295 results found for TechView: Embedded, displaying items 1 - 20
November 21, 2008
FPGA Costs Half A Buck
A couple of things have kept designers away from FPGAs, including size, price, power, and complexity. Actel’s Igloo nano blasts away these issues. The smallest version is available in a 3- by 3-mm package while still delivering 10k system gates. The price starts at less than $0.50.
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William Wong
November 7, 2008 Compact Module Taps COM Express Atoms For Mobile Video
Congatec’s latest COM Express module, the conga-CA945, is based on Intel’s 1.6-GHz, two-thread N270 Atom processor and 945GSE Express chip set (see the figure). The module can handle up to a 2-Gbyte DDR2 small-outline dual-inline memory module (SODIMM). It has a Gigabit Ethernet controller, three PCI Express lanes, eight USB 2.0 ports, two SATA ports, and an IDE interface. Furthermore, the...
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William Wong
November 7, 2008 Try Multithreaded, Multicore Chip For $99
XMOS wants you to try making lots of threads with its $99 XC-1 development system, which is home to a four-core XS1-G processor (see “Multicore And Soft Peripherals Target Multimedia Applications” at www.electronicdesign.com, ED Online 16231). It can handle up to 32 real-time threads and up to 400 Mevents/s. ...
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William Wong
October 23, 2008 Compact COM Express Packs Core 2 Punch
Kontron’s ETXexpress-PC comes in a compact COM Express format. It houses a 2.26-GHz, 45-nm Intel Core 2 processor in a fanless design and supports up to 8 Gbytes of DDR3 SDRAM (see the figure). The low-voltage 1.86-GHz version uses less than 10 W. Peripheral interfaces include five PCI Express x1 lanes, four SATA ports, an IDE port, eight USB 2.0 ports, and Gigabit Ethernet. Video...
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William Wong
October 9, 2008
PCI Express Switch Gains DMA
PLX Technology’s ExpressLane PCI Express switches not only incorporate a four-channel DMA engine that can offload memory transfer chores from the host, they also eliminate the need for DMA support on the host or its support chips.
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William Wong
September 25, 2008 Lucid Pulls A PCI Express Graphics Switch
The Hydra 100 from Lucid Technologies turns two or more graphics adapters into a single, cooperative graphics compute engine. It starts as a basic PCI Express switch, allowing any kind of device to be plugged in downstream. But it shows its multifaceted personality when GPUs such as those from NVidia and AMD/ATI are downstream. Its RISC engine makes multiple graphics boards appear as a single, more powerful device, distributing graphics operations...
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William Wong
September 11, 2008 Intel Makes Some Multicore Lemonade
I f you have lemons, you make lemonade. That’s what Intel will be doing with its x86 architecture when it comes to Larrabee, a massive multicore solution that will take aim at high-performance graphics rivals such as NVidia and AMD/ATI (see the figure). While NVidia and AMD/ATI are taking their graphics processing unit (GPU) offerings into the more general computational realm (see “What Will You Do With 1 TFLOLOPS...
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William Wong
December 15, 2006 Encrypted Hard Disk Keeps Secrets
Lock down your data without paying a performance penalty with Seagate s Momentus 5400 FDE.2 2.5-in. secure hard-disk drive with DriveTrust (see the figure). It incorporates full-disk, 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) hardware-based encryption in addition to a...
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William Wong
December 15, 2006 CompactPCI Gets Rugged Wi-Fi
MEN Micro's 3U F209L brings IEEE 802.11b to CompactPCI. It s based on an 802.11b PCMCIA Prism 2.5 chip-set adapter that allows upgrades to other wireless technologies. Outdoor range is 600 m. Also, the F209L operates over the industrial temperature range of 40°C to 85°C. Pricing starts at $640. www.men.de ...
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William Wong
December 15, 2006 SBC Mixes Multiple Connectivity Options
The LBC-GX500 EBX form-factor single-board computer (SBC) from WinSystems combines a 1-W AMD Geode GX500 and up to 512 Mbytes of SO-DIMM SDRAM with a range of wired and wireless communication interfaces, like MiniPCI-based 802.11, ZigBee, cellular modems, GPS, 100BaseT Ethernet, and glob-al-compliant dial-up modems.Peripheral interfaces include dual floppy interface, two UltraDMA 66 IDE interfaces, PS/2 keyboard/ mouse, six USB ports, 10 serial ports, and an optional 12-bit ...
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William Wong
December 15, 2006 ARM7 Gains Access To 2 Gbytes Of Memory
The Atmel AT91SAM7SE line’s external bus interface (EBI) provides direct access to up to 2 Gbytes of external memory in addition to 32 kbytes of RAM and 512 kbytes of on-chip flash. The dual-bank flash architecture permits full-speed execution while writing to flash. The memory protection unit (MPU) can prevent the microcontroller from booting from external memory. It also can prevent flash update and force code execution from on-chip flash. The system...
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William Wong
November 16, 2006 UML And C No Longer Oil And Water
Many UML 2.0 products have been able to generate code for languages like Ada, C, C++, and Java from UML (Universal Modeling Language) models. Typically, though, the C developer was expected to learn UML. Legacy code would be maintained, but the new target would be UML. While it's not a bad approach, it doesn't always make friends. The new C support in the latest release (V7) of Telelogic's Rhapsody breaks the mold by allowing C developers to employ modeling while...
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William Wong
November 16, 2006 Low-Cost Development Kits Include C Compilers
Microchip's PICkit 2 Debug Express includes everything you need to start developing applications for the 44-pin PIC16F917 8-bit microcontroller. The kit comes with the MPLab integrated development environment (IDE) with assembler support plus a copy of Hi-Tech Software's PICC Lite C compiler. The package includes assembler and C tutorials. The USB-based debugger can be used with other PIC platforms. PICkit 2 Debug Express costs $49. Also, Atmel's $49 USB-based AVR Dragon...
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William Wong
November 16, 2006 Tiny RTOS Takes Low Cost Per Developer Route
IAR Systems is now moving into the low-end real-time operating system (RTOS) business with a product that complements its partners like Micrium and its uC/OS-II. IAR's PowerPac is designed for developers who need the basics. Its small, 2-kbyte footprint (for a typical Arm platform) has a very fast context switch. Limited to 255 priorities, it supports pre-emptive and round-robin scheduling. It includes typical RTOS features such as tasks, semaphores, mailboxes, and...
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William Wong
October 26, 2006 Hello! VoIP In A Kit
Getting a product out the door quickly means starting from on top of a solid platform, not building from ground zero. That's one reason why I look at development kits in EiED Online. The better platforms get you started quickly and provide a solid base on which to build. Delivering a hardware or software platform often is the first step, with an integrated solution to follow. Digium's Asterisk represents that first step (see "Open-Source Platform Dials Into VoIP"...
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William Wong
October 26, 2006 Fingerprint Sensor Integrates With Trusted Pre-Boot Authentication Systems
Fujitsu's Full Speed USB 2.0-based MBF320 Sweep Sensor uses the TrustedCore preboot authentication (PBA), fingerprint-matching algorithms, and biometric software from Cogent Systems. The ultra-thin (16 by 6.5 by 0.9 mm) capacitive sensor has a hardened surface that can handle rugged environments. It provides 500-dpi resolution and 8-bit grayscale. Also, it consumes only 45 mW as well as only 150 µA in standby auto-finger-detect mode from 3.0 to 3.6 V. The unit...
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William Wong
October 26, 2006 48-Port PCI Express Switch Provides Flexible Port Configurations
PCI Express is replacing PCI-X in high-performance systems, increasing the need for flexible PCI Express switching. PLX Technology's PEX 8548, a 48-port PCI Express switch, can handle a range of configurations from three x16 PCI Express ports. It's ideal for handling a pair of high-speed video cards in a setup that has an x8 host port plus three x8 ports and four x4 ports for extensive peripheral access. This third-generation device complies with PCI Express 1.1, ...
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William Wong
September 28, 2006 ETX Modules Master Embedded Chores
ETX system modules plug into a baseboard that provides peripheral interfaces and connectors. Custom baseboards often are the typical route for designers. But standard baseboards like Kontron's ETX miniBaseboard usually are sufficient, easier to obtain, and economical enough for production products (Fig. 1). The ETX miniBaseboard hides the ETX module on the bottom. It's slightly larger (130 by 155 mm) than an ETX board, and its...
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William Wong
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