Electronic Design articles from March 2008

Electronic Design archives from March 2008

Putting all your power adapters in one basket.(Green Plug)(Editorial)
March 13, 2008... Welcome to this year's edition of Electronic Design's One Powerful Issue. In trying to decide what my contribution might be, I needed to look no further than my desk at home. Sitting on it are power adapters for a cell phone, PDA, Bluetooth...

Make the Universal Serial Bus your Universal Power supply.(the lab bench)
March 13, 2008... Why don't all devices that draw less t h a n 500 mA come with a Universal Serial Bus (USB) socket? Finding a charger these days hasn't gotten any better, yet USB sockets are everywhere. Only a fraction of these devices, from cameras to cell...

Demanding dynamic loads: can power devices keep up?(power design)
March 13, 2008... With each new generation of processor, the trend is toward lower voltages, higher currents, and faster dynamic loads. As a result, power-system designers are challenged to provide ever-faster transient response. They also have to do it using...

Dc-dc converter makes single-cell microcontroller.(techview)(Silicon Laboratories Inc.)
March 13, 2008... Silicon Labs has met the challenge of cutting power consumption to a single cell with its C8051F9xx, which fits into a 4-by 4-mm package (Fig. 1). Ranging from 0.9 to 3.6 V, its operating voltage is ideal for one-or two-cell solutions. ...

FPGA gets the hang of low power.(techview)
March 13, 2008... Until recently, low-power FPGAs were about as oxymoronic as bipartisan cooperation and bug-free code. But the FPGA landscape is changing for the better as more vendors can say with a straight face that they offer low-power FPGAs without having...

10 FPGA Tricks Provide Power-Saving Treats.(techview)
March 13, 2008... 1. Select an FPGA with an ASIC-like power profile. That means no inrush power, no boot-up configuration power, ultra-low standby power (especially over extended temperature ranges), and low dynamic power. Low-power and secure in-system...

Ultra-quiet buck converter suits RF and high-speed data applications.(techview)
March 13, 2008... The most challenging realm for dc-dc converters comprises cell-phone data cards, backplane adapters, and other applications that are sensitive to radiated and conducted switching noise from the converter. Enpirion, the Lucent spinoff with a...

Op amp cuts power and noise.(techview)(operational amplifiers)(Brief article)
March 13, 2008... For densely populated, thermally sensitive instrumentation applications that requires high-speed signal conditioning. Analog Devices' single-channel 850-MHz ADA4857 high-speed voltage feedback op amp combines a number of desirable features. It...

System design environment goes "soft".(techview)
March 13, 2008... Enabling system design in the "soft" domain, before a hardware platform has been settled upon, brings numerous advantages--not the least of which is maximizing flexibility as deeply as possible into the design process. An important byproduct of...

Smaller SFP+ optical transceivers save space and power.(techview)
March 13, 2008... The lower cost and wider availability of network interface cards (NICs) and other optical components have led to the recent upsurge in 10-Gigabit Ethernet (10GE) networking. According to a recent report by research firm IDC, installation of...

Access processor aggregates multiple protocol traffic for carrier Ethernet transmission.(techview)
March 13, 2008... An excess of acronyms represents the protocols used in carrying various types of data traffic. Nowhere is this more profound than in cellular communications, where basestations must maintain the older legacy protocols as well as implement all...

GPON platform ready for FTTH rollout.(techview)
March 13, 2008... The adoption of passive optical networks (PONs) is growing as large carriers like AT&T and Verizon implement their video and data plans for consumers. Many smaller local carriers are beginning to offer fiber to the home (FFTH) systems as well....

High efficiency challenges power-management design: designers face the formidable task of providing high-efficiency power management for processors that operate at 1 V and below, at 100 A or more, and at gigahertz frequencies.(feature)
March 13, 2008... The semiconductor industry has always forced the power-supply industry to follow its trend-setting lead. For the last decade, that trend has been to cram more transistors into a single package, particularly microprocessors. This led to...

New techniques enhance efficiency across all loads: governments around the world are moving from voluntary to mandatory power-supply efficiency efforts. Challenges may lie ahead, but designers now have methods to cope with them.(technology report)
March 13, 2008... Engineers who design products that plug into the ac mains face upcoming efficiency mandates that will make power-supply design tougher--and, one hopes, more lucrative. To some extent, the same is true for designers of portable equipment, as...

Stop the waste in your battery-charger conversion: as portable devices add functionality, the ability to recharge their batteries--and do so without wasting additional energy--becomes more important.(engineering essentials)
March 13, 2008... Excess energy waste during battery charge is, of course, a bad idea for the environment and poor design practice. In fact, the problem has deepened to the point where it's now an international regulatory agency issue. Battery-charger efficiency...

Why can't I do what I want?(embedded in ed)
March 13, 2008... Challenges abound when you're dealing with computers and trying to get something done--and computers are everywhere these days, from cell phones to light switches. Occasionally, these flaws may be a design oversight. In other cases, the...

Kit houses Pico-ITX.(NEWS)(Brief article)
March 13, 2008... For prototype or production, the VIA ARTiGO Builder Kit provides a compact, 15-by 11-by 4-cm, x86 platform. The system uses between 15 and 20 W from the PWB-N550 power board, and the case still has space for a 2.5-in. hard disk or flash drive....

Dual-head graphics target XMC slot.(NEWS)(Brief article)
March 13, 2008... XMC slots looking for high-performance graphics can try Thales Computers' XMC-G72. This dual-head XMC mezzanine card has an x8 PCI Express interface that delivers an AMD/ATI M72-CSP128 graphics controller with 128-Mbyte on-chip GDDR3 memory and...

Modules and motherboards.(embedded in ed)
March 13, 2008... Modules and small motherboards like VIA Technologies' Pico-ITX or Kontron's nanoCOMExpress offering are designed to pack commercial off-theshelf (COTS) performance into a small package (see the table). The ever-expanding set of options is...

Traversing the Telecom Standards maze: proprietary designs once dominated telecom equipment.
March 13, 2008... Individual companies provided total solutions encompassing the customer premises equipment, central-office gear, and a link with the wide-area network. To remain competitive, cut costs, and keep pace with technological innovation, vendors are...

Universal Graphics Module: the new standard for graphics control modules.(embedded in ed)
March 13, 2008... The demand from embedded applications for high-performance graphics has increased dramatically as larger flat-panel displays have become readily available and very desirable components are integrated in systems ranging from medical imaging to...

OMAP armed with Cortex.(NEWS)(Brief article)
March 13, 2008... Texas Instruments' latest crop of OMAP processors is based on ARM's 600-MHz superscalar Cortex-A8 core. The 65-nm OMAP35x line includes four chips, starting with a long A8 core and moving up to a C64x DSP/A8 dual-core solution at the high end....

Peripheral controler chip makes nice with PCI Express.(NEWS)(Expansion boards)(Brief article)
March 13, 2008... MosChip Semiconductor Technology's MCS9901CV PCI Express (PCIe) to peripheral I/O controller targets peripheral expansion. The 1x PCI Express (PCIe) interface can access any of the devices, including an [I.sup.2]C port, a 1.5-Mbit/s parallel...

3U VPX hits the SWaP sweet spot.(Brief article)
March 13, 2008... In recent years, two seemingly conflicting technology trends have affected many rugged embedded aerospace and defense applications. First, system designers have witnessed rapidly increasing requirements for processing speed, bandwidth, and...

Customize power supplies freely with a digital feedback loop: digital signal controllers plus power-supply-friendly on-chip peripherals are the building blocks for an easy and cost-effective method of digital power conversion.(design solution)
March 13, 2008... Tighter power regulations and safety issues are demanding efficient and intelligent power supplies that can be monitored externally and manufactured cost-effectively, with minimal hardware changes. Power-supply engineering advances have...

Use digitally controlled potentiometer to adjust voltage reference output.(ideas for design)
March 13, 2008... The output voltage of a voltage reference device can be adjusted using a digitally controlled potentiometer (DCP) without significantly changing the device's temperature coefficient (TC), which describes how the output voltage changes as the...

Two AA cells power class D amp to produce huge audio volume.(ideas for design)
March 13, 2008... Class D audio amplifiers like the MAX9704 offer almost 90% efficiency, but they need 10 V to operate. For battery-operated systems, that would require a large number of batteries wired in series. You can avoid bulky battery packs by...

Add fail-safe shoot-through protection to power MOSFET.(ideas for design)
March 13, 2008... MOSFETs are widely used as power switching elements in regulators and motor controllers. They can be either discrete devices or integrated into ICs in various H-bridge configurations. A common arrangement uses a high-side (HS) power MOSFET,...

What's all this LED power stuff, anyhow?(pease porridge)
March 13, 2008... Recently, NSC put on a webcast with Howard Johnson, NSC's Chris Richardson, and some guys from Philips and Future. As they had set it all up and presented it at the last minute, I didn't know what points they were going to make. When they made...

Countdown to the end of the analog TV broadcast era.(editorial)
March 27, 2008... As you probably know, analog TV broadcasts will cease on February 17, 2009-less than year away. For many viewers, it will be a nonevent, simply because they don't depend on over-the-air broadcasts for their viewing. But the number of American...

Hollywood and silicon valley both love remakes, sequels, and series.(the lab bench)
March 27, 2008... Do it once. Do it again. Even better, turn a remake into a series. They make lots of money. It works in Hollywood, and it works for the electronics industry too--sometimes. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Just like movies, there are flops in...

Industrial network standards need good PHY silicon implementations.(point of view)
March 27, 2008... Industrial networks are moving from analog to digital operation to realize higher functionality while reducing design effort and bill-of-materials costs. Although proprietary solutions have emerged, there is great momentum behind the use of...

Verification gets a whole lot smarter.(techview)(Survey)
March 27, 2008... In a survey of its own users, Mentor Graphics found that more than half of them spend more than half their time in functional design verification. Of those users, 78% are manually writing directed test sequences. This major timesink cries out...

GUI simplifies design tweaks.(techview)(graphical user interface)(Brief article)
March 27, 2008... Analog Devices re-emerged as a power-IC contender at last month's APEC 2008 show in Austin, Texas, with its ADP1043 digital pulse-width modulation (PWM) controller for ac-dc and isolated dc-dc power supplies. To facilitate design with the...

Fabless power-device challenger emerges at APEC.(techview)
March 27, 2008... Can the fabless semiconductor company model work as well for power devices as it does for more complex chips? It has for Alpha and Omega Semiconductor (AOS), which emerged from the shadows at APEC 2008 in Austin, Texas, last month with a...

Design FAQs: Class D amplifiers for portable applications.(FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS)(Interview)
March 27, 2008... What is class D amplification? Class D amplifiers are a more efficient alternative to class AB (push-pull) power amplifiers for audio signals. Class D is particularly attractive in portable applications because it helps extend battery...

Build your next company around robotics: looking to exercise your entrepreneurial spirit? Lots of opportunity--and a huge market--lie ahead in robotics.(feature)(Cover story)
March 27, 2008... Ever Googled the term "robotics"? The only major company and product that show up in the top 100 hits are Microsoft and its Robotics Studio, a development tool that leaves a lot to be desired. (Not one of the dozen or so folks interviewed for...

Developers refine their embedded wares for ESC: this spring's edition of the Embedded Systems Conference will serve up an array of announcements that build on existing platforms and standards.(technology report)(Conference news)
March 27, 2008... Keep two watchwords in mind when you head to next month's Embedded Systems Conference--more and better. Scheduled for April 14-18 at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, Calif., this year's show will reveal a number of incremental...

Power formats: you can have it your way: though they're more similar than different, the Common Power Format and Unified Power Format still diverge in ways designers should get to know well.(engineering essentials)
March 27, 2008... Now that there are two competing industry formats to capture power intent for low-power designs--the Common Power Format (CPF) and the Unified Power Format (UPF)--design teams need to understand the similarities and differences between the two....

Implement a complete ARV controller in a single SoC: compared to conventional methods, this approach allows for easy expansion, increased processing power, and future upgrades, reducing the chance of obsolescence.(design solution)
March 27, 2008... From toys to mobile home appliances, there has been a proliferation of simple robotic vehicles--and they all rely on some form of a processor. Some use 8-bit microcontrollers, while others use custom silicon or combinations of discrete...

LMC555 timers delay hardware reset to collect debug data.(ideas for design)
March 27, 2008... Most microprocessors have some type of hardware watchdog that can be used to reset the microprocessor and the surrounding hardware to a known state if firmware inadvertently stops executing code. But it may be advantageous to record the...

PiP technology cuts PCB assembly costs while boosting reliability.(eepn in electronic design)
March 27, 2008... OEMs are constantly maintaining or, better put, trying to trim their manufacturing budgets while ensuring product reliability. A big area of interest in the cost-cutting process is the assembly of printed-circuit boards (PCBs). ...

For more efficient cooling, try splayed pin-fin heatsinks.(eepn in electronic design)
March 27, 2008... The immense processing power generated by today's cutting-edge ICs enables engineers to design extremely powerful applications. Unfortunately, the higher processing power comes with a dramatic increase in the magnitude of heat dissipation that...

Consider your materials carefully in microprocessor and ASIC design.(eepn in electronic design)(application-specific integrated circuit)
March 27, 2008... Microprocessor and ASIC designers must address the thermal and mechanical protection of IC die while considering system cost and reliability. Lids and heatsinks are common solutions for mechanical protection. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] To...

Spring-cage connectors save time and space.(CONNECTORS)
March 27, 2008... Promising quick connections, the FKCN 2.5 spring-cage plug connectors and compatible CCDN 2.5 base headers sport a height that is 30% lower than standard connectors for wire sizes up to 12 AWG, according to the company. The push-in spring-cage...

HDMI connector line adds new configurations.(CONNECTORS)
March 27, 2008... Vertical and stacked versions have been added to the KDMIX series of HDMI connectors. The vertical and stacked HDMI connectors provide the same standard features as the traditional versions while offering additional product design flexibility....

Mezzanine connectors boost density and performance.(CONNECTORS)
March 27, 2008... Delivering ultra-high density to mezzanine applications while exhibiting next-generation, high-speed performance, the TwinMezz board-stacking connector packs 25 high-speed differential signal pairs in a square centimeter or 161 signal pairs in...

Molded caps repel dirt and static.(CONNECTORS)
March 27, 2008... Fitting a range of connectors deployed in dirt- and static-rich environments, this comprehensive line of injection-molded caps and plugs in static conductive and dissipative materials protects connectors from dust, dirt, moisture, and...

Insulation-piercing wire clamp maximizes stability.(CONNECTORS)(Brief article)
March 27, 2008... The XB, a 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...

Rail guides promise precise positioning.(CABINETS, ENCLOSURES, BACKPLANES)
March 27, 2008... Rounding out the company's portfolio of profile rail guides, an expanded product line now encompasses a variety of sizes featuring various slide configurations, i.e., normal, wide, long, and lengths to meet specific application requirements....

Anti-backlash assemblies put the screws on noise and vibration.(CABINETS, ENCLOSURES, BACKPLANES)
March 27, 2008... The ZBX series anti-backlash assembly performs as a linear actuator in vertical applications requiring noise and/or vibration control. A standard ZBX unit employs a patented, self-lubricating polyacetal nut that is radially preloaded on a 303...

Plastic ignition switches seal out the elements.(SWITCHES)
March 27, 2008... Poised for a variety of industries including trucking, marine, emergency vehicle, and construction, these ignition switches feature an engineering-grade plastic construction and sealing that meets IP-67 requirements. They come in a variety of...

PCB switches available in toggle, rocker, and pushbutton models.(SWITCHES)
March 27, 2008... The M2T and M2B series of miniature, PCB-mount (printed-circuit board) switches are available in toggle, rocker, and pushbutton versions. The M2T toggles and rockers and M2B pushbuttons feature an O-ring seal surrounding the actuator. The...

SPDT analog switches trim on resistance.(SWITCHES)(Brief article)
March 27, 2008... Specifying a typical on resistance of 3.6 [omega] (4.2 [omega] maximum) with a flatness of 0.4 [omega], the DG469 and DG470 single- and dual-supply single-pole dual-throw (SPDT) analog switches are identical, except the DG470 provides an enable...

Mailbag.(pease porridge)(Letter to the editor)
March 27, 2008... HI BOB: I would like to ask about designing a sine-wave amplitude attenuator with programmable attenuation. Preferably, it will just contain basic components (op amps, transistor, resistors, caps, etc.). Input: 1-V p-p sine wave (1 kHz...

Mailbag.(pease porridge)(Letter to the editor)
March 27, 2008... HI BOB, I recently purchased some germanium TO-3 power transistors just for fun to see if I am smart enough to use them. The newer IGBTs, etc., are wonderful. You can switch lightning voltages (almost), and they are certainly the way to...

Mailbag.(pease porridge)(Letter to the editor)
March 27, 2008... BOB, Your suggestion in your Feb. 28 column to connect a solid copper ground plane to the neutral conductor of the power line is dangerous. Although the neutral conductor is nominally at earth potential, load currents through the impedance...