Electronic Design articles from January 2008

Electronic Design archives from January 2008

LCDs, LEDs, and OLEDs project a bright future.(COMPONENTS DISPLAYS)
January 17, 2008... When it comes to displays, three technologies dominate the field--liquid crystal displays (LCDs), light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and organic LEDs (OLEDs). Plasma display panels (PDPs) and polymer LEDs (PLEDs)have some challenges ahead, though...

Forecasting 2008 with some help from our friends.(OVERVIEW)
January 17, 2008... Welcome to Electronic Design's annual forecast issue, where our editors look into the crystal balls of their particular beats and tell you what to expect in 2008 and beyond. While I don't have a particular coverage area, I'll make some...

What's all this layout Stuff, anyhow?(PEASE PORRIDGE)
January 17, 2008... I've always been interested in the layout of things: bikes, cars, pc boards--and ICs. Sometimes it is just the compactness. Back in 1974, I got on a plane to San Francisco with my usual pad of quadrille paper, planning to draft (on the plane)...

Musical sockets will define digital semiconductors.(DIGITAL)
January 17, 2008... At last month's Fabless Semiconductor Association (FSA) Awards (the FSA is now the Global Semiconductor Association, or GSA), Gordon Campbell, recipient of the Dr. Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award, made an interesting observation. ...

FPGAs steal more sockets thanks to new IP, more LUTs.(FPGAs)
January 17, 2008... FPGAs continue to take on more work, to the point where they can truly be called a systems-on-a-chip (SoCs). This new role comes in large part from the 65- and 90-nm process technology dominating today and the 45-nm technology on the horizon...

Get more for less in this year's microcontrollers.(MICROCONTROLLERS)
January 17, 2008... Smaller. Less power. More multicore. Virtualization. That's 2008 in a nutshell. The microcontroller, processor, and digital signal controller (DSC) arenas will be rife with new products and technology. 64-BIT VIRTUALIZATION * This year will...

Apps drive innovation, but the design environment is changing.(ANALOG)
January 17, 2008... Each December, I ask analog/mixed-signal companies about their expectations for the coming year, eliciting mostly predictable responses. Trends always point to the "big-three" improvements: lower power, smaller voltage swings, and shrinking...

DDS chips revamped, more design centers managed remotely.(ANALOG/MIXED SIGNAL)
January 17, 2008... Dennis Monticelli, National Semiconductor's chief technology officer, is happy to speculate about the coming year. Like other analog semi companies, National will continue to reduce power requirements, he said, adding that the company will...

Business, pleasure, whatever--get ready to network everything.(COMMUNICATIONS)
January 17, 2008... Network everything. That's the overall trend in electronic communications, and it's going to continue. "Computers, consumer electronics, and mobile devices are merging into one always-connected networked realm, changing the way we communicate,...

Video drives today's high-speed networking advancesw.(WIRED)
January 17, 2008... How much TV is enough? Nowadays, it seems like we spend most of our time watching it--not sleeping or working or playing. Of course, that varies widely. But we're all TV junkies. And while we have loads of TV now, we still want more. The...

Wireless technology makes waves in all directions.(WIRELESS)
January 17, 2008... Nothing is hotter now than the cell-phone business, which is driving semiconductor sales. And while cell phones are the biggest contributor to electronics growth, many other wireless technologies keep expanding as we drive toward a totally...

Smaller and denser components? Now that's a challenge.(COMPONENTS)
January 17, 2008... It doesn't matter if they're simple or complex. Nowadays, all components must offer more features in a smaller form factor to satisfy market demands. Basic passive components, for example, have relied on thin-film deposition and chip-size...

IC packaging gets ready for the big squeeze.(PACKAGING)
January 17, 2008... Advances continue in the packaging of ICs and IC subsystems as the demand for smaller, denser, and lower-cost electronics continues. The trend is toward 3D packaging using wafer-level techniques to take advantage of available packaging space in...

Connector makers woo pitch, push power, get down to basics.(CONNECTORS)
January 17, 2008... In the technology game, the song remains the same. Get smaller, deliver more power, or trim power--and get it all to market as fast and as reliably as possible. And the connector sector sets the rhythm for that tune. BREAK OUT THE...

Among design constraints, power assumes the Throne.(EDA)
January 17, 2008... Over the past few years, the "power problem" has registered more strongly on the radars of system design teams. Portable and handheld consumer electronics keep shrinking. Hence, so do their batteries. Meanwhile, no one wants to sacrifice...

The name of the game is "productivity".(DESIGN & VERIFICATION)
January 17, 2008... I've been covering the EDA industry full-time now for seven years this month, and I had been covering it at least part of the time for three or four years before that. Looking back, I cannot remember when it wasn't said that "verification takes...

Driven by power concerns, DFM goes mainstream in 2008.(PROTOTYPING & IMPLEMENTATION)(design for manufacturing)
January 17, 2008... Due to the growth in the consumer and wireless markets, low-power design is becoming a pervasive driver in IC design, verification, and implementation. The challenge lies in achieving timing closure while adopting advanced low-power and...

Better tools, more options mean embedded for the masses.(EMBEDDED)
January 17, 2008... Embedded development keeps pushing the proverbial envelope. Performance is up. Power requirements are down. Only the pace of software improvement seems slower than most engineers' expectations, though the dependence on C remains even with the...

Use new hardware to get your job done faster.(HARDWARE)
January 17, 2008... Embedded developers will continue to have a growing number of choices when it comes to hardware design, as new technologies like digital paper displays such as the one from InHand Electronics become more common (Fig. 1). [ILLUSTRATION...

Designers set their eyes on the Visual and Virtual worlds.(SOFTWARE)
January 17, 2008... Visual programming and vision are separate issues, but both will be big this year. Likewise, multicore systems are pushing the demands on parallel programming and virtualization, which also is becoming a significant tool in a single-core...

A few new standards, but lots of new products in 2008.(INTERCONNECTS)
January 17, 2008... Established standards like PCI Express, Serial Rapid-IO, Ethernet, and InfiniBand are making way for a host of new products based on them. This is true for device interfaces including USB, Serial ATA (SATA), and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)....

Expect big changes in digital POLs and energy harvesting.(POWER)
January 17, 2008... The big story of 2007 will have some serious ramifications in 2008 as companies react to Power-One's victorious lawsuit against Artesyn. The jury ruled that Power-One's patent claims over the digital control of point-of-load (POL) power...

Patent lawsuit verdict clouds future for PMBus.(POWER MANAGEMENT)
January 17, 2008... The verdict is in on the digital power-control patent lawsuit between Power-One and Artesyn Technologies, and it doesn't bode well for the PMBus. Maybe Power-One should change its name to "Power-Won" now that a Texas jury has upheld the...

Electric vehicles zero in on improved power management.(POWER SOURCES)
January 17, 2008... The desire to protect the environment is driving consumer demands for electric vehicles that use non-polluting propulsion systems. Nickel-metal hydride and several versions of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries have been used in the power...

Throughput, bandwidth, usability, cost drive instrumentation.(TEST)
January 17, 2008... hile the test and measurement (T&M) sector of the electronics industry doesn't experience the rapid-fire advances of other technologies, it still does a good job year to year. With its steady upgrades, T&M manages to keep pace with the latest...

Make some room for new storage devices in 2008.(STORAGE)
January 17, 2008... Gone is the floppy disk. Magnetic media reigns supreme when it comes to capacity, and solid-state storage is everywhere. There is even a meeting of the minds with hybrid storage drives. High-capacity, high-definition (HD) optical drives are...

Memory technologies duel to the death for fame and glory.(MEMORY)
January 17, 2008... It's no surprise that memory technology will get smaller and faster this year while running on less power per bit. But the competition is getting stronger, and it's coming up on high noon as these technologies try to wipe each other out in the...

For the best results, begin low-power SoC design at system level: careful analysis and architectural exploration in the ESL domain can reap enormous benefits in SoC power management.
January 17, 2008... Most often, designers chase the grail of optimizing a system-on-a-chip (SoC) design for low power at the register-transfer level (RTL) of abstraction. At RTL, many designers believe they have access to sufficient physical information to make...

Harmonic distortion and board layout.(Design Solution)(Brief article)
January 31, 2008... When you're thinking about how to lay out components on a pc board, remember that the board itself may introduce nonlinearities into your signal. That's because while the board material is electrically linear (constant impedance), the board's...

Leveraging ESL techniques to optimize low-power design.(Free Webcast)(Brief article)
January 31, 2008... Wednesday, Feb. 13 11 a.m. PT/2 p.m. ET Hosted by EDA Editor David Maliniak, this webcast will examine what is to be gained for low-power SoC at levels of abstraction above RTL and look at how tools and methodologies are evolving to suit...

The iRobot Warrior.(Engineering TV)
January 31, 2008... The battlefield of the future is here today, as the iRobot Warrior and its companion PackBot charge into dangerous areas, completing missions and saving lives. Learn how designers at iRobot created these marvels with Engineering TV's recent...

A penny for your pixels?(Techview Online)(Brief article)
January 31, 2008... check out Techview Online for exclusive product and industry news from our technical editors. With the U.S. dollar plummeting, it's nice to know how far a penny stretches these days thanks to the DVS-1600 TFT LCD OEM interface controller...

Latest SSD drive beefs up capacity.(Techview Online)(solid-state drive)(Brief article)
January 31, 2008... Some critics say 64 Gbytes won't cut the hard-disk drive (HDD) mustard. So, Samsung Semiconductor ups the ante to 128 Gbytes with its latest solid-state drive (SSD). Based on multi-level cell (MLC) flash, the drive will be offered in 1.8- and...

Boost data-center performance while lowering cost and power consumption.(Techview Online)
January 31, 2008... The latest accelerated Ethernet adapters from NetEffect extend the company's network interface card family. The first, the NE0201Gb 1-Gbit/s adapter, plugs right into existing slots and immediately improves the performance of all data-center...

HDTV and Blu-ray.(EiED Online)
January 31, 2008... Embedded/Systems/Software Editor Bill Wong takes a look at the Sharp Aquos HDTV and a pair of Blu-ray players capable of deliving 1080p content to the Aquos. All are controlled by Logitech's Harmony 1000 Advanced Universal Remote. ...

Retooling Electronic Design for 2008.(Editorial)
January 31, 2008... You'll notice some changes in our first standard issue of 2008. For example, our TechView section is now one department rather than a series individual columns from our technology editors. This will make it easier for us to provide you with...

Look past the misconceptions and myths surrounding Li-polymer.(point of view)
January 31, 2008... Batteries based on lithium polymer (Li-polymer) have been "the next big thing" in portable power for the last 10 years. Li-polymer batteries started appearing in small consumer electronics applications, such as wireless headsets, several years...

Distributed design teams pose no problem with video chatting.(techview)(SightSpeed)
January 31, 2008... Since the rise of overseas outsourcing, video conferencing has been a popular way to do business with remote employees. Now, companies that make video chatting their primary business are making it easier for engineers to work with remote...

What happens in Vegas ...(techview)
January 31, 2008... Legendary rock guitarist Slash joins Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates on stage at the 2008 International CES pre-show keynote address in Las Vegas earlier this month. While Gates used his annual appearance to tout the enduring power and...

Class D audio subsystems stretch apparent distance between cell-phone speakers.(techview)(Maxim Integrated Products Inc.)
January 31, 2008... Stereo systems for multiple speakers put the left and right speakers on opposite sides of the room. Personal systems use left and right ear buds or headphones to separate the sound. What can designers offer in the way of stereo on a cellular...

Chips help carrier Ethernet replace legacy networking solutions.(techview)
January 31, 2008... With the Brooklyn-10 and Hudson large-scale networking chips from Lightstorm Networks, designers can use carrier Ethernet to replace existing Sonet/SDH and ATM/frame-relay infrastructures. The Hudson is an operations, administration, and...

Young engineers need you! Everyone agrees that we need to do a better job of grooming the next generation of engineers. Now, it's time for you to get involved.(the lab bench)
January 31, 2008... Welcome to my lab bench. Hopefully, my editorial antics here and in future installments will inform and entertain as well as provoke some controversy and insight. I'll be taking this opportunity to rant about my favorite subjects as well as...

Design FAQs: digital temperature sensors.(FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS)
January 31, 2008... What common applications use temperature measurement? Temperature sensing is ubiquitous. Historically, temperature sensors have had well-known applications in environmental and process control as well as in test and measurement and...

Energy efficiency moves up the industry's "to-do" list: much of the focus in cleaning up the environment has shifted from eliminating restricted substances to shrinking power consumption at all levels.(feature)
January 31, 2008... Environmental issues continue to highlight the agendas of design strategy meetings. But it's no longer just about "getting the lead out." Now the focus is on optimizing energy efficiency in new chip and system designs. Increasingly, the...

Online design boosts analog engineer productivity: why fuss around on your workbench? A little web surfing will provide all the tools you need to streamline your design.(technology report)
January 31, 2008... Just about every analog IC maker provides graphical circuit design and analysis tools. Most are Web-based. Some you download to your PC. Either way, companies put them there to harvest sales leads and gain customer loyalty as you generally have...

Software frameworks tackle load distribution: multiple-core designs can go in several directions when it comes to Distributing the load.(engineering essentials)
January 31, 2008... Networking and multicore chips inevitably create greater complexity, which requires solutions replete with sophisticated communication and thread management. Distributing the load is the desired result, allowing more hardware to be incorporated...

New synthetic instrumentation methods solve tough system-level test problems.(design view)
January 31, 2008... Today's electronic components and products are evolving faster than ever, with design-to-production life cycles shrinking to just six months in most commercial applications. In addition, device content and topologies are migrating from single...

Improve LFSR-based encryption with an extra layer of protection.(ideas for design)
January 31, 2008... Encryption coding schemes for asynchronous data used in message/speech communication systems typically employ an LFSR-based (linear feedback shift register) design. Such a design creates a single minimal polynomial pseudorandom bit sequence...

Unique touchscreen tech gets ready to enter portable markets.(in electronic design)
January 31, 2008... Enlisting semiconductor sultan AMI Semiconductor, Tyco Electronics' Acoustic Pulse Recognition (APR) touch technology may be appearing on a cell phone near you soon. AMI has agreed to develop a silicon solution that will allow the integration...

Weigh all the costs before choosing your circuit protection.(in electronic design)
January 31, 2008... Design engineers often give circuit protection only cursory attention. Fuses, diodes, and varistors are so well known that designers select them with little thought as to the nature of the overvoltage and overcurrent threats and the true value...

Snap-in PCB terminals hold still during assembly.(CONNECTORS)(printed-circuit board)(Brief article)
January 31, 2008... While requiring a low insertion force, these snap-in printed-circuit board (PCB) terminals maintain their position during assembly and soldering processes. Their split-barrel design accounts for the low insertion force. Also, their spring...

Active latches add versatility to modular connector systems.(CONNECTORS)
January 31, 2008... The Minitek CTW 2-mm active latch debuts as the first such connector to be intermateable with existing elements in a modular connector system. Also detailed as the lowest-profile active latch housing on the market, the component takes on harsh...

Two-in-one connector mates SIM and microSDTM.(CONNECTORS)
January 31, 2008... Groomed for smart phones and multifunction handy terminals, the ST5 combination connector sports a two-in-one design for interconnecting with a microSDTM card and a GSM11.11-compatible plug-in SIM card. The component is 2.8 mm tall and features...

Fiber-optic feedthroughs guarantee hermeticity.(CONNECTORS)
January 31, 2008... Withstanding rigid testing for hermeticity with certification available, this comprehensive range of fiber-optic feedthroughs includes standard connectors: FC for single-mode or graded-index fiber and SMA for large-core fiber from 140 to 1000...

Insulation-piercing wire clamp maximizes stability.(CONNECTORS)(Tektest Inc. E-Z-Hook Div.)(Brief article)
January 31, 2008... The XB dynamic insulation-piercing wire clamp relies on a thumbscrew that locks down a bed of nails while a V-Groove centers wire, providing positive contact and maximum stability. The component's interior brass housing holds approximately 34...

UL male tab fends off bad vibrations.(CONNECTORS)
January 31, 2008... Addressing vibration issues, this UL male tab accepts both standard quick connectors and its patented FlatSnap, a snap-in unisex connector that is highly resistant to vibration. The FlatSnap connector is easier to connect, requiring a push-pull...

Euro-style connectors add screw termination.(CONNECTORS)
January 31, 2008... The Series 768 M8 of Euro-style connectors now includes shielded connectors with screw termination, which provides reliably shielded connections in industrial Ethernet and Fieldbus networks. Shielding is a simple task via the use of an...

QFN socket supports 0.5-mm pitch chips.(CONNECTORS)(Ironwood Electronics Inc.)(quad flat no-lead)(Brief article)
January 31, 2008... Housing STATSChipPAC quad flat no-lead (QFN) packages without significant performance loss and with a minimal increase in a printed-circuit board footprint, the SG-MLF-7025 socket accommodates devices with a 0.5-mm pitch and a 10-mm package...

Molded rocker switches achieve TV rating.(SWITCHES)
January 31, 2008... Representing what may be an industry first, the JWL series of molded, power rocker switches sports a TV-8 rating on top of its CSA and VDE approvals. All versions in the series resist dust with an interior seal of polyphenylene sulfide (PPS)...

Mailbag.(pease porridge)(Letter to the editor)
January 31, 2008... DEAR EDITOR: At first I thought I picked up an April Fool issue, but no, you have Al Gore in the Tech Year in Review section honoring him for imploring engineers to turn green (Dec. 1, 2007, p. 45; ED Online 17958). What crap. Please...