Electronics Weekly articles from February 2009

Electronics Weekly archives from February 2009

Products.
February 4, 2009... Free Windows Embedded board support packages Atmel has released free Windows Embedded board support packages (BSPs) for its AT91SAM9 (ARM926EJ-based) embedded MPUs. The Windows Embedded CE 5.0 BSP and the Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R2 BSP...

News.
February 4, 2009... Most readers are familiar with the current-limiting circuit in which the load current, IL, is limited to a value of approx VBE/RS, where VBE is the base-to-emitter voltage and RS is the sense resistance. Under normal conditions, in which...

Features.
February 4, 2009... The automotive market is a major user of serial buses, ranging from low-speed buses (up to 1 Mbit/s), such as CAN (Controller Area Network) and LIN (Local Interconnect Network), up to the high-speed (up to 10 Mbit/s) FlexRay next-generation...

Features.
February 4, 2009... Much has been written about the changing face of test, but less frequently discussed is the subject of confidence in test coverage. Specifically, while you can test increasingly complex boards, how comfortable are you with the thoroughness of...

Features.
February 4, 2009... Electrical testing can provide a range of benefits for PCB manufacturers. As well as overall cost efficiencies, it can increase productivity and reliability and avoid costly product recalls. Even the best designed and produced PCBs can have...

Features.
February 4, 2009... 04feb09TV test.jpg optional 04feb09TV test2.jpg Bringing TV test up-to-date by David Smith There are many differences between modern and traditional TVs, and they lie well beyond the obvious, such as the screen technology...

Features.
February 4, 2009... The ideal way to determine if a serial data receiver is fit for application is to test it with the worst signal it is ever likely to ever see. Stress tests mandated in the latest serial data standards are stretching current test techniques...

Products.
February 4, 2009... Seoul's 1.4W power LED has1.2mm package height Seoul Semiconductor has released a slim 1.4W power LED for lighting applications. Dubbed Z1, the complete package is 1.2mm high. There are two parts: the NZ10150 warm white 80lm (typical)...

Features.
February 4, 2009... CEESI scheme offers flexibility through distance learning A group of universities are offering a programme of MSc-level modules which are closely linked to the needs of the electronics industry. The universities involved in the...

News.
February 4, 2009... The wireless communications and broadcast industries will be hoping for increased investment over the next three years as the government lays out its plans for radically modernising the UK's communications infrastructure. The report -...

News.
February 4, 2009... By David Manners This year, the world semiconductor market will fall by 28% in value and by 26% in unit shipments, according to market analyst Future Horizons. This is by far the gloomiest forecast of all the major analysts. Merrill...

News.
February 4, 2009... 04feb09Humphreys A white LED breakthrough at the University of Cambridge could lead to mass production in the UK. "Its it is a way of making GaN LED die that is a factor of 10 cheaper: growing them on 150mm silicon wafers rather than...

News.
February 4, 2009... Researchers at the University of Manchester have found a way to predictably switch graphene out of its highly-conductive mode - the highlight of a month that has seen graphene announcements worldwide. The material, discovered at Manchester...

News.
February 4, 2009... Describe your business in two sentences Integrated Engineering Software develops and sells simulation software for design engineers. The company's main focus is in the electromechanical area, but it is also involved in applications...

Products.
February 18, 2009... 18feb09Microchip Microchip has anounced a family of eight and 32kbyte stand-alone serial SRAMs. The 23A640, 23K640 (23x640), 23A256 and 23K256 (23x256) have a standard SPI interface and the A devices operate from 1.7-1.95V, while the...

Products.
February 18, 2009... Open system for converting and mixing radar video Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing has announced Cougar, a radar input and scan converter VME board set which provides an open standards-based system for capturing, converting and...

News.
February 18, 2009... Looking a lot like a universal DC-DC converter, a 15x15mm-sized buck-boost module from Linear Technology can convert any voltage between 4.5 and 36V to any voltage between 0.8 and 34V, at up to 120W. Packaged in a 2.8mm LGA, the LTM4609...

News.
February 18, 2009... Dialog Semiconductor has introduced a multi-output power supply chip for mobile phones with a difference - it has peripherals including a touch-screen controller and watchdog timer. Aimed at smartphones and media players, the DA9052 has 300...

News.
February 18, 2009... 18feb09designfig1.pdf 18feb09designfig2.pdf 18feb09designfig3.pdf Convert signals to proper logic levels A way to reduce digital-voltage levels to those compatible with microcontrollers described by Abel Raynus When...

Features.
February 18, 2009... The ability to run multiple operating systems on a single hardware platform is nothing new. In the IT sector, systems such as VMware have been on the market for some years and new virtualisation solutions are being introduced at a constant...

Features.
February 18, 2009... Rapid prototyping is a popular methodology for taking electronics concepts to production quickly. Yet the rapidity with which embedded software and firmware can evolve during the initial stages of development can lead to problems as the number...

Features.
February 18, 2009... Looking at the market for open specification equipment, a trend emerges - the customer is demanding higher performance. This drive relates not only to the performance of the silicon, but to the interconnect, the fabric that links these blades...

Features.
February 18, 2009... Digital audio transport and LED display applications Appearing at the Embedded World event for the first time, XMOS, the Bristol-based developer of software defined silicon (SDS) will be demonstrating digital audio transport and LED display...

Features.
February 18, 2009... The most striking development in video game technology in recent years has been the emergence of motion control, a trend that is expanding the industry beyond its traditional demographics by appealing to young and old alike. The Nintendo...

Features.
February 18, 2009... Embedded system development with a Linux operating system is the focus of design workshops being held in Cambridge and Bristol in May. With these practical workshops the intention is to show how to build a working embedded Linux system,...

Products.
February 18, 2009... FastFET amplifiers operate at 1GHz Analog Devices is offering its fastest field-effect transistor (FET) operational amplifier, which is capable of operating at 1GHz. The op amp was designed for high-performance medical diagnostic...

News.
February 18, 2009... Ofcom is proposing to introduce the biggest round of radio spectrum trading the UK wireless communications market has yet seen. The communications regulator wants to free the logjam that has prevented the proliferation of commercial 3G...

News.
February 18, 2009... Intel is to spend $7bn over two years building 32nm wafer fabrication facilities in the US. The first microprocessors to be built using this technology are codenamed Westmere, and production ramp begins in 2009. Additional 32nm products will...

News.
February 18, 2009... Belgian research lab IMEC unveiled a receiver chip that can handle just about every mobile phone standard at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco last week. "The receiver is fully software configurable across...

News.
February 18, 2009... ARM has recently acquired a Sweden-based video IP company, Logipard AB. The firm's video encode and decode acceleration technologies is used by LG Electronics and two other handset OEMs. www.arm.com

News.
February 18, 2009... Numonyx has taped out a 1Gbit phase change memory. "We have taped out a 1Gbit phase change device on 45nm," said chief technology officer Ed Doller. He conceded that the density level is "well below floating gate" densities, which are...

News.
February 18, 2009... The University of Wales, Newport, is to move its theory of self-organisation into robots. "We have got the robots, we have got the infrastructure, and we have developed the model," researcher Dr Torbjorn Dahl (pictured) told EW. "We can...

News.
February 18, 2009... CSR seems to be confident that GPS location technology will soon become a standard feature of mass-market mobile phones. Otherwise it is doubtful that the Bluetooth chipset developer would have chosen this as the moment to pay [pounds...

News.
February 18, 2009... Ceva is targeting its Internet Protocol-based approach to mobile phone platforms at next-generation 4G systems with its first full-blown communications processor core. The programmable IP-based DSP architecture builds on the firm's...

News.
February 18, 2009... Belgian lab IMEC has developed a 60GHz front-end receive chain, phase-locked loop and power amplifier in 45nm digital CMOS. "These building blocks pave the way to second-generation 60GHz radios by 2010 which will rely solely on plain CMOS:...

News.
February 18, 2009... 18feb09richbeyer.jpg Freescale Semiconductor CEO, Rich Beyer tells David Manners that private-equity owners Blackstone are in the chip business for the long-haul Freescale's private equity owners Blackstone are in it for the long...

News.
February 25, 2009... Q1) What trends are influencing embedded system design today? I see the emergence of low-cost, high-capacity FPGA devices and their use as a system platform. From an EDA tool perspective this has a number of implications. Firstly, processor...

Features.
February 25, 2009... The number of mobile broadband subscribers (using W-CMDA, EV-DO, HSPA, LTE, and Mobile Wimax) is expected to surpass two billion by 2013, with LTE alone reaching 440 million subscribers by 2015. This growing demand for next-generation...

Features.
February 25, 2009... LED market will grow in 2009, says analyst by Suzanne Deffree LED are expected to outshine the overall semiconductor market during electronics downturn, with 2.9% revenue growth estimated for this year. That is according to the...

Features.
February 25, 2009... 25feb09cree.jpg 25feb09cree2.jpg By Alice Carroll The only way to judge an LED's true performance is to get your hands on a device sample. It is not that data sheet specifications are hard to understand, it is just that it...

Features.
February 25, 2009... Dimming on an LED is commonly implemented by means of a PWM signal. The reason that most applications use PWM instead of just changing the DC current through the LED is that a change in DC current through the LED will alter the colour...

Features.
February 25, 2009... The race for LED manufacturers to improve the industry headline metric of lumens/watt is hotting up in the drive to improve the energy efficiency of lighting systems. But as sales of LED lighting systems displace those of traditional...

Features.
February 25, 2009... WCMDA offered higher capacities and more features than GSM, but operators could not substitute their 2G networks for 3G networks overnight. 3G handsets continue to support the previous generation of technology. This trend will continue...

Products.
February 25, 2009... 25feb09MDmeshV.ppt ST's MDmesh mosfet technology is now in its third generation STMicroelectronics has announced version V of its MDmesh mains voltage power mosfet technology. "This provides performance that was not available in...

News.
February 25, 2009... Android, Google's open source mobile operating system, was expected to be much talked about last week at Mobile World Congress, Europe's mobile phone jamboree in Barcelona. There was anticipation of new handsets supporting the open source...

News.
February 25, 2009... 25feb09ECP3.jpg Lattice Semiconductor has played to its strengths with its latest generation mid-range FPGA, the ECP3. The third generation of its ECP family continues the company's strategy of offering low power consumption FPGAs for...

News.
February 25, 2009... ST-Ericsson claims to have the first Symmetric Multi Processing (SMP)-enabled mobile platform running on Symbian OS at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week. Interestingly this is running on the ARM Cortex-A9 multicore processor,...

News.
February 25, 2009... Texas Instruments has announced the next generation OMAP 4 mobile applications platform which will support 1080p HD video record and playback and 20 megapixel imaging. The chip's processing comes from a C64x DSP-based programmable...

News.
February 25, 2009... Mobiles will share a common charging socket design by 2012, according to an announcement at Mobile World Congress last week. Micro USB has been selected as the universal charging interface. Seventeen phone companies are supporting the...

News.
February 25, 2009... 25feb09thermogenerator.jpg At the heart of Nextreme's thermovoltaic generator is a bismuth/antimony telluride Seebeck/Peltier module. by Steve Bush With sustainable energy at the top of the political agenda it is not surprising a...

News.
February 25, 2009... Virginia, USA 1980: five years before the word cellphone entered the vocabulary, an Englishman passed through the gates of General Electric's mobile radio factory. That man was Gerry Whent, head of Racal's tactical military radio division,...

News.
February 25, 2009... With much discussion at last week's Mobile World Congress of what constitutes 4G, and when and in what form it will arrive, it is easy to forget the road that has brought us here. The drivers behind the lightning evolution of cellular...