EDN articles from October 2006

EDN archives from October 2006

PCI Express contends for communications role.
October 12, 2006... by Richard A Quinnell, Contributing Technical Editor Scalable performance and low cost are making PCI Express attractive for communications-device designs, challenging proprietary-bus structures for next-generation design wins. ...

DLNA and HANA: two visions of consumer multimedia networking.(Digital Living Network Alliance)(High-Definition Audio-Video Network Alliance)
October 12, 2006... by Matthew Miller, Executive Editor Online Consumers want painless networking and interoperability of multimedia devices. Here, two standards groups paint sometimes-conflicting pictures of how to achieve that goal--and how far such...

ASIC-design managers face global challenges.
October 12, 2006... by Michael Santarini, Senior Editor With resources and new business stretched across the globe, design managers are employing a range of methods to get designs done on time. With the emergence of IC foundries in Taiwan, Singapore, and...

Soft limiter for oscillator circuits uses emitter-degenerated differential pair.
October 12, 2006... Herminio Martínez and Encarna Garcia, Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville Most oscillator circuits include a nonlinear amplitude control that sustains oscillations at a...

Feedback circuit enhances phototransistor's linear operation.
October 12, 2006... JC Ferrer and A Garrigós, University Miguel Hernandez, Elche, Spain Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville A designer who uses a phototransistor to convert a modulated optical signal to an electrical signal frequently...

Three-phase sinusoidal-waveform generator uses PLD.(programmable-logic device)
October 12, 2006... Eduardo Perez-Lobato, University of Antofagasta, Antofagasta, Chile Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville Using the circuit in this Design Idea, you can develop and implement a lightweight, noiseless, inexpensive, three-phase,...

Triple-play trickery: Beware the buzzword bandwagon.
October 12, 2006... by Maury Wright, Editor in Chief Lately, it seems that almost every pitch I hear from marketers uses the term "triple play" in an attempt to leverage what they perceive as a hot market. But many of those pitchers don't even understand...

Frequent obsession.
October 12, 2006... by Howard Johnson, PhD I recently encountered yet another pc-board-trace specification written in the frequency domain. Why do people do that? This particular specification calls for a worst-case trace loss of --3 dB at 11.2 GHz. The...

Monolithic op amps: A lab tool became indispensable.
October 12, 2006... Maury Wright, Editor In Chief In the early days, op amps were laboratory curiosities. Based on combinations of discrete tubes and later transistors, op amps formed the basis of analog computers that engineers used to model functions, such...

Future trends in IC operational amplifiers.
October 12, 2006... by Maury Wright Over the last five years, some outstanding advances have been made in monolithic operational amplifiers. These devices have progressed from the point where they were an expensive curiosity, with marginal performance and...

Formal techniques solidify power-grid verification.
October 12, 2006... by Ersin Beyret , Sequence Design Inc Formal grid verification provides an early checkpoint in the design flow, during which a user can sign off on the structural integrity of the power grid before proceeding to voltage-drop and...

Quiet-node current sensing tames noise problems.(peak current-mode-control)
October 12, 2006... by Claude Abraham, Bendix Commercial Systems Where you locate the current-sense resistor in your dc/dc converter can have a profound effect on the device's performance. In designing dc/dc converters, one of your options is the CMC...

Maintaining channel compliance in high-speed backplanes.
October 12, 2006... by Bogdan Gavril, Elma Bustronic The advent of switched-fabric options has geometrically increased data rates. As speeds increase across the backplane, it becomes more challenging to maintain high signal quality. Therefore, the role of...

7.1-GHz, low-phase-noise spectrum analyzer costs $11,995.
October 12, 2006... by Dan Strassberg Anritsu's MS2717A spectrum analyzer offers general-purpose spec trum analysis over the 100-kHz to 7.1-GHz frequency range at a price of $11,995. Compared with earlier instruments, increased measurement capabilities reduce...

Develop software early on virtual ARM hardware.
October 12, 2006... by Graham Prophet, EDN Europe Designers of complex microprocessor-based systems often face the problem of having to develop software before their hardware is ready. According to officials at ARM, that problem becomes particularly acute...

3G subscriptions to reach 285 million worldwide by year-end.
October 12, 2006... by Vinod Kataria, EDN Asia After years of market uncertainty, with investors wringing their hands and restructuring their finances, 3G has finally gained credibility, according to ABI Research. Jake Saunders, the company's Asia-Pacific...

Tool generates HDLs directly from Simulink.
October 12, 2006... by Michael Santarini The folks trying to model multiple DSP functions to implement in FPGAs or ASICs using The MathWorks tools will be happy to learn that the company's latest release, Simulink HDL Coder, automatically generates...

55-nm embedded-DRAM process debuts.
October 12, 2006... by Ron Wilson Many designers think of embedded DRAM--that is, DRAM arrays fabricated on logic SOCs (systems on chips)--as a technological artifact: a technique designers a few years ago tried in moderate-performance graphics chips and...

Test products support PCI Express, HDMI.
October 12, 2006... by Dan Strassberg Agilent Technologies has announced what it calls the industry's first complete and integrated x1 through x16 protocol analyzer and exerciser system for 5-Gbps PCIe (PCI Express) 2.0, which doubles the 1.x protocol's...

*Lite* version of IP interconnects hardware blocks.
October 12, 2006... by Ron Wilson While it has been busy licensing its wares into some of the most influential platform designs in the industry, including Texas Instruments' ( www.ti.com ) OMAP (Open Multimedia Applications Platform) architecture, Sonics has...

Downconverter simplifies wideband applications.
October 12, 2006... by Warren Webb Tackling high-performance applications, such as wideband recording, real-time digital-signal processing, software radio, telemetry, and radar-beam forming, Pentek recently released the high-speed, dual-channel Model...

Laser on a chip targets terabit rates.
October 12, 2006... by Ron Wilson Working with a team at the University of California--Santa Barbara, Intel developers have demonstrated a technique for fabricating very small lasers on the surface of otherwise-conventional silicon ICs without demanding...

1.5-nm organic cell encapsulates memory.
October 12, 2006... by Ron Wilson Researchers at IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory have demonstrated a stable, reprogrammable, nondestructive-read-memory effect in a single organic molecule less than 2 nm long. Technicians at Rice University (Houston)...

Mechanism interlocks nano-oscillators.(Brief article)
October 12, 2006... By Ron Wilson Scientists can force the oscillation at microwave frequencies of nanoscale sandwiches in which a layer of copper film separates two layers of magnetic film. However, the resulting devices produce output power on the order...

Scope.
October 12, 2006... Edited by Ron Wilson Looking ahead Ron Wilson To the ATCA Summit From October 17 to 19 in Santa Clara, CA, the ATCA (Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture) Summit takes place at the Santa Clara Marriott Hotel....

Sidebands be gone, or let there be (no) light.(Electromagnetic Systems Labs)(Column)
October 12, 2006... by James Long, PhD Back in 1983, I was working at ESL (Electromagnetic Systems Labs) in Sunnyvale, CA, on exotic, high-performance radios. I had done all the calculations and developed a circuit for one of these radios. The prototypes...

Get more accuracy from your DAC.(Digital-to-Analog Converter)
October 26, 2006... By Bonnie Baker With a DAC, you calibrate by initially determining the code-to-voltage error at one-third of the output range and again at two-thirds of the output range. The range between one-third full-scale and two-thirds full-scale...

EDN hands-on project: Mobile Makeover.
October 26, 2006... by Warren Webb, Technical Editor With the right communications link and readily available development tools, you can transform an off-the-shelf smart phone into a low-cost, mobile user interface for your next embedded-system project. ...

High-speed bus for PC management emerges.
October 26, 2006... by Charles H Small, Contributing Technical Editor Analog Devices and Intel have collaborated on a new high-speed bus. The Simple Serial Transport bus provides PC-system management. Analog Devices has teamed with Intel to develop a new...

PSoC microcontroller and LVDT measure position.
October 26, 2006... Sigurd Peterson, Sig3 Consulting, Aloha, OR Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville Connecting an LVDT (linear-variable-differential transformer) to a microcontroller can prove challenging because an LVDT requires ac-input...

Single microcontroller pin senses ambient light, controls illumination.
October 26, 2006... Loren Passmore, Berkeley, CA Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville As in a previous Design Idea (Reference 1 ), this design uses an LED as a transducer to measure the ambient-light level and to provide illumination. This Design...

Hartley oscillator requires no coupled inductors.
October 26, 2006... Jim McLucas, Longmont, CO Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville Editor's note : EDN originally ran this Design Idea in its June 22, 2006, issue. However, due to a number of schematic and textual errors, we have decided to run a...

Cellular radios: Not just for phones anymore.(Dash Navigation)
October 26, 2006... by Maury Wright, Editor in Chief The most compelling products and presentations at the Demo Fall conference (Sept 26 to 27, www.demo.com ) in San Diego, CA, all centered on mobile connectivity. Perhaps the focus shouldn't have surprised...

Mini-NAS: an unfinished masterpiece?
October 26, 2006... by Brian Dipert, senior technical editor D-Link's ( www.dlink.com ) DSM-604H Central Home Drive was, as its name implied, one of the first NAS (network-attached-storage) devices that targeted home and SOHO (small-office/home-office)...

Handling differential skew in high-speed serial buses.
October 26, 2006... by Arnold Frisch, WarpSpeed Chips LLC Differential skew has become a performance-limiting phenomenon. You can manage it with a variety of approaches. Until recently, wide synchronous buses were the method of choice for high-data-rate...

Downlink enables remote boundary-scan tests.(Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)
October 26, 2006... by Marc van Houcke and Anthony Sparks, JTAG Technologies Link internal IEEE 1149 structures with communication ports integrated within a product and available to the outside world. For some time, engineers have followed the IEEE 1149.1...

Application dictates choice: fixed- or floating-point DSP?
October 26, 2006... by Boris Lerner, Analog Devices Choosing between fixed- and floating-point implementations can be difficult. A comparison of one of each type of processor and some sample applications highlight some of the pros and cons of each approach....

Tapping Linux as an application framework for consumer electronics.
October 26, 2006... by Benoit Schillings, Trolltech In the highly competitive consumer-electronics industry, product life cycles are notoriously short, and downward price pressures are constant. As a result, electronics manufacturers must produce consumer...

Floppy disks led the removable-storage stampede.
October 26, 2006... by Maury Wright, Editor in Chief Random access and convenient media made floppies the media of choice in microcomputers. Before the floppy disk arrived, computer users had severely limited options for removable-storage peripherals....

FLEXIBLE DISCS: A LOOK AT THE LATEST MINI-PERIPHERAL.
October 26, 2006... by Maury Wright, Editor in Chief With no standardization in sight, floppy-disc users must be well versed in the basics to understand the differences. The concept of utilizing a flexible-disc media has been present in the...

Waveform-viewer software works with four suppliers' DSOs.
October 26, 2006... by Dan Strassberg Many signal-integrity experts who measure jitter and other phenomena through scope-based measurements recognize the name Amherst Systems Associates (ASA), though the name is hardly a household word to other EEs. The...

Two new suppliers broaden users' handheld-DSO choices.
October 26, 2006... by Dan Strassberg Although the list of handheld-DSO/DMM (digital-storage-oscilloscope/digital-multimeter) manufacturers includes at least three companies, most EEs are familiar with only Fluke Corp ( www.fluke.com ), whose ScopeMeter...

Midrange device includes SERDES function.(serializer/deserializer)
October 26, 2006... by Michael Santarini Lattice Semiconductor has announced a midcapacity, midpriced FPGA that includes some of the high-speed, high-end functions you typically find only in the most advanced and priciest Xilinx ( www.xilinx.com ) Virtex...

Flexible switch has 48 lanes.(PLX Technology Inc.)(Brief article)
October 26, 2006... by Richard A Quinnell Switches are key components of systems based on the emerging PCIe (PCI Express) standard. The more capable the switch, the more design flexibility that developers enjoy. PLX Technology has now introduced one of the...

DSOs find and display anomalous waveforms before you can explain why they are unusual.(Digital storage oscilloscopes)
October 26, 2006... by Dan Strassberg One of the most frustrating aspects of using a digital scope to diagnose intermittent malfunctions in a UUT (unit under test) is that, to get the scope to display the anomalous waveforms, you generally must describe to...

IC tool ensures proper heat dissipation.
October 26, 2006... by Michael Santarini IC-power-analysis-tool vendor Apache Design Solutions has introduced a static-thermal-analysis tool for locating potential heat problems in ICs. Until now, only one other company--Gradient Design Automation (...

Ultrathin heat spreader uses fluid core to cool processors, displays.
October 26, 2006... by Margery Conner Power-hungry components, such as graphics processors and LED displays, currently use a combination of heat spreaders, pipes, and fans to dissipate heat. However, fans introduce reliability concerns, and pipes are bulky....

Single-chip receiver for mobiles handles TV and radio.(Mirics Semi-conductor)(Brief article)
October 26, 2006... by Graham Prophet, EDN Europe Start-up Mirics Semi-conductor describes its new MS1001 RF-tuner IC as a "polyband" device for mobile digital-broadcast reception. Although several companies have recently made announcements that focus on...

Enterprise networks tout 10-Gbps speed.(Brief article)
October 26, 2006... by Vinod Kataria, EDN Asia Systimax Solutions is building upon its proprietary network-analysis tools and techniques to create reliable and high-performance structured cabling. The company recently introduced the 10-Gbps GigaSpeed X10D...

HP's Paul Tuttle: the man in the moon.
October 26, 2006... by Paul Rako After a stint in the Air Force, Paul Tuttle started his career in 1966 with Filtron, which provided RFI testing on everything from Caterpillar tractors to NASA space hardware. That's how his name ended up on the moon,...

Scope.
October 26, 2006... Edited by Ron Wilson Looking ahead Ron Wilson To the world's great electronics show That show would be Electronica, in Munich, Germany, November 14 to 17. The sheer size and audacity of the show set it apart from any...

Serendipity saves the day.
October 26, 2006... By Billy Sevel, Fairchild Semiconductor Years ago, I was a design engineer for a medical-imaging company producing MRI (magnetic-resonance-imaging) equipment. Even though I was not an RF engineer, the designs I worked on had to deal with...