A new waterproof cell phone scheduled for high-volume production in the fourth quarter of 2008 will employ AuthenTec’s TouchStone fingerprint sensor packaging technology, according to Authentec. The TouchStone package allows easy integration into various waterproof industrial design configurations. It offers the durability and water resistance required for this new class of handsets while adding Power of Touch features, including security, convenience, personalization, and navigation.

Scopus Video Networks will use Horizon Semiconductor's high definition decoding technology in its receiver processor for multi-channel ATSC decoding/down conversion. Horizon designs semiconductor devices used for secure video/audio compression and transmission in the consumer electronics and broadcast markets.

It’s getting harder for U.S.-based industries to maintain competitiveness in business segments that have been moving offshore. But a collaboration between two universities and a maker of electronic interconnects has resulted in a pioneering microelectronics manufacturing research and development center.

Hitachi Ltd. has selected Analog Devices Inc.’s Advantiv advanced television ICs to drive wireless functionality, flexibility, and seamless high-definition connectivity in Hitachi’s TP-WL700H consumer wireless transmission hub. The hub employs three Advantiv ICs to provide enhanced HD video compression, decompression, and transmission technology.

Using a 34-nm process technology developed by their joint venture—IM Flash Technologies—Intel Corp. and Micron Technology Inc. have introduced a 32-Gbit multi-level cell memory chip measuring only 172 mm². The chip uses the smallest NAND process geometry on the market and is the only monolithic device at this density that fits into a standard 48-lead thin small-outline package (TSOP), according to the companies.

Make it low-power. Buying off-the-shelf parts to meet these criteria is still a challenge, but the latest crop of modules makes the job easier. Modules let designers develop custom configurations with minimum moving the design of the critical aspects of the system to the module vendors. This includes the processor and memory subsystem and usually most, if not all, of the peripheral interface. A carrier board typically contains connectors and...

Men Micro’s ESMexpress-based XM50 targets the pending VITA 59, RSE Rugged System-On-Module Express standard. The 1.5-GHz PowerQUICC III MPC8548 processor has access to 2 Gbytes of ECC DDR2 SDRAM memory in addition to nonvolatile SRAM and FRAM. The 12-W board has three Gigabit Ethernet ports, five USB ports, three SATA ports, and an 8x PCI Express port. The XM50 also plugs into a carrier board and is enclosed in a metal case...

Take one SpaceSaver-II. Attach one GMS P70x. Start developing on one slick platform with Mini-PCI Express and a 2.16-GHz Core 2 Duo processor. The 4- by 4-in. SpaceSaver-II provides these connectors: three video (NTSC, RGB, DVI), audio with 2.5-W amp, two SATA, IDE, two serial, eight GPIO, five USB, LVDS LCD, Mini-PCI Express, Express- Card, Compact Flash, two Gigabit Ethernet, plus support for a 1.8-in. solidstate hard drive. The...

Marvell took its ARM license and cranked out the 32-bit Shiva core, which hits 2 GHz and delivers PCI Express connectivity. It’s compatible with ARM’s 16- and 32-bit instruction sets even though it isn’t part of ARM’s Cortex push. This lets designers tailor the core to its requirements. The initial crop of Shiva chips targets multimedia applications, including portable units such as mobile Internet devices (MIDs). The 2-GHz 88F6281 ...

Freescale’s QorIQ series builds on the venerable PowerQUICC lines. PowerQUICC will remain, but the QorIQ is where the power is. The P4 series starts with the eight-core P4080, which uses Freescale’s CoreNET on-chip interconnect to deliver high performance while keeping power requirements low (see the figure). The one- and two-core P1 series offers even lower requirements. ...

With my new role as Group Editorial Director, I’m going to miss doing my column in each issue of Electronic Design. So here I am joining the “blogosphere.”

The Universal Asynchronous Receive and Transmit (UART) interface is found on a variety of peripheral devices. Consider, for instance, a microcontrollerbased system with four such peripherals. Ideally, in low-cost embedded applications, you would like to connect multiple peripherals to a single UART. However, a lack of chip-select signals in UARTs complicates such a task. This is a common design problem, and there are a few conventional ways of...

The best way to make midrange, low- to medium-accuracy temperature measurements (considering size, cost, performance, and ease of use) is to use an IC temperature sensor. But most IC temperature sensors are designed for applications where the circuits to which they connect are nearby. Therefore, the inclusion of sensing, digitizing, and signal- processing functions in one IC greatly simplifies the design of such sensors and the data-acquisition interface. ...

Voltage-to-current converters that feed grounded loads are common in industrial measurement and control applications. The conventional "textbook" circuit uses both positive and negative supply rails. An earlier article by this author titled "Voltage-To-Current Converter Works From A Single Supply Rail" (Electronic Design, Feb. 17, 2003, ED Online 2985) described a circuit that could power grounded loads and needed only a positive ...

Many small microcontrollers require so little power that often they can draw what they need through their loads. This can simplify a system, reduce its cost, increase its reliability, and provide unexpected benefits. One example is an automotive check system that monitors a car's brake lights and indicates any faults through an incandescent bulb in the instrument cluster, LMP1 (Fig. 1)....

LEDs are often used on manmachine interfaces (MMIs) or device front panels to illuminate switches or backlight text information so that the user knows what the device is supposed to be doing at the time. Occasionally, the designer wants these LEDs to start blinking at a particular rate to alert the user to a condition needing attention, such as a low battery. Many devices use embedded microprocessors or microcontrollers to handle the MMI, along...