIA) discussed in Chapter 6, do you know whether the phase compensation requirement that dictates a value of CF for stability/gain peaking (i.e., the formula on page 58) changes? (Refer to my column "...
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Bob Pease
[TechView: The Industry] Next-Generation Lithography Takes UV Light To The Extreme
As semiconductor processes head below 65 nm, scientists are scrambling to find a light source that will let fabs manufacture next-generation chips. Martin Richardson, an optics professor and director of the University of Central Florida's laser plasma laboratory, believes extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) light could replace the deep-ultraviolet lithography that's currently used to carve circuit patterns onto silicon wafers. "We must use a light source with a wavelength that's...
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John Edwards
[TechView: The Industry] Power Management Can Save The World
Former Vice President Al Gore calls it an inconvenient truth. But global warming represents an attractive opportunity for the power-management industry, which can employ its expertise in reducing energy usage to benefit consumers around the globe—as well as benefit the globe itself. The industry is now turning its attention to long-neglected white goods, which are the biggest users of electricity in homes. As developing regions of the world increase their demand for such...
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Marijana Vukicevic
[TechView: The Industry] Meet And Greet Your Peers At EDS 2007
Pack your golf clubs and order some fresh business cards. It's time to head for Las Vegas and this year's Electronic Distribution Show (EDS), scheduled for May 14-17 at the Paris and Bally's hotels. During the event, manufacturers of electronic components, test instruments, and accessories will have countless opportunities to meet with their distributors, representatives, and suppliers. In addition to the networking, EDS will have plenty of educational seminars on tap for...
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Richard Gawel
[TechView: Analog & Power] Low-Power 24-Bit Stereo ADCs Boast 124-dB SNR
For professional digital audio recording and processing, Texas Instruments' PCM4220 and PCM4222 24-bit, 216-kHz delta-sigma analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) provide up to 124dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). While sampling at 48 kHz, these two-channel ADCs consume 305 mW, permitting designs that power computer audio interfaces entirely through a USB or Firewire bus. The 6-bit output from the delta-sigma modulators in the PCM4220 is routed to a digital decimation filter, whose...
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Don Tuite
[TechView: Analog & Power] Transceiver Chips Simplify EIA-485 Implementation
EIA-485 (RS-485) may seem a little retro. But the standard is still the simplest way to drive digital data over long distances (i.e., 4000 feet) with multidrop capability. Recognizing this, Maxim Integrated Products' has come up with a pair of chips that simplify RS-485 implementations. The MAX13487E and MAX13488E half-duplex RS-485 transceivers achieve this simplification with a feature Maxim calls AutoDirection. This feature automatically enables the driver when transmitting...
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Don Tuite
[TechView: Digital] Give Yor Robot A Fresh Set Of Eyes
Robots have it tough, performing tasks ad nauseam to please us humans. Most of them deal with subpar working conditions, with no bathroom breaks and total blindness. When most of us humans either naturally or by some corrective means have perfect vision, why should robots suffer and work continuously in the dark? Let the hypocrisy end by purchasing your robot some much-needed "glasses." In about an hour, your robot can enjoy 20/20 sight with TrueView from ABB Robotics, a...
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Daniel Harris
[TechView: Digital] Design Tip: Overcome The Challenges Of 45-nm Design
The industry is moving to the 45-nm process technology node. As with the 65-nm node, this migration will be pioneered by foundries partnering with first-tier movers such as large fabless companies and integrated device manufacturers (IDMs). The move to 45 nm, regardless of the application (e.g., FPGA or RF), poses a number of challenges. Increased process complexity to boost device performance: Since traditional device scaling methods can no longer be...
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Chia Wen Liang
[TechView: EDA] Device-Native FPGA Verification Helps Speed Development Cycles
There are a lot more FPGA design starts these days than ASIC design starts. But with FPGAs approaching the size and complexity of ASICs, they bring along many of the same verification issues. For many FPGA designers, simulation is just too slow and error-prone. Intellectual property (IP) behaves differently in simulation than it does on real hardware. ASIC design works its way toward a known-good chip by means of multiple iterations of synthesis/place and route. FPGA...
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David Maliniak
[TechView: EDA] Place-And-Route Tool Improves Runtimes And Capacity
In the 2007.03 release of IC Compiler, Synopsys' flagship place-and-route tool, designers can look for faster runtimes, higher capacity, smarter multicorner/multimode (MCMM) optimizations, and improved predictability compared to earlier versions. The release also rolls out physical design support for the emerging 45-nm technology node. According to Synopsys, IC Compiler 2007.03 can deliver a 35% runtime improvement over previous editions without trading off quality of...
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David Maliniak
[TechView: Wireless] Single-Chip ZigBee Radio Kicks Up The Data Rate While Boosting Battery Life
More and more, designers are using the ZigBee short-range wireless technology to monitor remote sensors and transmit simple control messages in their industrial, building automation, and home applications. Freescale Semiconductor's MC1322x Platform in Package (PiP) not only makes it easier to implement ZigBee in these and other applications, it also offers ultra-low power consumption. ZigBee is an enhancement to the IEEE 802.15.4 personal-area networking (PAN) standard, which...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Engineering Essentials] Flexible Displays Set To Go Mainstream
After two decades of intensive study and testing, flexible displays are just about ready to take off. Researchers have strived to find the right combination of flexible glass, polymer, and metal-foil substrates along with thin-film-transistor (TFT) backplates—a combination that will turn the flexible display into a commercial reality. Ultimately, they're looking to produce a thin, flexible, clear substrate with the barrier properties of glass. Anticipated mass-market...
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Roger Allan
