Electronic Design articles from January 2004

Electronic Design archives from January 2004

Joining the Optimist Club in 2004.(Overview)
January 12, 2004... I'm an optimist by nature. But cautious optimism has been the best even the most positive-thinking of us could offer in the last two years, considering the false starts in the economy and the global and national security concerns we all have...

What's all this forecasting stuff, anyhow?(Pease Porridge)
January 12, 2004... Well, I am going to make a few comments about "forecasting." I will primarily observe that most efforts at forecasting are a waste of time. I remember when one of the CEOs of NSC in the old days (NOT Charlie Sporck) forecast that the...

All hail the Semiconductor Age.(Visionaries)(Industry Overview)
January 12, 2004... Every time the technology domain goes through a downturn, too many people get fearful that somehow the tech scene is "over." They flock to bio-tech of agriculture or genetics, thinking it will be the next big thing. Unfortunately for them, the...

U.S. leadership relies on engineering.(Visionaries)
January 12, 2004... From a strategic standpoint, the United States must do a better job of encouraging more of its youth to enter the engineering field. Engineering simply isn't as popular a discipline in the U.S. today as it was just 20 years ago. Some students...

Hydrogen could fuel the digital electrical grid.(Visionaries)(Excerpt)
January 12, 2004... Computing resources flow bidirectionally along the Internet connecting millions of computers. Could we do the same with our energy grid, perhaps even integrate our electricity and transportation delivery systems? Couple Internet communications,...

Introducing future thinking.
January 12, 2004... ACTEL Which application areas will lag claim to the greatest opportunities in the coming year? As market windows continue to shrink, designers are challenged to rapidly meet changing system requirements while quickly and cost-effectively...

Digital circuits break new performance barriers.(Digital ICs)
January 12, 2004... Advances in all aspects of silicon manufacturing are delivering digital and mixed-signal circuits that run faster and pack more functionality than anyone had predicted just a few years ago. This year, new processors will run at 4 GHz. Others...

Memory directions: speed, speed, and density.(memory)(Excerpt)
January 12, 2004... In general, the faster data can be retrieved, the faster the host processor can execute its algorithms. Internal parallelism on the processor side requires ever faster data-transfer rates from external memory to keep parallel execution units...

Commercial volumes of 1-Gbit.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * COMMERCIAL VOLUMES OF 1-GBIT DDR SDRAMs will be available from several memory suppliers. Yet initial volumes will be absorbed mainly by server manufacturers because costs will be too high for the commodity memory market.

The first samples of 4-Mbit.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * THE FIRST SAMPLES OF 4-MBIT magnetoresistive memory available from Motorola. These memories combine the best aspects of flash memory and SRAM, offering fast and symmetrical read and write operation, unlimited writes, nonvolatile storage, and...

Production quantities.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * PRODUCTION QUANTITIES of DDR II SDRAMs will be available in 400- and 466-MHz speed grades before mid-year, and samples of 533-MHz versions are expected sometime late in the coming year.

Samples of 512-Mbit Rambus.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * SAMPLES OF 512-MBIT RAMBUS RDRAMs will be available this quarter. In addition, 256-Mbit devices will be available in speed grades of 600 to 800 MHz.

Expect samples of the first extreme-data-rate.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * EXPECT SAMPLES OF THE FIRST EXTREME-DATA-RATE DRAMs to be released by Toshiba Corp. These memories incorporate a differential interface developed by Rambus Inc. that will transfer data at up to 6 Gbytes/s. The first device will pack 512...

The specification for 2G fast-cycle DRAMs.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * THE SPECIFICATION FOR 2G FAST-CYCLE DRAMs with capacities of 576 Mbits will be finalized this year. Engineering samples of prototype devices will be released by mid-2005. Meanwhile, 512-Mbit 1G devices will be commercially available in the...

Prototypes of the first nanocrystal-based flash-memory chip will be demonstrated by Motorola.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * PROTOTYPES OF THE FIRST nanocrystal-based flash-memory chip will be demonstrated by Motorola. This technology, an extension of standard CMOS processes, uses a layer of 50-angstrom silicon dots deposited on a 50-angstrom grid that lies on top...

Flash-memory devices.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * FLASH-MEMORY DEVICES with 2 Gbits of single-bit/cell storage capacities will be commercially available this year, with still higher density devices on tap for 2005. This year will also see availability of 4-Gbit dual-bit/cell flash devices.

Look for a high-speed memory.(Top Ten)
January 12, 2004... * LOOK FOR A HIGH-SPEED MEMORY interface from Silicon Pipe as an intriguing alternative to the XDR interface. The novel interface design employs a controller that converts the parallel bus of a host system to serial interfaces. In turn, the...

Samples of 36-Mbit quad-data-rate SRAMs.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * SAMPLES OF 36-MBIT QUAD-DATA-RATE SRAMs should be readily available from several manufacturers, with production quantities ready by mid-year.

Memory markets gather momentum in 2004.(memory)(according to Seimco Research Corp.)(Industry Overview)
January 12, 2004... While the PC market remained the catalyst for the memory market's growth in 2003, other applications will begin to create some noise. DRAM will further expand into PDAs, smart phones, digital video recorders, advanced gaming consoles, and VoIP...

Micro sparks fly at both ends of the spectrum.(microcontrollers and microprocessors)(Brief Article)(Industry Overview)
January 12, 2004... The 64-bit micro space will get a lot of play this year. For servers and workstations, the PowerPC, Itanium, Sparc, and Opteron architectures give users many choices, augmented by the increased use of Linux. These faster and cheaper processors...

Arming the masses.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)(Industry Overview)
January 12, 2004... The growth of standard 32-bit MCUs continues, with ARM-based solutions leading the way. Vendors will further widen their product lines, but the real empowerment will come on the software side. Lower-cost development tools will mark the...

Interconnects draw battle lines around high-end CPUs.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... PCI Express will be the high-speed peripheral interconnect for the world. The problem with that is it does a lousy job of handling multiple CPUs, Advanced Switching not withstanding. This means designers must make CPU decisions based on their...

High-speed links start to mirror each other.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... Get a good idea and everyone picks up on it. InfiniBand had RDMA (remote DMA). HyperTransport had packet streaming. All high-speed interconnects get more bandwidth using multiple data streams. But don't expect everything to merge into a common...

8-bit MCUs grow up and down.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... They're getting so small that the connections are dominating the packaging. A boost in flash memory capacity is lending a hand, though. This will be good for companies that have maintained a stable of 8-bit developers, because the functionality...

FPGAs + CPUs = Differentiation.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... Put a hard or soft CPU into an FPGA and you get a flexible solution that's hard to replicate. Differentiation with just software is hard to do, but adding an FPGA into the mix can make the difference. Look for growth in this end of the embedded...

New peripheral interfaces move on-chip.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... Look for a new class of MCUs supporting interfaces like PCI Express, USB 2.0, and Serial ATA as on-board peripherals become more available. These will complement existing interfaces like Ethernet and CAN as interfaces (e.g., PCI) more out of...

Multithreading moves in.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... Embedded processors will get a leg up in the multitasking environment with hardware multithreading support like that found on the Intel Pentium 4. Expect delivery of chips with different ways to exploit idle execution hardware. Also, look for...

Is Java hard to swallow?(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... Having a new crop of 32-bit MCUs has advantages for Java developers as Java acceleration becomes more common. Initially targeted at cellphones and mobile devices, these fast Java solutions will find their way into more embedded applications...

Security concerns.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... Be it secure network communication of digital rights management, many MCU-based products will wind up needing hardware security support. The lack of standards, other than basic encryption, or Internet links such as SSL will make decisions about...

Improved on-chip clocks save MCU pins.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... Low-pin-count MCUs in low-cost applications are getting easier to find as on-chip clock technology improves. This is critical for a one-chip solution where space is critical. More accurate on-chip clocks also make faster communication practical...

Rich processor variety adds up to 18% growth in 2004.(microcontrollers and microprocessors)(Industry Overview)
January 12, 2004... A full year of rather positive growth for embedded microprocessors (MPUs), microcontrollers (MCUs), and digital signal processors (DSPs) is now under our belt, and the general economic picture has improved as well. Gartner Dataquest is...

FPGAs absorb more system logic.(reprogrammable logic)(Industry Overview)
January 12, 2004... Gains made in density and performance are pushing FPGAs into an ever more competitive position with custom-designed ASICs. On top of that, they're virtually going head-to-head with "platform" and "structured" ASICs. The demand for FPGAs...

Flash-based FPGAs.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * FLASH-BASED FPGAs will increase their gate capacities from current 1-Mgate levels to capacities of close to 3 Mgates as Actel migrates to the next-generation flash process. Samples are expected in the second quarter.

The first samples of SRAM-based FPGAs.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * THE FIRST SAMPLES OF SRAM-BASED FPGAs based on Xilinx's novel application-specific modular block architecture should appear toward the end of the year. The company expects the family to include devices with as many as 1 billion transistors on...

By late 2040.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * BY LATE 2004, expect both Altera and Xilinx to have engineering prototypes of FPGAs packing close to 10 million system gates. These FPGAs, based on the latest 90-nm process technologies, will employ as many as 10 levels of metal...

Production quantities.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * PRODUCTION QUANTITIES of the recent Eclipse II low-power, low- to medium-density FPGAs should be available from QuickLogic in the first and second quarter. The family includes devices ranging from 47k to 320k system gates and exhibits standby...

Expect most FPGA suppliers.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... EXPECT MOST FPGA SUPPLIERS to jump on the PCI Express bandwagon, offering either hard or soft cores to implement the high-speed serial version of the PCI bus.

A 400-MHz double-data-rate.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... A 400-MHz DOUBLE-DATA-RATE memory controller interface will be available from Altera in the first quarter. The interface has been qualified with Micron 400-MHz memory modules and runs on the Stratix and Stratix GX FPGAs.

Designers at Xilinx.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... DESIGNERS AT XILINX have started work on defining a 10-Gbit/s point-to-point short-distance interface. The company expects to have a final draft of the interface definition available by mid-2004, with samples of the interface possibly in early...

Expect to see flip-chip-packaged FPGAs.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... EXPECT TO SEE FLIP-CHIP-PACKAGED FPGAs coming from Xilinx and other FPGA suppliers. The use of flip-chip technology allows FPGA suppliers to achieve higher performance because the electrical paths from the chip to the pc board are shorter. In...

Look for design security.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... LOOK FOR DESIGN SECURITY to get more attention from FPGA suppliers. The value of the IP used within the FPGAs is rapidly increasing, so FPGA suppliers must find ways to protect that IP from being copied by someone that can capture the bit...

Military and space-capable.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... MILITARY AND SPACE-CAPABLE versions of high-density flash- and antifuse-based FPGAs will arrive from Actel in the first quarter of this year. The ProASIC arrays and the latest antifuse arrays offer two to four times the gate capacity of the...

Cost-saving 90-nm processes a boon to FPGA markets.(reprogrammable logic)(Industry Overview)
January 12, 2004... One bright spot in an otherwise dreary ASIC market landscape is the progress made by the FPGA market in terms of improved performance and cost. Toward the middle of 2004, the first FPGAs produced using 90-nm process technology will enter the...

Standard logic and interface devices: still the glue that binds.(standard logic)(Industry Overview)
January 12, 2004... Even as the IC industry continues its march toward total system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions, there will always be a need for a gate here, an inverter there, a level translator somewhere else, or a stable clock source. Thus, standard logic...

Expect higher-performance.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... EXPECT HIGHER-PERFORMANCE bus interface circuits, with propagation delays below 2 ns, to be sampled later this year. Such chips will allow designers to implement limited-length buses that run at close to 500 MHz.

Logic level translators.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... LOGIC LEVEL TRANSLATORS with the lowest power consumption will be available from Texas Instruments. The circuits will have static current drains of just 900 nA and will translate between logic families that employ 1.5-, 1.8-, 2.5, 3.3-, or 5-V...

There will be continued momentum.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... THERE WILL BE CONTINUED MOMENTUM in the use of multichannel serial interfaces to replace wide parallel bus structures. For example, parallel buses such as PCI will be replaced by PCI Express, and large parallel backplanes will also include...

SERDES building blocks.(Top Ten)
January 12, 2004... SERDES BUILDING BLOCKS, operating at 3.125 Gbits/s, will become mainstream. Several suppliers will offer samples of 6Gbit/s serializer/deserializer (SERDES) solutions.

Growth will continue in the single-gate logic market as designers work with ever more space-constrained systems.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... GROWTH WILL CONTINUE in the single-gate logic market as designers work with ever more space-constrained systems. The tiny single-gate logic devices are an ideal solution because their size allows them to be inserted in the system directly in...

More-flexible clock.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... MORE-FLEXIBLE CLOCK and clock distribution chips will be available from Cypress Semiconductor and other suppliers. These chips will supply the multiple clock frequencies needed in systems ranging from PCs to network subsystems.

Intellectual-property offerings.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... Intellectual-Property Offerings of both 3.125-GHz SERDES building blocks and more complex interfaces like PCI Express will become more widely available as designers try to reduce system complexity even as performance demands increase.

For chip-to-chip interconnections.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... For chip-to-chip interconnections, HyperTransport interfaces and RapidIO ports will become mainstream solutions for many systems. There will be a wide variety of support circuits for HyperTransport systems that will enable a wide range of...

Differential signaling interfaces.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... DIFFERENTIAL SIGNALING INTERFACES will increase in popularity due to their high noise immunity. New interfaces, such as the extreme-data-rate (XDR) interface developed by Rambus, will allow data to transfer at four times the clock speed-up to 6...

There will be continued price pressure on interface logic as FPGAs and ASIC design libraries continue to absorb more of the system.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)(Industry Overview)
January 12, 2004... THERE WILL BE CONTINUED price pressure on interface logic as FPGAs and ASIC design libraries continue to absorb more of the system. The system-on-a-chip solutions now in design will require fewer and fewer support functions as designers...

Standard logic and interface ICs filling the gap.(standard logic)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... The rise of the microprocessor, libraries of standard cells for ASICs, and finally, the programmable logic device (PLD) and FPGA have all acted to consolidate many hundreds if not thousands of discrete logic functions within one part,...

ASICs take on more of the system.(ASICs)(Industry Overview)
January 12, 2004... As more logic and memory are integrated onto ASICs, manufacturers and foundries are shifting from 130- to 90-nm design rules. The smaller transistors possible at 90 nm enable a near-fourfold increase in gate capacities, permitting designers to...

By mid-2004, there will be widespread availability of 90-nm process technology from most of the ASIC suppliers.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * BY MID-2004, THERE WILL BE widespread availability of 90-nm process technology from most of the ASIC suppliers. This process node will allow designers to integrate about 40 million gates on a single chip.

Expect FPGA suppliers.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * EXPECT FPGA SUPPLIERS to deliver the first samples of chips with as many as 10 million ASIC equivalent gates. These FPGAs will also be based on new 90-nm processes available from foundries such as TSMC.

Continued growth of on-chip memory.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * CONTINUED GROWTH OF ON-CHIP MEMORY will push more designers to use an SRAM replacement based on a DRAM core. Dubbed the 1T-SRAM by Mosys, the memory array can replace most large SRAMs in applications that don't demand the shortest access...

High-speed serial interfaces.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * HIGH-SPEED SERIAL INTERFACES, both low-voltage differential logic and serializer/deserializers (SERDES), will continue as popular resources ASIC suppliers pre-integrate into various structured and platform ASICs. They'll also be included as...

The pace of process development.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * THE PACE OF PROCESS DEVELOPMENT will go undaunted as ASIC suppliers develop design rules for 65-nm processes. Although no products will probably appear until late 2005, design rules will be firmed up by late 2004 or early 2005 to update IP...

ASIC suppliers will roll out.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)(Industry Overview)
January 12, 2004... * ASIC SUPPLIERS WILL ROLL OUT a wide range of structured ASICs and platform chips. These will provide designers with an alternative to the high mask costs associated with a full ASIC design. Leading the pack is LSI Logic with its RapidChip...

More extensive use of flip-chip packaging.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * MORE EXTENSIVE USE OF FLIP-CHIP PACKAGING will provide higher pin counts and reduce the signal path's delays going from the chip to the package and from the package to the circuit board. As chip performance increases, the package becomes one...

Use of serial interfaces.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * USE OF SERIAL INTERFACES will also skyrocket over the next year. SERDES-based interfaces will allow designers to replace wide parallel buses with more noise-immune serial channels, thus helping to counter the trends toward ever higher pin...

Mask costs will escalate.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * MASK COSTS WILL ESCALATE past the $1 million mark. In fact, estimates are already pegging the cost for a 65-nm design mask set to be somewhere in the $1.5 million to $2 million range. Those cost levels may limit the number of companies that...

As design rules shrink.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * AS DESIGN RULES SHRINK to 90 nm, it will be easier for ASIC suppliers to produce full-CMOS mixed-signal circuits that implement full RF transceiver functions that operate at 2.4 and even 5 GHz. This will potentially eliminate the need to use...

Structured ASICs: balm for ailing ASIC market.(ASICs)(Industry Overview)
January 12, 2004... It seems that just about every day we read another prediction about the ASIC market's demise. One prognosticator says it's the decline in ASIC design starts. Another feels it's the difficulties in designing a complex systems-on-a-chip (SoC). It...

HardCopy structured ASICs: get ASIC gain without the pain.(Altera HardCopy)
January 12, 2004... ASIC design today is an economically and technically challenging task. As process geometries have shrunk, mask and wafer costs have increased significantly, with total cost of ownership reaching up to $20 million before first sample...

DSP everywhere: advances in DSP expand its role.(digital signal processing)(Excerpt)
January 12, 2004... Digital-signal-processing (DSP) technology has made tremendous strides thanks to advances in semiconductor processing that allow more memory and compute resources to be integrated on one chip and architectural enhancements that let the...

Samples of a 1-GHz DSP chip.(Top Ten)(from Texas Instruments)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * SAMPLES OF A 1-GHz DSP CHIP will be released by TI in Q2 of 2004. Based on 90-nm design rules, the processor will be a drop in replacement for TI's previous best, a 720-MHz processor.

Prototypes of a new DSP core.(Top Ten)(from CEVA INc.)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * PROTOTYPES OF A NEW DSP CORE that combines VLIW and SIMD architectural approaches will be released by CEVA Inc. The 16-bit version of the core will deliver 12 times the performance of the company's previous high-end processor core, the Teak...

Low-cost floating-point DSPs.(Top Ten)(ADI Sharc)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * LOW-COST FLOATING-POINT DSPs targeted at telematics audio processing, and streaming media applications will be available from ADI. The Sharc DSP chips will operate at a 300-MHz internal core frequency and deliver a throughput of 5 billion...

The first samples of the highly parallel.(Top Ten)(Motorola)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * THE FIRST SAMPLES OF THE HIGHLY PARALLEL and reconfigurable compute fabric developed by Motorola will be released during the first half of 2004. The array is based on a core compute element developed by Morpho Technology and licensed by...

Software libraries and development tools.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * SOFTWARE LIBRARIES AND DEVELOPMENT TOOLS will play an ever more important role as the DSP chip architectures get more complex. Due to the complexity of the new, highly parallel architectures, designers will require more software support to...

Operating power levels.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * OPERATING POWER LEVELS for DSP cores will keep dropping as designers try to extend system battery life while adding more functionality. Next-generation cell phones, for instance, are adding cameras, multimedia players, and other features that...

DSP cores are growing.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * DSP CORES ARE GROWING in popularity as designers more to a system-on-a-chip solution. Integration levels are increasing as engineers combine the DSP cores with standard RISC processor cores, large blocks of memory, and such system interfaces...

Control and DSP functions.(Top Ten)(Texas Instruments TMS320F28xx family)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * CONTROL AND DSP FUNCTIONS are merging into a single core along with flash-based program storage and a broad array of peripheral interface functions. Samples of next-generation controller/DSP chips, the TMS320F28xx family, will come from TI in...

Compute throughputs exceeding 20 GFLOPS.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * COMPUTE THROUGHPUTS EXCEEDING 20 GFLOPS will be achieved by some of the latest highly parallel array processors. These software-configurable processors will deliver unparalleled performance. But software tools will be key to achieving the...

Look for FPGAs.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... * LOOK FOR FPGAs to also play a role as DSP accelerators of coprocessers. The ability to configure an FPGA into an array of multipliers or other functions will allow systems to rip through large data tables or perform other highly parallel...

DSP: performance increases as costs decrease.(digital signal processing)(Industry Overview)
January 12, 2004... The DSP market made a strong recovery in 2003 due in large part to cell-phone handsets. Sales revenues grew 27% in 2003 to $6.2 billion, and the growth rate will likely be in the same range in 2004. The unit growth rates are even higher--55%...

Analog/mixed-signal: application needs inspire groundbreaking innovations.(ADCs)
January 12, 2004... Developers of analog and mixed-signal ICs have many options at hand to enhance the value of their products. They can soup up key ac and dc performance specifications. They can shrink device size or add more functionality to a given-sized...

Diverse requirements spin ADC development down many paths.(ADCs)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... Analog-to-digital-converter (ADC) architectures vary greatly in their performance capabilities. ADC application needs are even more diverse. So it should come as no surprise that the development of ADC chips is moving simultaneously in multiple...

The switch from parallel.(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... THE SWITCH FROM PARALLEL to serial data interfaces is drastically reducing I/O requirements for DACs and ADCs. With fewer pins needed, newer data converters can move to smaller package outlines, or to combine more converter channels per chip....

Low-Voltage Differential Signaling (LVDs).(Top Ten)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2004... LOW-VOLTAGE DIFFERENTIAL SIGNALING (LVDS) is becoming more popular as ADCs more to higher speeds. For converters with 12 bits or more of resolution, LVDS becomes critical at speeds of 100 Msamples/s or more to maintain the converters' dynamic...