[Engineering Feature] The Cell Phone—Now That's Entertainment
There was a time when children could convince their parents they needed a cell phone because wherever they were, they would always be just a phone call away. It's hard for a teenager to use that excuse now. Today's cell phones are as much portable entertainment devices as they are phones. So many models boast MP3 players, games, cameras, and even video, some experts say we soon will spend as much as 80% of the time using our phones for entertainment. This isn't necessarily a bad...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Technology Report] The Other Microdisplay
Most microdisplays are used in rear projection TVs (RPTVs). But some devices, also known as "near-to-eye" microdisplays, are taking the home theater out of the house and on the road. Products based on near-to-eye microdisplays can be found in many everyday items like digital cameras and camcorders, as well as head-mounted displays. They also can be found in these products' viewfinders. Head-mounted displays can be built with twin electronic viewfinders for viewing DVD players,...
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Roger Allan
[Technology Report] Rear-Projection HDTV Microdisplays Fire Back
Not long ago, consumer electronics giants were clamoring to get out of the microdisplay market. Sub-par technology, combined with high manufacturing costs and a stiff price tag, all contributed to the demise of the microdisplay. No longer on the back burner, today's microdisplay market is on fire, and they're back with a vengeance. And at the center of it all is the realm of microdisplays that drive high-definition (HD) rear-projection TVs (RPTVs) with screen diagonal sizes...
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Roger Allan
[Leapfrog: First Look] Low-G Sensors Mold A New MEMS Market
Three new highly sensitive low-g acceleration sensors, along with an electric-field (E-field) sensor, will look to deepen the market penetration of microelectromechanical-system (MEMS) devices. The sensors, developed by Freescale Semiconductor, have set their sights on applications throughout the consumer, medical, automotive, and industrial fields. They span a wide range of sensitivity levels and are low cost. (See the end of this article for more pricing details.) Using the...
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Roger Allan
[Design View / Design Solution] Yes, You Can Do Digital Audio With Real-Time Java
Java has become the preferred programming language in the traditional information-technology domain. That's because it offers improved developer productivity, greater software reuse, lower software-maintenance costs, more flexible and general software architectures, and higher software reliability. Now, various approaches to using Java in lower-level, hard, real-time software realms have been proposed. But when Java technologies are applied to very low-level software, such as...
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Kelvin Nilsen
[Ideas For Design] 1.5-Bit Stages In Pipeline ADCs
Use of pipeline analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) continues to expand, both as standalone parts and as embedded functional blocks in system-on-a-chip (SoC) ICs. They boast acceptable resolution at high-speed operation and can be integrated onto relatively small die area. Driven by IC chip cost factors, many commodity CMOS-technology SoCs now include embedded pipeline ADCs. Pipelined converters attain their final resolution through a series cascade of lower-resolution stages. For...
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Dave Treleaven
[Ideas For Design] Handy Expert Tip Simplifies Resistor Segments On ICs
For analog IC design engineers, using matched components in circuits is one of the keys to creating highly accurate circuits. I have worked on many types of power-management chips, and a small, yet very important, part of them would be the matched feedback resistors that contribute to output voltage accuracy. To optimize the matching of resistors on an IC, you would typically use multiple segments of the exact same size resistors. An advantage to this approach is that process...
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Tom Li
[Ideas For Design] R-C Twin-Tee Circuit Reduces Power-Supply Hum
The R-C twin-tee passive circuit supplies band-reject (notch) filtering to portable applications. It has a circuit Q (loaded) of 0.25. Satisfactory rejection can be achieved when the bridge is balanced (close tolerances of adjustable components) and the capacitor unloaded Qs (a function of capacitor ESR) are large compared to the circuit Q. A schematic of a symmetrical twin-tee circuit is shown in the figure. The design equations are as follows:...
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Richard M. Kurzrok
[POV: Point Of View] Don't Sacrifice Performance For Low Sleep-Mode Power
The accuracy and performance of battery-powered systems need not be sacrificed to achieve long battery life. Designers can use techniques that provide both high performance and low sleep-mode power consumption. Applications such as keyless entry, climate control, and security systems are inactive almost all the time, waking up periodically for just a few microseconds to poll sensors or respond to an interrupt. In these predominantly sleep-mode applications, sleep-mode current is...
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Asmund Saetre
[Editorial] Keeping Connected Sometimes Means Turning Off Mobile Media
Connected everywhere—that seems to be the goal in this wireless age. Consumers activate close to a billion new cell phones each year. And now, these phones offer data, music, video, and games as well as communications. In this issue's cover story, Lou Frenzel cites predictions that mobile media eventually will account for 80% of the time we spend using the cell phone (see "The Cell Phone—Now That's Entertainment," p. 42). As I said in a recent column, there...
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Mark David
[Pease Porridge] What's All This License Plate Stuff, Anyhow?
Let's call this the License Plate Game, because that's the easiest place to get three nearly random letters. You start with three given letters, and you have to make them into a word. And you start with eight points. If you add one (or more) vowels to the beginning or end of the letters, that costs you one point. Or if you have to add one or more consonants to the beginning or end of the letters, that also costs you a point. If you have to add some (one or more) vowels and also...
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Bob Pease
[TechView: The Industry] Students' Tracking System Keeps Tabs On Emergency Personnel
As soldiers, firefighters, and other first responders face the challenges of the 21st century, many of them rely on 20th century technology. They carry walkie talkies into danger while their support teams have no idea where they are. Thanks to a team with the University of Florida College of Engineering's Integrated Product & Process Design Program, that's about to change. These students have developed a system that locates, tracks, and communicates with emergency personnel in...
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Richard Gawel
[TechView: Analog & Power] Power-Meter ICs Reflect Different Nations' Needs On A Common Platform
Designers who target the global market must account for the differences in submarkets and accommodate them within the confines of their basic designs. Two variations on an electrical power-meter IC from Cirrus Logic vividly demonstrate this principle. In China, electricity once was unmetered and had limited reach. Today, the Chinese power grid is expanding rapidly, and citizens are expected to pay for what they use. The latter requirement presents a challenge to some end users'...
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Don Tuite
[TechView: Analog & Power] Rugged Lead-Acid Charger Packs A 500-W Wallop
This is no tiny smart-charger IC for lithiumions. Instead, Absopulse Electronics' BCH501-BTC is a constant-voltage charger with high power density for big lead-acids. Only 6 by 2.63 by 13.82 in. and 5.7 lb, it nonetheless cranks out 500 W. Like its tiny IC brethren, it has some built-in intelligence. Battery-temperature compensation enables the charger to modify its output voltage so the charge voltage is reduced as the battery temperature rises and increased when the batteries...
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Don Tuite
[TechView: Communications] Chips And NICs Set The Stage for 10GE Networks
Ten Gigabit Ethernet (10GE) has been around for a few years. But it hasn't enjoyed widespread deployment, mainly because of its high cost. With optical interfaces coming down in price and a 10GE copper solution forthcoming, though, 10GE is ready to take off. The pressure is really on to add greater capacity and speed to existing networks and data centers. Applications like storage networks, Internet Protocol television and Video on Demand, server clustering, and consolidation are...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[TechView: Communications] Next-Generation Ethernet PHY Chip Breaks Power And Performance Barriers
We often take Ethernet physical-layer (PHY) chips for granted. But with 1-Gbit Ethernet (1GE) moving into the PC mainstream, it's time to give them another look. As a member of the SimpliPHY line of next-generation Ethernet chips, Vitesse Semiconductor's VSC8601 meets the triple-play (voice, video, and data) challenges. With the highest integration of any PHY available and lowest power, the VSC8601 is a great candidate for the Gigabit LAN on motherboard (GLOM) trend in laptops...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[TechView: Digital] Convert C Code To FPGA Hardware With A Click Of The Mouse
The Nios II C-to-Hardware Acceleration (C2H) Compiler from Altera greatly simplifies the job of accelerating functions in a C program using hardware (see the figure). It also simplifies the chore of linking the instruction stream with the new hardware. The first step is to identify the function or functions that should be accelerated via software profiling tools commonly used by software developers. A small fraction of a program...
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William Wong
[TechView: Digital] Low-Cost DSPs Do Multichannel Audio
The Texas Instruments DA707 and DA705, which build on the C6000 DSP architecture, are pin-compatible with the DA708. Both chips have 192 kbytes of SRAM and 768 kbytes for ROM. They also have 32 kbytes of instruction cache. Each chip has two McASP units, a pair of I2C interfaces, and two serial peripheral interfaces. The DA707 has a 16-bit external memory interface. Both chips support dMax. The chips are designed for high-performance audio applications like digital sound...
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William Wong
[TechView: Digital] Flash Memory Speaks Double SPI
Winbond's 25X SpiFlash family delivers nonvolatile memory in capacities up to 64 Mbits. Its maximum transfer rate is 75 MHz, and its dual data pins provide an effective rate of 150 MHz. This throughput is in the range of parallel flash. Such an approach extends the normal three-wire serial peripheral interface (SPI) to four wires, so a single eight-pin small-outline IC can easily support the 25X SpiFlash. The chips have 4-kbyte sectors. A 64-kbyte block can be erased in 1 s. The 4-Mbit chip...
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William Wong
[TechView: Test] Multifunction Data-Acquisition System Takes Advantage Of USB 2.0
USB refers to Universal Serial Bus, of course. But it could just as easily stand for Ubiquitous Serial Bus. It has become that popular. Manufacturers of all kinds of T&M equipment— standalone or computer-based—have taken advantage of it. The latest is National Instruments' CompactDAQ, a modular data-acquisition system that offers up to 256 channels of electrical, physical, mechanical, or acoustic measurements in a 10-in. wide chassis (...
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John Novellino
[TechView: Test] Serial RapidIO Analyzer Probe Supports Logic Analyzers
Designers looking for reliability, high bandwidth, low latency, and faster bus speeds for their computer and peripheral projects often turn to Serial RapidIO (SRIO) technology. To help these designers perform protocol analysis on their designs, the FuturePlus Systems FS4410 SRIO analysis probe permits non-intrusive probing of SRIO buses in conjunction with Agilent Technologies logic analyzers (see the figure). The FS4410 connects...
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John Novellino
[TechView: EDA] When Analog/Mixed-Signal Circuits Feel The Heat, Tool Diagnoses It
Analog/mixed-signal IC designers are feeling the heat these days, and it's not just from their ever-shrinking design cycles. It's from their designs themselves. Now more than ever, from the start to the finish of the design flow, designers need to accurately assess the temperature variations in their designs and how those variations affect circuit performance and reliability. Into the breach comes CircuitFire, a tool that provides detailed 3D temperature analysis (...
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David Maliniak
[TechView: EDA] FPGA Design Suite Builds In Timing Analysis With Native Support For SDC Format
With FPGAs pushing aside ASICs in many complex designs, the limits of traditional FPGA timing-analysis tools are being stressed to the breaking point. So if you want to use today's high-end FPGAs in place of ASICs, you'll need to use ASIC-like tools and measurement parameters. Enter Version 6.0 of Altera's Quartus II design software, which now offers native support for the Synopsys Design Constraints (SDC) timing format. Quartus II v.6.0 incorporates Altera's TimeQuest timing...
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David Maliniak
[TechView: EDA] EDA Roundup
BY BUILDING ON-CHIP VARIATION (OCV) analysis into its TimeCraft static-timing analysis tool, Incentia has given TimeCraft users a means of improving the accuracy and efficiency of static timing analysis. The tool's OCV engine enables users to address the effects of statistical process variation, which in turn permits them to eliminate excessive guardbanding. It's available for 32- and 64-bit Sun Solaris, Linux, and HP platforms. For more details, visit www.incentia.com....
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David Maliniak
[Embedded in Electronic Design] 768-Way SMP Drives Java VM Network Attached Processing
Virtual machines (VMs) move into the massively parallel processing realm with Azul's Network Attached Processing (NAP) appliances. The latest crop is based on Azul's new chip, with 48 64-bit processing cores that can be combined into a 768-way symmetrical multiprocessing engine (SMP). The processing cores are designed to run today's VMs, such as Java and .NET CLR (common language runtime). Its primary target is Java 2 Enterprise Edition. The processors could support a range of...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] 8-Bit Module Custom Carrier Board Takes Less Than A Week
The RabbitFlex is a custom carrier board for Rabbit Semiconductor's line of Rabbit 4000-based plug-in modules. The big difference is that it lets designers configure the carrier board over the Internet with delivery within five business days. Designers configure the connection and interface between the module and the carrier's board sockets. For example, a serial connection could add a set of RS232 or RS485 drivers. Similar options are available for digital and analog...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] New Products
900-MHz ZigBee Kit Available ZMD AG's support for the 40-kbit/s, 900-MHz ZigBee is easier to try out with ZMD's ZMD44102SKB starter kit bundle priced at $399. The 900-MHz implementation offers superior range (over 250 m at 0 dBm) performance. A low-cost, two-node version without the Daintree sensor network analyzer costs $199. The ZigBee modules incorporate ZMD's TSic temperature sensor. They use the $2.97, lead-free, QFN-48, ZMD44102 RF transceiver chip....
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Building A Box Fast
So you want to turn a network-based micro into a product, and your boss wants it done yesterday? No problem. Chip vendors like Freescale and Cirrus Logic are going to make your job much easier. Their solutions are platforms that build on their chips but surround them with reference designs and software that can address 90% of your product needs. Mix in peripherals, an enclosure, and some custom applications, and get ready to ship. Plenty of platform vendors do the same kind of...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] x86 System-On-Module Cuts Time-To-Market
Logic Products and AMD have teamed up to deliver AMD's Geode in an ETX (4.5- by 3.7-in.) module. The module has a 500-MHz Geode LX 800 processor that uses 0.9 W. It can handle up to a 1-Gbyte small-outline dual-inline memory module package. The chip has hardware encryption support, including AES hidden key storage and a random number generator. It also has video input and output, a UDMA IDE controller, four USB 2.0 host ports (including wake-on USB event), a flash interface, and an LPC port...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] 160-MHz Flash MCU Runs Single-Cycle Flash And Can Handle Up To A Pair Of Motors
Renesas' SH7211F 32-bit superscaler microcontroller cranks out 320 MIPS. Located on the SH-2A CPU core, it comes with 512 kbytes of flash memory and 32 kbytes of RAM. An external bus controller can handle a range of interfaces, including flash, SRAM, and SDRAM. Its six-cycle interrupt response is possible because there are 16 register files—one per interrupt, plus the main application. Dual multifunction pulse-width modulation units can each handle three-phase motor drive chores. The...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Elliptical Curve Cryptography Targets Tiny 8-Bit Nodes
Certicom Security for Sensor Networks looks to handle security for not dozens but hundreds to thousands of nodes in a distributed wireless network. The key (pun intended) is Elliptical curve cryptography (ECC) that requires significantly fewer key bits than other public key cryptography methods for the same level of security. A 163-bit ECC key is comparable to a 1-kbit RSA key. ECC is critical for environments like ZigBee/802.15.4 that tend to be populated by hundreds or thousands of 8-bit...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Feature Pack Enhances Embedded Operating System
The Windows CE 5.0 Network Media Device Feature Pack may be a mouthful, but it's going to make Windows CE easier to swallow. Microsoft is working to add functionality to its popular Windows CE platform by using the Feature Pack approach, so expect more in the future. This is in lieu of adding the features via a new version of the operating system. The new features are available as shared source, and there's no additional charge for Windows CE developers. The Network Media Device...
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William Wong
[Basics Of Design] Virtual RF Design and Testing
Wireless ubiquity?even if we aren't quite there yet, we soon will be. The number of wireless technologies developed and implemented over the past decade is astonishing. Cell phones definitely top the list of key applications, but there are so many others. In fact, most of these new wireless methods are short-range technologies designed to replace cables and provide greater mobility and freedom. All of these wireless technologies can be easily implemented and incorporated into almost...
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Louis E. Frenzel
