Electronic Design articles from July 2007

Electronic Design archives from July 2007

Smart meters could revolutionize summer living.(Editorial)(Editorial)
July 5, 2007... It's summertime, but the living isn't easy. All the talk about global climate change--coupled with soaring summer electric rates--is keeping me from keeping my cool. According to the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), 60% of a typical summer...

Bob's Mailbox.(PeasePorridge)(Letter to the editor)
July 5, 2007... Bob: An induction motor pulls nameplate current at namplate rpm. If it is being used as a generator, the slip is opposite what is experienced when the device is used as a motor, but rated power is produced at about the same absolute slip. If...

How to succeed in an era of globalization.(career tips for engineers)
July 5, 2007... Globalization has brought many countries of the world together as competitors. Information technology, computer tools, and communication systems developed by members of our profession enable today's engineer to contribute anywhere on the globe....

Bluetooth ems units streamline cardiovascular intervention.(emergency services)(Medtronic Lifepak 12 with Audiovox 6700)(University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey)
July 5, 2007... Heart attacks start with a percolating cold sweat. Nausea ripples through your body. Your chest tightens and you can hardly breathe. Rationality and thought leave you when crippling pain in your stomach sends you helplessly to the floor as you...

Clock generator chip raises jitter performance bar.(Analog & Power)(Texas Instruments CDCE421)(Brief article)
July 5, 2007... The CDCE421 low-phase-noise low voltage positive emitter coupled logic/low-voltage differential signaling (LVPECL/LVDS) clock generator from Texas Instruments provides 380-fs (rms at 10 kHz to 20 MHz) jitter performance (see the figure) ...

16-port transceiver provides cost-per-port economies.
July 5, 2007... The DS26519 from Dallas Semiconductor reduces cost per port in channel service units, data service units, multiplexers, switches, routers, channel banks, and test equipment. This 16-port, T1/E1/J1 long-and short-haul transceiver doesn't need...

LVPECL/LVDS clock distribution chips conquer metastability.
July 5, 2007... Metastability, which essentially means chaotic output behavior resulting from input glitches, can be a source of system failures in clock distribution. Input glitches are inevitable in hot-swap applications. Micrel's latest LVPECL/LVDS fanout...

Prevent terrorist attacks by upgrading 60-year-old technology.(Digital)(Mobotix network cameras)
July 5, 2007... Even today, many airports still rely on grainy, analog video surveillance. "Why is 60-year-old analog technology that is not up to the standards needed in the post-9/11 world still being used predominantly, instead of digital technology, which...

SoC/ASIC prototyping system targets designs up to 9 mgates.(application specific integrated circuits, system on chip)(GiDEL's PROC9M)(Brief article)
July 5, 2007... Designed to debug and verify system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs of diverse styles up to 9 million ASIC gates in size, GiDEL's PROC9M prototyping system operates at system clock speeds up to 300 MHz. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Each system...

FPGA design suite supports graphical block-based design entry.
July 5, 2007... With an eye toward easing the system-level FPGA design process, version 8.0 of Actel's Libero integrated design environment (IDE) enables users to design at a higher level of abstraction. Actel's Smart- Design technology lets users visually...

Controller relieves your host server for true 10GE LAN performance.(Communications)(Broadcom BCM57710)(local area network)
July 5, 2007... While 10-Gbit Ethernet (10GE) has been available for a few years, cost and implementation methods have slowed its adoption. Yet as Internet connections have increased, the use of storage networks has expanded. And as the sheer volume of data to...

Hit iWARP speed in networking, storage,and clustering apps.(Communications)(NetEffect NE020 network adapter)
July 5, 2007... NetEffect was the first company to offer the Internet Engineering Task Force's iWARP standard implementation for 10-Gbit Ethernet (10GE). The company's second-generation product, the NE020, continues to provide the same high performance in key...

It isn't easy being green: with most of the industry finally on board with RoHS, the eco-design focus switches to the slew of emerging energy-efficiency requirements--and how best to comply.(Engineering Feature)(Restrictions on Hazardous Substances)(Electronic Product Environment Assessment Tool)
July 5, 2007... Now that the dust is beginning to settle on the European Union's Restrictions on Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive, what's next? What new environmental legislation will change the way the industry designs its products? It pretty much comes...

The EU's effect on green design.(Engineering Feature)(European Union's Restrictions on Hazardous Devices directive)
July 5, 2007... It has been just over a year since the industry had to formally adopt the European Union's Restrictions on Hazardous Devices (RoHS) directives. Other countries, including China and Korea, have come up with their own versions of RoHS since then,...

Wanna boost functionality? Cut costs? Try a reference design:Whether full-function or simply a platform, reference designs come in different flavors for the task at hand.(Technology Report)
July 5, 2007... Once you've got an idea, how long does it take to turn that idea into a product? That depends on a large number of factors, including the developer's expertise. Starting from scratch is always an option. Alternatively, building on a broader...

Preparing for power over Ethernet Plus.(EngineeringESSENTIALS)(Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 802.3 standards)
July 5, 2007... The draft standard for IEEE 802.3at Power over Ethernet Plus (PoE Plus) remains on track for an August release. The original 802.3af PoE standard offered a fairly straightforward way to supply loads with 13 W or so of usable power delivered at...

Analog/mixed-signal foundries address technology Convergence.(DesignView)
July 5, 2007... With a new breed of analog/mixed-signal foundries arriving on the scene, fabless and fab-lite companies can create a huge variety of high-yielding designs. As a result, these fabless and fab-lite companies are able to successfully compete with...

Process technology.(Highlights)(mixed signal processing)(Brief article)
July 5, 2007... Mixed-signal process technologies differ from plain-vanilla CMOS. The architecture of an analog/mixed-signal process is defined by four major issues: *the passive device architecture *the active device architecture, driven by the...

Gate-oxide requirements.(Highlights)(for high voltage drivers)(Brief article)
July 5, 2007... Gate-oxide (GOX) thickness determines maximum gate voltages in high-voltage (HV) driver design topology. Accommodating the different voltage domains leads to two competing requirements. To keep the process simple, HV devices should have the...

NVM options.(Highlights)(nonvolatile-memory)(Brief article)
July 5, 2007... Nonvolatile-memory (NVM) blocks can be implemented in the process architecture without any extra mask layers. On the other hand, embedded flash and EEPROM cells need a minimum number of additional masks (fewer than 10). [ILLUSTRATION...

Isolation techniques.(Highlights)(for avoising cross talk)(Brief article)
July 5, 2007... To minimize or eliminate crosstalk and parasitic effects, different areas of the IC must be insulated from each other. The two most widely used techniques are dielectric isolation and junction isolation. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] VOLKER...

1/8-brick module boasts high power density.(ComponentView)
July 5, 2007... With a 40-A output at 3.3 V, the PKB4110C 1/8-brick dc-dc converter from Ericsson Power Modules delivers up to 60% more power than previously released modules of similar size. The converter comes in two versions--through-hole and surface-mount....

Power supplies.
July 5, 2007... With a rated input-to-output isolation of 4000 VA rms, the Tracopower THB3 dc-dc converters from Power Sources Unlimited suit applications in the medical and information technology markets, where high isolation is required. The 24-pin...

Sequence generator delays bias voltages to LCDs.(IdeasForDesign)(liquid crystal display)
July 5, 2007... Many graphic (passive/active (TFT)) LCDs require multiple positive and negative supply voltages. At "power on" and "power off," these bias voltages must be sequenced properly, along with the LCD's data and control signals, to prevent damage to...

B3 series Hi-Brite Block solid state lighting.(PRODUCT ALERT)
July 5, 2007... Bivar's innovative new lighting solutions are meeting requirements in applications across a broad spectrum of industrial markets. The B3 Series Hi-Brite Block design features optional configurations for power, light, and mounting styles in a...

IPV42/70 series-intelligent power distribution units.(PRODUCT ALERT)
July 5, 2007... Power distribution units (PDUs) have become vital to the management of power to IT arrays and have evolved from a simple panel of switches and outlets to designs that can now be considered "intelligent" through the inclusion of internal...

200 watt AC/DC power supply.(PRODUCT ALERT)
July 5, 2007... The GNT200 is a wide range, openframe power supply series up to 200 watts. Available in models from 12-48 volts, the GNT200 has a power density of 10-13 watts per cubic inch. Safety approvals include CSA/EN/IEC/UL 60950-1 for ITE; EN/IEC/UL...

40 GHz socket for QFN packages.(PRODUCT ALERT)
July 5, 2007... Ironwood Electronics introduces a new high performance QFN socket for 0.4mm pitch QFN packages. These QFN sockets operate at bandwidths up to 40 GHz with less than 1dB of insertion loss. The contact resistance is typically 3 milliohms per pin....

From Melexis.(PRODUCT ALERT)
July 5, 2007... The MLX90614DAA is a 3 Volt digital integrated temperature sensor device that delivers [+ or -]0.1[infinity]C measurement accuracy in the object temperature range of 36[infinity]C-39[infinity]C and the wide ambient temperature range...

Electronic cabinets withstand earthquakes.(PRODUCT ALERT)
July 5, 2007... Electronic cabinets specifically designed to withstand severe earthquakes are available from Equipto Electronics Corporation. Independently tested, the seismic hardened cabinets meet the NEBS standard for Zone 4, the most severe, for earthquake...

New series of low-cost PC/104 digital boards provides 48 isolated digital inputs.(PRODUCT ALERT)
July 5, 2007... ACCES I/O Products Inc., is pleased to release its newest series of PC/104 isolated digital I/O boards, the 104-IDI-48 Series. These 48-channel PC/104 utility boards feature 48 individually optically isolated digital inputs. The boards are...

Basics of design; you need RAID for high-speed data streaming in instrumentation systems.(redundant array of inexpensive disks)
July 5, 2007... High-speed serial interfaces facilitate throughput, but what do you do with all that data? As the sampling rate of ana-log-to-digital converters (ADCs) has continued to increase, it has become practical to test, measure, and ana-lyze RF...

Puerto Rico--a shining star in aerospace engineering.(Editorial)(Editorial)
July 19, 2007... Even as Congress debates immigration reform and Homeland Security looks to erect a virtual fence on our southern border, the populace of the U.S. is inexorably changing. More than 12% of our residents are foreign-born, the highest percentage in...

What's all this production costs stuff,anyhow?(PeasePorridge)
July 19, 2007... Aguy asked me how to optimize a bridge circuit. His design had eight op amps and over a dozen precision resistors. I showed him how to minimize the number of (expensive) resistors and precision op amps. I got it down from eight to four to two....

U.S.export control policy hurts American interests in China.(PointOfView)
July 19, 2007... Insistence on enforcing the existing export control policy can only damage the interests of the American high-tech industry without improving national security. This is because the U.S. is no longer the sole source of much high technology. If...

OLEDs will be everywhere--even the shirt on your back.(TechView)(Viewpoint essay)
July 19, 2007... Aself-powered display--thin, flexible, and durable enough to be incorporated into clothing--is one of the goals of a $1.7 million international research project that aims to bring organic lightemitting diodes (OLEDs) to the mass market. The...

Power supplies push power-density limits.(Analog & Power)
July 19, 2007... So what's happening in mediumsized power supplies? These days, the power output is the only thing that's medium-sized as these smaller devices provide more power density. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Aimed primarily at the telecom market, XP...

Multimode analyzer leverages power of multithreaded platforms.(EDA)(Brief article)
July 19, 2007... Among the issues compounding design closure, none is more pressing than the timing, power, and signal-integrity (SI) loop. Timing tools have not scaled with design complexity. Runtimes for SI tools can stretch beyond 24 hours. With hundreds if...

Digitizer maximizes test data throughput with low power consumption.(Test)(Agilent Technologies DP1400)
July 19, 2007... The first step in most test and measurement applications today is to acquire and digitize the test signal for further storage and analysis with software on a PC. A good digital oscilloscope is one common way of doing this. But for some tests,...

New technologies enable more moore.(Digital)
July 19, 2007... Is the end near for Moore's Law? Semiconductors are getting harder to scale due to thinner and closer wires that are getting hotter with higher impedances. Yet researchers are using carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to get around these limits. James...

Chip twists ARM with custom logic: it's now possible to build custom ARM-based microcontrollers without high startup costs.(LeapFrog)(Advanced RISC Machine)
July 19, 2007... Single-chip solutions built with standard microcontrollers have been a boon to system designers who can access a wide selection of features, performance, and pricing. Unfortunately, to get the resources not found on standard parts, you need...

Building A virtual wall to protect our borders: planned electronic walls on the nation's borderlines will use the latest surveillance, sensor, and communications tools. But can technology alone take the place of sturdy physical barriers?(Engineering Feature)
July 19, 2007... It will be situated on the nation's borders, designed to prevent people from illegally entering the U.S. But please, don't call it af wall. SBInet, part of the Department of Homeland Security's Secure Border Initiative, is an integrated...

Advanced Internet services accelerate new fiber options: with costs finally dropping in the quest for fiber to the home, PONs have broken out as the leader in the expansion of fiber-optical usage.(TechnologyReport)
July 19, 2007... The need for ever-faster data-transmission rates is insatiable. The good news about that is we have the ability to go faster with fiber-optic data transmission. The bad news is that fiber is expensive. With greater usage, however, that's...

Analog/full-custom flows move toward interoperability: the IPL initiative seeks to bring openness, and with it greater productivity, to the creation of PCells and process design kits for full-custom design.(Engineering ESSENTIALS)
July 19, 2007... In the age of convergence, analog and full-custom design is reasserting itself as a crucial aspect of almost all system-level designs. While analog content is growing by leaps and bounds in most IC designs, productivity for analog designers is...

Does multicore scale?(Embedded)(Viewpoint essay)
July 19, 2007... The 8-bit Intel 8080 was the central component of a multiprocessor system called the Hypercube back in the 1970s. The theory was that multiple processors could tackle large problems using parallel processing. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ...

Module takes a Spin.(Brief article)
July 19, 2007... The Propeller chip (see "Eight 32-Bit Cores Take Flight In Multiprocessor Microcontroller" at www.electronicdesign.com, ED Online 12235) has found a home in the $59 24-pin Spin Stamp Microcontroller module from Parallax. It is the same form...

Tiny DSC targets sensors.(digital signal controller )(Brief article)
July 19, 2007... Microchip is pushing small (6 by 6 mm) digital signal controller (DSC) chips out the door to tackle intelligent sensor applications. The 40 MIPS dsPIC33FJ12GP family is compatible with its larger brethren but pares down memory to 12 kbytes of...

Reconfigurable architecture targets military sensor systems.(Morphable Networked Micro-Architecture)
July 19, 2007... Raytheon developed its MONARCH (Morphable Networked Micro-Architecture) architecture and chip under a Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) polymorphous computing architecture contract from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (see...

InfiniBand links 512 cores/rack.(SGI Alitx ICE)(Brief article)
July 19, 2007... High-performance computing (HPC) users are looking for platforms that deliver performance at a reasonable cost and within the confines of space and cooling available to them. A consistent software platform helps too. Silicon Graphics targets...

Clock buffers support 5-gbit/s serial connectivity.(ComponentView)(Gen2 clock buffers from Pericom Semiconductor)(Brief article)
July 19, 2007... The Gen2 high-performance, zero-delay clock buffers from Pericom Semiconductor provide reference clocks for PCI Express (PCIe) Gen2 serial connectivity at 5 Gbits/s. They also meet the reference-clock requirements of fully buffered dualinline...

Oscillators.
July 19, 2007... Thanks to their AT cut crystal design, the devices in MMD Components' MOFL series provide oven-controlled crystal oscillator (OXCO) performance for the cost of a temperature- compensated crystal oscillator (TCXO). These OXCOs offer [+...

Single LED takes on both light-emitting and detecting duties.(INNOVATIVE DESIGNS FROM READERS)
July 19, 2007... Sometimes people forget that light-emitting diodes can also detect light quite well. They're usable in a wide range of applications as inexpensive, readily available optical detectors. Typically, an LED detects light at a wavelength somewhat...

Increase visibility into FPGA-based prototypes.(DesignView)(field-programmable gatearrays )
July 19, 2007... One of the most significant challenges facing verification teams using prototypes based on field-programmable gatearrays (FPGAs) is understanding the prototyped system's internal behavior when it fails to perform as expected. A key factor in...