Electronic Design UPDATE: September 15, 2004

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Electronic Design UPDATE e-Newsletter
Electronic Design Magazine 
PlanetEE ==> www.planetee.com
September 15, 2004
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Today's Table Of Contents:
1. Industry View
  * Outsourcing A Path To Success: But For Whom And When?
2. Focus On Embedded
  * Novel Compiler Boosts Performance Of M16C-Based Applications
3. News From The Editors
  * Low-Power CPUs Tackle Multimedia And Communications Applications
  * SMT Quad Adapters Simplify Prototyping
  * LED Driver Features High Efficiency 
4. Upcoming Industry Events
  * Assembly Technology Expo
  * PCB East
  * NEPCON Texas
  * LonWorld Exhibition and Conference
5. Magazine Highlights: September 6, 2004
  * Cover Feature: Engineering Feature -- Fiber Comes Home
  * Leapfrog: First Look -- Optical MEMS Powers WDM Spectrum Module
  * Leapfrog: First Look -- Network Search Engine Hums With Dual LA-1 Ports
  * Design View / Design Solution -- Novel Interconnect Scheme Enhances 
Comm Design

Electronic Design UPDATE edited by John Novellino, Executive Editor

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DON'T MISS THE ASIC ROUNDTABLE WEBCAST!
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discussion, "Selecting The Best ASIC Solution." The participants in our 
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represent all the various design options, from FPGAs to 
structured/platform approaches to full-ASIC solutions. To register for 
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1. Industry View -- Exclusive to Electronic Design UPDATE
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Outsourcing A Path To Success: But For Whom And When?

Ian Mackintosh, Open Core Protocol-International Partnership

When jobs move from A to B, did A become less competitive and B more so, 
or did A just "outsource," while B capitalized on innate advantages? In 
this simple scenario, many varied interpretations seem to be at work.
   Outsourcing appears to be a natural event. At the most basic level, 
you have to believe that you outsource because someone gave you a 
no-contest, buy-versus-make solution. Outsourcing also is the result 
of maturity. As an industry matures, skills are automated and 
inevitably become commoditized. When this occurs, the work goes to 
those who best compete with the lowest common denominators: trained 
labor, low-cost resources, and affordable capital.
   The semiconductor industry has witnessed similar cycles for decades. 
In the late 1970s, MITI in Japan targeted semiconductors (among other 
industries). By the 1980s, Japan dominated manufacturing through DRAM 
production. In the 1990s, Korea repeated the recipe, centered again 
on the availability of a low-cost and capable workforce, plentiful 
supplies of water, and capital investment stimulated by a motivated 
government. Passing through the clouded images seen through recent 
industry downturns, it is apparent we should expect China to dominate 
in the not-too-distant future.
   Similarly, consider high-end system-on-a-chip design activity that 
has been globally dispersed to standalone expert teams that 
contribute to decentralized programs. At lower levels, however, the 
repeated influence of the critical factors of labor, resources, and 
capital availability continues. Software development and less 
challenging design tasks have been reallocated (for almost two 
decades) around the world, taking advantage of better offers to be 
found on some or all of these "factors."
   So, the cycle continues. Skill-sets mature, automation occurs, 
commoditization is afoot, and outsourcing (also known as "offshore 
manufacturing") moves jobs overseas. The process itself is natural 
and inevitably suggests that the power base for the semiconductor 
industry will gravitate to China, which likely will secure all 
manufacturing, design, and certainly consumption dominance.
   It seems somewhat ironic that the three primary, simple elements 
sought by outsourcing (skilled labor, inexpensive resources, and 
low-cost investment) will ultimately reposition the power center of 
the very industry that sought them out. Must short-term gains from 
outsourcing precede long-term ills? Probably not, if the new paradigm 
for the industry is to secure such massive improvements through 
automation that subjugation by the "three critical factors" can be 
avoided.
   Automation is an intriguing opportunity. Those who control major 
advances have secured a strategic opportunity when productivity gains 
change the prevailing paradigm by minimizing the significance of the 
three critical factors. In this case, a controlled strategic solution 
brings a competitive respite from the need to drive to the 
lowest-cost operational solutions. Of course, as soon as equivalent 
solutions enter the public, commercial domain, long-term protection 
from competition is again diminished, and the three critical factors 
can enter the scene.
   Finally, this interesting thread leads us to a more relevant 
question. If outsourcing can initiate a path to the geographic 
recentering of an industry, is this even a concern or a problem? 
Ultimately, companies (and indeed countries) are most prosperous when 
they control the high-value elements in the production of any goods. 
Anything that is commoditized in a flow is subject to strong 
competition and the vagaries of the three critical factors. In this 
scenario, we accept that jobs and work, by definition, can be readily 
relocated.
    For success, focus must shift to the exact nature of what is 
"recentered." If it is merely the low-profit parts of an operation 
or flow, the new directive for any economic entity should clearly be 
to focus on ways to secure the high-value (profitable) part of any 
product. A winning recipe means leveraging and embracing the 
outsourced, low-cost opportunities and redefining and redirecting 
the indigenous workforce for alternative deployment while planning 
and creating a flow of new products and entering alternative or 
expanded markets.

Ian Mackintosh is president of the OCP-IP. This industry association is 
working to make a common standard for intellectual-property core 
interfaces, or sockets, that facilitate "plug and play" system-on-a-chip 
design.

To comment on this Industry View, go to Reader Comments at the foot of 
the Web page:  

Electronic Design UPDATE ==> 
http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eA0Gl4E70Fh10BLYW0AS

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2. Focus On Embedded
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***Novel Compiler Boosts Performance Of M16C-Based Applications
Version 3.0 of the Tasking M16C toolset uses the company's Viper 
compiler technology. The new C/C++/EC++ compiler for the Renesas M16C 
microcontroller can increase performance up to 40% and reduce code size 
by 15% compared to prior versions. Of course, the optimizations depend 
on the application, but even an improvement of a few percent can be 
worth the investment in many instances. The compiler also supports MISRA 
C code checking. The toolset includes the Tasking Embedded Development 
Environment (EDE), CrossView Pro simulator debugger, and Tasking ROM 
monitor debugger and M16C flasher. It's available for PC/Windows and 
Sun/Solaris platforms for $2790.
     Altium Ltd. ==> http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eA0Gl4E70Fh10BLYX0AT

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3. News -- From The Editors
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***Low-Power CPUs Tackle Multimedia And Communications Applications
An advanced multiprocessor architecture conceived from the ground up to 
run next-generation low-power handheld systems forms the heart of the 
chips in the CoolProcessor family. The processor's architecture was 
optimized for low-power, concurrent execution of specific applications, 
including MPEG-2/4, 801.11a/b/g, H.263/4, JPEG/2000, MP3, GPS, 802.16 
Bluetooth, GSM/GPRS/EDGE, and CDMA 2000/WCDMA, in various combinations. 
Typical power consumption is less than 100 mW when implemented in a 
standard 130-nm low-power CMOS process. There will be six initial family 
members, all upwardly code compatible and sharing a single programming 
model. Applications-development software and modeling tools are also 
available. The first CoolProcessor CPU, the 3P3200, can run combinations 
of MPEG, JPEG, GSM, and 802.11 concurrently. Planned for release in the 
second quarter of 2005, it will sell for $8 apiece in lots of 10,000.
     3PLUS1 Technology Inc. ==> http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eA0Gl4E70Fh10BLYY0AU

***SMT Quad Adapters Simplify Prototyping
The latest Snap-Apart adapter board, the P518, is a universal quad 
adapter that will work with most surface-mount (SMT) quad ICs to speed 
up the prototyping of circuits with quad ICs. It adapts devices with 32 
to 256 leads on 0.65- or 0.8-mm spacing. Each adapt takes SMT quad chips 
and breaks the leads out into dual-row 0.100-in. header pins. The kit 
holds one Snap-Apart board with two adapters and eight 80-pin, 0.100-in. 
header strips. The P518 is available now for $59.95 each.
     Bellin Dynamic Systems Inc. ==> http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eA0Gl4E70Fh10BLYZ0AV 

***LED Driver Features High Efficiency
The LX1994 dual-mode boost controller targets applications powering LEDs 
in handheld battery-powered displays used in pagers, cell phones, 
digital cameras, PDAs, and other devices. The step-up boost controller 
uses an advanced dual pulse-frequency modulation (PFM) architecture for 
efficient operation in either light or heavy current modes. Maximum 
efficiency is typically greater than 92%. The PFM architecture also 
reduces cost and saves board space. Additional features include 
integrated overvoltage protection, logic-controlled shutdown, 
amplitude-independent pulse-width-modulation dimming, and a built-in 
light sensor interface. The LX1994 comes in a choice of two 3-mm square, 
10-pin surface-mount packages, the micro-lead MLP and the standard-lead 
MSOP. Both are available for immediate sampling and delivery. In 
10,000-unit quantities, the MLP version costs $0.63 and the MSOP version 
costs $0.61.
     Microsemi Corp. == http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eA0Gl4E70Fh10BLYa0Ac 

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4. Upcoming Industry Events
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Sept. 28-30, Assembly Technology Expo
Chicago, Ill.
http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eA0Gl4E70Fh10BKvl0AH  

Oct. 4-8, PCB East
Manchester, N.H.
http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eA0Gl4E70Fh10BKvm0AI  

Oct. 20-21, NEPCON Texas (with Assembly Texas Pavilion)
Arlington, Texas
http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eA0Gl4E70Fh10BLYb0Ad 

Oct. 20-21, LonWorld Exhibition and Conference
Shanghai, China
http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eA0Gl4E70Fh10BLYc0Ae 

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5. Magazine Highlights
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In case you missed them, here are some of the high points of our most 
recent issue.

September 6, 2004:

* Cover Feature: Engineering Feature -- Fiber Comes Home
A cheaper version of the traditional optical network, the passive 
optical network is the ultimate bandwidth solution.
http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eA0Gl4E70Fh10BLYd0Af

* Leapfrog: First Look -- Optical MEMS Powers WDM Spectrum Module
A wide-dynamic-range module is 10 times faster at half the size and cost 
of conventional fiber analyzers.
http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eA0Gl4E70Fh10BLYe0Ag

* Leapfrog: First Look -- Network Search Engine Hums With Dual LA-1 Ports
Able to perform 266 million searches/s, the Ayama 20000 NSE uses dual 
LA-1 ports to divvy up the tasks between two NPUs for faster throughput.
http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eA0Gl4E70Fh10BLYf0Ah

* Design View / Design Solution -- Novel Interconnect Scheme Enhances 
Comm Design
http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eA0Gl4E70Fh10BLYg0Ai

For the complete Table of Contents, go to 
Electronic Design ==> 
http://lists.planetee.com/cgi-bin3/DM/y/eA0Gl4E70Fh10BLYh0Aj

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CONTACTS: Electronic Design UPDATE e-NEWSLETTER
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Editorial: Lucinda Mattera, Associate Chief Editor:
mailto:[email protected]

Advertising/Sponsorship Opportunities: Bill Baumann, Publisher: 
mailto:[email protected]
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