Electronic Design articles from October 2004

Electronic Design archives from October 2004

Let your car lead the way.(Techscope: electronics technology at work and at play)(new navigation system)(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... Forget about stopping to ask someone for directions next time you take a wrong turn. Just ask your car! The Honda Motor Company has integrated IBM's Embedded ViaVoice software into its in-car navigation systems. With the software's advanced...

CCDs power high-definition-video camcoder.(Techscope: electronics technology at work and at play)(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... Purported to bring professional-quality video in the palm of your hand, Sony's HDR-FX1 Handycam camcorder records and plays back high-definition video with 1440 pixels by 100 interlaced lines of resolution. It's powered by the company's...

Lobster fishing goes wireless.(Techscope: electronics technology at work and at play)(Advanced Design Consulting)(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... There's more to finding good lobster than just throwing out a trap. Commercial fishermen correlate water temperatures at the ocean floor with locations where lobsters are most abundant. Current thermal measuring devices feed readouts to data...

PlanetEE.com.(Techscope: electronics technology at work and at play)(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... THE GLOBAL RESOURCES 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...

3d projection holograms: reach out and try to touch.(Editorial)
October 4, 2004... While we were preparing this month's cover story on LCDs, I got an e-mail from a company working on the true bleeding edge of display technology--on "touchless holographic interfaces." Surely that's an intriguing technological innovation in and...

What's all this Pease-Cohen effect stuff, anyhow?(Pease Porridge)
October 4, 2004... Back in 1965, I designed one of the best op amps in the world, the PP25A. It had less than 1 mV of [V.sub.OFFSET], and 150 pA of [I.sub.BIAS], using good Amelco n-channel JFETs. Its yellow epoxy package had an impedance far above 1 million...

Feature-phone memory: making it multimedia-fit.(Point Of View)
October 4, 2004... As feature-phone growth skyrockets (Gartner Dataquest forecasts sales of close to 500 million units in 2005), designers are restructuring memory architectures to make them multimedia-fit. This means providing adequate memory to handle an...

Convergence 2004: auto electronics add digital mobility.(Conference Preview)
October 4, 2004... For its first 29 years, the Convergence show has served as a forum for automotive and electronics engineers to come together--to converge--on solutions to the challenges in the automotive industry. Convergence 2004, the 30th anniversary event,...

Japanese firms lead the way in micro fuel cells.(The Industry)
October 4, 2004... Fuel cells have received a lot of recent attention as possible replacements for internal combustion engines in automobiles. Such power systems are probably at least 10 to 15 years away. But a study by ABI Research expects their much smaller...

Battery "gas-gauge" IC assures users they're not cruising on empty.(Analog & Power)
October 4, 2004... How far should you trust any of those battery "gas-gauge" ICs, the circuits that drive the remaining-battery-life displays on portable devices? Today, it's something users only learn through experience. The problem lies in the way ICs have...

Dual-function LDO controls microprocessor resets.(Analog & Power)
October 4, 2004... Regulator designers continue to look for opportunities to differentiate their products by combining functions. Here's a chip for size-challenged battery-powered products that combines a 300-mA low-dropout (LDO) regulator with a low-current...

Circuit breakers get Windows-smart.(Analog & Power)
October 4, 2004... Circuit-protection ICs that drive external power devices to shut off current to shorted loads certainly don't rate as a new development. What is new, however, are all-electronic, Windows-programmable rack-mount circuit breakers for...

Design FAQs: frequently asked questions: cell-phone handset design.
October 4, 2004... Designing a cell-phone handset is a complex, multifaceted project with many issues that extend from the black art of RF design to efficient software development and virtually all other electronic specialties in between. Here are the basic...

Nova Wireless Engine reference design.(Product Q&As)(Analog Devices )(Brief Article)(Advertisement)
October 4, 2004... The Nova Wireless Engine from Analog Devices is a reference design that allows cell-phone manufacturers to quickly develop a family of GPRS feature-phones using the SoftFone and Othello product families. The Nova Wireless Engine supports a wide...

Othello One TV direct-conversion radio.(Product Q&As)(Advertisement)
October 4, 2004... The AD6539 Othello One TV is the latest entry in Analog Devices' Othello family of radio transceiver ICs for cellular handset applications. It reduces bill-of-materials cost by integrating the local-oscillator (LO) and transmit...

SoftFone baseband processor.(Product Q&As)(Advertisement)
October 4, 2004... Our SoftFone family of baseband chipsets offer a wide range of proven wireless terminal products based on a flexible architecture. The SoftFone architecture is processor-independent and RAM-based for maximum flexibility. All Analog Devices'...

X-PA power amplifier.(Product Q&As)
October 4, 2004... The ADL5552 is a high-output-power, high-efficiency mobile handset power amplifier with integrated RF power control and measurement. In the GSM band, a high output power level of 35 dBm is achieved at an efficiency of 54%. In the DCS/PCS band,...

Simplify 10 Gbits/s over fiber or copper.(Communications)
October 4, 2004... Improved implementation of high-speed optical interfaces for 10-Gbit Ethernet, Sonet/SDH, and Fibre Channel networks is the catalyst behind the XT38720 CMOS XFI interface. Crafted by Xignal Technologies AG, an intellectual-property company...

Add/drop multiplexer put Sonet/SDH everywhere.(Communications)
October 4, 2004... Sonet/SDH, which dominates metro and long-haul networks, has always been complex and expensive. But it works so well! Parama Networks now makes it easier and less expensive to build next-generation Sonet/SDH metro edge and core products that...

MIMO WLAN chip set brings wireless HDTV to the home.(Atheros Communications Inc., high definition television)
October 4, 2004... Now that we've wirelessly networked the enterprise, public spaces, and PCs at home, the next frontier is home entertainment. Video and audio can be streamed at a reasonable price, so look for consumers to begin eliminating the wires that...

Enhanced-data-rate SoC extends Bluetooth application.(RF Micro Devices Inc., system-on-a-chip)
October 4, 2004... Congratulations to Bluetooth! It must finally be successful. We've reached the inflection point where it's not only taken for granted, but also ubiquitious. Any new version can only lead to further adoption. RF Micro Devices is making that...

Enhanced I/O test suite facilitates test connections.(Components & Test)(Agilent Technologies Inc.)(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... Demand for simple and fast test-system connections in multivendor instrument setups pushed Agilent to come up with E2094N I/O Libraries Suite 14.0, which enables error-free connections in under 15 minutes. Its updated I/O libraries and...

Low-cost IR camera delivers accurate results up to 250[degrees]C.(Components & Test)
October 4, 2004... High-end image quality and thermal sensitivities within 0.1[degrees]C at up to 250[degrees]C are two key features of the IR-Insight T250 temperature-measuring infrared (IR) camera from Infrared Solutions. Its 3.5-in. LCD readout displays clear...

HW/SW DAQ products make Palm-to-PC connectivity a breeze.(Components & Test)(Datastick Systems Inc.)(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... Two data-acquisition (DAQ) hardware modules and three Connection software programs created by Datastick Systems facilitate connectivity of Palm PCs to desktop PCs while expanding their functionality. The 12-bit, 20-kHz DAS-1254 (four analog...

RC engines lift accuracy of parasitic extraction.(Mentor Graphics Corp. new software)
October 4, 2004... Traditionally, post-layout parasitic extraction has treated device and interconnect models separately. That paradigm falls apart partially at 90-nm geometries and more fully at 65-nm geometries, where complex physical effects are borne of the...

Pre-silicon validation tool adds VHDL support.(Carbon Design Systems new products)(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... SpeedCompiler and DesignPlayer products for pre-silicon chip and system validation now support VHDL and mixed-language designs. Support for VHDL and mixed languages is part of a broad strategy on developer Carbon Design Systems' part to enable...

Tool gives programmable logic wings to fly.(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... The benefits of reconfigurable logic have long been known to earthbound engineers. But it took a collaboration between Xilinx and Sandia National Labs to come up with a way to get FPGAs into orbit and beyond. The pair has developed the...

PC board/system design tools get physical.(Flomerics Inc.)(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... By addressing many different aspects of physical design in a single environment, Flomerics' Version5 integrated design suite for pc boards and systems not only reduces design-cycle times, it also breaks down communication barriers between...

EDA tools go on the road.(EDA Roundup)
October 4, 2004... EDA TOOLS GO ON THE ROAD through Tanner EDA's new commuter licensing model. Users can "check out" available licenses onto their notebook PCs for a predefined period. They can then disconnect from their company's network without losing access to...

Automated power and signal-integrity analysis.(EDA Roundup)
October 4, 2004... AUTOMATED POWER AND SIGNAL-INTEGRITY ANALYSIS for IC packages, pc boards, and systems is available in Ansoft's Slwave version 2. A full-wave electromagnetic-field simulator, Slwave analyzes signal- and power-integrity effects using a...

Taking the bite out of Bluetooth[R] Technology.(Design / idea)(Advertisement)
October 4, 2004... Expertise in protocol stacks, RF design and system integration are typically required to successfully implement a Bluetooth[R] design. With the LMX9820 this is no longer the case. Devices like scales, thermostats and meters that use...

Micropower 150 mA CMOS voltage regulator with active shutdown.(Featured products)(Brief Article)(Advertisement)
October 4, 2004... The LP3995 regulator is designed to meet the requirements of portable wireless battery-powered applications and will provide an accurate output voltage with low noise and low-quiescent current. For battery-powered systems, the low-dropout...

Lower power with higher performance 1 MSPS ABCs.(Featured products)(analog-to-digital converters)(Brief Article)(Advertisement)
October 4, 2004... The ADC121S101, ADC101S101, and ADC081S101 are low power, monolithic CMOS 12-, 10-, and 8-bit analog-to-digital converters that operate at 1 MSPS. Each device is based on a successive approximation register architecture with internal...

PC-based HW/SW tools aid design and test: DAQ hardware and test software in PC-based instruments raise performance levels yet still lower costs.(National Instruments Corp.)
October 4, 2004... "We need more speed and accuracy!" say design and test engineers who work with PC-based instruments. Of course, the price for that performance must be within reason. Paying heed to that cry:, National Instruments came up with the M series...

Portable DSOs measure up to industrial power market: a new DSO class, with isolated channels and eight-hour battery operation, expedites design validation and equipment maintenance in the lab and the field.(Leapfrog: first look: putting new technology in perspective)(digital storage oscilloscopes)
October 4, 2004... Boasting four isolated channels, a family of portable digital storage oscilloscopes (DSOs) brings an array of noteworthy features to the industrial power market. Designers and technicians within the automotive, communications, consumer...

Compilers: looking under the hood.(Embedded In Electronic Design)
October 4, 2004... There are probably a lot of engineers out there like me who used to get under the hood of their cars. Some may even remember what a timing light was for. At best, you can change the oil and spark plugs in today's cars. Still, it's nice to know...

RapidIO and CompactPCI take on 72 processors.(Embedded News)
October 4, 2004... The ImpactRT 3200 from Mercury Computer Systems links up to 72 1.35-GHz PowerPC 7447A processors. Each processor is part of a compute node with 512 Mbytes of SDRAM, flash memory, and a RapidIO link. The CompactPCI boards feature four compute...

Toolkit facilitates fixed-point DSP development using Matlab modeling.(Embedded News)
October 4, 2004... Migrating floating-point algorithms to fixed-point platforms got significantly easier for users of the Mathworks' Matlab model-based development environment. Catalytic's Fixed-Point DSP Studio helps designers migrate floating-point algorithms...

Microcontroller marries PowerPC and PCI Express.(Embedded In Electronic Design)
October 4, 2004... PCI Express in microcontrollers was inevitable. One of the first examples to emerge is Applied Micro Circuits' PowerPC 440SPx. It's designed to be an I/O controller, so it sports PCI Express links for both host and device. Thus, it services a...

Linux brings dual-processor SBC on board.(Embedded In Electronic Design)
October 4, 2004... The dual-processor SVME/DMV-182 single-board computer (SBC) now runs TimeSys Linux. The SVME/DMV-182 is based on dual 1.2-GHz PowerPC 7457 processors with Altivec enhancements. Incorporated is up to 1 Gbyte of double-data-rate SDRAM memory with...

LCDs breakout in new dimensions: liquid-crystal flat-panel displays continue to advance on all performance fronts, with gains in size, brightness, response time, viewing angle, and color brilliance.(Technology report: liquid-crystal displays)(Cover Story)
October 4, 2004... For a flat-panel display technology that's relatively more mature than other competitive approaches, liquid-crystal displays show an unstop plays: contrast ratio, color display brilliance, response time, viewing angle, and resolution. All of...

Brighten up your Bluetooth designs with high-quality audio.(Design view: communications)
October 4, 2004... With over 100 million Bluetooth-enabled products shipping in 2004 and predictions of over 200 million for 2005, Bluetooth has well and truly arrived. Questions of "Will there be devices to connect with?" have been replaced by "How well will my...

Simple circuit drives PCI Express with PCI hot-plug power IC.(Design briefs: innovative designs from readers)
October 4, 2004... Conventional PCI and PCI-X computer slots have four supply voltages available: +12, +5, +3.3, and -12 V. PCI and PCI-X cards rely on +5 V and +3.3 V for most of the power and are limited to 500 mA of load current on the +12-V supply. This...

Emergency light turns white LEDs on when power goes out.(Innovative Designs from Readers)(Brief Article)
October 4, 2004... Power outages often occur unexpectedly, leaving you in total darkness. Whether in a hospital, a theater, or your home, such occasions call for an emergency lighting system that turns on automatically. The preferred emergency light source is the...

Component specifier.(New products: the latest notable components at a glance)(Illustration)
October 4, 2004... CIRCUIT PROTECTION ED Online 8776 TYPE/Model Features N-CHANNEL MOSFET Features 100-V breakdown voltage and 100-V NUD3048 buffered gate voltage rating; functions as a ...

19-in. rackmount LCD satisfies cost-conscious applications.(... Components)
October 4, 2004... * A rugged display platform plus a large viewable area--this describes a new 19-in. rackmount flat-panel LCD for applications looking at the bottom line. Featuring a contrast ratio of 500:1, a luminance level of 225 nits, and image quality...

Precision resistors offer [+ or -] 0.01% tolerance from 50 k[OMEGA] to 10 M[OMEGA].(... Components)
October 4, 2004... * The HVPS thin-film series of high-value precision in line resistors features tolerances as low as [+ or -] 0.01% from 50 k[OMEGA] to 10 M[OMEGA]. The resistors also offer a stability of 500 ppm (2000 hours at 70[degrees]C) and...

Lightweight circuit breaker handles 1 to 50 A in a small package.(... Components)
October 4, 2004... * Don't let the light 60-g weight of the 4140 aerospace circuit breaker, which includes optional auxiliary contacts, fool you. It can handle 1 to 50 A in a package that's smaller than Mil-Spec MS 24571 and 10% lighter than competitive devices....

Performance packed into tiny-footprint real-time clocks.(... Components)
October 4, 2004... * The DS1390/91/92/93 three- and four-wire serial-peripheral-interface bus real-time clocks feature automatic power switching, a trickle-charge output, an alarm, a microprocessor reset, a square-wave output, and a periodic interrupt signal all...

Compact UV spot-light sources beam with performance.(... Components)
October 4, 2004... * High output power drives the LC3/LC4 LightningCure compact UV spotlight sources. The LC3 features 500 mW/[cm.sup.2] at 365 nm and 570 mW/[cm.sup.2] at 436 nm, while the LC4 offers 3500 mW/[cm.sup.2] at 365 nm. Typical power consumption is 50...

Industrial controller includes remote-sensing capability.(... Components)
October 4, 2004... * Flexibility and ease-of-use are the calling cards for the Plus next generation family of industrial controllers. By adding several new features, an easy to use programming interface, and a "plug-and-play" options format designed to reduce...

44-pin test plug can be used With plastic-leaded-chip-carrier sockets.(... Components)
October 4, 2004... * By enabling a cable to be soldered directly, or a socket or header on the topside, a novel plug offers customers three choices of connection. The 44-301695-XX 44-pin test plug is constructed of a 0.62-in. thick glass-filled FR4 material with...

Micro-DIMMs shave 35% off the space SO-DIMMs need.(... Digital ICs/DSP)
October 4, 2004... * The DDR2 Micro-DIMM modules for SubNotebooks are only 65% of the size of equal capacity small-outline dual-inline memory modules (SO-DIMMs) used for notebook computers. The Micro-DIMMs' 214-pin "mezzanine connector" reduces the size of the...

128-Mbit CellularRAM consumes little power, delivers burst data.(... Digital ICs/DSP)
October 4, 2004... * Samples of the MT45W8MW16BGX 128-Mbit burst CellularRAM are now available. Organized as 8 Mwords by 16 bits, it incorporates the version 1.5 feature set as defined by the CellularRAM working group. It's also one of the first 128-Mbit burst...

Low-power CPUs tackle multimedia and communications applications.(... Digital ICs/DSP)
October 4, 2004... * An advanced multiprocessor architecture conceived from the ground up to run next-generation low-power handhold systems forms the heart of the chips in the CoolProcessor family. The processor's architecture was optimized for low-power,...

Low-power FPGAs pack dedicated PCI ports that deliver 132 Mbytes/s.(... Digital ICs/DSP)
October 4, 2004... * Four devices optimized for portable applications are now part of the QL58x0 PCI 2.3-compliant QuickPCI family. Users can achieve 132-Mbyte/s PCI bus performance (0 Wait States) while meeting the low power requirements of portable PCI...

Mating modules, motherboards and PCI Express: a match made in heaven.(Basics of design: com express: a new standard)
October 4, 2004... High-speed, serial peripheral interfaces demand a new approach to module design. The COM (Computer On Module) Express standard meets those challenges. Supporting many popular new serial interface standards, including PCI Express, USB 2.0,...

Spinach-powered portables take "green" to a new level.(Electronics Technology At Work And At Play)
October 18, 2004... Popeye would be proud. Just a little dash of spinach could help portable devices recharge in the sun, thanks to the world's first solid-state photosynthetic cell. While plants convert sunlight into energy quite efficiently, they require water...

Volcano studies flow toward wireless.(Electronics Technology At Work And At Play)
October 18, 2004... Tungarahua, a 5016-meter volcano in Ecuador, rumbles while spewing ash and hot gas each day. But when is it going to blow? To get that answer, researchers must rely on wired monitoring systems. Not only are they costly, they also quickly...

The global resource for electronics engineers.(PlanetEE.com)(Brief Article)
October 18, 2004... Aimed at electronics engineers and engineering managers worldwide, PlanetEE serves as gateway to the individual Web sites of the highly respected engineering publications and specifier's tools of the Penton Media's Electronics Group.

Find the latest on Power Products.(PlanetEE.com)
October 18, 2004... Need a quick way to gather data on the latest power-related products and services from the world's leading vendors? Want to learn more about the latest introductions in power semiconductors, and power products for design, test, manufacturing,...

Magazines.(PlanetEE.com)
October 18, 2004... Access the Web sites of four leading publication in the EOEM community: Electronic Design EE Product News Microwaves & RF Wireless Systems Design

E-newsletters.(PlanetEE.com)
October 18, 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...

Spirit of Wescon lives on: smaller stage, big picture.(Editorial)
October 18, 2004... Some of my friends who've been in the electronics arena since Wescon's glory days were curious to know if the event is still worth attending. Although it's not the must-attend extravaganza of "back in the day," my time was well spent at last...

What's all this "selective fit" stuff, anyhow?(Pease Porridge)
October 18, 2004... Back in the late 1950s, George A. Philbrick Researches would cheerfully sell you a $22 K2-W op amp that would swing [+ or -]50 V as its rated output (per my old column*), and for $33, a K2-X that would swing [+ or -]100 V of output. But there...

Taking the fear out of the jitter bug.(POV: point of view)
October 18, 2004... Although the semiconductor industry is seduced by high-performance, multi-gigabit interface technologies like Serial ATA and PCI Express, abandoning our comfort zone of lower-speed signaling and approaching these enigmatic high-speed serial...

Heat-sensitive ink, heated probe improve nanoscale lithography.(In The Labs)
October 18, 2004... An improved method to directly write nanometer-scale patterns onto a variety of surfaces combines thermal control of the ink flow with existing dip pen nanolithography (DPN). "Thermal DPN" (tDPN) extends DPN, an increasingly popular technique...

Coming attractions: attack of the killer 3D displays.(In The Labs)
October 18, 2004... If your memories of 3D displays involve B movies and cardboard glasses with red and blue lenses, it's time for another look. New 3D displays are arriving in many different forms, from enhancements to standard flat screens to true volumetric...

Multiphase power converters gang up to add current.(TechView: analog & power)
October 18, 2004... The Achilles heel of all non-isolated voltage-regulator modules and point-of-load converters is the size and cost of the passives that store the energy needed when their loads require a big increase in current. Primarion tackled this problem...

Dual-input, 8-Bit, 1-Gsample/s Fold-And-Interpolate ADC Wrings 7.5 effective number of bits from 1.6 W.(TechView: analog & power)
October 18, 2004... At $219 each in 1000-unit volumes, the ADC08D1000 analog-to-digital converter (ADC) isn't destined for consumer products. But this chip from National Semicondctor can digitize two Input signals to 8-bit resolution at sampling rates up to 1...

16 bits, buffers, and voltage references all squeeze into SOT-23-Packaged DACs.(TechView Analog & Power)
October 18, 2004... HOMING IN ON INDUSTRIAL-CONTROL and T&M applications, Analog Devices has extended its portfolio of small-footprint nanoDACs. Eight pin-compatible 12-to 16-bit digital-to-analog converters (DACs) now enter the fray, some for closed-loop control...

Power design FAQs frequently asked questions: step-down regulators--part 2: battery-powered applications.
October 18, 2004... Why do you need a voltage regulator when operating from a battery? The battery output voltage goes down over time, so you need a regulator to maintain the required system voltage, Also, the device must provide tight output voltage...

The industry's first 1-A Thin-SOT-23 buck converters.(Product Q&As)(Brief Article)
October 18, 2004... The series LM2734 and LM2736 are the industry's highest-power-density step-down dc-dc converters housed in 6-pin Thin-SOT-23 miniature packages that can handle loads of up to 1 A. They provide local dc-dc conversion with accurate regulation and...

RF/IF chips simplify next-gen basestation designs.(Tech View: communications)
October 18, 2004... As carriers upgrade their basestations to add subscriber capacity and implement new data services, many are considering new designs that also will support 3G and future 4G features. These wideband systems using WCDMA, and eventually orthogonal...

Faster 802.11 WLANs in the works: a progress report.(Tech View: communications)
October 18, 2004... WIRELESS LOCAL-AREA NETWORKS (WLANs) based on the IEEE 802.11 Ethernet standard continue to enjoy growth and success. Such WLANs are widely deployed in large and small organizations, homes, and a growing number of public access points called...

Inadequate test tools can have a very high price.(ahead Of The Curve)
October 18, 2004... The age-old adage says you can't do the right job without the right tool, but in today's high-performance electronics there's an important corollary: Not having the right measurement tools can increase a product's development cost and business...

Passive rotary optical encoder shrugs off harsh environments.(TechView: components & test)
October 18, 2004... No integral electronics can be found within the encoder housing of a novel rotary incremental optical encoder. Micronor's entirely passive MR312 ZapFree encoder has an all-optical design. Thanks to wave-division-multiplexing (WDM) technology,...

Optical proximity sensor makes it automatic for consumer appliances.(TechView: components & test)
October 18, 2004... Compact mobile devices have a new miniature, low-cost optical proximity sensor at the ready. In mobile phones, for example, the HSDL-9100-021 sensor makes it possible to automatically change from the loudspeaker to the earpiece mode when the...

BERT set options meet SAN and 10-GbE demands.(TechView: components & test)
October 18, 2004... New options for Anritsu's MP1763C pulse pattern generator and the MP1764C/D error detector bring 12.5G bit-error-rate test (BERT) sets that accurately evaluate the latest highspeed devices used in storage-area-network (SAN) and 10-Gigabit...

Structured ASICs deliver pin-compatible FPGA replacements.(TechView: digital)
October 18, 2004... Although large FPGAs are popular when designers create system prototypes, they're often constraining in production due to high per-unit costs. The arrival of a lower-cost, pin-compatible solution for the latest 1.5-V generation FPGAs looks to...

DSP array produces WiMAX, HSDPA solutions from reference designs.(TechView: digital)
October 18, 2004... Thanks to complete software implementations of 802.16 (WiMAX) basestations and HighSpeed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) picocells, designers can rapidly develop full system solutions using the PC102 communications processor. The PC8520 and...

DSP extensions turn MIPS CPUs into media stars.(TechView: digital)
October 18, 2004... Adding DSP hardware extensions to the MIPS instruction-set architecture (ISA) boosts CPU throughput by up to 300% when handling signal-processing algorithms for audio and video applications. The improved DSP throughput, coupled with the CPU's...

Platform FPGA design suite exploits new architecture.(TechView: EDA)
October 18, 2004... Stir together 200,000 logic cells and 500-MHz performance, and you get the Integrated Software Environment (ISE) from Xilinx. Following on its recent announcement of the Virtex-4 family of platform FPGAs, the company rolled out the 6.3i release...

RTL-to-GDSII flow rolls for structured ASICs.(TechView: EDA)
October 18, 2004... A collaboration between Magma Design Automation and ChipX has produced a unified RTL-to-GDSll structured ASlC design flow. Based on Magma's Blast Create and Blast Fusion tools, the flow supports ChipX's CX5000 family of structured-ASIC devices....