EDN articles from February 2005

EDN archives from February 2005

The end of the bloat.(Leading edge: what's hot in the design community)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2005... "Power users are going to want 250 Gbytes of storage in their portable media centers. And most of that storage requirement will not be for our software. It'll be for data... audio, pictures, video. Phew. Finally 'bloatware' will not be off the...

Tiny modules cool PC/104-expansion woes.(Leading edge: what's hot in the design community)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2005... THE NEW XBLOK PRODUCT family from Octagon Systems provides low-cost, energy-efficient peripheral expansion for PC/104 platforms. The tiny modules measure 1.65 x 3.55 in., less than half the size of a standard PC/104-expansion module. Designers...

High-reliability-qualified chip resistor doesn't resist.(Leading edge: what's hot in the design community)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2005... A 0[ohm] CHIP-RESISTOR FAMILY from State of the Art targets high-reliability applications and provides engineers with more flexibility of board layout in challenging routing situations. These devices, the MIL-PRF-32159 series, are available in...

Books offer serious design help.(Leading edge: what's hot in the design community)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 3, 2005... WITH THE WIDE AVAILABILITY of vendor application notes, Web-based sources, reference designs, and EDA tools, books may seem to be outmoded information sources for engineers. But that's not at all the case. In the past few months, EDN has...

Dilbert.(Leading edge: what's hot in the design community)
February 3, 2005... I'D LIKE TO PROMOTE YOU, BUT THE LOWEST SALARY BAND FOR THE NEXT LEVEL IS 20% HIGHER THAN YOUR CURRENT PAY. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] RAISES ARE CAPPED AT 5%, SO THERE'S NO WAY TO GIVE YOU THE PROMOTION. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ...

Devices extend the reach of 8-bit processing.(Leading edge: what's hot in the design community)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2005... Microchip has added four new devices to its PIC18F family of 8-bit microcontrollers. The devices operate as fast as 40 MHz and include 96 and 128 kbytes of self-reprogrammable, high-endurance flash memory and can operate over 2 to 5.5V. The...

Color your world with superior LED backlighting.(Leading edge: what's hot in the design community)
February 3, 2005... AGILENT'S NEW HDJDJ-B01 illumination- and color-management system seeks to darken the prospects of the CCFLs (cold-cathode fluorescent lamps) that LCD-TV backlighting currently uses. Key to the design is a color-sensor IC, which controls a...

Video-receiver IC spans analog present, digital future.(Leading edge: what's hot in the design community)(integrated circuits)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2005... ADD ANALOG DEVICES TO THE LIST of companies supplying chips compatible with the fast growing HDMI (high-definition-multimedia-interface) standard (see "Video processor embraces high-speed A/V link," EDN, Jan 20, 2005, pg 14). ADI puts a...

Programmable-logic successors focus on cost, capacity, feature enhancements.(Leading edge: what's hot in the design community)
February 3, 2005... ACTEL ADMITS that its eight-year-old ProASIC FPGA line was a slow starter, but the company happily reports that its flash-based devices, which it inherited through an acquisition of Gatefield and then refined, have now hit full stride. The...

Measuring droop.(signal integrity)(Column)
February 3, 2005... RAJEN MURUGAN OF DELL WRITES: What is the best technique to make dc-voltage measurement on a power rail? Will a four-point measurement technique he the most accurate? You can simply apply a voltmeter across the power and ground terminals...

Suffering from sensory deprivation?(edn.comment)
February 3, 2005... ALTHOUGH IN MANY CASES the parameter the sensor is measuring, such as temperature or pressure, seems simple enough from a textbook perspective, the installed actuality is often quite different. That's why there are thousands of sensors for each...

Mobile video: participants follow multiple paths: service providers and chip vendors target the handset, but is that the bull's eye?(digital den)
February 3, 2005... MEASURED BY SALES volume, the mobile handset remained the most important consumer product throughout 2004. That success and the computing horsepower in the device make the handset a magnet for other compelling technologies, such as music or...

Third-party IP: a shaky foundation for S0C design: commercial modules help designers meet schedules and cost objectives, but risks abound.(intellectual property)(Cover Story)
February 3, 2005... LAWYERS HAVE LABELED reusable design blocks, or cores, as IP (intellectual property), despite the fact that most electronics designers use IP to mean Internet Protocol, and most engineers prefer to describe such products as "virtual cores."...

Microelectronics applications require the right stacked-memory-packaging architecture: it's sometimes difficult to achieve a distinction combination of memory chips to support high data performance, low power consumption, low cost, and high-volume production to meet consumer's needs.(design feature)
February 3, 2005... INCREASINGLY, MEMORY CHIPS--in combinations of all their flavors, including DRAM, SRAM, and flash--are at the forefront of microelectronics end-product functions. This scenario is true for cell-phone handsets, broadband devices, networking...

Making the move to serial buses: serial-bus architectures offer high performance and system scalability. Understanding how they operate is the first step in managing the transition away from parallel-system-bus designs.(design feature)
February 3, 2005... STANDARD PARALLEL-BUS STRUCTURES are reaching their performance limits. The only way to increase system bandwidth is to switch to a serial-bus structure. Although serial structures promise enhanced performance, they are more complex to design...

Power supply design for power-over-ethernet applications.(Powerful designer: expert tips, tricks, and techniques for powerful designs)
February 3, 2005... Power-over-Ethernet (POE) The Internet is becoming as essential and ubiquitous a tool for communication and entertainment as are television and the telephone. An ever-growing variety of powered devices (PDs) such as wireless routers, web...

Power design tools.(Powerful designer: expert tips, tricks, and techniques for powerful designs)
February 3, 2005... WEBENCH[R] online design environment Our design and prototyping environment simplifies and expedites the entire design process. 1. Choose a part 2. Create a design 3. Analyze a power supply design --Perform electrical...

Reducing audio "buzz" in GSM cell phones: the pulse rate for GSM is within the audio band, and the DC current and RF energy readily convert into an objectionable audio "buzz" within the phone's circuitry. You can minimize the buzz if you take precautions early in the design stage.(design feature)
February 3, 2005... MOBILE-PHONE DESIGNERS who build to the GSM standard must sufficiently reduce audio "buzz" so that it is inaudible to users. GSM cell phones use a TDMA (time-division multiple-access) time-slot sharing technique that results in high-power RF in...

S-parameters and digital-circuit design: as bus speeds move into the microwave range, digital designers need thorough knowledge of S-parameters.(design feature)(scattering parameters)
February 3, 2005... IN THE DAYS of relatively slow 66-MHz buses, designers could ignore signal-integrity effects without problem, certainly for small boards. Similarly, they didn't have to know about S-parameters (scattering parameters), long used by...

Op amp selection guide for optimum noise performance.(Design Notes)
February 3, 2005... Design Note 355 Introduction Linear Technology continues to add to its portfolio of low noise op amps. This is not because the physics of noise has changed, but because low noise specifications are being combined with new features such...

Use an off-the-shelf signal source as a jitter/wander generator.(design ideas)
February 3, 2005... ENSURING THAT new networked products, such as routers, gateways or DSLAMs (digital-subscriber-line-access multiplexers) meet stringent timing specifications usually requires a specialized jitter/wander generator. As a substitute, you can use a...

Temperature controller saves energy.(design ideas)
February 3, 2005... GIVEN THE HIGH COST of electrical power, replacing a conventional on/off temperature control with a proportional controller can often save energy and money. Figure 1 shows a low-cost, high-efficiency, time-proportional temperature controller...

Calculator program finds closest standard-resistor values.(design ideas)
February 3, 2005... ALTHOUGH IT MAY not appear obvious to newcomers to the electronics-design profession, components' values follow one of several progressions that divide a decadewide span into equally spaced increments on a logarithmic scale. For example, when...

Reduce voltage-reference output noise by half.(design ideas)
February 3, 2005... REDUCING LOW-FREQUENCY (1/f) noise generated by an IC voltage reference can prove difficult. In theory, adding a lowpass filter to a reference's output reduces noise. In practice, a lowpass RC filter for suppression of noise frequencies below...

Touch switch needs no dc return path.(design ideas)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2005... COMMON DESIGNS FOR touch switches detect a decrease in resistance when a user's fingertip either connects a contact to the circuit's common ground or supplies an injection of 60-Hz ac voltage, resulting from immersion in the electrostatic field...

Polymer chip capacitor operates to 125[degrees]C.(Passives)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2005... The B4529W series of tantalum polymer capacitors can operate at temperatures as high as 125[degrees]C. They are available in case sizes D, E, or V with capacitances from 100 to 680 [micro]F for rated voltages of 2.5 to 10V and equivalent series...

Wire-wound coil inductors withstand temperatures to 200[degrees]C.(Passives)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2005... The DR360, DR361, and DE362 Series wire-wound coil inductors protect against EMI problems in current-handling applications as high as 38A and feature an advanced magnet-it-alloy core, granting extended life in temperatures of -55 to...

Power shielded conductor has small footprint.(Passives)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2005... The PG0087NL series of power-shielded, surface-mount inductors have a 6.2x6.2x2-mm maximum footprint package for dc/dc applications in products such as MP3 players, digital cameras, gaming consoles, and any low-power dc/dc-conversion...

Saw filters have smaller packages.(Passives)(Surface Acoustic Wave)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2005... Epcos has reduced the size of its narrowband filters by 42% with its 3.8 x 3.8-mm QCC8B package option and has miniaturized the broadband fil-ters on lithium-tantalite substrate to fit into 3x3-mm DCC6C pack ages. The DCC6C is for major...

High-current inductor has high-dielectric-withstanding voltage.(Passives)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2005... The low-profile, high-current IHLM-2525CZ-0 inductor series features a 6.47 x 6.86x3-mm package and operates over a frequency range as high as 5 MHz. The devices' molded construction allows higher dielectric-withstanding voltage that allows...

Common-mode chip filters suppress EMI.(Passives)(Electromagnetic Interference)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2005... The PM0805CM and PM1206CM series surface-mount chip filters in this series of common-mode EMI chip filters suit use in USB2.0 lines for PCs and peripheral devices, IEEE 1394 lines for PCs, digital cameras, low-voltage differential signaling,...

Inductors provide space savings for communications applications.(Passives)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2005... The IMC family of 0402 and 0603 wire-wound surface mount inductors measure 1x0.55x0.5 mm and 1.6X1.05X1.05 mm, respectively. The 0402 SRF values range from 2100 to 6000 MHz over an inductance range of 1 to 47 nH with minimum Q-factor values of...

USB-host stack targets embedded systems.(Embedded Systems)(Universal Serial Bus)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2005... The SmxUSB for use with embedded ARM, ColdFire, PowerPC, x86, and other processors complies with specifications for USB Version 1.1, OHC 1.0a, and UHCI 1.1. The product supports control, bulk, isochronous, and interrupt USB data transfers at...

Module kit allows engineers to build specialized I/O modules.(Embedded Systems)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2005... National Instruments' CompactRIO (reconfigurable-I/O) module-development kit enables engineers to reconfigure embedded systems by allowing access to low level electrical architecture and design specialized I/Os, communication, or control...

Serial-flash memory features dedicated boot and parameter sectors.(Integrated Circuits)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2005... The 4-Mbit spiFlash NX25B40 is fully pin-and instruction-compatible with NexFlash's standard NX25P40 4-Mbit serial-flash memory. Variable sector sizes include two 4-kbyte, one 8-kbyte, one 16-kbyte, one 32-kbyte, and seven 64-kbyte sectors at...

Memory-development system has flexible and high bandwidth.(Integrated Circuits)
February 3, 2005... The Virtex-4 ML461 memory-development system includes 533-Mbps DDR2 SDRAM, 300-MHz QDRII SRAM, buses as wide as 144 bits, hardware-proven reference designs, a memory-interface-generator tool, and a complete hardware platform. Designers can...

FRAM has high capacity and read/write operations.(Integrated Circuits)(Ferroelectric Random-Access Memory device)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2005... The 8-bit MB85R1001 and 16-bit MB85R1002 1-Mbit FRAM devices use 0.35-micron, 1T1C (one-transistor/onecell) technology that doubles the amount of capacity of its traditional 2T2C (two-transistor/two-cell) technology. The new devices have an...

Bridge chips simplify USB-to-serial connectivity.(Integrated Circuits)(universal serial bus)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2005... The single-UART OXUSB950 and quadUART OXUSB954 feature an integral 12-Mbps transceiver and serial-interface engine and support baud rates as high as 230 kbps. An additional independent UART provides for code development and debugging. The...

Pseudo-SRAM product supports the CosmoRAM standard.(Integrated Circuits)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2005... The uPD46128953 device features a 128-Mbit memory capacity, operating at 83 MHz during burst mode at 1.8V and includes a 32-bit, high-speed I/O interface. The uPD46128953 is available in a 127-pin plastic FBGA package. The product complies with...

Design-tool suite offers upgraded performance.(Integrated Circuits)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2005... The ispLever4.2 design-tool suite is an upgrade and enhancement of the tools' performance, reducing mapping, placement, and routing runtimes by 24% for a typical design. The ispLever4.2 features an I/O Assistant for efficient placement of mixed...

Buck regulator provides low-noise dc/dc conversion.(Integrated Circuits)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2005... Micrel's MIC2203 buck regulator targets use in applications requiring low-noise dc/dc conversion, such as 802.11 wireless cards, USB applications, cell phones, mini disk players, and MP3 players. The 1-MHz PWM synchronous buck converter...

Photocoupler is 50% smaller than standard.(Integrated Circuits)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2005... The TLP701 high-speed surface-mount MOSFET/IGBT gate driver photocoupler comprises a GaA1As LED and a photodetector. The product has minimum internal clearance, creepage distance, and isolation thickness of 7, 7, and 4 mm, respectively, and...

Two new evaluation platforms available for FPGAs.(Integrated Circuits)(Brief Article)
February 3, 2005... The Standard Evaluation Platforms available for LatticeEC low-cost FPGAs include either the LatticeEC LFEC6E-4F484C with 6000 LUTs (look-up tables) or the LFEC20E-4F484C device 20,000 LUTs, an SPI flash memory for configuration, SMA pads for...

GHz-speed dual ADC offers industry's highest performance at the lowest power consumption.(Featured products)(ADC08D1000 of National Semiconductor Corp.)(Advertisement)
February 17, 2005... The ADC08D1000 is a dual, low-power, high-performance, CMOS analog-to-digital converter that digitizes signals to 8 bits resolution at sampling rates up to 1.6 GSPS. Consuming a typical 1.6W at 1 GSPS from a single 1.9V supply, this device is...

Ultra-low power, dual 12-bit, 40 MSPS ADC.(Featured products)(ADC12DL040 of National Semiconductor Corp.)(Advertisement)
February 17, 2005... The ADC12DL040 is a dual, low power, monolithic CMOS A/D converter capable of converting analog input signals into 12-bit digital words at 40 MSPS. This converter uses a differential, pipeline architecture with digital error correction and an...

Interleaving ADCs for higher sample rates.(Design idea)(Analog to digital converters)
February 17, 2005... Designers have often attempted to combine more than one analog-to-digital converter (ADC) in an effort to increase the effective sample rate. While the flash converter (still the fastest ADC architecture) was available before the advent of...

Ultra-wideband, 900 MHz, voltage-feedback op amp.(Featured products)(operational amplifiers)(Advertisement)
February 17, 2005... The LMH6609 is an ultra-wideband, unity-gain stable, low power, voltage-feedback op amp. It offers 900 MHz bandwidth at a gain of 1, 1400 V/[micro]s slew rate, and 90 mA of linear output current. The LMH6609 is designed with voltage...

Multi-Gigabit analog equalizer with highest ESD protection.(Featured products)(Embedded Systems Design )(Advertisement)
February 17, 2005... The EQ50F100 is a 2.5 to 6.25 Gbps equalizer that compensates for transmission medium losses encountered with FR4 transmission lines. It is optimized for low-voltage, high-density, DC-coupled interconnections between the line card and switch...

Blue-man droop.(leading edge)
February 17, 2005... "The Smurfs were trying to dance,... but their legs weren't moving. Our originating broadcast was fine, but DirecTV had bit-starved their retransmission of it, reallocating bandwidth to the multiple football games in progress on other...

Dual-core device adds networking.(leading edge)(Analog Devices Inc.)(Brief Article)
February 17, 2005... Clyde D Smith senior vice president, Turner Broadcasting Systems ANALOG DEVICES' four new ADSP-BF534, BF536, and BF537 network-enabled Blackfin processors and the BF566eM30 eMedia platform target embedded audio, video, and communications...

VOIP goes visual.(leading edge)(product intriduction)(Brief Article)
February 17, 2005... AFTER MANY YEARS' worth of unrealized expectations, VOIP (voice-over-Internet Protocol) adoption is finally exploding, fueled by a steadily broadening embrace of broadband (see "The human touch keeps the elderly and disabled...

Switch chip mixes security, wireless, and IPv6 support.(leading edge)(Broadcom Corp.)(Internal Protocol Version 6)
February 17, 2005... PUSHING ITS LEADERSHIP position in Ethernet switches, Broadcom has just launched an Ethernet-switch architecture and the first chips based on that architecture. The StrataXGS III architecture features a 72-Gbps packet-processing engine that...

Dilbert.(leading edge)(cable modems)(Brief Article)
February 17, 2005... TINA TRAINS HER BOSS YOU'LL FIND ME IN THIS CHAIR, DOING REAL WORK. YOUR JOB, AS I UNDERSTAND IT, IS TO MAKE UNINFORMED DECISIONS AND ACT LIKE A SOCIOPATHIC EGOMANIAC YOU'LL USUALLY STAND LIKE THIS. I ALSO LIKE TO FIDGET AND...

IP model reduces time to market, increases yield.(leading edge)(intellectual property)(Virage Logic Corp.)(Brief Article)
February 17, 2005... More complex ICs, tighter design geometries, and deadline pressures mean that each design spin is getting tougher. To meet these challenges, Virage Logic has combined IP (intellectual property) and silicon in its Silicon Aware IP, which may tip...

Entrepreneur's perspective highlights the impact of "digital".(leading edge)(Interview)
February 17, 2005... MATTHEW LORBER, president and chief executive officer of Copley Controls Corp, founded the company in 1984. His previous startups include Solid State Instruments in 1961 with Massachusetts Institute of Technology roommate and co-founder and...

$99 Microcontroller-development kit includes IDE, software.(leading edge)(integrated development environment)(Goal Semiconductor Inc.)(Brief Article)
February 17, 2005... Goal Semiconductor has recently introduced the UVK (UniVersaKit) development kit and evaluation system that supports all Goal Versa product families, as well as most industry-standard 8051 micro-controllers. The kit comes with an IDE...

Real-time DSO bandwidth jumps to 15 GHz.(leading edge)
February 17, 2005... TEKTRONIX HAS ANNOUNCED what it calls the world's fastest, most capable, real-time oscilloscopes. The company also announced a new probe intended to simplify connecting to such ultrahigh-speed serial buses as second-generation PCI-Express,...

Stable, flexible clock-recovery module broadens sampling scopes' appeal.(leading edge)
February 17, 2005... WITH ALL of the hoopla about faster and faster real-time DSOs, most EEs can easily forget about sequential-sampling Scopes--more popularly known merely as sampling scopes and, to Agilent Technologies' customers, as DCAs (digital communications...

Tiny device packs in features.(leading edge)(Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.)(Brief Article)
February 17, 2005... The 3X3X0.85-mm LPC9102 and LPC9103 processors are the newest members of Philips Electronics' 8-bit LPC900 microcontroller family. These tiny 80C51-based devices target space-constrained applications and include an internal 7.3728-MHz; a...

Start-up offers Ethernet silicon for enterprise Wi-Fi support.(leading edge)(Wireless Fidelity)(SiNett Corp.)
February 17, 2005... WI-FI (Wireless Fidelity) is so hot that investors are willing to back companies such as start-up SiNett, even though the company's first chips aren't purely WLAN (wireless-LAN) plays. Instead, the OneEdge switch-processor family focuses on...

Multi-level flash: the consumer choice.(Toshiba)(Advertisement)
February 17, 2005... NAND FLASH HAS ARISEN AS THE MEMORY TECHNOLOGY of choice for many non-volatile storage applications, from music players to solid-state disk drives. Multilevel cell (MLC) flash technology offers nearly twice the storage density of traditional...

Sometimes, noise can be good.(baker's best)(Column)
February 17, 2005... WHEN I STARTED TO WRITE this column, someone saw the title and asked, "You don't have any kids, do you?" Well, I did have the charge of children at one time in my life, but I think people forget two things in their lives: extreme pleasure and...

Reaching down: 32-bit processors aim for 8 bits: the ongoing effort to supply low-cost, 32-bit processors has them beginning to encroach on the territory that 8-bit processors now own.(design feature)
February 17, 2005... A NEW BREED OF LOW-COST, 32-bit devices is targeting the healthy market share that 8- and 16-bit devices have exclusively supported. According to Isuppli's 2004 microcontroller-unit-market forecast, 8-bit devices account for more than 40% of...

What are a few fingers worth?(edn.comment)(Column)
February 17, 2005... AS A JOURNALIST, I'm not easily impressed, but some applications and demos are simply irresistible. A low-power demo and a new unique application using a Texas Instruments microcontroller to reduce serious table-saw injuries caught my eye--and...

Dos and don'ts: getting the most from wideband scopes: despite high-performance scopes' copious built-in intelligence, you still must employ lots of your own brainpower to obtain meaningful results in high-speed serial-bus debugging.(Cover Story)
February 17, 2005... MODERN HIGH-PERFORMANCE digital oscilloscopes offer a wealth of features for making users' lives easier--so many features, in fact, that their effect can sometimes be the opposite of what the manufacturer intended. Whereas, typically, the...

Getting to silicon: accuracy requirements of nanometer designs: although device and parasitic extraction has been an issue at each technology process node, at 130 and 90 nm, it has become the major issue, today, simulation may not accurately account for an analog device's uniquely shaped diffusion and may create a stress that may cause an entire chip to fail.(design feature)
February 17, 2005... DEVICE AND PARASITIC extraction has always been an issue at some level. Analog designs are handcrafted and are more prone to signal flaws than are digital designs. Therefore, they have a greater impact on full-chip power and electrical...

Outstanding AC performance with extremely low power.(High speed ADCs: high performance analog solutions from linear technology)(Advertisement)
February 17, 2005... A new family of high speed analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) from Linear Technology combines outstanding AC performance with extremely low power, making them ideal for a range of wireless and cable communications systems. The LTC[R]2220...

Enhancing a power supply to ensure EMI compliance: with a few components and the proper installation, EMI compliance should be easy.(design feature)(electromagnetic-interference)(VDE-Association for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies)
February 17, 2005... IN THE UNITED STATES AND EUROPE, Class A and Class B limits of FCC (Federal Communications Commission) and VDE (European association for electrical, electronic, and information technologies) standards govern conducted-noise emissions. In the...

Pushbuttons and digital potentiometer control boost converter.(design ideas)
February 17, 2005... DIGITALLY CONTROLLED potentiometers are useful for generating analog control voltages under the control of a microcontroller. In some applications, manual pushbutton switches could replace a microcontroller and simplify product design....

Microcontroller protects dc motor.(design ideas)
February 17, 2005... ALTHOUGH ANY overloaded dc motor can draw excessive current and sustain damage, a cooling fan's motor is particularly vulnerable due to fouling by dust, insects, or misplaced objects. A few fans include built-in overload protection, and others...

Improved Kelvin contacts boost current-sensing accuracy by an order of magnitude.(design ideas)(Kelvin sensing techniques)
February 17, 2005... MANY POWER-SUPPLY designs rely on accurately sensing the voltage across a current-sense element. Multiphase regulators use the sense voltage to force current sharing among phases, and single-phase regulators to control the current-limit...

Active pullup/pulldown network saves watts.(design ideas)
February 17, 2005... THE CONTROL CIRCUIT in Figure 1 presents a relatively low input resistance and thus imposes a low value on external pulldown resistor [R.sub.1] to provide the desired low-level input voltage. In turn, [R.sub.1] wastes power by drawing a...

Sine-wave step-up converter uses Class E concept.(design ideas)
February 17, 2005... MANY POWER APPLICATIONS ranging from luminescent and fluorescent lighting to telephone-ringing voltage generators require a more or less sinusoidal-drive voltage. These applications typically require a waveform of only moderate quality, and its...

Dual monolithic ideal diode manages multiple power inputs: design note 356.(Design Notes)
February 17, 2005... Introduction The LTC[R] 4413 dual monolithic ideal diode helps reduce the size and improve the performance and reliability of handheld battery-operated devices. The LTC4413 is a single-chip solution that can automatically select between...

Control-switch relay allows 20 independent contacts.(Switches and Relays)(Electroswitch Corp.)(Brief Article)
February 17, 2005... The Series 24 CSR (Control Switch Relay) allows 20 independent contacts in the same deck, with contact ratings at 60A per minute and 30A continuous, at up to 600V ac, The CSR combines the functions of a control switch and a remote-controlled...

Switch offers multiple positions.(Switches and Relays)(CIT Relay and Switch)(Brief Article)
February 17, 2005... The KJ Series addition to the vendor's DIP-switch line offers two to 12 positions with gull-wing termination and the option of extended or recessed actuators. The product has an electric rating of 25 mA at 24V de, 100 mA at 24V de, and a...

Miniature SIP reed relay has dual switch.(Switches and Relays)(Brief Article)
February 17, 2005... Coto's 9092 miniature SIP reed relay includes a 2 Form A switching capability and measures 0.6 x 0.15 x 0.35 in. The product comes with a standard external magnetic shield that reduces interaction or relays. The SIP relay is available in 5 and...

70-kV gas-filled relay sealed for safety.(Switches and Relays)(Gigavac)(Brief Article)
February 17, 2005... The completely sealed, single-pole, 70-kV G71 relay is filled with SF6 gas for low leakage and high-current capacitive discharge switching, operates from -55 to +85[degrees]C, and measures 51x50 mm. The G71 is available in normally open (Form...

Long-life reed is available straight or customized.(Switches and Relays)(Hasco Components International)(Brief Article)
February 17, 2005... Hasco Components' glass reed switches measure 8 to 14 mm long and 1.8 to 2.2 mm in diameter. The switching inrush currents range from 0.3 to 3A. Components International Corp, 1-516-328-9292, www.hascorelays.com

Toggle switches suit use in motor loads and power applications.(Switches and Relays)(Apem Components Inc.)(Brief Article)
February 17, 2005... The Durable 600 Series toggle switches target use in high-power applications, including motor control. The switches handle power ratings as high as 15A at 125 or 250V ac or 10A at 400V ac and peak currents as high as 150A at 250V ac. Models are...

Infrared switch comes in compact housing.(Switches and Relays)(Brief Article)
February 17, 2005... Forward dc current as high as 50 mA drives the OPB200 Series of compact infrared slotted switches with infrared LED packaging. The housing has a 5.08-mm gap and 8.13-mm slot depth, through-hole device mounts, a 13.2x6.1-mm footprint, and a...

Molded rocker series offers TV ratings.(Switches and Relays)(Brief Article)
February 17, 2005... The snap-in-mount JW Series rocker switches handle large inrush currents. JWM models are certified for TV-5 rating and are rated ]OA at 125/250V ac. JWL models are certified for TV-8 rating and rated at 16A at 125/250V ac; for...

Upgrade indudes IP for DSP design.(Microprocessors)(Advertisement)
February 17, 2005... Accelchip DSP Synthesis 2004.6 has released updated support for Cadence's Incisive Simulator and Xilinix's Virtex-4 devices and including an Accelware fixed-point IP (intellectual-property) tool kit with cores for inversion and factorization of...

PCI software is backward-compatible.(Microprocessors)(Brief Article)
February 17, 2005... The vendor developed the Nucleus PCI-X software to meet increased I/O performance in the server environment. The software is backward-compatible with other PCI-based systems. Nucleus embedded software is available in source-code format without...