EDN articles from January 2004

EDN archives from January 2004

LED modules give ultrawide angle.(leading edge)(light emitting diodes)(Brief Article)
January 8, 2004... YOU CAN GET THE LATEST wide-body additions to the Mako series of LEDs from BivarOpto in single-color or RGB triads and take advantage of their 180[degrees] viewing angle to create high-intensity, variable-color message displays. The LEDs,...

Small fish, big pond.(leading edge; copyright cases)(Brief Article)
January 8, 2004... "In some ways, the best protection is basically being a small fry--not worth the attention of the whale." --Jonathan Zittrain, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, regarding copyright laws that...

Device enables next-generation home networking.(leading edge)(Brief Article)
January 8, 2004... IDT's (INTEGRATED Device Technology's) RC32434 Interprise communications processor targets the needs of digital-home-network applications, including media servers, media adapters, and IP (Internet Protocol)-based network appliances. The MIPS...

Flash-memory transformation responds to application and competition evolutions.(leading edge)
January 8, 2004... NEXCOM TECHNOLOGIES' chips and modules once delivered impressive write speeds (see "Data storage in a flash" EDN, July 3, 1997, pg 65). Lately, however, things have been less rosy for the company. ISSI acquired it and spun it off again a short...

Rocker ensures that your products roll.(leading edge)(Brief Article)
January 8, 2004... It may seem that rocker switches have been around forever, but new designs have emerged for contemporary applications. E-Switch has introduced its RR series of round, panel-mount switches for appliances, lamps, and other ac-powered devices. The...

Dilbert.(leading edge)(Cartoon)
January 8, 2004... WE'LL SAVE MONEY BY OUTSOURCING OUR I.T. FUNCTION. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THEN WE'LL SAVE MORE MONEY BY REPLACING OUR OUTSOURCING WITH FULLTIME EMPLOYEES! [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WHEN IT'S TIME FOR US TO PANIC, WILL THERE BE A...

Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the world's largest retailer, set a one-day sales record of more than $1.52 billion on the Friday after Thanksgiving in 2003, as customers snatched up toys and electronics.(leading edge)(Brief Article)
January 8, 2004... Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the world's largest retailer, set a one-day sales record of more than $1.52 billion on the Friday after Thanksgiving in 2003, as customers snatched up toys and electronics. That figure represents an increase of more than 6%...

Process migrations, design optimizations squeeze out additional speed.(leading edge)(Brief Article)
January 8, 2004... ATI TECHNOLOGIES believes that its Radeon 9600 and 9800 graphics architectures, which it first unveiled a year ago as the closely related 9500 and 9700, still have plenty of life left in them. Latest generation announcements seem to bear out...

Power supplies celebrate diversity.(leading edge)(Product/Service Evaluation)
January 8, 2004... ANYONE WHO supposes that power supplies are monolithic system functions is mistaken, judging from the variety of recent announcements. For example, the PTH series of nonisolated. point-of-load dc/dc converters from Artesyn Technologies Inc...

1U-high programmable power system makes scopelike transient measurements.(leading edge)(Brief Article)
January 8, 2004... AGILENT SAYS that its N6700 programmable dc modular power systems offer industry-leading processing speed, autoranging outputs, and new measurement capabilities for automatic-test applications in many industries. To tailor a system to your...

Tool helps design reuse.(leading edge)(Product/Service Evaluation)
January 8, 2004... DESIGNERS OFTEN LOSE design knowledge because of unstructured documentation processes and the widening gap across time and distance within distributed-design organizations. Legacy designs or third-party IP (intellectual-property) blocks can be...

Messaging layer for network processors and coprocessors promotes interoperability.(leading edge)
January 8, 2004... THE NPF (Network Processing Forum) has announced the availability of the Message Layer IA (implementation agreement). The spec standardizes communication among NPEs (network-processing elements), such as cryptographic engines, search engines,...

Solid-state industrial relay follows today's slimming trend.(leading edge)(Brief Article)
January 8, 2004... With Fujitsu's FTR-SL relay, your products can be thin, too. The 1A solid-state relay in a single-inline package measures 5x28x15 mm and is pin-compatible with a Fujitsu electromechanical relay. Targeting the industrial and appliance markets,...

Small and medium displays are sharp in two ways.(leading edge)(thin film transistors)(Brief Article)
January 8, 2004... NEW TFT (THIN-FILM-TRANSISTOR)-LCD technology from Sharp Corp yields sharp images, color fidelity and brightness, and wide viewing angle. Available in sizes from 1.5 to 6.5 in. diagonal, these displays have 300-to-1 contrast ratio and a...

Accuracy comes in many flavors.(baker's best)
January 8, 2004... MOST PROCESS-CONTROL APPLICATIONS require digital results that have resolution of one part in 4096. By definition, the digital output of a 12-bit ADC has 4096 digital combinations. This feature makes the ADC look like a perfect fit. So, why do...

DNA lab on chip rests on MEMS foundation: a low-cost, disposable, silicon-based platform outperforms conventional systems for doing molecular diagnostics.(how its works)
January 8, 2004... A CHEMICALLY CHISELED silicon biochip is at the heart of a tiny portable DNA laboratory that promises to re-shape the landscape of instruments for analyzing microbiological samples. The biochip, now in a prototype stage, is the primary element...

Harmony at home: as digital data becomes pervasive, designers must deliver in-home devices that automatically interact to simplify operation and share content.(Cover Story)
January 8, 2004... THE MARKET FOR DIGITAL DEVICES in the home is exploding. Consumers are clamoring for convergence products that provide immediate access to entertainment, security, automation, and computing data from any of their electronic devices. Yet,...

Noise 101: a few basic concepts, presented in this first installment of a two-part series, can get you started thinking about designing for low noise.(design feature)
January 8, 2004... NOISE REPRESENTS the fundamental limit for many signal-processing applications. As such, it is a key constraint for many electronic designs, particularly interface circuits. Industry trends in applications as disparate as test and measurement,...

LEDs glow in anticipation: LEDs dominate indicator applications in electronics and now outshine incandescents even in traffic lights and automobile-brake lights. That scenario is just the start.(tech trends)
January 8, 2004... ILLUMINATING THE DARK RECESSES of the lighting industry is no trivial task. For sure, though, equating lighting with incandescent-lamp technology is so 20th century. Even newer forms of lighting, such as compact-fluorescent- and...

Monolithic synchronous regulator drives 4A loads with few external components--design note 328.(Design Notes)(LTC3414 DC/DC converter)
January 8, 2004... Introduction The LTC[R] 3414 offers a compact and efficient voltage regulator solution for point of load conversion in electronic systems that require low output voltages (down to 0.8V) from a 2.5V to 5V power bus. Internal power MOSFET...

5V power supply teams low-dropout regulator, charge pump.(design ideas)
January 8, 2004... AUXILIARY POWER of 3.3V is replacing the 5V auxiliary power that silver boxes" supply in most computer systems, but some circuits still require a 5V supply. Such systems impose the messy task of creating a central 5V auxiliary supply from the...

Four-quadrant power supply provides any-polarity voltage and current.(design ideas)
January 8, 2004... A CONVENTIONAL power supply operates only in the first quadrant; positive-voltage output and current are sourced to a load or, with a deliberately miswired output, statically in the third quadrant as a "minus" supply. The conventional supply...

Simple circuit controls stepper motors.(design ideas)(Brief Article)
January 8, 2004... STEPPER MOTORS are useful in many consumer, industrial, and military applications. Some, such as personal-transportation systems, require precise speed control. Steppermotor controllers can be simple (Figure 1), but they require a...

Simple dc/dc converter increases available power in dual-voltage system.(design ideas)
January 8, 2004... THE SCHEMATIC in Figure 1 shows a way to increase the power available from a current-limited 5V supply by adding power from a -5V supply. The de/de converter generates a single 12V, 150-mA (1.8W) output from two regulated and current-limited...

Integrated circuits.(new products)(Buyers Guide)
January 8, 2004... 18-Mbit dual-port RAMs * Z5V synchronous and asynchronous devices are organized as 512kx56 bits * Offer selectable 2.5 and 3.3V I/O options * 70T3539M, 70T653M, $110 (10,000) Integrated Device Technology Inc, 1-408-727-6116,...

Embedded Systems.(new products)(Buyers Guide)
January 8, 2004... Gigabit Ethernet switches * 6U CompactPCI boards support as many as two four-port physical interface modules * Media options include eight copper, eight fiber, or four copper and four fiber ports * CP6-GIGSW8-C1, from $3009;...

Love child: never meant to be.(leading edge)
January 22, 2004... The most troubling development... is that spammers and virus writers have evidently decided to partner, resulting in a demon love child virus-worm that both infects computers and spews spam. Michelle Delio, Wired magazine, Dec...

Tiny embedded computer delivers PC power.(leading edge)(Brief Article)
January 22, 2004... THE RECENTLY INTRODUCED SpacePC 4320 Pentium-class PC/104-Plus single-board computer from Parvus targets defense, aviation, and other demanding applications. Parvus based the device on the Pentium MMX-class AMD Geode GX1 CPU; it is available in...

Tweaks tailor processor performance, power draw.(leading edge)(Brief Article)
January 22, 2004... WHILE HANDS-ON TESTING Core Sounds' PDAudio-CF and Mic2496, along with corresponding software from Gidluck Mastering and Pocco Software, I'm also pondering a migration from my iPaq 3835, based on a 206-MHz StrongARM CPU and the Pocket PC 2002...

DVD controllers deliver the write options.(leading edge)
January 22, 2004... AN OVERABUNDANCE OF less-than-$50 DVD players clogging store shelves implies scant profits for chip vendors supplying this rapidly maturing market. In response, semiconductor companies, such as LSI Logic, are working in lock step with their...

Dilbert.(Cartoon)
January 22, 2004... CATBERT: EVIL H.R. DIRECTOR FROM NOW ON, THE COMPANY WILL ALLOW FLEX TIME. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] YOU CAN WORK ANY HOURS YOU LIKE, AS LONG AS YOU'RE HERE FROM EIGHT TO FIVE. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THAT'S CALLED UNPAID...

Leading edge.(news briefs)(Brief Article)
January 22, 2004... Researchers from the University of Auckland in New Zealand report in the Christmas issue of The British Medical Journal that silver vehicles are less likely to he in a car crash involving serious injuries than other-colored autos. Only...

System offers thermal and stress analysis for electronic systems.(leading edge)
January 22, 2004... DESIGNERS OF ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS are finding that mechanical issues are frequently becoming a major issue in product development, especially in RF design. To address these issues, Ansoft has introduced ePhysics, which works with its Maxwell 3D...

Audio DSP does double duty.(leading edge)(Cirrus Logic CS49520)
January 22, 2004... UNWILLING TO GIVE a key competitor sole access to the new-product limelight, Cirrus Logic introduces the CS49520, which thrusts the company's high-end audio processors fully into the 32-bit era (see "SHARC swims toward deeper, more fertile...

Digital-multimedia interface grows up.(leading edge)(High Definition Multimedia Interface)
January 22, 2004... THE JANUARY 2003 CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas marked the debut of HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface), the CE-tuned, high-resolution, multichannel, audio-inclusive version of DVI-HDCP (Digital Video Interface-High...

Processors provide Layer 2 traffic management.(leading edge)(Brief Article)
January 22, 2004... MINDSPEED Technologies has announced the TSP3 family of programmable traffic-management processors, enabling product differentiation at Layer 2 through traffic-management capabilities, including queuing, hierarchical shaping, scheduling,...

Serial controller simplifies embedded displays.(leading edge)(Brief Article)
January 22, 2004... REACH TECHNOLOGY recently introduced the SLCD controller board, enabling inexpensive, 8- and 16-bit-processor-based systems to provide a modern-looking graphical user interface. A standard UART serial port drives the SLCD, which accepts...

When things go wrong, listen for the heartbeat.(baker's best)(Column)
January 22, 2004... SELECTING THE RIGHT RESONATOR for your controller or processor is like taking care of your application's heartbeat. This selection may or may not be easy, depending on how critical clock performance is to your application circuit. However,...

Common-mode analysis of skew.(signal integrity)
January 22, 2004... HOLDING YOUR ARMS out straight in front of you, let your hands represent two signals, a and b. The vertical position of each hand represents the voltage present on each signal. Now flap your arms up and down in an opposite, or antipodal,...

Living in the materials world.(edn.comment)
January 22, 2004... ENGINEERS UNDERSTAND the importance of basic materials to our industry and its progress. Advances in the performance and reliability of our ICs, connectors, pc boards, and passives depend on increasingly pure and perfect materials, which...

Speedy simplicity: the era of stardom for the cumbersome and slow parallel-storage interface is drawing to a close as nimbler, younger serial contenders take the stage.(tech trends)
January 22, 2004... THE ELECTRONICS PRESS frequently discusses Intel's influence on the evolving PC architecture, by virtue of its dominant microprocessor-market share. Intel's supremacy even occasionally gets the attention of regulatory bodies in the United...

Break on through: the open-source eclipse project is poised to impact the world of embedded-development tools.(Cover Story)
January 22, 2004... IN RECENT YEARS, the open-source software-development process has demonstrated some impressive successes (see sidebar "Defining open source"). According to the December 2003 Netcraft Web Server Survey (news.netcraft.com), users employ the...

Eyes and ears everywhere: extending the network to deeply embedded devices becomes a reality with low-cost wireless transceivers.(design feature)
January 22, 2004... THE RANGE OF APPLICATIONS for embedded networks is growing as costs drop, considering that manual device management can be extremely labor-intensive. Industrial sensor networks are the foundation of this technology, as are control applications,...

Programmable silicon oscillators: high performance analog solutions from Linear Technology.
January 22, 2004... If you need a stable frequency source, the best bet is a crystal, right? The correct answer is a resounding "maybe." It turns out, there are lots of reasons to abandon the tried and true. Traditional docks involve crystals, modules and...

Overcoming DDR-2-interface challenges: faster clocks mean ever smaller data-valid windows.(design feature)
January 22, 2004... DDR (DOUBLE-DATA-RATE) memory devices do an admirable job of unclogging the memory bottleneck between external memory and ASICs, but the nature of DDR is stretching the skills of designers creating controllers to transfer data between ASIC and...

Addressable [I.sup.2]C bus buffer provides capacitance buffering, live insertion and nested addressing in 2-wire bus systems: Design Note 329.(Design Notes)
January 22, 2004... Design Note 329 Introduction In an effort to improve the reliability of large data processing, data storage and communications systems, their subsystems include a growing number of active circuits to monitor parameters such as...

Force/sense connection eliminates multiplexer on-resistance error.(design ideas)
January 22, 2004... DIGITALLY CONTROLLED GAIN is an everyday analog-design element. You frequently find this element in an op-amp-based, transimpedance current-to-voltage converter. When you design digital gain control into such a converter, the usual scheme is to...

Analog multiplexer uses flying capacitors.(design ideas)
January 22, 2004... THIS DESIGN IDEA describes a way to increase the number of analog inputs to your micro-controller for cases in which adding an analog-multiplexer chip or upgrading to a microcontroller with more inputs might be impractical. If the...

FPGA-configuration scheme is flexible.(design ideas)(Xilinx Field Programmable Gate-Array)
January 22, 2004... FPGAs ARE POPULAR in circuit design because of their flexibility and efficiency. You need to program an FPGA by loading configuration data into designated configuration memory. Because most FPGAs have no internal non-volatile memory, you must...

Add fault protection to a 4- to 20-mA loop supply.(design ideas)
January 22, 2004... A 4- TO 2o-mA CURRENT LOOP consists of a power source and a current-easuring device at the control end and a field transmitter that senses process-variable information, such as temperature or pressure, and converts it to a current (Figure 1)....

Low-power 12-bit ADCs.(Intergrated Circuits)(Brief Article)
January 22, 2004... * Consume 185 mW at 20M samples/sec and 160 mW at 10M samples/sec * 5V devices are pin compatible with National's 12-bit ADCs (ADC12040, ADC 12L063, and ADCI 2L066) * ADC12020, $8.57; ADC12010, $5.85 (1000) National Semiconductor Corp,...

24-kbit FRAM.(Intergrated Circuits)(Brief Article)
January 22, 2004... * 3.3V nonvolatile device reads and writes continuously at maximum bus speeds of 20 MHz with no write delays * Uses an industry-standard SPI interface * FM25CL04, from 59 cents (10,000) Ramtron International Corp, 1-719-481-7000,...

Surround-sound codecs.(Intergrated Circuits)(Brief Article)
January 22, 2004... * Deliver multichannel 192-kHz DVD-Audio capability * Come in six- and eight-channel versions, each available with a 110- or 114-dB dynamic range * CS42416, $3.31; C$42418, $4.09; CS424-26, $4.69; and CS42428, $6.35 (10,000) Cirrus...

RS-485/422 transceivers.(Intergrated Circuits)(Brief Article)
January 22, 2004... * Operate from a 3.3V supply with [+or -]10% voltage tolerance * Handle half-duplex bidirectional communication at maximum data rates of 250 kbps (ISI.83483) and 10 Mbps (ISL83485) * ISL83483, $1.21; ISL83485, $1.05 (100) Intersil Corp,...

Low-power 10-bit ADCs.(Intergrated Circuits)(Brief Article)
January 22, 2004... * Consume 78 mW at 80M samples/see, 68 mW at 65M samples/sec, and 55 mW at 40M samples/see * Furnish a precision 1.2V internal reference * ADC10080, $8.77; ADC10065, $6.56; and ADC10040, $5.42 (1000) National Semiconductor Corp,...

MIL-qualified flash-based FPGAs.(Intergrated Circuits)(Brief Article)
January 22, 2004... * Supply densities ranging from 300,000 to 1 million system gates www.edn.com * Versions include MTP (military-temperature plastic), MTH (military-temperature hermetic), and hermetic packaging fully screened to MIL-STD 883B * APA300,...

Mixed-signal waveform analyzer.(Test & Measurement)(Brief Article)
January 22, 2004... * Configurable as a six-channel DSO, 48-channel logic analyzer, or any incremental channel mixture in between * Offers extensive triggering and flexible time-base zooming * MS8321, from $5299 for a two-channel DSO and 16-channel...

Signal-analyzer boards.(Test & Measurement)(Brief Article)
January 22, 2004... * Perform synchronous dual-channel real-time averaging at 1G sample/see * Full-length PCI cards run under Windows, Linux, and VxWorks * AP240, from $15,980; AP235, from $11,980 Acqiris USA, 1 877-227-4747, www.acqiris.com

Fibre Channel analyzer upgrade.(Test & Measurement)(Brief Article)
January 22, 2004... * Allows long term recording of trace data to disk to enable capture of intermittent errors * Adds remote access over TCP/IP networks * FCTracer two-channel analyzer with V1.1 software, from $17,950 Computer Access Technology Corp,...

Handheld RF counter/detectors.(Test & Measurement)(Brief Article)
January 22, 2004... * Employ a digital bar graph that displays both frequency and signal strength * Provide a 300-MHz direct counter with 0.1-Hz resolution * Model 103, $129; Model 104, $229; Model 105, $239; and Model 106, $219 B&K Precision,...

Four-channel scope card.(Test & Measurement)(Brief Article)
January 22, 2004... * Furnishes 12-bit resolution, 10-MHz bandwidth, and 50M-sample/see simultaneous sampling rate * Comes on a 50 x 150-mm M-Module form factor * M78, from $1095 MEN Micro Inc, 1-972-939-2675, www.menmicro.com

Temperature/humidity logger.(Test & Measurement)(Brief Article)
January 22, 2004... * Records temperature to within [+ or -] 0.125[degrees](2 and relative humidity to within [+ or -] 1.5% on two channels * Onboard memory stores as many as 400,000 date- and time-stamped measurements * DewK Model 1620, from $1495 to...

Programmable pulse generator.(Test & Measurement)(Brief Article)
January 22, 2004... * Serves as a 100% form-fit-function replacement for the obsolete Hewlett-Packard HP8160A * Provides two independent 50-MHz output channels with pulse widths of 10 nsec to 10 sec * GP1550H, from $19,995 Geotest-Marvin Test Systems,...