Electronics Weekly articles from June 2008

Electronics Weekly archives from June 2008

Products.
June 4, 2008... Zuken has introduced an autorouting tool which it claimed moves away from clumsy settings-based autorouting on boards to a methodology driven approach. This comes in the form of the Routing Strategy Environment (RSE) that applies routing...

News.
June 4, 2008... by David Manners STMicroelectronics is becoming an analogue company. The main priority for the immediate future is to invest in and grow its analogue business, by acquisition where necessary. "We're building a new ST, a better ST,"...

News.
June 4, 2008... Mirics Semiconductor has developed a hardware/software TV demodulation technique which it is coupling with its RF tuner to add a broadcast receiver to PCs. The firm has opted for a software demodulator to support the broadcast standards...

Features.
June 4, 2008... By Steve Bush Essex-based electrical equipment maker MK Electric has announced wireless light switches based on self-generating technology from Germany's EnOcean. "The Echo range harvests tiny amounts of ambient energy to wirelessly...

Features.
June 4, 2008... The selection of electronic interconnects by system designers is becoming increasingly critical during the design of next-generation telecoms and datacomms equipment platforms. As information content has expanded from voice to also include...

Features.
June 4, 2008... Electronics that require elevated operating temperatures are going to be a key technology to support the next generation of products. We are all aware of the growing requirements for electronics in automotive applications such as hybrid...

Features.
June 4, 2008... In our communications-dominated electronics world, with the focus on 'connected' and wireless portable devices, high frequency design and integration have become critical factors. The integration of digital, analogue and mixed-signal...

Features.
June 4, 2008... Signal integrity in high-speed connectors By Gert Havermann and Kevin Canham Developing connectors for multi-gigabit applications is one of the greatest challenges in the field of electromechanical component engineering. Achieving good...

News.
June 4, 2008... 04jun08Q5arrow.jpg 1. 2. 3. 4. 5)

News.
June 4, 2008... Mobile TV is not happening in Europe and will not happen until it is a free service for the user. Mobile phone operators in Japan and China have been smart enough to realise that mobile TV must be a free-to-air service just like...

News.
June 4, 2008... A Japanese flash memory start-up has European mobile phone manufacturers interested in its ultra-long endurance NOR flash memories and is working with an unnamed fab to put them into production. "We'll be sampling in September next year",...

News.
June 4, 2008... Qualcomm has paid [pounds sterling]8m for 40MHz (1452-1492 MHz) of L-Band radio spectrum in UK. Although the company has not given specific details of what it will use the spectrum for, it is thought that it will be to trial its MediaFlo mobile...

News.
June 4, 2008... EMBARGO 2nd JUNE 04jun08SiliconBlue2.pdf - diag on first page 04jun08SiliconBlue.pdf p24 die shot - olny if words can be removed California start-up SiliconBlue has revealed details of its low power SRAM FPGAs for handhelds,...

Features.
June 4, 2008... By Richard Wilson richard.wilson@electronicsweekly.com Thales has worked with design tool firm Mentor Graphics to develop a new type of tool and design methodology training course which the defence firm will offer to a hundred...

Features.
June 4, 2008... By Richard Wilson richard.wilson@electronicsweekly.com PCB Design Service company Routability and Total Board Solutions (TBS) has developed a training course specifically for PCB design contractors. Routability is a four-year-old...

Features.
June 4, 2008... 04jun08bikeride.jpg Routability and Total Board Solutions have also teamed up to donate a tandem to the Help for Heroes campaign, a charity which raised over [pounds sterling]4.3m to fund the building of swimming pool and hydrotherapy...

News.
June 4, 2008... US-based Universal Display (UDC) revealed two white organic LED technologies for lighting at the Society for Information Display conference in Los Angeles last month. Based on phosphorescent materials, the first is a 'warm' white emitter...

News.
June 4, 2008... 04jun08photonic1.jpg Individual 200x100[micro]m scales on the exoskeleton of the beetle Lamprocyphus augustus appearing green because the fingernail-like material in the scales has a diamond-like crystal structure that reflects green...

News.
June 4, 2008... Stackable GPS receiver enables position tracking As transportable embedded systems become commonplace, designers are looking for economical ways to integrate global-positioning equipment to track movements and deter theft. To target...

News.
June 4, 2008... By Margery Conner editorial@electronicsweekly.com The passive/semipassive IDS-SL13A tag chip from Swiss company, IDS Microchip finds use in single-cell, battery-powered smart-RFID (radio-frequency-identification) labels. An...

News.
June 4, 2008... 04jun08MIPS.jpg Multiprocessor system sports up to four coherent, multi-threaded cores By Robert Cravotta MIPS Technologies' MIPS32 1004K coherent processing system is a multithreaded, multiprocessor licensable IP multiprocessor...

Products.
June 11, 2008... Low-profile eighth-brick sized DC-DC converter SynQor has introduced a low- profile eighth-brick sized DC-DC converter, which measures 22.9x58.4x8.1mm and offers a regulated output of 2.5V up to a maximum rating of 35A with little or no...

News.
June 11, 2008... 11jun08Wolfson.pdf - a certain diag on p31 plus an optional graph from p34 Edinburgh-based Wolfson Microelectronics has significantly cut the typical power consumption of battery headphone amplifiers using variable voltage rails, claimed...

Features.
June 11, 2008... 11jun08Q5alexander.jpg t. 1) 2) 3) 4) 5)

Features.
June 11, 2008... 11jun08Tektronixtable.jpg Table 1: Factors in picking the right FPGA debug methodology. 11jun08TektronixPIC.jpg Taking the bug out of FPGA debugging By Dave Ireland Design verification has emerged as one of the most...

Features.
June 11, 2008... See Fig 1 eps in email. Considerations and advantages of networked test systems on any bus By Tristan Jones Computer users have benefited from distributed processing to separate tasks and enable higher performance for tasks in...

Features.
June 11, 2008... Modular instrumentation, as a technique for building customised test equipment, is a mature concept that is now hitting its stride. By drawing on standards and components having their origins in the PC industry, the PCI Extensions for...

Features.
June 11, 2008... Network Robustness Testing in Vehicles By Roland Jeutter is general manager of the automotive digital test division at Agilent Technologies The major challenge vehicle manufacturers are facing is how to produce cars that are...

Features.
June 11, 2008... IEEE 802.11n is the expansion of the WLAN 802.11a/g standards for peak data rates up to 600Mbit/s. IEEE 802.11n, like 802.11a/g, uses OFDM modulation but also MIMO (multiple-input and multiple-output) technology and also a special coding...

Features.
June 11, 2008... High availability in embedded systems: Always on By Warren Webb Designers are tuning high-availability architectures to meet customer demands for a persistent data interface for the next generation of ultra-reliable embedded-system...

News.
June 11, 2008... From a multi-core ARM processor to on-chip boundary scan test technology this week's new look Electronics Weekly demonstrates that innovative design is flourishing in the UK. After all, that is why we are here. To present the most...

Features.
June 11, 2008... 11jun08Altera1-2.pdf Capacitive touch switch uses CPLD By Rafael Camarota, Altera Capacitive touch switches work by measuring the change in capacitance of a PCB pattern depending on the placement of a user's finger over a sensing...

Features.
June 11, 2008... 11jun08EarlsCourt.jpg 11jun08Floorplan.pdf National Electronics Week exhibition will take place at Earls Court 2 in London from June 17th to 9th. The event will showcase manufacturing and test technologies alongside power and display...

News.
June 11, 2008... ARM is going head-to-head with Intel in the ultra-mobile PC space, usually referred to as mobile Internet devices (MIDs). Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and graphics chip firm Nvidia are bringing out chipsets based on an ARM processor which...

News.
June 11, 2008... 11jun08ibm.jpg IBM cools 3D chips with water by Ann Steffora Mutschler, Electronic News IBM's Zurich, Switzerland labs have demonstrated a prototype that integrates a cooling system into 3D chips that pipes water directly between...

News.
June 11, 2008... 11jun08L2TEK.jpg Tim McBride and Mark Scott-South, both of whom have spent the last 10 years selling semiconductors into the broadcast and AV markets across Europe, have recently formed their own manufacturers' representative business....

News.
June 11, 2008... 11jun08MLE.jpg Design house MLE is working with London-based PDD on what they call is an "holistic approach" to the design of medical systems. "Partnering with PDD gives us access to their ability to look at the whole interaction between...

News.
June 11, 2008... Texas Instruments is claiming record low power consumption for additions to its MPS430 family. "We are offering the industry's lowest power consumption for devices that can provide up to 25MHz performance," said TI, "with as low as...

News.
June 11, 2008... Berkshire-based Carclo revealed 10mm optical collimators for Lumiled's tiny Rebel power LEDs as well as 20 and 26.5mm forms for Cree's recently released four chip MC-E device at the EuroLED conference and exhibition in Coventry last week....

News.
June 11, 2008... Mobile phones remain the only high volume market for Bluetooth chipsets. Attempts to widen the Bluetooth market to cameras, cars and medical devices have had only limited success. This is why the leading supplier CSR and its much larger...

News.
June 11, 2008... The technology industry is looking good, to the surprise of many people who thought general economic conditions would have a negative effect on it. The technology industry will be the best performing sector worldwide this year, according...

News.
June 11, 2008... ARM has laid-out its graphics processor strategy with scaleable multi-processor versions of its Mali 3D graphics processing cores. The family, called Mali-400, has four variants: single core, dual core, triple core and four core. The four...

News.
June 11, 2008... Following the announcement of a consultation period prior to closing its Irish design centre with the loss of 47 jobs, Freescale has conceded that a sale of the company's fab at East Kilbride in Scotland looks "unlikely" and that, while...

News.
June 18, 2008... Altera FPGAs get ColdFire soft core Altera has added Freescale's 32bit V1 ColdFire core to its library of FPGA soft cores. "To create system-level designs using Cyclone III FPGAs, designers can now choose a Freescale, ARM Cortex M1 or...

News.
June 18, 2008... With ARM shaping up to take on Intel for the mobile Internet device (MID) market, the Smartphone market, the server market and, maybe further out, the laptop and desktop PC market, how is the battle shaping up? On the face of it Intel, by...

Products.
June 18, 2008... MEMS sensor detects motor-bearing irregularities Vibration analysis can serve as the proverbial ounce of prevention for factory equipment, in which unscheduled downtime can be prohibitively expensive. Targeting that prevention, Analog...

News.
June 18, 2008... Students at the University of Southampton are developing a free wireless network for local residents, while researching Wi-Fi technology. Southampton Open Wireless Project (SOWN) is run by staff and students in the School of Electronics...

Supplements.
June 18, 2008... By Mark Cambridge Full colour, full motion video displays are becoming a familiar sight in environments and applications that just a few years ago would have stretched the imagination of a science fiction writer. Reality is catching up...

News.
June 18, 2008... 18jun08Cypress1... - choice On show at the EuroLED exhibition last week in Coventry, is this the most intuitive multi-colour multi-intensity alternative to the humble light switch yet? It uses capacitive touch sensing from Cypress ...

Features.
June 18, 2008... Hal Philipp and his wife Kathy founded Quantum Research Group in Hamble, Hampshire in 1996 in a spare bedroom. He originally developed and patented his capacitive touch technology for use in automatic water taps. Today, refined versions of this...

Supplements.
June 18, 2008... 18jun08muncaster1-2.jpg Country houses like Muncaster Castle in the Lake District have a great history of pioneering new technology. Peter Frost-Pennington, whose family have occupied the castle for 800 years, was thus maintaining a...

Features.
June 18, 2008... DC-DC buck (step-down) converters and boost (step-up) converters address a unidirectional voltage conversion of always regulating a voltage less than or more than the input supply, respectively. However, the question of how to regulate a...

Features.
June 18, 2008... Overlap - the short period during which a push-pull drive's two transistors are both simultaneously on - is a common problem with these drives in a centre-tapped transformer's primary. Overlap causes a large current spike and increased...

Features.
June 18, 2008... The embedded application processor is evolving in a similar way to that seen in desktop computing in the mid 1990's. Then as now, it was realised that the CPU did not have the necessary processing power or instruction set to deliver the 3D and...

Supplements.
June 18, 2008... 18jun08clamp1-2.jpg Improved laser-diode-clamp circuit protects against overvoltages Adding a bipolar transistor to a JFET laser-diode clamp protects high-current laser diodes, writes James Zannis Expensive semiconductor laser...

News.
June 18, 2008... After years of living in hope that 3G would happen eventually, semiconductor suppliers once again believe that technology differentiation can win significant business in the mobile market. It is like the mobile phone design boom of the late...

Supplements.
June 18, 2008... 18jun08backlights.jpg Passion needed for display backlight design by Luke Huiyong Chung For several years, the relentless competition between liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and plasma display panels (PDPs) has intensified as new...

News.
June 18, 2008... Wireless body monitoring technology was a key part of Jaltek's acquisition of Cambridgeshire-based RF design services company Hidalgo. One of Hidalgo's designs is the Equivital monitoring system, which enables heart rate, respiration and body...

News.
June 18, 2008... 18jun08EricssonBCF1612.jpg plus optional 18jun08Ericsson.pdf diag on page 4 Ericsson has moved to digital feedback in an isolated DC-DC converter to squeeze 400W and 96 per cent efficiency from a quarter brick power supply....

News.
June 18, 2008... A US firm has developed an unusual technique for soldering materials with differing coefficients of thermal expansion. "It can join any metal to any ceramic, or difficult metal combinations including aluminium to titanium," European...

News.
June 18, 2008... Last week we reported on a team of researchers at IBM in Zurich using water to cool 3D chips (EW 11-17 June 2008, page 5), now we see that IBM is actually using chip cooling techniques to gain more solar power from optical concentraters such as...

News.
June 18, 2008... With ARM shaping up to take on Intel for the mobile Internet device (MID) market, the smartphone market, the server market and, maybe further out, the laptop and desktop PC market, EW asked Warren East, CEO of ARM how the battle was developing?...

Supplements.
June 18, 2008... By Rob Anders Some - but not all - consumer-product developers have understood that maximising the appeal of high-tech equipment is dependent on delivering an outstanding user experience. Securing competitive advantage demands...

Supplements.
June 18, 2008... by Andy Green Video display is a critical application for handsets and other portable products, but there has been limited success, particularly with mobile TV, in large part due to poor perceived quality. A display's viewability is...

News.
June 18, 2008... By David Manners Is a merger of 3G long term evolution (LTE) and Wimax, the two contesting standards for next generation - 4G - mobile phone technology, do-able or desirable? The question has been has resurrected by Intel after it was...

News.
June 18, 2008... US companies like Microsoft, Intel, Qualcomm and Rambus may moan about European Commission (EC) investigations into their business practices, but they have only the US to blame for the EC's antitrust rules. The EU drew heavily on America's...

Products.
June 18, 2008... 18jun08tektronix.jpg Tektronix has introduced a ruggedised handheld version of its desktop real-time spectrum analyser range which includes DPX waveform image processor technology that the company uses to provide what it calls a live RF...

Features.
June 25, 2008... 25jun08displaysol.jpg "Sometimes it's important to measure progress and innovation not by higher, faster or stronger but just by simpler." Zen-engineering's latest prophet is Martin Whitehead, systems manager of Display Solutions. ...

News.
June 25, 2008... 18jun08IMECandAIXTRON.pdf Thickness uniformity map of a 1[micro]m GaN layer deposited on 200mm Si(111) using an AlN/AlGaN buffer. The average thickness measured in-situ is 1008nm for the full wafer excluding a 5mm edge. European...

Features.
June 25, 2008... 25jun08MentorFIG1-2-3-4-5.jpg Place and Route Solutions for Multi-corner Multi-mode Designs By Sudhakar Jilla As mainstream ICs move to 45nm process node, traditional place and route systems are struggling to achieve predictable...

Products.
June 25, 2008... 25jun08Vishay.jpg Siliconix is claiming a lot of records for additions to its family of 2x2x0.8mm SC-70 power Mosfets: including one with 11m[ohm] on-resistance, formerly available only from TSOP-6 Fets which are twice the size. ...

News.
June 25, 2008... DIAG AND CAP image constructed from two in 11jun08zetex. Zetex' ideal diode controller is comprised of a differential comparator and high current driver. The detector monitors the reverse voltage of the Mosfet such that if body diode...

Features.
June 25, 2008... By Pierluigi Lo Muzio and Philipp Jacobsohn Deployment of ESL (Electronic System Level) design-methodologies often leads to a degradation of achievable results. Usually, a higher abstraction level has a negative impact on both device...

Features.
June 25, 2008... Recent design tool announcements from Altium and Zuken are attempting to tackle that grey area which is the boundary between PCB electrical and 3D mechanical design. Typically, engineers completed initial board layout for checking later by...

Features.
June 25, 2008... There are many standards for high-speed serial signalling such as HDMI, PCI Express, Serial ATA, and DDR memory. The higher speeds give rise to greater demands on printed circuit board designs to meet power signal integrity (SI), power...

News.
June 25, 2008... On a visit to the National Electronics Week exhibition in London last week I met a number of people who passionately believed that the UK was not doing enough to showcase its technology capabilities to the rest of the world. At the same...

News.
June 25, 2008... Intel is entering the solar cell industry by spinning off key assets of a start-up business inside its new business initiatives group to form an independent company, SpectraWatt. The semiconductor company explained that SpectraWatt will...

News.
June 25, 2008... Cadence Design Systems surprised the chip design tool industry last week by making a $1.6bn bid to acquire rival Mentor Graphics. The move followed two months of discussions between the two companies which failed to convince Mentor of the...

News.
June 25, 2008... 18jun08IMECandAIXTRON.pdf Thickness uniformity map of a 1[micro]m GaN layer deposited on 200mm Si(111) using an AlN/AlGaN buffer. The average thickness measured in-situ is 1008nm for the full wafer excluding a 5mm edge. European...

News.
June 25, 2008... Power efficiency is becoming a key design parameter for microcontrollers in many embedded applications. Two recent product announcements demonstrate what is achieveable. A couple of weeks ago Texas Instruments added low operating power...

News.
June 25, 2008... Researchers at the University of Glasgow are using a combination of quantum dot phosphors with photonic crystals to increase the light output of LEDs in lighting applications. Late last year, researcher Dr Faiz Rahman revealed that he was...

News.
June 25, 2008... by Bill jacobs Plastic electronics may have enormous potential with UK-based firms leading the way, but MPs were told last week that this potential will be fulfilled provided the technology can find a way into the commercial market. ...