EDN Asia articles from September 2008

EDN Asia archives from September 2008

Dielectric uncertainties at 32nm.(ednasia comment)
September 1, 2008... Companies are rolling out ideas to face 32nm design challenges. But it seems that dielectric is a contentious issue and designers are not sure what should be the ideal dielectric at 32nm. IBM has announced that along with its partners,...

TI opens door to lighting design innovation with remote-controlled LED board.(INNOVATIONS AND INNOVATORS)
September 1, 2008... Texas Instruments Incorporated opens up more possibilities for low-power lighting design. Its recently developed TPS62260LED board controls the color and brightness of a lamp or runs an automatic color light animation program. Designers...

Low supply current monitors for portables.(pulse)
September 1, 2008... Linear Technology's LTC2934 and LTC2935 are ultralow power supply monitors that draw 500nA of quiescent current. Battery life is of the utmost importance in portable applications, where it is essential to reduce the amount of supply current the...

FPGAs target power-constrained designs.(pulse)
September 1, 2008... Actel has extended its Igloo series of low-power FPGAs with Igloo Plus. Whereas the company designed the original devices for maximum density, it optimized the new parts for I/O count. The core-logic structures remain the same as in the earlier...

Tiny RF-amplifier.(pulse)
September 1, 2008... Avago Technologies has introduced what's said to be the world's smallest RF amplifier. With 0402 package dimensions and no wirebonds, the VMMK-2x03 amplifiers experience almost no signal loss and minimal parasitics. Its tiny size and fully...

MEMS sensor provides early detection of motor-bearing irregularities.(pulse)
September 1, 2008... Vibration analysis can serve as the proverbial ounce of prevention for factory equipment, in which unscheduled downtime can be prohibitively expensive. Targeting that prevention, Analog Devices' ADXL001 industrial vibration and shock sensor...

Tiny video filter amplifier lets portable devices output SD video signals to SDTVs.(pulse)
September 1, 2008... The MAX9515 is said to be the industry's smallest, lowest pin-count video filter amplifier for standard-definition (SD) video connections from portable devices to TVs. Packaged in a 1x1mm, 4-bump UCSP, the Maxim Integrated Products device...

Melting reduces edge roughness, defects in IC features.(pulse)
September 1, 2008... A project at Princeton University shows that surface heating of small features on an IC can reduce edge roughness and, in some situations, repair defects in metal and semiconductor structures. Project leader Stephen Chou, the Joseph Elgin...

50V LDMOS power transistors for L-Band radar applications.(pulse)
September 1, 2008... Freescale Semiconductor has unveiled the 50V LDMOS RF power transistor line-up for L-Band radar applications. Ideal for a wide range of high-power RF applications including air traffic management and long-range weather radar, the RF product...

Smart RFID chip automates data-logging, tracking.(pulse)
September 1, 2008... The passive/semipassive IDS-SL13A tag chip from IDS Microchip AG finds use in single-cell, battery-powered smart-RFID (radio-frequency-identification) labels. An external 1.5 or 3V battery powers the chip's integrated real-time clock and EEPROM...

Cougar computer attacks rugged applications.(pulse)
September 1, 2008... With an eye toward demanding military, aerospace, medical, and industrial applications, VersaLogic announced the Cougar single-board computer at the April Embedded Systems Conference.The new PC/lO4-plus board offers designers of ruggedized...

Stackable receiver enables position tracking.(pulse)
September 1, 2008... As transportable embedded systems become commonplace, designers are looking for economical ways to integrate global-positioning equipment to track movements and deter theft. To target these applications, Micro/sys recently released the USB1700,...

MOSFET gate drivers with top switching efficiency.(pulse)
September 1, 2008... The ISL6615 and ISL6615A are high-frequency 6A sink synchronous MOSFET gate drivers that provide greater efficiency and added protection features for system safety. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Developed by Intersil Corporation, these...

"Highest" power density for direct methanol fuel cells.(pulse)
September 1, 2008... Sharp Corporation has achieved what's said to be the highest power density, 0.3W/cc, for direct methanol fuel cells (DMFC) for mobile equipment. This technology enables efficient power generation from a small cell volume making it possible to...

Low-cost snapshots: dismembering a diminutive digicam.(prying eyes)
September 1, 2008... Prompted by a tempting ink-jet-printer-rebate promotion, I this year purchased Argus' bundled $9.99 DCM-099 0.3M-pixel digital camera with a "Prying Eyes" analysis in mind. What's inside the unit's petite silver-plastic case, and do its...

Automobile electronics seek to plug power leaks: automobile accessories and control electronics benefit from power-management schemes to prevent dead batteries and gas guzzling. Low-power electronic subsystems are especially important for the next generation of electric cars and plug-in electric vehicles.(Cover story)
September 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The ideal gas-powered car moves its driver and passengers from Point A to Point B in comfort while sipping gas and producing next to no harmful emissions. However, car buyers have sharply inflated their definition of...

Low-quiescent-current switchers target automotive-electronic design.
September 1, 2008... Modern automobiles continue to include increasingly complex electronic systems. Furthermore, the automotive environment continues to be harsh for any type of electronics. Wide operating-voltage requirements, large transient voltages, and large...

Achieving first-time success at 40nm: an early adopter at the 40nm node tells what it took to get results from this leading-edge process.(design feature)
September 1, 2008... Every process generation brings new design challenges, but, for the 40nm node, both the difficulty and the risks are exceptional. Increased complexity, size, and design costs dictate that designers adopt new methodologies to ensure that they...

Selecting video op amps: video amplifiers have unique and demanding specifications. Understanding them will help you select an amplifier that can do the job.(design feature)
September 1, 2008... Video op amps have improved significantly since their debut in the early 1990s. The first versions operated from [+ or -] 15V supplies, featured bandwidths of 50MHz, and delivered slew rates in the low hundreds of volts per microsecond. Today's...

Smart power management reduces energy consumption.(special report)
September 1, 2008... Nowadays, the number of electrical products used in private homes and offices is growing at an extremely fast pace. The problem with most of these products, such as audio/video products and office equipment, is that they consume considerable...

Capacitive touch switch uses CPLD.(design ideas)(complex-programmable logic device)
September 1, 2008... Capacitive touch switches work by measuring the change in capacitance of a PCB (printed-circuitboard) pattern depending on the placement of a user's finger over a sensing pad. Capacitive switches are becoming popular because they are less...

RS-232-to-TTL converter tests UARTs with a PC.(design ideas)
September 1, 2008... you often need an RS232-to-TTL adapter for debugging or testing UARTs using a computer. But most of these adapters require an external power-supply adapter to power up the RS-232 transceiver. This external adapter increases the number of cables...

Hot-swap circuit allows two computers to monitor an RS-232 channel.(design ideas)
September 1, 2008... The hot-swap serial-interface circuit in Figure 1 allows two computers to see all of the communication between each computer and each device on the communication network for that serial port. This circuit allows each computer to determine what...

Zero-drift, bi-directional current shunt monitors in SC70 packages.(SEMICONDUCTORS)
September 1, 2008... The INA210 family of high- or low-side measurement, bi-directional current shunt monitor ICs come in SC70 packages. Utilizing a zero-drift bi-directional architecture, it provides accuracy up to 1% over the -40 to +125C temperature range, with...

Low-power, superheterodyne receiver for ASK data.(SEMICONDUCTORS)
September 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The MAX7034 is a low-power superheterodyne receiver for ASK data in the 300 to 450MHz frequency range. Requiring a few external components to implement a complete receive-chain solution, this device integrates an...

Low cost USB PIC MCUs.(SEMICONDUCTORS)
September 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The PIC18F13K50 and PIC18F14K50 (PIC18FlXK50) are low cost USB MCUs that provide a host of features not normally found on inexpensive 8-bit MCUs--enabling the addition of embedded USB into a wide range of...

Family of regulators for consumer apps expanded.(SEMICONDUCTORS)
September 1, 2008... International Rectifier has expanded its SupIRBuck portfolio of versatile wide input, single output integrated point-of-load (POL) DC/DC voltage regulators with the introduction of the IR380x family for consumer embedded POL applications up to...

ADM voice codec offers low power consumption.(SEMICONDUCTORS)
September 1, 2008... The CMX649 is an Adaptive Delta Modulation (ADM) voice codec--a complete multi-mode solution in a tiny SOIC package. Ideal for wireless digital voice/audio communications in both consumer and industrial applications, it offers full-duplex ADM,...

Controller IC targets three-phase motors.(SEMICONDUCTORS)
September 1, 2008... Targeting use in automotive Hall-commutated three-phase motors, the temperature- and voltage-grade A3930 and A3931three-phase BLDC (brushless-direct-current)motor-controller ICs integrate the commutation logic onboard. The microprocessor...

Intermediate bus PWM controller increases energy efficiency.(SEMICONDUCTORS)
September 1, 2008... This power supply controller for unregulated output voltages achieves up to 97% system efficiency in an intermediate bus architecture. The UCC28230 PWM controller allows intermediate bus architecture power systems to combine the highest amount...

Laser diode driver features APC, power monitoring.(SEMICONDUCTORS)
September 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The SY88212L is a stand-alone 2.5Gbps laser diode driver (LDD) with integrated Automatic Power Control (APC) and power monitoring feature to keep average optical power constant during temperature changes and over the...

LED controller delivers over 50W of LED power.(SEMICONDUCTORS)
September 1, 2008... The LT3755 is a 60V, high side current sense DC/DC converter designed to drive high current LEDs. Its 4.5 to 40V input voltage range makes it ideal for a wide variety of applications, including automotive, industrial and architectural lighting....

FCC-certified RF transceiver module.(SEMICONDUCTORS)
September 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Providing a complete short-range IEEE 802.15.4 wireless networking solution, the MRF24J40MA transceiver module is surface mountable and can be used with hundreds of 8, 16, or 32-bit PIC microcontrollers (MCUs). The...

Flash driver IC delivers high-intensity WLED lighting.(SEMICONDUCTORS)
September 1, 2008... The AAT1282 is said to be the industry's first 2A Flash LED driver IC capable of delivering high intensity light from white LEDs (WLEDs). Operating across a 2.7 to 5.5V input, the devicc is designed for LED photo Flash applications in a variety...

Six-port network-interface card supports gigabit rates.(SEMICONDUCTORS)
September 1, 2008... The Niagara 2266 GbE (gigabit-Ethernet) PCIe (peripheral-component-interconnect-express) network-interface card adds to the vendor's copper-NIC family. The six-port card supports gigabit rates and throughput, suiting Internet-security...

Miniature Transil family delivers 400W suppression.(SEMICONDUCTORS)
September 1, 2008... The SMM4F family of unidirectional Transil voltage surge-suppression diodes improves performance in three key areas by delivering high protection within a small footprint, reducing leakage current for low losses, and raising maximum junction...

XMC uses general-purpose-computing process.(BOARDS, CARDS & MODULES)
September 1, 2008... Using AMD's ATI Radeon HD 3650 graphics-processing unit, the Sentiris 5140 XMC (express mezzanine card) uses general-purpose computing on graphics-processing units, enabling computation and visualization. This device also provides better...

ESMexpress-based module aims at communication applications.(BOARDS, CARDS & MODULES)
September 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The ESMexpress-based, 1.5GHz XM50 module uses the PowerQUICC (quad-integrated-communications-controller) III MPC8548 processor integrates high-performance interfaces, making it suitable for use in...

60GHz T/R module for short-range indoor communications.(BOARDS, CARDS & MODULES)
September 1, 2008... This 60GHz T/R module targets short-range indoor communications that must transport data traffic at multi-gigabit speeds. It allows full-duplex operation with flexible modulation and can be operated in various radar modes. Typical...

Six-port network-interlace card supports gigabit rates.(BOARDS, CARDS & MODULES)
September 1, 2008... The Niagara 2266 GbE (gigabit-Ethernet) PCIe (peripheral-component-interconnect-express) network-interface card adds to the vendor's copper-NIC family. The six-port card supports gigabit rates and throughput, suiting Internet-security...

Sunchro/resolver VXI-instrument card provides high stimulus accuracy.(BOARDS, CARDS & MODULES)
September 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The DSP-based, single-slot 65CS4 VXI card includes modular design providing as many as four synchro/resolver instrument-grade measurement channels and up to four synchro/resolver instrument-grade stimulus channels,...

Digital-receiver card supports 160M-sample/sec analog rate per channel.(BOARDS, CARDS & MODULES)
September 1, 2008... The rugged XMC-E2201 high-speed XMC (express mezzanine card)/PMC (peripheral-component-interconnect mezzanine card) speeds the integration of high-performance signal acquisition into rugged deployed COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) VPX, VME...

Low-priced 8-bit digitizer for OEMs.(BOARDS, CARDS & MODULES)
September 1, 2008... This low-priced BASE-8 CompuScope digitizer is designed for OEM customers who require analog-to-digital conversion in their systems but who also need to keep the cost as low as possible. They provide a single digitizing channel with 8-bit...

Flash-based configuration for high-speed connectivity.(EMBEDDED)
September 1, 2008... Xilinx has released a Flash-based configuration and storage solution for the Virtex-5 family that delivers top levels of configuration performance for meeting today's high-speed connectivity requirements. The solution includes a new 128Mb...

Evaluation kit enhances design capabilities.(EMBEDDED)
September 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Nios II Embedded Evaluation Kit is a feature-rich, low-cost platform that provides a fast and simple "hands on" way for embedded designers to assess the Nios II processor and Altera SOPC Builder system design...

NorDig-compliant system-level STB solution.(EMBEDDED)
September 1, 2008... The STB100 T21 reference board is said to be the first full digital terrestrial system-level solution to have passed the NorDig 1.0.3 verification test process. The NorDig 1.0.3 compliance will ensure that the STB100 reference board is capable...

Compact reference design for embedded powerline applications.(EMBEDDED)
September 1, 2008... The DE21P module for embedded powerline communications applications is said to help drive widespread acceptance of high quality powerline enabled connectivity for home networking and IPTV applications. It enables product differentiation and can...

Flexible connectivity for Intel in-vehicle infotainment reference design.(EMBEDDED)
September 1, 2008... The Xilinx Automotive (XA) field programmable gate array (FPGA) and intellectual property (IP) solution is included in the Low-Power Intel In-Vehicle Infotainment Reference Design (Low-Power Intel IVI Reference Design) targeting automotive head...

Enhance development support of CEVA DSP + ARM multiprocessor SoCs.(EMBEDDED)
September 1, 2008... CEVA has partnered with ARM to enable real-time trace support for CEVA DSP cores in ARM CoreSight technology for the development of multiprocessor system-on-chip (SoC) solutions. The enhanced support will enable the growing number of customers...

Broader selection of soft processor cores for FPGAs.(EMBEDDED)
September 1, 2008... Giving system-level designers broader selection of soft processor cores for FPGAs, Altera Corporation announced that Freescale will be delivering a 32-bit V1 ColdFire soft core for the SOPC Builder tool. To quickly and easily create...

High-resolution Z-Foil audio resistor reduces signal distortion, increases clarity.(PASSIVES)
September 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Vishay audio resistor (VAR) is an ultra-high-precision Z-Foil audio resistor that features a special design for increased clarity. It provides a low typical TCR of [+ or -] 0.2ppm/[degrees]C from -55 to...

Connectors for increased safety in transportation apps.(PASSIVES)
September 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The CIR Series of high temperature connectors meet European CEN/TS 45545 standards governing railway fire safety. They are capable of withstanding a high temperature exposure period of at least 15 minutes at the ISO...

More vertically mounted wirewound resistors.(PASSIVES)
September 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The RWT series of vertical mount thermally fused wirewounds have been expanded to include 2 and 7W rated elements that accommodate a broad range of commercial, consumer, and industrial applications. The RWT is...

Economical D-Sub shielded hood series.(PASSIVES)
September 1, 2008... This D-Sub shielded hood is designed with an optimum number of pieces: two half-metal covers in zamack (zinc alloy), two jack screws, and a steel fiber-reinforced plastic strain relief for EMI/RFI screening and mechanical cable retention. The...

BI expands molded inductor family.(PASSIVES)
September 1, 2008... For design engineers who require a magnetic solution beyond the standard inductor offering, TT electronics BI Technologies has expanded its molded inductor product line to include a miniature device and custom capabilities. The HM72A Series is...

14-way navigation switch.(PASSIVES)
September 1, 2008... The SensoNav 14-function navigation switch combines sensitive touch and tactile functions, while guaranteeing an extended life span of 1 million actuations per direction. This combination enables the standard 5-way center, up, down, left and...

Compact RoHS-compliant resistor exhibits high stability in harsh environments.(PASSIVES)
September 1, 2008... TT electronics IRC has developed a Tantalum Nitride 0402 chip resistor to expand its comprehensive offering of precision thin film chip resistors. Designated the PFC Series, the chip resistors are constructed on IRC's ultra stable patented...