Electronic Design articles from January 2009

Electronic Design archives from January 2009

What's happening@electronicdesign.com.
January 15, 2009... Our editorial staff continues its predictions for the year ahead with exclusive online reports spotlighting key vertical markets. Transportation Guidelines For Lithium Batteries Get Update Robin Sarah Tichy, Contributing Editor ...

Forecasting industry growth for 2009 and beyond.(EDITORIAL)
January 15, 2009... Welcome to our 2009 forecast issue. In deciding what to write for this issue, one presentation from last year stuck in my mind. During November's electronica show, National Semiconductor chairman and CEO Brian Halla outlined the products and...

Analog survival means learning to be adaptable.(ANALOG)
January 15, 2009... Adapt! That's always a good notion in a period of change. It becomes a matter of customer relations, long-term vision, product pull from deep in the future, and the ability to draw a roadmap from here to there. For example, traditional...

Analog chip makers venture into new technological waters.(ANALOG)
January 15, 2009... Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and other technologies may represent a paradigm shift as analog chip makers struggle with immediate and long-term challenges (see "Analog Survival Means Learning To Be Adaptable," p. 17). This is the way...

The comm market may be down, but it's not out.(COMMUNICATIONS)
January 15, 2009... First the bad news. 2009 is stacking up to be a poor year for the electronics industry, including the high-flying communications sector with its past exceptional wireless growth rates. Projections for all communications segments are down. ...

Broadband broadens to satiate consumer demand.(COMMUNICATIONS)
January 15, 2009... Wireless gets all the attention these days. Its continued development and widespread adoption across all areas make it the darling of the semiconductor and cell-phone industries. While that relationship will continue to flourish, some...

It's business as less-than-usual for wireless.(COMMUNICATIONS)
January 15, 2009... Lots of companies are looking for the killer app in the wireless world. But wireless is the killer app. Despite the bleak economy, wireless developments and adoptions will flow--though at a slower pace. CELL PHONES * The core trend of...

Components and their packages evolve to resolve market demands.(COMPONENTS)
January 15, 2009... Whether it's a connector, cable, display, indicator, or any type of sensor, it will undergo an evolutionary change in form and functions. They're becoming smaller and smarter, lower in cost, and more flexible to use, but they all have one...

Connector and cable makers can't stand pat.(COMPONENTS)
January 15, 2009... The connector market is huge, diversified, and convergent, from consumer to commercial through medical to military and aerospace, all with equally daunting and diverse opportunities for innovation and creativity. In fact, "all markets are ripe...

LCDs, LEDs, OLEDs, and EPDs light the way.(COMPONENTS)
January 15, 2009... Display technologies continue to march forward, with LCDs, LED displays, organic LEDs (OLEDs), and electrophoretic displays (EPDs) leading the charge. LEDs and OLEDs may even overtake LCDs for some applications, while EPDs carve out a niche in...

There's no stopping digital's progress.(DIGITAL)
January 15, 2009... One thing is for sure. Advances in the digital realm continue at a breakneck pace, even if various limits force the move to multicore and lower-power devices. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ASICs and high-performance processors are pushing 45...

ASICs stumble at 45 nm.(DIGITAL)
January 15, 2009... The steady progress of ASIC design in embracing each new semiconductor process node has stalled at 45 nm, and it may take some time to jump through that hoop. Growing design challenges, rising costs, and shrinking benefits face users of the...

The ASIC market faces a tough 2009.(DIGITAL)
January 15, 2009... According to iSuppli Corp., revenue from global shipments of core ICs--application-specific standard products (ASSPs), application-specific ICs (ASICs), and programmable logic devices (PLDs)--will see a weak finish to 2008 and decline in 2009....

The economy tanks while FPGAs grow.(DIGITAL)(field programmable gate array)
January 15, 2009... FPGA hardware technology will continue to improve across the spectrum this year. Actel's Igloo Nano FPGAs are available for under $0.50 (Fig. 1), while Achronix will be shipping 1.5-GHz Speedster (Fig. 2) parts. Altera, Lattice Semiconductor,...

Power-sipping micros, multicore monsters dot the landscape.(DIGITAL)
January 15, 2009... Anyone waiting for a consolidation to occur in the micro or DSP arenas should settle in for the long haul. The choices just keep growing, even as vendors attempt to use software and peripheral consistency to simplify what developers have to...

EDA retools to exploit multicore architectures.(EDA)
January 15, 2009... With no end in sight to the spiraling transistor counts in today's bleeding-edge systems-on-a-chip (SoCs), the runtimes for EDA tools are rising in corresponding fashion. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] If filling all of those gates isn't...

Design and verification move up in abstraction.(EDA)
January 15, 2009... Pressure is mounting on verification engineers to reduce the time and cost of ensuring that system designs are thoroughly debugged. The economy heading into 2009 demands that designers begin the verification process as early and at as high an...

A new design inflection point.(EDA)
January 15, 2009... The grim financial news out of the semiconductor industry in the latter half of 2008 did not help raise hopes that new, more efficient design methods will be high on the list of priorities in 2009. But I am cautiously optimistic that we are at...

Embedded system design looks strong in all corners for 2009.(EMBEDDED)
January 15, 2009... When it comes to embedded system design, the choices keep multiplying. Form factors never go away--they just continue to morph. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Take Acces I/O Product's USB-based modules (Fig. 1). These boards have a PC/104 form...

Embedded hardware percolates on all fronts.(EMBEDDED)
January 15, 2009... Getting to market quickly is a major determinant in the build-versus-buy choice. Thanks to a host of new processor options, the choice is clear: system creation through the use of boards and modules. Most existing modules and board standards...

Parallel processing zooms while debugging zags.(EMBEDDED)
January 15, 2009... Parallel processing is everywhere, with almost as many software choices as hardware. Symmetrical-multiprocessing (SMP) designs and clustering dominate large-core, multicore solutions on PCs and servers. Graphics processing units (GPUs) have...

Exciting new directions in power brighten economic gloom.(POWER)
January 15, 2009... It never ceases to amaze how much mind-bogglingly fascinating technology is associated with the supposedly staid discipline of power technology. Take gamma correction in TV receivers. The gist of it is simple. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ...

Ultra-portables bank on power-frugal components.(POWER)
January 15, 2009... A new breed of components is emerging, significantly reducing power and in turn paving the way for ultra-portable--and ultra-low-power--systems. Needless to say, manufacturers will now look at other products in this vein. Power consumption...

Fast isn't fast enough in the T&M Universe.(TEST & MEASUREMENT)
January 15, 2009... The test-and-measurement segment of the electronics industry is a curious animal, forced to be a leader and a follower at the same time. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] T&M providers must carefully follow trends in the market, delivering the...

Tough serial, wireless requirements propel test & measurement innovation.(TEST & MEASUREMENT)
January 15, 2009... Today's state-of-the-art serial communication links typically operate from 6 to 8 Gbits/s, with the highest data rates running to more than 10 Gbits/s in specialized backplanes. Such high-speed serial technologies bring an increasing level of...

What's all this raging canal stuff, anyhow?(PEASE PORRIDGE)(Column)
January 15, 2009... There's an old folk song that goes, "Well, she's gone, gone, gone, and she's gone, gone, gone. I lost my true love on the Raging Canal." Back in the 1840s, a bunch of local Connecticut businessmen decided, after seeing how well the 1825 Erie...

Design solution.(Brief article)
January 29, 2009... Randall Restle, Newark Behind The Bright Lights, LED Drivers Evolve To Meet New Requirements High-brightness LEDs can generate usable levels of light with improved efficiency, longer lifetimes, and smaller dimensions than conventional...

Analog/mixed-signal design.
January 29, 2009... Dave Van Ess, Cypress Semiconductor Use Software Filters To Reduce ADC Noise Let's say you chose a particular micro-controller for its 12-bit ADC. You built up your system, and although the ADC gives you 12 bits of resolution, the...

Test & measurement techview.
January 29, 2009... David Maliniak, EDA/Test Editor High-Resolution LXI Digitizers Eliminate Need For Add-On Front Ends The Agilent Technologies L4532 two-channel and L4534A four-channel digitiz-ers sport LXI connectivity, sampling up to 20 Msamples/s, as...

Lab bench online.(Vudu)(Brief article)
January 29, 2009... Bill Wong, Embedded/Systems/Software Editor Vudu: Movies On Demand When was the last time you went to the local video store to rent a movie? Or even bothered with rentals by mail? Movies now come right to your set-top box. Bill takes a...

Industry view.(Brief article)
January 29, 2009... Bertan Tezcan, IDT Use DisplayPort In Your Next TV Application DisplayPort, a new interface standard from the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA), simplifies display design and its associated connections. It also supports...

New products showcase.
January 29, 2009... Deborah Word, director of sales at Epson Toyocom, discusses the company's QMEMS process and TG502BA TXCO. Then, editor-in-chief Joe Desposito tests his swing as he tries out a golf putter that uses one of the company's gyro sensors. To see the...

Engineering TV.(Infinite Power Solutions' Thinergy micro-energy cells)(Brief article)
January 29, 2009... Thinergy Micro-Energy Cells Energy harvesting represents a new frontier in power design. But once you generate that energy, where do you store it? Thinergy micro-energy cells from Infinite Power Solutions are ultra-thin, solid-state,...

Though attendance was down, 2009 International CES still shines.(Editorial)
January 29, 2009... Early reports from the 2009 International CES this month in Las Vegas placed the number of attendees at more than 110,000, down from last year's 141,150 total. But I didn't notice that much of a difference. I was solidly booked with...

Make security your new year's resolution for 2009.(LabBench)
January 29, 2009... The number of networked devices at this year's International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was mind-boggling. No area was spared. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Automotive wireless connectivity ranged from the delivery of real-time traffic...

Using delta-sigma can be as easy as ADC (Part 4).(Analog/MixedSignal)(analog-to-digital converter)
January 29, 2009... Based on the amount of e-mail I received after Part 3 of this series (Nov. 7, 2008, p. 18; www.electronicdesign.com, ED Online 19948), many of you have already guessed that an incremental integrator is really just a delta-sigma modulator (DSM)....

Chip drives liquid lenses to stretch battery life in cell-phone cams.(Techview)
January 29, 2009... Maxim Integrated Products has teamed up with Varioptic to pioneer a complete package for digital still and video camera and cell-phone makers that want to replace power-hungry, noisy hard lenses with liquid lenses. The problem with hard lenses?...

Online poll.(Techview)
January 29, 2009... President Obama has announced plans to hire the nation's first chief technology officer. Is this a good idea? Yes. R&D, education, and the infrastructure all would benefit. 43% Maybe. It depends on the quality of the candidate. ...

Sensor provides real 3D positioning.(Techview)
January 29, 2009... The Analog Devices Sharc gets a workout inside Sixense Entertainment's 3D sensor system, which will be at the heart of a new class of game controllers. Nintendo's Wii popularized 3D wireless controllers, but its accelerometers only provide...

Automatic digital antenna tuning fits multiple wireless applications.(Techview)
January 29, 2009... Peregrine Semiconductor's DuNE technology solves one of the orneriest problems in RF design--antenna impedance matching. In every wireless application, an antenna has to be connected to the radio. That invariably means the imposition of some...

Regulatory compliance means going the extra green mile: as the weeks and months (and laws) pass, creating environmentally friendly products gets more difficult as designers try to hit the moving targets of local, federal, and international regulations.(Cover Feature)(Cover story)
January 29, 2009... Just when you thought you were beginning to understand Europe's environmental regulations, the European Union turns the tables and will change them again. In the process, these requirements will become much more complicated, more costly,...

Take the FPGA plunge: while FPGA features continue to improve, advances in design tools help to expand the audience.(Technology Report)
January 29, 2009... FPGAs are expensive... and hard to use... and too slow... and difficult to program... and hard to debug... and they draw too much power... and require register-transfer-level (RTL) wizards. That's the conventional developer widsom, at...

Use algorithmic synthesis to solve your FPGA prototyping and design issues.(Technology Report)
January 29, 2009... Algorithmic synthesis--the efficient implementation of algorithms in silicon--offers compelling value to both system-on-achip (SoC) and FPGA design teams. However, there are subtle but important differences in the teams' requirements when using...

FPGA modules.(Technology Report)
January 29, 2009... FPGAs aren't that difficult to incorporate into embedded designs. But unlike some microcontrollers, they often lack features like built-in clocks and brownout detection. Also, some designs require off-chip memory. One alternative is to employ...

FPGA technology advances.(Technology Report)
January 29, 2009... With Altera and Xilinx FPGAs moving to 40 nm, that means more lookup tables (LUTs), higher performance, and lower power requirements/LUT. They target the high-performance FPGA market with high-speed serializer-deserializer (SERDES) support....

Conforming with worldwide safety and EMC/EMI standards: planning to sell your mains-powered product around the world? Then saddle up, because it takes more than approved components and a checklist to get those all-important marks.(Engineering Essentials)
January 29, 2009... Many designers think meeting the worldwide safety standards for power supplies in mains-powered products involves following a simple checklist to ensure their designs don't run into distribution problems in some countries due to a lack of...

Trailblazing SuperSpeed USB design and verification: moving up to the upcoming USB 3.0 specification means addressing design challenges at both the physical and protocol layers. Learn how to anticipate some of those challenges and what kinds of test equipment you'll need to overcome them.(DesignSolution)
January 29, 2009... The eagerly awaited revision 3.0 of the Universal Serial Bus (USB) specification offers 10 times the speed of USB 2.0 even as it maintains backward compatibility with USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 devices. Early adopters ramping up their USB 3.0 (known...

An easy way to roll your own programmable power supply.(Ideas For Design)
January 29, 2009... Adjusting the output voltage of a power supply is a feature typically reserved for highly integrated handheld power-management units (PMUs) with multiple integrated power supplies. You can implement this feature, however, with any power supply...

Proximity-sensing intercom uses standard programmable SoC.(Ideas For Design)
January 29, 2009... Designers can use specialized ICs as a simple way to add touch-sensing capabilities to a circuit. For instance, the Cypress CapSense devices can handle several touch buttons and a touch slider. In some designs, however, one button might...

BSI technology takes a major leap forward.(ElectronicDesignProducts)
January 29, 2009... Since their efforts were first reported in June 2008, CMOS image sensor specialists at OmniVision have been very busy perfecting their backside illumination technology (see "BSI Technology Flips Digital Imaging Upside Down" at...

Demand more from your switch suppliers and reap savings.(ElectronicDesignProducts)
January 29, 2009... Is your company looking to shorten design cycles and bring products to market faster? Are you looking to reduce supply chains and the number of suppliers you deal with? Have you considered offloading portions of your product design, freeing up...

Flexible cable outfits disposable hearing aids.(INTERCONNECTS)(Brief article)
January 29, 2009... Cicoil's highly flexible flat cable is a component in the Song-bird, which the company calls the world's first disposable hearing aid. The miniature flat cable runs from the behind-the-ear body to the micro-speaker earpiece, which is...

19-way connector includes secondary locking mechanism.(INTERCONNECTS)
January 29, 2009... The APD 19-way circular connector targets volume products requiring a technically robust component and can withstand harsh and wet-area environments. Its unique secondary locking mechanism, which is based on patent-pending technology, requires...

SMT strip sockets and pin headers make secure connections.(INTERCONNECTS)(Brief article)
January 29, 2009... For creating a reliable surface-mount interconnect between two printed-circuit boards (PCBs), Mill-Max Manufacturing's latest strip sockets and pin headers feature a round stub-tail termination. The 0.008-in. floating-pin design compensates for...

Bus-bar power system reduces assembly time, boosts performance.(INTERCONNECTS)
January 29, 2009... Designed for power distribution in telecom basestations, computer servers, storage systems, industrial equipment, and military applications, the Crown Line bus bar system features a unique fingerproof construction to reduce assembly time,...

42-piece adapter kit speeds on-site antenna installations.(INTERCONNECTS)
January 29, 2009... The ADPT4RP adapter kit contains the parts most often required in onsite antenna installations. The 42-piece kit's 50-[ohm] coaxial connectors and universal adapters facilitate custom and temporary fixes for virtually any antenna application....

High-power connectors outfit electric and hybrid vehicles.(INTERCONNECTS)
January 29, 2009... Groomed to meet the demands of electric vehicle (EV) and hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) OEMs, the RCS and APEX high-power connector families pack features that reflect the unique challenges presented by EV and HEV applications. The Apex 950...

Light-guided system assembles aerospace connectors.(INTERCONNECTS)
January 29, 2009... For assembling circular connectors common to aerospace and other high-reliability applications, the Light Director system exploits light fibers driven by super-bright LED lamps to individually illuminate target cavities in the connector. Users...

1.124-in. connectors house 19 pins.(INTERCONNECTS)
January 29, 2009... A 19-pin connector expands Turck's line of 1.125-in. minifast connector lines to handle even more applications. It handles up to 300 V at 4 A and is a more robust, cost-effective alternative to traditional 19-pin M23 connectors, according to...

UV non-solarizing optical fibers live long.(INTERCONNECTS)
January 29, 2009... Billed as the first UV non-solarizing optical fiber by Ceramoptec Industries, Optran UVNS silica/silica fiber boasts long-term performance with 40,000 continuous, unfiltered hours of reliable transmission at 95% of the original output. The...

Popular cable family adds smaller members.(INTERCONNECTS)(Brief article)
January 29, 2009... Extending the Xtra-Guard family of cables are 26 AWG and 28 AWG stranded conductors. The small-gauge cables are available with a variety of conductors and twisted pairs. Shielding options include unshielded, foil, and Supra-Shield foil/braid,...

Wiring system handles up to 18 A.(INTERCONNECTS)(Brief article)
January 29, 2009... The M16 powerfast wiring system for machine power distribution and motor control promises to be a time- and cost-saving replacement for traditional hardwiring installations and complies with NFPA 79. The system's two-, three-, and four-pin...

10-GHz sockets house 0.5-mm pitch BGAS.(INTERCONNECTS)(Brief article)
January 29, 2009... Embarking as a high-performance quad flat no-lead (QFN) socket for 0.5-mm pitch, 256-pin ball-grid array (BGA) ICs, the SG-BGA-7121 and SG-BGA-7122 sockets accommodate an 8- by 8-mm package size and operate at bandwidths up to 10 GHz with less...

Terminal blocks increase options and space.(INTERCONNECTS)(Brief article)
January 29, 2009... Phoenix Contact's line of screw-connection terminal blocks now includes knife-disconnect, component, and feed-through terminal blocks that offer 2.5- by 2.5-mm cross sections. The UT 2.5-MT, -TG, and -MTD terminal blocks promise to save space...

Power-entry modules now offer vertical flange mounting.(INTERCONNECTS)(Brief article)
January 29, 2009... The Corcom P series power-entry module line now includes vertical-flange mount modules with current ratings of 6 and 10 A. The vertical-mount configuration reduces panel area requirements and gives designers greater packaging flexibility in a...

I/O links race at 10 Gbits/s per channel.(INTERCONNECTS)(Brief article)
January 29, 2009... The DensiShield copper I/O links achieve 10-Gbit/s per channel differential performance using common wire gauges in cable lengths up to 10 m. A full DensiShield system provides four-channel capability, delivering an aggregate bandwidth of 40...

Popular backplane line adds 85-[ohm] connectors.(ENCLOSURES & BACKPLANES)
January 29, 2009... Especially designed for the PCI Express Generation 2 standard and other applications where matching the connector to an 85-[ohm] system impedance is necessary, an 85-[ohm] connector suite expands the Z-PACK TinMan backplane product portfolio....

Open-access chassis supports 3U backplanes.(ENCLOSURES & BACKPLANES)
January 29, 2009... Debuting as a 3U version of Elma Electronic's E-frame chassis line, the portable E-frame, formerly available in heights for 6U backplanes, now accommodates 3U heights. The unit doesn't have side or back walls around the card cage area,...

Mailbox.(PeasePorridge)(Letter to the editor)
January 29, 2009... HELLO TO MR. BOB PEASE! In the datasheet for the LM135/LM235/LM335, there is no mention of capacitive bypass (minimum acceptable, maximum acceptable). This publication also did not say anything:...