Electronic Design Update: May 21, 2008

Electronic Design UPDATE e-Newsletter |   May 21, 2008 ADVERTISEMENT High-Performance Stacking Connectors Increase Design Flexibility
Incorporate flexible configurations into card and system designs with mezzanine connectors from Amphenol TCS. The XCede® Stacker enables parallel board-to-board designs up to 20 Gbps with the highest levels of reliability. The XCede Stacker provides the density and mechanical robustness needed to address increasing I/O counts. Its modular construction and different guidance options allow length to be optimized for each application. Several heights are available, ideal for scaling stackable systems based on 1U increments.
Learn more. editor's view |Green Chemistry Initiative Has Critics Seeing Red By Daniel Harris, Digital Editor
California has set many legal precedents. For example, it was the first state to legalize medical marijuana, and nine other states have since followed its lead. Now, California is preparing the nation’s toughest standards for chemical use with its Green Chemistry Initiative (GCI), which was launched about a year ago. Read the full article... blog | IEF 2008 Session 1: Shifting Industry Paradigms By Joe Desposito, Editor-in-Chief
This session included three presentations: Present & Future Of Digital Technology by JJ (Junshi) Yamaguchi, executive vice president, NEC Electronics; Mobile Device Technical Challenges by Petri Liuha, laboratory director Computation Structures, Nokia Research Center; and The Other Barrier In Electronics: Applications by Kees Van Der Klauw, senior VP of Technology & Development, Philips Consumer Lifestyle.

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engineer's resource | Webinar: Aftermarket Battery Packs - Revelations from Product Tear-Downs
Sponsored by Micro Power and Panasonic
June 11 @ 2 pm ET Aftermarket battery packs are available for most portable devices. Hosted by Robin Sarah Tichy, Technical Marketing Manager with Micro Power and contributor to Electronic Design's Power Design column, this webcast will present the results of several product tear-downs on aftermarket battery packs and explain how substandard aftermarket packs can cut corners on cost, safety mechanisms, and battery performance. These teardowns expose electronic & mechanical design issues, as well as good manufacturing and regulatory violations. Then, this webcast will provide solutions for OEMs to manage and control their ecosystem of aftermarket battery pack suppliers. The webcast is applicable to OEMs of consumer and industrial electronic products susceptible to aftermarket batteries, such as medical, handheld radio, and data collection devices.

Your Ideas For Design Can Win $500
Send us your Ideas for Design and we'll pay you $150 for every Idea for Design that we publish. In addition, the year's top design as selected by our readers will earn an additional $500, with two runners-up each receiving $250. You can submit your Ideas for Design via e-mail to: dbs@penton.com or, mail your material to:
Ideas for Design
Electronic Design
45 Eisenhower Dr., Suite 550
Paramus, NJ 07652

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focus on embedded hardware |

LED Driver Delivers Constant Current To Large Displays

Expanding Catalyst Semiconductor's line of LED drivers for large video and other indoor/outdoor displays, the CAT4008 eight-channel, constant-current sink LED driver operates with an output voltage on the LED pins as low as 0.4V for 2-mA to 100-mA LED drives. Nominal LED current is set via an external resistor. A four-wire serial interface operating at a clock frequency up to 25-MHz clock frequency controls each channel using a shift-register and latch configuration. Read the full article... EiED online |

Static Source Code Analysis

Static source code analysis tools can be an invaluable tool for software developers. Technology Editor Bill Wong talks with some of the major vendors in this space. Read the full article...

ADVERTISEMENT Attend Microsoft's Windows Embedded Acceleration Workshops.
An Acceleration Workshop is a full-day, hands-on learning experience with a Windows Embedded® platform. Designed for professional embedded developers, and presented by experienced system integrators. Get a head start on your next device design.
Click here for more info. Engineering TV | Lithium-ion Electric Race Car As hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV), and electric vehicles (EV) continue to gain acceptance as viable alternatives to gasoline-powered vehicles, it is clear that HEVs will need light, compact, high-powered, high-capacity batteries to power their needs. Similarly, Li-ion batteries are gaining acceptance as a power alternative to nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries. Compact Power and LG Chem used this technology with their ER2 and ER3 Li-ion electric race cars to set records in the Pike's Peak International Hill Climb, a long-standing tradition in Colorado Springs and the second oldest motorsports event in the United States.

news from the editors |

Emerging Ethernet Enhancements Engender Energy Efficiency

Back in 2002, the U.S. Department of Energy said the nation’s enterprise IT equipment ate 97 terawatt hours per year—and that didn’t even include the power required to cool all that gear, which probably would boost that figure by 50% or more. Read the full article...

Testing Starts On Fisker Plug-In Hybrid Electric Car

Fisker Automotive Inc. and Quantum Technologies have begun initial vehicle testing and fine tuning of the battery software management system for the Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid production car. Three Fisker Karma prototypes have been built and are undergoing testing for the electric powertrain developed by Quantum Technologies. Concurrently, the Fisker Automotive engineering team is working on crash test simulation. Additional validation and certification of the vehicles will be performed over the coming months. Read the full article...

10GE Switch IC Offers 26 Ports With Low Power Consumption

The pressure keeps building at all levels of networking, from the Internet to the local-area network (LAN), as applications like gaming, video, and cell phones are implemented. As usual, the push continues to increase data rates in all products and services, bringing about the need for Ethernet switches for the data centers and telecom plants that can handle the faster data. Read the full article...

IEEE Honors Developers Of Flip-Chip Technology

Karl J. Puttlitz Sr. and Paul A. Totta have won the 2008 IEEE Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology Award. They are being recognized for their pioneering role in the establishment of flip-chip interconnection technology, which has helped drive the miniaturization and improve the performance and durability of electronic devices such as personal computers and mobile phones. Read the full article... quick poll | Are you okay with Internet service providers (ISPs) monitoring your surfing habits?

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