December 1, 2008
[Technology Report] Switch-Mode ICs Promote Efficient Power Management, Part 1: Switch-Mode Fundamentals
A switch-mode converter circuit uses a controlled power semiconductor switching technique along with an inductor, transformer, or capacitor as an energy-storage element to transfer dc power from its input to its output. In a basic switch-mode converter, a dc-to-pulse-width converter IC accepts a dc input and produces square waves applied to a power semiconductor switch.
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Sam Davis
December 1, 2008
[Design View / Design Solution] Six Steps For Characterizing High-Speed Serial Links
As serial-data standards go from fast to very fast, designers must devote a greater amount of time to the analog features of those high-speed signals. It’s no longer enough to remain in the digital domain with ones and zeros. To find and correct conditions that lead to potential problems—and thereby prevent those problems from showing up in the field—designers must check the parametric realm of their designs...
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Hamed M. Sanogo
November 25, 2008
[TechView: Embedded] Parts Add Up To Home Theater PC
Home theater PCs aren’t new. But getting one that works, especially with HDTVs and HDMI, is now a lot easier with AMD’s Maui AMD Live! This platform is designed for Microsoft Vista Media Center and AMD Athlon processors.
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William Wong
November 25, 2008
[Design View / Design Solution] Behind The Bright Lights, LED Drivers Evolve To Meet New Requirements
High-brightness LEDs can generate usable levels of light with improved efficiency, longer lifetimes, and smaller dimensions than conventional light sources. Accurate current control is essential for an effective LED lighting solution, and a wide variety of LED driver ICs is available to help engineers optimize their designs.
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Randall Restle
December 01, 2008[Technology Report] Military Systems Bolstered By Building-Block Breakthroughs
Technological advances lead to tactical advantages. That’s why investments in electronic technology for military applications traditionally run high. Yet those investments can often yield useful breakthroughs as well as dramatic improvements in existing technologies. Military systems such as electronic warfare (EW), signal intelligence (SIGINT), and radar systems receive the most funding. Still, electronic building blocks such as amplifiers, display...
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Jack Browne
November 25, 2008
[Technology In The News] JEDEC Seeks Participation In SSD Standard
With work progressing rapidly on a standard for solid-state drives (SSDs), JEDEC is inviting companies worldwide to participate in the process. The standard is being developed by JEDEC’s JC-64.8 subcommittee for solid-state drives, which held its first meeting last May and is co-chaired by Seagate and Micron.
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ED News Staff
November 25, 2008
[Mark David's Blog] Electronica 2008 Thrives Despite Economic Upheaval
With the infamous naked (painted) booth babes of 2006 Electronica replaced by a foosball table, Electronica 2008 seemed to have had a little less flash (or was that flesh?) and sizzle than some previous shows. Maybe this was a concession to the tough global economic times. But despite the steady stream of news about global recession, the mood at Electronica was one of “business as usual” with a look to the future. The show was a big success.
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Mark David
December 01, 2008[Editorial] International CES Takes Center Stage In January
The second week of January is a special time for the consumer electronics (CE) industry. This is when the International CES®, the largest tradeshow of its kind, rolls into Las Vegas with more than 130,000 attendees, including 6000 or so engineers. If youâ??ve attended this spectacle before, you probably listened to Bill Gates of Microsoft give the preshow keynote on a Sunday night at The Venetian. International CES will start on a Thursday this...
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Joseph Desposito
December 01, 2008[Technology Report] CES Keynotes Sport A New Look
I’m a big fan of keynote addresses at any tradeshow I go to. But my favorite ones by far are those of the International CES. This show invariably draws the top executives from consumer electronics and other companies around the globe. For example, Bill Gates of Microsoft provided the preshow keynote speech at CES for many years. The keynotes give engineers the lay of the land for consumer electronics for the rest of the year and then some, which can...
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Joseph Desposito
December 01, 2008[Technology Report] CES Awards And CE Spotlights Salute Excellence And Inspiration
There are always tons of technology and products packed into CES, but perhaps the only way to be sure you catch the best products and designs is by scoping out the awards ceremonies and the CE Spotlights. This year, CES will open the floor to four awards programs: the International CES Innovations 2009 Design and Engineering Awards, the CNET Best of CES Awards, the esteemed Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards, and the Global Media Awards™. ...
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John Arkontaky
December 01, 2008[Technology Report] Improve Your Knowledge And Know-How At The CES Sessions
The axiom “knowledge is power” certainly applies to the 2009 International CES. Boasting the consumer technology industry’s largest educational forum, this year’s program delivers more than 200 conference sessions with over 500 expert speakers, covering the hottest topics and trends shaping today’s design decisions. (This just in: the Industry Insider series will be returning. Check the CES site at CESweb.org for late-breaking news on who will be featured.) ...
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Roger Engelke
December 01, 2008[Technology Report] When It Comes To Design, Get In The Zone—TechZone, That Is
All eyes are on Vegas when the International CES comes to town, and the 2009 show will be no different, with plenty of celebrities and all the hottest gadgets. But you’re a designer! You need the latest info to create the next wave of groundbreaking innovations—maybe in time for the 2010 event. Located throughout the entire show floor, this year’s CES TechZones will spotlight market-specific...
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Richard Gawel
December 01, 2008[Technology Report] Robots Crowd The Aisles In Las Vegas
Just about everyone has heard about Spirit and Opportunity, the robots that keep on trucking across the surface of Mars. And of course, there was last summer’s hit movie WALL-E, about a lovable little waste-collecting robot. Well, you don’t have to go to Mars or the multiplex to meet a real robot. Just keep your eyes open in the aisles of the Robotics TechZone, sponsored by Robotics Trends, at the Sands. Robots may not be everywhere, but...
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William Wong
December 01, 2008[Technology Report] Cut The Cord With WiMedia
If you’re anxious to see the latest in wireless technologies and find out how you can use them in your next design, then the International CES is the place to be—especially for the latest in Ultra-Wideband (UWB) products. This short-range technology provides speeds up to 480 Mbits/s at up to 10 m. UWB has been around a few years, but it hasn’t gotten much traction as a widespread wireless technology yet. It has taken a while to firm up the standard...
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Louis E. Frenzel
December 01, 2008[Pease Porridge] What's All This "Adjustable Slew Rate Stuff," Anyhow?
The other day, a guy wrote in requesting help. “How can I make an amplifier with adjustable positive and negative slew rates?” he asked. I instantly replied, “Easily,” and I drew this up. As soon as I got to work, I scanned and sent him the basic circuit (Fig. 1). You turn the P1 pot until the available current through R1 is adequate to give the desired maximum negative slew rate. Likewise, turn...
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Bob Pease
December 01, 2008[Technology Report] Diverse Component Trio Represents This Year's Best
The components market always seems to be in a state of accommodation, creating products to support every other sector’s designs. Whether it’s a power source that fits an oddly shaped printed-circuit board (PCB) or a motor that can deliver massive torque levels in a space the width of a finger, component makers innovate for innovators. Over the past year, for example, OmniVision gave digital-camera designers a leg up in their work with its BSI CMOS...
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Mat Dirjish
December 01, 2008[Technology Report] USB Thinks Inside The Box
USB is the de facto peripheral interconnect outside the box. Inside, though, it’s been a different story. This year, USB has been internalized with a range of products and platforms becoming more popular. My two choices for “best” reflects this change, with Stackable- USB and the MicroBlade standards. StackableUSB (www.stackableusb.org) has its own organization behind it, and the MicroBlade...
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William Wong
December 01, 2008[Technology Report] Industrial's Best Devices Save Space In New Designs
Representing this year’s best in the industrial category are an eight-channel, digital-input serializer from Texas Instruments and a six-degree-of-freedom (DoF) inertial sensor from Analog Devices. Both devices bring advanced functionality to industrial designs while saving significant space compared to similar solutions on the market. EIGHT-CHANNEL CONVERSION Designing high-density industrial automation systems that fit in...
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Joseph Desposito
December 01, 2008[Technology Report] Multicore Mania Sweeps Through Computer Design
Today’s computers are going multicore where performance matters. Whether it’s for a desktop or server, more cores are showing up in the compute engine and graphics rendering, providing users with everything from more lifelike video to solutions for computationally complex problems. This year, three products stood out. Intel’s six-core Xeon pushes the envelope for the typical operating platforms such as Linux and Windows. The Tesla C1060 opens...
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William Wong
December 01, 2008[Technology Report] Pressure-Sensor System Is A Mini Medical Marvel
The medical industry needed an implantable pressure- sensing system that had to meet very harsh requirements. Its must-haves included ultra-miniature size, wireless operation, the lowest power consumption for battery operation, precision low drift and temperature stability, and isolation from media such as blood, tissue, and saline solutions. Such were the very difficult challenges that Tronics Microsystems met with a two-chip microelectromechanical system ...
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Roger Allan
December 01, 2008[Technology Report] Best Scope Merges Style, Substance
If looks were the only criterion for choosing the best test instrument of the year, the LeCroy WavePro 7 Zi oscilloscope line would win hands down. Its 15.3-in. WXGA LCD touchscreen can display all sorts of useful data simultaneously (see the figure). But the real breakthrough is what’s inside—its new hardware and software. The series includes five basic models with maximum bandwidths of 1.5,...
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Louis E. Frenzel
December 01, 2008[Technology Report] Low Stored Charge Separates Diode From The Pack
I n an idealized diode, no reverse current flows from cathode to anode when the device is reverse-biased. However, with real-world diodes, large amounts of stored charge can flow from the cathode—back through the anode— before the diode enters its blocking state. That stored charge is QRR, and it causes the reverse recovery current (IRR) that flows as the diode transitions from forward to reverse bias. For example, a...
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Sam Davis
December 01, 2008[Technology Report] Top FPGAs Excel While Best Chips Simplify Design
For design flexibility, FPGAs are unsurpassed. But they have typically suffered performance or power penalties to achieve that distinction. Now, those penalties exist no more. This year’s best FPGAs can take a leading role in highvolume and high-performance designs. The structures that typical FPGAs use to provide their configurability add overhead to their internal design. To achieve functional density and performance levels comparable to those...
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Richard Quinnell
December 01, 2008[Hall Of Fame] Robotics Move From Industry To Space To Elder Care
Retirement isn’t coming easy to 83-year-old Joseph Engelberger, widely known as the Father of Robotics. “There’s a lot that can still be done,” he says wistfully, despite already accomplishing so much in the robotic field. In fact, Engelberger and George Devol produced Unimate, the first industrial robot. While studying for his MS degree at Columbia University, Engelberger worked for Manning Maxwell & Moore as a physicist designing control systems for...
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Doris Kilbane
December 01, 2008[Technology Report] Networking Invigorates The Home Multimedia Blitz
The continually morphing home-entertainment arena has turned to local-area networks (LANs) to tie things together. This year we chose three products, two fixed and one portable, as the first or best in their categories. One of the offerings supports the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA), and you can count on DLNA becoming more of a force within this realm. These days, you can select from a range of NAS devices that are DLNA media servers. For example,...
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William Wong
December 01, 2008[Hall Of Fame] RAM Innovator Took A New Career—And Education—By The Horns
His pioneering work in digital computer technology gave the world reliable random-access magnetic-core memory that revolutionized computer speed and power. Nevertheless, Jay Forrester says his work today is “much more important.” “In 1956, I thought the pioneering days of computer innovation were pretty much over,” Forrester said. “The biggest multiple in improvements in computer speed, reliability, and logical design were from 1946 to ’56. Rapid...
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Doris Kilbane
December 01, 2008[Hall Of Fame] Family Need Leads To A Better Hearing Aid And A New Industry
George Frye was happily working at Tektronix on high-speed sampling oscilloscopes in 1970 when his hearing-impaired mom needed some help. “Her old Zenith hearing aid was getting a little cranky, ” said Frye. She took him up on an offer to build her one. “Transistors had just come onto the market, so I believed I could build it using transistors.” Although it turned out to be a little more complicated than he anticipated, Frye persisted and eventually...
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Doris Kilbane
December 01, 2008[Design FAQs] FPGA Improves Basestation Design
What are some of the challenges facing basestation designers today? The five biggest are the numerous wireless standards that must be accommodated, increased and complex frequency assignments, increased operating efficiency, capital expenditures (CAPEX), and scalability. Why must designers deal with so many standards? Most new basestations benefit from being able to handle...
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Louis E. Frenzel
December 01, 2008[Hall Of Fame] From Sneaking Into Computer Labs To Sneaking Out Java
James Gosling, inventor of the Java programming language and the virtual machine, skipped many of his high school math and physics classes. His teachers knew it, but they still gave him A’s. That’s because, said Gosling, they knew why he was missing the classes. He was working for the physics department at the University of Calgary writing software for satellites. “That attitude was a huge influence on me,” said Gosling. “They understood that learning...
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Doris Kilbane
December 01, 2008[Technology Report] Wi-Fi Chips Stand Out In A Sea Of Wireless Products
Most of the ICs we cover in Electronic Design are new products that really have something to offer. With hundreds of new chips announced annually, it’s a challenge to identify those that push the speed, power, and size boundaries or have unique features. We look for innovation. You wouldn’t think, then, that the Wi-Fi radio chips I selected as the Best Communications/ Wireless products would be, well, the winners. Yet these new chips do offer...
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Louis E. Frenzel
December 01, 2008[Technology Report] 2008 Analog Prologue: Innovation In All Directions
When I report on new products, I usually avoid claims that chips are “so many percent” better in some way than their competitors. That’s because specsmanship is a constant game of leapfrog. Sometimes a focus on specs can lead to an awkward situation. For example, Texas Instruments and National Semiconductor demonstrated the perils of dueling specifications last January by announcing new analog-todigital converters (ADCs) for the same application...
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Don Tuite
December 01, 2008[Hall Of Fame] Computers—A Revolutionary Medium For Boosting Human Thought
The printing press was one of the most influential inventions in human history. Could universal personal computing and worldwide networking be just as significant to human thought? In the 1960s, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) established a research community to accomplish that grand goal. Quite a bit of this dream was realized in the 1970s by the extension of this community at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) sparked by ideas from...
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Doris Kilbane
December 01, 2008[Technology Report] In EDA, A Year Of Mergers, Failed And Otherwise
For the EDA industry, 2008 was dominated not so much by technology breakthroughs but rather by corporate intrigue. Cadence Design Systems’ attempt to take over Mentor Graphics had the electronics industry at large holding its collective breath for a few months. In the wake of the effort’s failure, one need only look at the subsequent ouster of most of Cadence’s senior management, including CEO Mike Fister, to know how profound the failure was. ...
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David Maliniak
December 01, 2008[Technology Report] Automotive Imaging ICs Keep An "Eye" On The Road
In the quest to make driving more enjoyable and safer, designers are relying on the most advanced video sensors and processors for greater driver assistance and comfort (see “Semi ICs Drive Auto Safety And Control Innovation,” Electronic Design, Oct. 9, 2008, p. 28). Intelligent video systems have proven essential, spurring on the need for the design and manufacture of cost-effective vision-system ICs. As part of this trend, STMicroelectronics’ and...
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Roger Allan
December 01, 2008[Hall Of Fame] In AI, Robotics, And Any Field, Stand Alone To Stand Apart
If you want to make a difference, don’t follow the crowd, Marvin Minsky advises today’s students. Don’t go into the most popular field. “That could be a disaster. When I started to work on artificial neural networks, only four other researchers were involved with this field. But today, there are many thousands of them. Interesting discoveries come only every few years—so each researcher has less than one chance in 1000 of making significant contributions,” Minsky...
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Doris Kilbane
December 01, 2008[Editorial] As 2008 Comes To A Close, We Salute The Industry's Best
Selecting the best OEM products and technologies of the year can be a daunting task, given the wealth of innovations that this industry produces. But a few always stick out in an editor’s mind, somehow making their way to the top of the list. For this issue, the Electronic Design staff and contributors wrote about these products and technologies. The editors made their selections entirely on their own, without any voting from readers or advertisers,...
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Joseph Desposito
December 01, 2008[Leapfrog: First Look] MEMS Inclinometer Spawns Wide Application Range
When Analog Devices introduced its ADIS16209 dual-axis MEMS inclinometer and accelerometer as part of its iMEMS family late last year for industrial applications (â??Tiny Dual-Axis MEMS Inclinometer Simplifies Industrial Measurements,â?? Nov. 15, 2007, p. 34; ED Online 17442), it became an instant hit. In fact, our readers called it the Best Leapfrog of the year....
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Roger Allan
November 24, 2008
[Design View / Design Solution] Low-Power Design With Multi-VDD Flows
Nearly all designs at advanced process nodes need some sort of power-saving strategy. As more designs employ advanced low-power techniques, design teams are discovering huge implementation hurdles that affect cost, performance, and time to market.
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Sudhakar Jilla
November 24, 2008
[Lab Bench Online] USB Makes A Move Inside The Box
USB is ubiquitous, but it’s usually used to connect boxes like PCs and laptops to other devices. The type of USB hosts are changing already, with USB sockets on printers and even HDTVs providing access to USB flash drives. Playing a hi-def movie from a flash drive is no longer a goal but a reality. But USB inside the box is a much different story.
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William Wong
November 24, 2008
[TechView: Embedded] 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 21, 2008
[TechView: Embedded] 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 21, 2008
[Technology In The News] Power Grid Presents Great Market Opportunity
The bad news is that today’s power grid is wasteful, costly, inefficient, and dumb, according to Lux Research. In other words, it’s ill-equipped to address many pressing energy issues, from the need to focus on climate change and carbon cost, to the demand for high reliability.
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ED News Staff
November 21, 2008
[Electronica News] Eighth-Brick Converters First To Offer 4:1 Inputs
Embarking as the first eighth-brick dc-dc converter modules supporting 4:1 ultra-wide inputs, 9 to 36 V dc or 18 to 75 V dc, the UWE series from Murata Electronics delivers fixed outputs up to 75 W, making them viable as drop-in replacements for 100-W quarter-bricks where the full 100 W is not needed.
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ED News Staff
November 21, 2008
[Electronica News] 1-W DC-DC Converters Raise Efficiency Bars
Specifying typical efficiencies from 84%, the single-output MEV and dual-output MEA series 1-W dc-dc converters from Murata Electronics deliver a load-regulation performance of less than 5% with an overall load-regulation tolerance envelope of 9%.
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ED News Staff
November 20, 2008
[Electronica News] Sigma-Delta ADC Optimize Bandwidth And Resolution
Touting the industry’s best combination of operating frequency, dynamic range, and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), the 16-bit AD9261 and AD9262 analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and the AD9267 continuous-time sigma-delta (CTSD) modulator from Analog Devices, Inc, couple low noise and high dynamic range with a bandwidth up to 10 MHz.
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ED News Staff
