[Engineering Feature] VoIP: Packetized Voice Over Everything
Though it has bounced around for over a decade, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has only recently seen a surge in activity, with clear movement toward widespread adoption. Slowly but surely, companies and individuals are replacing their standard plain-old telephone service (POTS) on the public switched telephone network (PSTN) with VoIP on the Internet. Why on earth would we give up one of the best, most highly developed, and ultrareliable electronic systems ever built? Simply...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Technology Report] The Truth About Design For Manufacturing
It was a steamy morning in late July when I drove into Manhattan for a breakfast meeting with Chuck Byers of TSMC and Anna del Rosario of Altera. Ostensibly, the meeting was to discuss TSMC's ongoing manufacturing partnership with Altera. Because I had an upcoming Technology Report on my plate on the subject of design for manufacturing (DFM), I decided to pick Byers' brain a bit. Chuck's first comment on DFM was to remind me that the "D" stands for design. "DFM is a design...
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David Maliniak
[Leapfrog: First Look] Factorized Power Module Redefines The Wall-Wart
Previously, Vicor's Factorized Power Architecture (FPA) concept seemed constrained to a role as an alternative to the intermediate bus architecture (IBA). Now, the company's newest V°I Chip family member, the power factor module (PFM), takes the company from point-of-load to the ac wall plug (Fig. 1). With it, FPA promises significant reductions in ac-adapter size and increased ac-dc converter efficiency in converter configurations from...
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Don Tuite
[Design View / Design Solution] Learn To Manage All Kinds of Complexity With SystemC
SystemC came about because of the need to model systems-on-a-chip (SoCs). SoCs require concurrent modeling of hardware and software, increasing complexity to a level that could not be managed any other way. Today’s use of SystemC ranges from SoC design to FPGA design to test and verification of chips. However, if we look a little deeper, it becomes clear that SystemC has much more to offer in a variety of different technology domains and applications. The platform is actually...
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Imran H. Khan
[Ideas For Design] High-IOUT LDO Rgulator Has Excellent Transient Response
Originally, the venerable three-terminal linear regulator featured a bipolar junction transistor emitter-follower output that exhibited very low output impedance. Many of today's applications demand dropout voltages lower than that of the first-generation regulators (1.5 V). Most modern regulators, therefore, include a common-source MOSFET as the pass element. One compromise that's associated with the common-source (or common emitter) output is an intrinsically high output...
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John Guy
[Ideas For Design] Frequency-Modulated DC-DC Converter Offers Flexibility
It's certainly easy enough to buy a switcher off the shelf, but what do you do if you need a little extra voltage with a little more control? A programmable switcher would be nice. The following design is a very simple attempt at providing a little extra voltage with flexible control, while requiring very little hardware overhead. A basic voltage-feedback boost converter design is chosen with a vastly simplified feedback circuit. The feedback circuit requires only a comparator,...
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Ross Fosler
[Ideas For Design] Power Plays A Critical Role In 90-nm FPGA Design
The semiconductor industry’s rapid move toward a 90-nm process node to achieve performance and cost benefits puts enormous pressure on power budgets. Decreasing transistor sizes lead to increased leakage current and, as a result, static power. Dynamic power also rises with system speeds and higher design density, but in a more linear fashion. Today, many designs have 50-50 static and dynamic power dissipation. According to International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS)...
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Matt Klein
[Editorial] Rethinking New Orleans' Defenses With Technology
As EEs, you apply the latest technologies and see fast results. Compare this to civil engineering. Started in 1965, the New Orleans levee project was still under construction when Katrina hit this month. Imagine working on the same electronics project for 40 years. Granted, the science of civil engineering doesn't move at the pace of electronics. But civil engineering hasn't stood still over the course of four decades either. Even the New Orleans geography has morphed, with...
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Mark David
[POV: Point Of View] With All Eyes On ESL, Who Will Watch Our RTL?
Amid the inevitable "post-DAC" war stories and EDA industry buzz this year, one message comes through loud and clear: We're definitely on track to deliver on the promise of using electronic system level (ESL) techniques to tackle the design complexity challenge. We've now made solid progress toward and methodologies for system design continue to do so for all the right reasons. But judging from where the action is, it seems that this focus on the lofty story has...
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Glenn Perry
[Pease Porridge] Bob's Mailbox
Hi Bob: I think this may interest you. I repair electronics and had a guy bring me a TV/VCR. A month later he came back, and the belt I replaced was broken. It was one of those take-everythingapartto-get-to-the-belt kinds. This time, the belt looked like it was 20 years old—nothing but little, hard chunks of rubber. Yes, it was the same unit. He did not try to sneak in his friend's for repair. I started asking him what he could have in his house that could do this. It...
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Bob Pease
[TechView: The Industry] Teardown Reveals Mac Mini's Cutting-Edge Design
With products like the iPod nano and the iMac, Apple Computer has demonstrated its talent for packing large amounts of functionality into small form factors. Yet its Mac mini desktop PC takes high integration to a whole new level. Creative design and cutting-edge components have produced a system that is small in size and cost but big on style and elegance...
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Andrew Rassweiler
[TechView: The Industry] Low-Temperature Polysilicon Process Bodes Well For Flat-Panel Displays
A joint venture promises a radically new approach to low-temperature silicon processing. It also signals a breakthrough for low-cost thin-film-transistor (TFT) flat-panel displays like organic LEDs (OLEDs) and LCD active-matrix displays. TCZ Inc. has combined the expertise of Cymer Inc., a deep-ultraviolet laser supplier, and Carl Zeiss SMT AG, a supplier of versatile optical systems for chip manufacturing and process control, to achieve this breakthrough. TCZ's tool addresses...
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Roger Allan
[TechView: Analog & Power] Low-VIN Buck Regulator Toggles Fast-Switching/Very Low-Dropout Modes
The LTC3448 goes after applications in devices powered by single-cell lithium-ion, multicell alkaline, or nickel-metal-hydride batteries. Developed by Linear Technology, this 600-mA (continuous) buck regulator transitions from switch mode (at a constant 1.5 or 2.25 MHz) to a 160-mV very low-dropout (VLDO) mode when load current drops below 3 mA. Quiescent current is only 32 ?A in VLDO mode. Once the output current again rises beyond 11 mA, the switching mode toggles back on....
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Don Tuite
[TechView: Analog & Power] Built-In Magnetics In PoE Jack Assemblies Save Assembly Hassles
The 1658821 RJ45 Ethernet jack assemblies from Tyco Electronics integrate the isolation transformers necessary to inject power in Power over Ethernet (PoE) switches, including switches intended for Gigabit Ethernet. These modular, six-wide by two-high assemblies also include the jacks and heatsink as well as two bicolor LEDs per port. In fact, one 12-jack module replaces as many as 200 discrete parts. Press-fit assembly eliminates the need for wave soldering, facilitating lead-free...
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Don Tuite
[TechView: Embedded] 16-Bit MCU Invades 8-Bit Territory With 4- By 4-mm Chip
The very small has been the realm of 8-bit microcontrollers. But Texas Instruments is pushing its MSP430 line where it has never gone before. The 16-bit MSP430F20xx microcontroller is available in a range of packages, including a 14-pin, 4- by 4-mm QFN chip. It's also available in TSSOP and PDIP packages. The MSP430F20xx family is a major upgrade from the MSP430F1xxx product line. The new siblings are smaller, faster, and more power-efficient at 200 µA/MIPS. The 10 I/O pins...
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William Wong
[TechView: Embedded] New Products
SAS Switch Chips Sharpen Blade Servers The PM8399 SXP 24x3GSec and PM8398 SXP 36x3GSec SAS switching chips from PMC-Sierra provide multiple processors with access to an array of SAS and SATA hard-disk drives with transfer rates up to 3 Gbits/s. PMC-Sierra has imbued the chips with a range of security features based on its zone permission table. These features permit traffic segregation so designated hosts can access specific groups of drives. Systems can support...
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William Wong
[TechView: Communications] 4-Gbit/s Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters Accelerate SAN Access
As storage systems have grown in number, so has the need to get data into and out of them faster. RAID, JBOD, and other storage-area network (SAN) boxes now store jillions of bytes that must be accessed over the Internet or via local-area networks (LANs) inside organizations needing fast access to databases. The primary pipeline to these systems is Fibre Channel (FC), a fast fiber-optic interface. Over the years, its speed has increased from an initial rate of 100 Mbits/s to 1...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[TechView: Digital] Network/Storage Procesors Tackle Control-Plane And Data-Plane Needs
The Octeon EXP processors combine data-plane and control-plane processing into single-chip solutions. They also can operate at multigigabit rates using a standard C/C++ software programming model. They're based on an architecture that uses multiple MIPS64 processor cores, release 2 of the MIPS instruction-set architecture. Developed by Cavium Neworks, the EXP series will find homes in networking and storage applications (see the figure)....
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Dave Bursky
[TechView: Digital] Largest Space-Qualified FPGA Delivers 4M System Gates
According to its manufacturer, the radiation-tolerant RTAX4000S FPGA offers the highest density for space designs. This Actel device provides 4 million system gates, which is roughly equivalent to about 500k ASIC gates. Furthermore, it tolerates a total ionizing dose of up to 300 krads (silicon, functional), exceeding the requirements for most space applications (see the figure). This antifuse-based FPGA has a single-event latch-up...
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Dave Bursky
[TechView: Test] Stress Your Comm Devices, Not Yourself, With 7-GHz Generator
Signal integrity is becoming more important—and harder to evaluate—with every leap in communication speeds. Checking the signal integrity of your latest design is a two-part problem. Acquiring and looking at signals is one part. The Agilent 81141A serial pulse data generator targets the other part—stimulating the system, especially under stress. The 81141A outputs a variety of data formats plus user-defined or software-generated patterns at up to 7 GHz and with...
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John Novellino
[TechView: Test] Arb Series Offers Performance Range To Fit Multiple Applications
They may be in Tektronix's "value" category. Yet six arbitrary waveform/function generators target a host of design applications, from consumer, medical, and automotive electronics up to high-performance computing and communications equipment and video products. These one-and two-channel units offer a wide range of performance based on a custom "generatoron-a-chip" ASIC and an intuitive GUI enhanced by a 5.6-in. color display. Compact and portable, the AFG3000 generators include...
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John Novellino
[TechView: Test] Imaging System Speeds Wafer Probing
Designers doing process development or device characterization and modeling can use Cascade Microtech's eVue digital imaging system to navigate, observe, and measure their devices more quickly and effectively than they could with a conventional microscope. Optimized for on-wafer test with the company's wafer probing stations, the system combines advanced navigation tools and video processing with next-generation digital microscope technology. The core of the system is a multi-CCD...
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John Novellino
[TechView: EDA] Power-Grid Verification Takes A Formal Turn
Power-analysis tools are taking on new and interesting angles these days, especially since power integrity has gotten on the radar screens of most system-on-a-chip designers. The latest wrinkle is the addition of formal power-grid verification in the form of Sequence Design's CoolCheck tool. CoolCheck uses a vectorless approach to examine power grids early in the design cycle, verifying both electrical and physical connectivity (see the figure)....
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David Maliniak
[TechView: EDA] Schematic Checker Finds PC-Board Errors Early
Catching errors early in a design cycle is a key to holding down costs, and pc-board design is no exception. An add-on to Zuken's CR-5000 enterprise design environment called Circuit Adviser systematically checks for errors in schematic drawings. This can help identify errors early and eliminate the need for rework later on. Circuit Adviser finds hidden electrical problems in schematicsdesigned in the CR-5000 environment through use of predefined electrical rules set by the...
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David Maliniak
[TechView: EDA] EDA Roundup
SUPPORT FOR THE OPENACCESS 2.2 DATABASE has been voiced by Cadence Design Systems. An early champion of OpenAccess, Cadence will employ v.2.2 as a unified database across its IC implementation platform and design-formanufacturing (DFM) tools. Use of the new version of the industry-standard design database will further improve efficiency of design-data exchanges between applications. Support for OpenAccess 2.2 is already shipping in the Encounter and Virtuoso design platforms as well as DFM...
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David Maliniak
