Electronic Design articles from July 2004

Electronic Design archives from July 2004

Breathalyzer uncovers diabetes.(Electronics Technology At Work And At Play)(Brief Article)
July 5, 2004... About 17 million Americans have diabetes, but nearly 6 million of them don't know it. Testing for it can be tricky, too. Urine sugar tests and blood tests after fasting are low in sensitivity and may be inaccurate. The glucose tolerance test...

Runners stay on pace with GPS system.(Electronics Technology At Work And At Play)(Brief Article)
July 5, 2004... Running enters the 21st century with Garmin's Forerunner 201. Using GPS technology, it accurately measures the distance the runner travels and maps out the route on its screen. It additionally provides precise latitude, longitude, and altitude...

Army's laser passes live rocket test.(Electronics Technology At Work And At Play)(Brief Article)
July 5, 2004... The missile was launched. The warhead was live. The threat was greater than any other the team had ever faced. But the MTHEL's laser successfully shot the missile down--and we're not talking about the climax of the latest big-budget sci-fi...

The global resource for electronics engineers.(PlanetEE.com)(Brief Article)
July 5, 2004... Aimed at electronics engineers and engineering managers worldwide, PlanetEE serves as a gateway to the individual Web sites of the highly respected engineering publications and specifier's tools of Penton Media's Electronics Group.

New: find the latest on power products.(PlanetEE.com)(Brief Article)
July 5, 2004... Need a quick way to gather data on the latest power-related products and services from the world's leading vendors? Want to loam more about the latest introductions in power sources, power passives, power semiconductors, and power products for...

Magazines.(PlanetEE.com)
July 5, 2004... Access the Web sites of four leading publications in the EOEM community: Electronic Design EE Product News Microwaves & RF Wireless Systems Design

E-newsletters.(PlanetEE.com)
July 5, 2004... Sign up for some the industry's best e-newsletters focusing on EE design news, products, tips, and strategies: Electronic Design UPDATE EEPN Products of the Week EDA Alert Wireless Systems Design UPDATE Microwaves & RF...

Moore's law on track at DAC, but taking some new turns.(Editorial)(Editorial)
July 5, 2004... Last month's Design Automation Conference in San Diego was a great place to tap into the energy and enthusiasm that is revitalizing the world of semiconductor design. Based on the signs, the next couple of years will be very fertile in terms of...

What's all this floobydust stuff, anyhow? (Part 13).(Pease Porridge)
July 5, 2004... When I go on a plane trip, I carry a mid-size, self-addressed, padded envelope in my briefcase-about 7 by 9 in.-along with five 37-cent stamps and some suitable stickers or tape for sealing it up. Why? Because I might forget to put my...

Low-speed serial I/O thrives amid high-speed hype.(POV: Point Of View)
July 5, 2004... Neglected amid the volume of recent press on high-speed serial interfaces, where the cutting edge is now exceeding 10 Gbits/s, has been the quiet adoption of lower-speed serial interfaces in a variety of equipment types. So why all the noise...

MEMS memory targets high-speed flash applications.(Embedded)(Cavendish Kinetics)(Brief Article)
July 5, 2004... Flash and EEPROM are getting more competition. The Nanomech nonvolatile memory technology by Cavendish Kinetics uses a moveable microencapsulated cantilever system to store information. Each submicron cantilever stores one bit. Only 25...

Hefty increases in purchases for top 10 semi buyers.(Market Report)(Brief Article)
July 5, 2004... INCREASED SALES OF PCs TO BUSINESSES and consumers helped Hewlett-Packard and Dell hold on to their number one and two positions as the leading OEM purchasers of semiconductors last year. HP spent $11.0 billion on semiconductors in 2003 and...

Lamp half-bridge driver chips boost efficiency, need fewer parts.(Analog & Power)
July 5, 2004... A Pair of half-bridge driver ICs raises efficiency and slashes parts count in controllers for compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) and low-voltage halogen lamps. These chips from International Rectifier are based on the company's proprietary...

8-bit ADC chip runs at 250 Msamples/s, cuts DNL to [+ or -] 0.25 LSB.(Analog & Power)(Brief Article)
July 5, 2004... In test instruments like digital oscilloscopes and network analyzers, analog-to-digital converter (ADCI differential nonlinearity (DNL) is critical to providing accurate displays of small input signals. Analog Devices' AD9480 8-bit ADC runs at...

LEDs, flash-lamp chips vie for cell-cam design-ins.(Analog & Power)(Brief Article)
July 5, 2004... NEXT-GENERATION CELL PHONES WILL USE XENON FLASH lamps or super-bright LEDs for the flash function in integrated cameras. For xenon lamps, with an external 5.8- by 5.8- by 3-mm transformer, Linear Technology's photoflash-capacitor charger...

Single-chip analog front end launches ADSL2+ modems.(Communications)
July 5, 2004... With the global boom in DSL broadband services, highlighted by a 41% spike in the U.S. alone last year. carriers are looking to boost DSL speeds to compete with cable companies. Current ADSL rates top out at about 1.5 Mbits/s, suiting them for...

Fast, high-resolution ADCs attuned to software-defined radios.(Communications)(Brief Article)
July 5, 2004... More basestation manufacturers are moving to software-defined radios (SDRs), which permit multiple bands and standards to be handled with fewer transceivers. SDR receivers use digital signal processing to sort out the signals and perform the...

Surface-mount RF capacitors squeeze into 0201 footprint.(Components & Test)(Brief Article)
July 5, 2004... Silicon-based RF capacitors in a 0201 footprint give designers another weapon in the effort to create smaller more powerful wireless communications products. Developed by Vishay Intertechnology, the HPCO201A caps measure 0.024 by 0.012 by just...

Green flip-chip SOIC package qualified for production use.(Components & Test)(Brief Article)
July 5, 2004... High-reliability packages, always in demand within the automotive, medical, and RF fields, are now going green. A fully qualified flip-chip small-outline IC (FC-SOIC) narrow body package developed by Advanced Interconnect Technologies (AIT)...

Novel architecture extends scope probe measurements to 8 GHz.(Components & Test)(Brief Article)
July 5, 2004... Thanks to an innovative Z-active architecture, the P7380 active differential probe measures signals up to an 8-GHz bandwidth, featuring high-end signal fidelity with a fast guaranteed 55-ps rise time (35 ps typical) and low circuit loading....

Can a scope probe ever show what was truly there?(ahead Of The Curve)(Advertisement)
July 5, 2004... There's a bit of a philosophical debate surrounding how oscilloscopes and probes make measurements, especially at today's high frequencies. What should a scope/probing system try to show: "What was," in other words, the signal that was present...

Strained silicon-on-insulator combats leakage to boost circuit performance.(Digital)
July 5, 2004... As companies struggle to push strained silicon technology into the mainstream at the 90-nm process node for greater digital-circuit performance, new variations lurk at 65 nm and below. At these advanced process nodes, performance and...

Power-aware DSPs, development tools bolster portable-system efficiency.(Digital)
July 5, 2004... Portable-system power consumption, a persistently prickly issue, should get some much-needed help from a trio of power-savvy DSP chips and several power-management design tools. These DSPs include the TMS320C-5503, 5507, and 5509A. Each...

Testbench technology shores up simulator's verification capabilities.(EDA)(Brief Article)
July 5, 2004... The latest VCS simulator release from Synopsys brings the tool deeper into the verification world. A cornerstone of the company's Discovery verification platform, VCS 7.1 is enhanced with support for the same constraint-solver engines found in...

Tool optimizes FPGA/CPLD pin assignments.(EDA)(Product Acceleration Inc)(Brief Article)
July 5, 2004... With FPGA pin counts rising to 2000, end projections seeing that number balloon to over 3000 by 2007, a crisis of complexity Is rising In pc-board routing. Routing pinouts for such complex devices has forced board-layer counts to 50 and higher....

Superthreaded route acceleration.(Breaking News)(Brief Article)
July 5, 2004... * SUPERTHREADED ROUTE ACCELERATION, now offered in Cadence's NanoRoute router, provides a tenfold productivity gain while maintainingtiming and signal-integrity results. Superthreading combines the advantages of multithreaded routing with the...

In an OEM agreement.(Breaking News)(Brief Article)
July 5, 2004... * IN AN OEM AGREEMENT, NEC Electronics will bundle and distribute a license for Synplicity's Amplify ISSP Physical Optimizer tool within NEC's Open CAD design environment. This environment is used to develop NEC's Instant Silicon Solution...

Choosing the right linear regulator for your application.(Design / idea)(Advertisement)
July 5, 2004... Linear regulators are often used as a band-aid by design engineers and are often chosen in later stages of the product development. The design engineer is concentrating more on how to make the complex BB or RF ASIC work, rather than the...

Versatile synchronous buck controllers for low output voltage FPGAs, ASICs, and point-of-load applications.(Featured products)(Advertisement)
July 5, 2004... The LM2742/43 are synchronous switching regulator controllers that provide 1A to 25A of output current with up to 95% conversion efficiencies. A fixed-frequency voltage-mode PWM control architecture is used, that is adjustable from 50 kHz to 2...

100V push-pull voltage-mode PWM controller for high-voltage power converters.(Featured products)(Advertisement)
July 5, 2004... The LM5033 high-voltage PWM controller contains all the features needed to implement Push-Pull, Half-Bridge, and Full-Bridge topologies. Applications include closed-loop voltage mode converters with a highly regulated output voltage, or an open...

Compiler leverages automation power of CPU core: the XPRES compiler automates architectural exploration and acceleration directly from C/C++ source code--without altering the source.(Leapfrog: industry first: an Electronic Design exclusive)(Product/Service Evaluation)
July 5, 2004... If you're already on the configurable processor bandwagon, you know all about the beauty of having programmability after silicon implementation, the benefits of fixing bugs in software, and the freedom of implementing changing standards...

Contending with new standards.(Special Editorial Feature)
July 5, 2004... Serial interconnects will wreak havoc on bus-oriented architectures like PC/104. This will eventually lead to new form factors like the PICMG (PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group) Advanced Mezzanine Card (AMC) standard. AMC is a...

EPIC SBC saves power.(SBC News)(Brief Article)
July 5, 2004... Versalogic tapped Intel's ultra-low-voltage Celeron processor for its first EPIC (Embedded Platform for Industrial Computing) single-board computer (SBC). The VL-EPIC-1b features a 400-MHz Celeron plus a pair of serial ports, two USB ports,...

Crusoe shows up in PC/104-plus SBC.(SBC News)(Brief Article)
July 5, 2004... An 800-MHz Transmeta Crusoe TM5500 processor powers Kontron's new MOPSIcd PC/104-Plus single-board computer (SBC), consuming as little as 20 mW in deep-sleep mode. The SBC has a 10/100BaseT Ethernet interface, dual serial and USB ports, a...

CompactPCI SBC features low-power Celeron M.(SBC News)(Brief Article)
July 5, 2004... Entry-level applications can get processing power at a low price with the ICP-CM single-board computer (SBC). Inova Computers' board comes with a 600-MHz or 1.3-GHz processor and up to 1 Gbyte of SDRAM. This SBC includes a pair of Fast Ethernet...

CR3: 3U CompactPCI SBC.(Single-Board Computer Series)
July 5, 2004... SBS Technologies Inc. www.sbs.com Price: $5250 Processor: 650-Hz ULV Celeron Memory: 128 Mbytes Flash: 512 kbytes Cooling: conduction Temperature: -40[degrees]C to 85[degrees]C Video: none Peripherals:...

VP 307/01x: 6U VME SBC.(Single-Board Computer Series)
July 5, 2004... Concurrent Technologies www.gocct.com Price: $3550 Processor: 1.8-GHz Pentium M Memory: 1.5-Gbyte ECC SDRAM Flash: 32 Mbytes Cooling: conduction Temperature: 0[degrees]C to 55[degrees]C Video: front panel...

PmPPC7447: PMC SBC.(Single-Board Computer Series)
July 5, 2004... Artesyn Technologies www.artesyn.com Price: under $1000 Processor: 1-GHz PowerPC MPC7447A Memory: 2-Gbyte SDRAM Flash: 64 Mbytes Cooling: conduction Temperature: 0[degrees]C to 50[degrees]C Video: none ...

A8540-PMC: PMC SBC.(Single-Board Computer Series)
July 5, 2004... Artis Microsystems artismicro.com Price: $2450 Processor: 666-MHz MPC8540 PowerPC Memory: 256-Mbyte DDR SDRAM Flash: 8 Mbytes Cooling: conduction Temperature: -40[degrees]C to 85[degrees]C Peripherals:...

eTX-Lx15: ETX SBC.(Single-Board Computer Series)
July 5, 2004... Diversified Technology Inc. www.dtims.com Price: $945 Processor: 1.6-GHz Pentium M Flash: CompactFlash slot DiskOnChip socket Cooling: conduction Temperature: -40[degrees]C to 85[degrees]C Video: Extreme Graphics...

SBC2596: EBX SBC.(Single-Board Computer Series)
July 5, 2004... Micro/sys www.embeddedsys.com Price: $925 Processor: 266-MHz Pentium III Memory: 128-Mbyte SDRAM Flash: 1 Mbyte, CompactFlash Cooling: conduction Temperature: -40[degrees]C to 85[degrees]C Video: none ...

picoFlash: Credit Card SBC.(Single-Board Computer Series)
July 5, 2004... JK Microsystems www.jkmicro.com Price: $98 Processor: 40-MH7 RDC R8822 Memory: 512-kbyte DRAM Flash: 512-kbyte flash, DiskOnChip socket Cooling: conduction Temperature: 0[degrees]C to 55[degrees]C Video:...

CPCI-690+: CompactPCI SBC.(Single-Board Computer Series)
July 5, 2004... Force Computers www.forcecomputers.com Price: $3400 Processor: 1-GHz 750GX PowerPC Memory: 2-Gbyte SDRAM Flash: 64 Mbytes Cooling: conduction Temperature: 0[degrees]C to 55[degrees]C Video: none ...

Linux on a stick.(News)
July 5, 2004... Measuring a mere 20 by 80 by 8 mm, the gumstix 400x single-beard computer is powered by a 400-MHz PXA2S5 XScale processor. It comes complete with 64 Mbytes of SDRAM and 4 Mbytes of flash memory. The 400x consumes less than 250 mA, suiting it...

Take a stab at full-scale simulation.(News)
July 5, 2004... Simics 2.0 from VirtuTech is ambitious in implementation and scope. It can simulate one beard or a complete network with multiprocessor systems. The simulated systems actually run production code. For example, a simulated, multiprocessor Sparc...

Pentium 4 ATX motherboard links legacy systems to ISA.(News)
July 5, 2004... Following the leading edge of technology can be tough for embedded designers with a vested interest in custom ISA adapters. Win Enterprises' WINIP-06046 attempts to fill the gap with a socket for the latest Pentium 4 processor. The motherboard...

8-bit MCU with dual ADCs comes in under two dollars.(News)(Brief Article)
July 5, 2004... Small, low-cost, 8-bit microcontrollers with analog support are ideal for white-goods, mobile, and security applications. Philips Semiconductors' 12-MHz, two-clock, 8051-based LPC935 houses a pair of analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) in...

The future of sensors: besides greater penetration in the automotive, medical, and industrial arenas, sensor manufacturers also anticipate a multitude of applications in wireless communications and consumer electronics.(Technology Report)(Cover Story)
July 5, 2004... Sensors have made serious inroads into automotive, medical, industrial, and aerospace applications. But you ain't seen nothin' yet. Rising concerns for safety, convenience, entertainment, and efficiency factors, coupled with worldwide...

Taking a peek under the hood of your spice circuit-simulation engine.(Design View EDA)
July 5, 2004... In today's quest for simplicity in "ready-to-use" EDA tools, understanding what's under the hood of a Spice circuit-simulation engine can be helpful, particularly for designs that challenge the conventional limits of Spice. Analog-centric...

Fast-charge controller handles 22-cell NiCd/NiMH battery.(Design briefs: innovative designs from readers)
July 5, 2004... Because 22-cell nickel-cadmium/nickel-metal-hydride (NiCd/NiMH) batteries are ubiquitous, the need for a compatible battery charger that is inexpensive and simple to use and takes up little space is also common. You can implement such a charger...

Simple circuit controls pulse transition rates.(Design briefs: innovative designs from readers)
July 5, 2004... Some applications require that pulse transition rates be controlled to minimize distortion and crosstalk in subsequent systems. The choice of active filtering generally results in elaborate and expensive designs, especially because good...

Component specifier: the latest notable components at a glance.(New Products)(Buyers Guide)
July 5, 2004... CONTROL DEVICES ED Online 8272 TYPE/Model Features PWM CONTROLLERS Pin-compatible with the UC2842/0002842 and MAX5070A/MAX5070B UC2844/UCC2844 families; single-ended, current- ...

Carrier board/wireless tablet card improve time-to-market.(Packaging & Materials)
July 5, 2004... * "System-on-a-module" is the novel approach taken by the Plug-N-Run G3 carrier board and TabletCARD. The combo makes a suitable platform for tablet-computing products based on Intel's Pentium M processors for 802.11, Bluetooth, and GPS...

Ultra-thin lightweight touch panels aim at mobile products.(Packaging & Materials)
July 5, 2004... * Mobile LCD devices such as cameras, cell phones, PDAs, industrial equipment, and medical devices can now take advantage of the Film-Film (FF) and Film-Film-Plastic (FFP) touch panels. They measure 0.65 and 23.0 mm thick, respectively, in...

Encapsulant series molds to different IC package needs.(Packaging & Materials)
July 5, 2004... * The CN-1432 high-purity and high-reliability adhesive and underfill encapsulants satisfy the needs of various IC packages, such as flip-chip, chip-on-board (COB), chip-on-film (COF). ball-grid-array (BGA), and tape-carrier packages (TCPs)....

Soft ferrite materials made for 1-MHz transformers, converters.(Packaging & Materials)
July 5, 2004... * The P51 manganese-zinc soft ferrite materials meet the demands of dc-dc converters and transformers. Rated for operation from 400 kHz to 1 MHz, they offer a 50% reduction in core losses at elevated temperatures and a 20% increase in...

Ganged multiport cages deliver high packaging densities.(Packaging & Materials)
July 5, 2004... * Ganged cages can help free up board space, which in turn enables higher packaging densities. Such is the case with the Molex SFP multiport ganged cages that come in four press-fit versions of 1 by 2, 1 by 4, 1 by 5, and 1 by 6. The rugged...

Molded light guides feature logo backgrounds.(Packaging & Materials)
July 5, 2004... * The MicroLlight with embedded logo graphics provides a backlight that saves OEMs the extra step of adding an overlay and adhesive to illuminate their logo on products. Used to backlight everything from 3G cell-phone LCDs to mid-size and...

Fan tray assemblies support up to nine fans.(Packaging & Materials)
July 5, 2004... * Three new fan tray assemblies can handle three, six, and nine fans per tray, putting out a total of more than 100 CFM of cooling per fan. Each assembly has a standard EIA size of 19.00 in by 1U (1.75 in.) notch for panel mounting, with depths...

LCX, VCX logic chips housed in tiny DQFN packages.(Digital ICs & DSPs)
July 5, 2004... * Several 4-, 6-, and 8-bit LCX and vex series low-voltage logic functions can now be had in DQFN (depopulated very thin quad flat-pack no-leads) packages. The industry's smallest package for quad, hex, and octal logic functions, the DQFN saves...

Ferroelectric RAM packs 256 kbits in eight-lead SOIC package.(Digital ICs & DSPs)
July 5, 2004... * Designed for a serial-peripheral-interface (SPI) memory, the FM25L256 256-kbit nonvolatile ferroelectric RAM delivers bus-speed 25-MHz writes and unlimited read/write cycles, yet it provides nonvolatile storage. The FM25L256 offers designers...

128-Mbit flash memory pushes data transfers to 108 MHz.(Digital ICs & DSPs)
July 5, 2004... * As cell phones and other portable systems deal with larger files that hold images and other graphic content, faster data-transfer times are needed for the nonvolatile storage devices. The LH28F128BN is a 1.8-V, 128-Mbit flash storage device...

Programmable clock chips allow in-system configuration.(Digital ICs & DSPs)
July 5, 2004... * The VersaTime clock family offers a complete portfolio of programmable skew and zero-delay buffers with nonvolatile programming capability, enabling customers to consolidate multiple dedicated fixed-function clocks into one clock chip. The...

PCI-Express PHYs drive data whether it's 1 or 32 lanes.(Digital ICs & DSPs)
July 5, 2004... * Area- and power-efficient design is the strength behind a new family of PCI-Express physical layers (PHYs). The PHYs come in all lane configurations, including x1, x2, x4, x8, x12, x16, and x32, suiting implementation on TSMC's 130-nm...

DDR DRAM modules deliver data at 200, 266, or 333 Mbits/s.(Digital ICs & DSPs)
July 5, 2004... * Based on the 200-pin JEDEC SO-DIMM standard, the W3EG7266S-D4 512-Mbyte memory module delivers double-data-rate (DDR) throughput at 100, 133, or 166 MHz (200, 266, and 333 Mbits/s). Using 512-Mbit DDR DRAMs, the unbuffered module offers...

16-bit ADC muxes up to 16 channels in less than one conversion period.(Analog & Power)
July 5, 2004... * A 16-bit delta-sigma analog-to-digital converter (ADC) easily multiplexes eight differential or 16 single-ended channels thanks to a settling time that's shorter than the time for a single conversion. The LTC2439-1 joins the same-pinout...

One-chip video-signal conditioner handle cable/camera variations.(Analog & Power)
July 5, 2004... * For those security and process-control systems that employ multiple TV cameras, the MAX754x video-signal conditioners will find themselves between the video source and a switcher. They restore the dc level of ac-coupled video inputs, correct...

Single chip plays dual role in mobile-device cameras.(Analog & Power)
July 5, 2004... * A novel power- and lighting-management IC addresses all lighting functions for cellular phones, PDAs, and digital cameras. The chip also takes on display and sensor bias-supply applications. One 95% efficient charge pump delivers up to 600 mA...

Power MOSFET/PWM controller addresses global energy standards.(Analog & Power)
July 5, 2004... * Designers can meet and even exceed stand-by-power specifications of the U.S. Energy Star standard and the German Blue Angel Eco Norm thanks to a power MOSFET/pulse-width modulation (PWM) controller combo. (In a typical 30-W DVD recorder, the...

Charge-pump controller squeezes dual LCD/CCD bias supplies.(Analog & Power)
July 5, 2004... * Designers facing space constraints in flat-panel LCD, organic-LED (OLED), and CCD image-sensor applications have a new weapon. The AAT3190 charge-pump controller converts supply voltages ranging from 2.7 to 5.0 V into independently regulated...

Students construct affordable landmine detector.(Electronics Technology At Work And At Play)(Brief Article)
July 19, 2004... More than 100 million land mines are deployed throughout 70 countries around the world, some dating back to World War II. According to the United Nations. these devices kill or maim more than 2000 people each month. In reaction to those...

ORNL tabbed for fastest supercomputer Project.(Electronics Technology At Work And At Play)(Brief Article)
July 19, 2004... The Department of Energy granted $25 million to Oak Ridge National Laboratory to spearhead a partnership that will build the world's most powerful supercomputer. The plan will pool the partnership's resources for a sustained capacity of 50...

PlanetEE.com.(Electronics Technology At Work And At Play)(Brief Article)
July 19, 2004... THE GLOBAL RESOURCE FOR ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS Aimed at electronics engineers and engineering managers worldwide, PlanetEE serves as a gateway to the individual Web sites of the highly respected engineering publications and specifier's tools...

Electronics on vacation-you may win a prize!(Editorial)(Editorial)
July 19, 2004... Now that summer's here, it's time to plan your vacation. But what kinds of gadgets are you going to bring with you? A recent issue of a popular men's magazine made some recommendations. Of course, music players topped the magazine's must-take...

Bob's mailbox.(Pease Porridge)(Letter to the Editor)
July 19, 2004... Dear Bob: I have enjoyed your writings and presentations for years. Please keep up the good work. I've learned a lot from you even though my technicians have named me the SandMan for all the ICs I've returned to their native state of sand. I'm...

Setting IP standards to simplify SoC design.(POV: point of view)
July 19, 2004... Ninety percent of new intellectual property (IP) licensed in 1004 will use externally developed IP, according to Jerry Worchel, senior analyst of In-Stat/MDR Digital Engines Service. This is motivated by the fact that 85% of all chips in...

Defense drives growth of rugged computers.(Market Report)(Brief Article)
July 19, 2004... Demand for ruggedized/industrial computer systems in North America and Western Europe will to nearly $1.9 billion by 2006. That's a compound annual growth rate of 4.4% from 2003's level, about $1.648 billion, according to a report by Venture...

Mobile-phone OEMs face new demands.(Communications)
July 19, 2004... For years, the formula for success in the mobile*phone business was simple: Make products that are progressively cheaper and smaller with longer battery lives. But with the increasing segmentation of mobile-phone products into multiple tiers,...

Low-power chip allows tiny camera to broadcast more pictures.(Analog & Power)
July 19, 2004... A custom transmitter chip combines ultra-low-power wireless technology with clever design techniques to realize a tiny swallowable camera capsule for the diagnosis of the gastrointestinal tract. Made by Zarlink Semiconductor, the custom chip is...

PoL voltage controllers support margining.(Analog & Power)(Brief Article)
July 19, 2004... To uncover voltage sensitivities on pre-production boards, engineers may evaluate design corners by independently varying dc-dc converter supply outputs. Summit Microelectronics says that most computer, industrial, communications, and datacom...

Clock/data X-point switches mux or buffer at 2 Gbits/s.(Analog & Power)
July 19, 2004... For clock buffering/multiplexing or data transmission in high-speed network routing and wireless basestations, two 4-by-4 low-voltage differential-signaling, non-blocking crosspoint switches operate at more than 2.0 Gbits/s. Each output driver...

Power design FAQs frequently asked questions: power-mosfet gate drivers.
July 19, 2004... What is the power MOSFET gate driver? It is a power amplifier that accepts a low-power input from a controller IC and produces the appropriate high-current gate drive for a power MOSFET. A gate driver is used when a pulse-width-modulation...

LM5100/01 Gate Drivers.(Product Q&As)(Brief Article)(Advertisement)
July 19, 2004... The LM5100/LM5101 are high-voltage gate drivers for the high-side and low-side n-channel MOSFETs in a synchronous buck of bridge configuration. The floating high-side driver can operate with supplies up to 100 V. Outputs are independently...

LM5102 with programmable delay.(Product Q&As)(Brief Article)(Advertisement)
July 19, 2004... The LM5102 is similar to the LM5100 with the addition of a programmable delay for adjusting driver dead time. The LM5102 offers the flexibility of an independent programmable delay of the rising edge for both high--and low-side driver outputs....