Electronics Weekly articles from March 2009

Electronics Weekly archives from March 2009

News.
March 4, 2009... In December year, Electronics Weekly posted a piece called "FPGA industry on the wrong track". It argued that the FPGA industry is becoming more like the SoC business, with products targeted for specific applications instead of relying on its...

News.
March 4, 2009... As an Asic business focused on the German automotive industry, how will you cope with the downturn? While it is true that the German automotive industry is an important part of our business. We have diversified significantly in the past...

Products.
March 4, 2009... Mini pressure sensors could enable new applications Epcos is offering some neatly packaged sensors for barometric pressure measurement. The dimensions are 1.7x1.7x 0.9mm. It is hoped the small size will open up new applications for...

News.
March 4, 2009... This design describes a voltage-to-frequency converter (VFC) that uses an interesting property of square roots: their ability to extend VFC dynamic range by orders of magnitude (Figure 1). Linear VFCs are one of the oldest types of ADCs,...

Features.
March 4, 2009... The risk of encountering counterfeit components has risen significantly in recent times. The sheer scale was highlighted by a US/EU customs operation which seized 360,000 counterfeit electronic components over a two-week period late last year....

Features.
March 4, 2009... Western Europe still represents 15% of the global electronics manufacturing output (RER, 2007), a statistic that reflects the growing maturity of customers making outsourced manufacturing decisions. Although Asia can beat Europe on labour...

Features.
March 4, 2009... Executives from UK-based electronic manufacturing services (EMS) companies met in London last month to share information on how they were dealing with the global economic downturn. The mood at the meeting, organised by industry body...

Features.
March 4, 2009... Market developments have accelerated the incidence of counterfeit electronic components. A risk mitigation strategy that includes affordable component testing is increasingly important to distributors and manufacturers facing this threat. ...

Features.
March 4, 2009... I can't remember who said there where two certainties in life - paying taxes and death - but I would like to suggest a third: component obsolescence. With a greater choice of new components and shortening lifecycles, things are getting...

Products.
March 4, 2009... Winged high-current inductor for cut-out PCBs Vishay Intertechnology is offering a winged high-current inductor for use on a cut-out PCB. With a frequency range up to 5MHz, the IHLP inductor offers an inductance range from 0.10 to...

Features.
March 4, 2009... Embedded wireless seminar The integration of wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi, Zigbee and GPRS into M2M applications will be discussed at the at an embedded wireless seminar being held by Solid State Supplies in Leeds on 11 March. ...

News.
March 4, 2009... When I met a group of UK-based manufacturers last month, I assumed the mood of the meeting would be deep gloom at the precarious state of the economy. Not a bit of it. The executives were clearly being challenged by the state of the...

News.
March 4, 2009... Nujira has received a strategic investment from Mitsubishi UFJ Capital of Japan. This is the Cambridge-based firm's first venture investment relationship with a Japanese corporation and comes as three major Japanese OEMs are designing its RF...

News.
March 4, 2009... STMicroelectronics and Luminary Micro continue to push ARM Cortex-M3-based microcontrollers into the low-cost embedded market with new versions offering wider interface support. STMicroelectronics has added a full-speed USB on-the-go (OTG)...

News.
March 4, 2009... Plextek claims it can reduce development time for embedded systems such as in-car multimedia with a customisable core processor-based reference design. Based on a Freescale iMX31 processor incorporating an ARM11 core running the WinCE 6.0...

News.
March 4, 2009... ARM has introduced its smallest Cortex processor yet. At 12,000 gates, the firm sees the Cortex-M0 displacing 8 and 16bit processors in low-power applications, particularly where protocol stacks are required or wide data is manipulated. ...

News.
March 4, 2009... A handheld DNA tester which could predict a patient's possible allergic response to medication within a matter of minutes is the aim of a research project involving Imperial College London, its spinout DNA Electronics and drug company Pfizer....

News.
March 4, 2009... Europe has a one-stop shop for piezoelectric design which operates out of nine centres, including two in the UK at the National Physical Laboratory and Cranfield University. "It is an industry-academic partnership, here for people who...

Products.
March 11, 2009... CompactFlash card provides 65Mbyte/s read speed Jactron is offering a 64Gbyte CompactFlash card from Pretec. Using a specially-crafted controller IC and SLC nand flash technology, the Pretec 433X CF card reaches 65Mbyte/s read speed and...

Features.
March 11, 2009... Most industrialised nations have adopted "green" initiatives, whereby they encourage manufacturers to incorporate energy saving techniques into their end products. This has led many power management IC suppliers to improve power conversion...

News.(Company overview)
March 11, 2009... 11mar09GaryMarsh.jpg Gary Marsh, managing director of distributor Solid State Supplies talks to EW about how the downturn is really impacting business and new design opportunities which still exist. 1. What impact is the downturn...

News.
March 11, 2009... If government were to pay the first two years' costs of employing IET-chartered engineers, the output of the UK electronics industry and the value of the industry in the eyes of venture capital (VC) investors would double overnight, according...

News.
March 11, 2009... To display the status of two digital outputs, you can simply connect an LED and its resistor on each output. You must, however, interpret, or "decode", the displayed binary code. In addition, when no LED lights, users have no way of knowing...

News.
March 11, 2009... Intended to serve web pages using minimal power, Marvell Semiconductor's SheevaPlug is a Linux PC built into a mains plug. "Unlike other embedded devices in the home, it contains a gigahertz-class processor to offer PC-class performance,"...

Features.
March 11, 2009... Power over Ethernet (PoE) will continue to contribute to the popularity and greater adoption of IP phones in businesses, but IP phones powered by PoE require a capable point-of-load (POL) power architecture. Consider surge protection when...

Features.
March 11, 2009... Implementation of the Batteries Directive in the UK will create a mechanism to significantly reduce the 700 million portable batteries going into landfill sites every year. This directive extends further the EU philosophy of "the polluter...

Features.
March 11, 2009... Medical electronic equipment designers are looking for ways to reduce system size and weight. Not only is the hospital bedside environment space-constrained, but there is a trend for more equipment to be used in the home, in doctors'...

Products.
March 11, 2009... Height savings stack up with Euroboard subracks Rittal offers kits for mounting double and treble height Euroboard printed circuit boards horizontally in both 3 and 4U high subracks. The horizontal mounting kits save height, and thus...

News.
March 11, 2009... Intel has a dilemma. It needs to enter the mobile phone market but it is not sure if that market will generate the revenues its needs. Last week's foundry deal with TSMC is Intel's latest attempt to unlock the mobile phone chipset market....

News.
March 11, 2009... Berkshire-based Polymer Optics has combined refractive and reflective LED optics to produce a narrow beam from a small package, and introduced a novel manufacturing technique to make the device. Most LEDs are focused by reflectors or...

News.
March 11, 2009... Mouser Electronics has opened a customer support centre in the UK as part of a plan to increase its business in the European component market. The catalogue and online component distributor has seen its sales in Europe more than double in...

News.
March 11, 2009... Atmel has introduced a family of tinyAVR microcontrollers that deliver 8Mips from 0.7V. "These devices are targeted at applications that run from a single battery, such as AA, AAA, or coin cell," said Atmel. "The first member of this...

News.
March 11, 2009... Suppliers of Computer-on-Modules (COM) form factor embedded boards have thrown their weight behind a smaller version of COM Express form factor based on the nanoETXexpress platform. The 84x55mm-sized module form-factor was originally proposed...

News.
March 11, 2009... A Java processor which will run real-time applications has been demonstrated by aJile Systems. Java has gained acceptance as an embedded platform, where it is offered as an alternative to embedded Linux and Windows CE/MF, particularly in...

News.
March 11, 2009... Cambridge Consultants is to design analogue chips for the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope. "There are going to be about 40 million receiver elements. If you make one every two seconds, it will take two years," Gary Kemp of Cambridge...