EDN articles from October 2008

EDN archives from October 2008

Transimpedance-amplifier-noise issues.
October 2, 2008... by Bonnie Baker How much noise is too much noise in a photodiode-preamplifier circuit? You can derive the noise performance of a transimpedance amplifier (Figure 1a ) with calculations or by using a Spice simulation (Reference 1 ). When...

Virtualization: silicon and software salvation or technological tower of Babel?
October 2, 2008... by Brian Dipert, Senior Technical Editor Stable, robust code speaks one language; new CPUs speak another. Is a software rewrite necessary to resolve the seeming contradiction, or can virtualization temporarily--or even permanently--ease the...

On time, every time: embedding real-time performance.
October 2, 2008... by Warren Webb, Technical Editor High-speed graphics, user interfaces, and networks represent the norm in embedded-system designs, and these performance issues dictate the use of multitasking firmware. As a new generation of...

Use an LM317 as 0 to 3V adjustable regulator.
October 2, 2008... Vladimir Rentyuk, Modul-98 Ltd, Zaporozhye, Ukraine Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Most engineers know that they can use an inexpensive, three-terminal adjustable regulator, such as Fairchild Semiconductor's...

Alarm monitors rotational speed of dc motor.
October 2, 2008... Peter Demchenko, Vilnius, Lithuania Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville You can use the circuit in Figure 1 to monitor the rotating speed of a dc fan motor and sound an alarm if the motor stalls. One potential application of the...

Add charging status to simple lithium-ion charger.
October 2, 2008... Peter T Miller, Applied Inspirations, Bethlehem, CT Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Like other simple, single-cell lithium-ion battery chargers, Microchip's (www.microchip.com ) MCP73812 provides no means of indicating the...

555 timer drives multiple LEDs from one NiMH cell.
October 2, 2008... Chuck Irwin, Hendersonville, NC Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Using a CMOS 555 timer and a single NPN transistor, you can drive as many as seven LEDs using a minimal amount of voltage and power from a single NiMH...

Microcontroller inputs parallel data using one pin.
October 2, 2008... Rex Niven, Forty Trout Electronics, Eltham, Victoria, Australia Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Inputting multiple bits of information using a single entry pin of a microcontroller without the complexity of UARTs can prove...

Why tout a demo board nobody can buy?
October 2, 2008... By Paul Rako, Technical Editor Recently, my buddy Dave was trying to make a remote-control airplane that would transmit high-definition video to the operator on the ground. Because he wanted to use the video in real time to control the...

Extending SPI4.2 capabilities for Ethernet services.
October 2, 2008... by Shakeel Peera, Lattice Semiconductor With the proliferation of Internet Protocol-based systems in the telecommunications market, designers are turning to FPGAs to create intelligent Ethernet bridges and traffic managers. As carriers...

Artificial cochlea: an example of structural processing.
October 2, 2008... by Robert Cravotta, Technical Editor The cochlea is the portion of the inner ear that senses sound vibrations and converts them into electrical signals that the auditory system can interpret. The cochlea is an example of active cellular...

Video card captures 480 frames/sec.
October 2, 2008... by Warren Webb Extending its line of OEM video-capture cards, Sensoray recently announced the model 817 PCIe (peripheral-component-interconnect-express) frame-grabber card, which captures 16 channels of compressed JPEG or uncompressed bit...

Book helps you resolve BGA-layout issues.
October 2, 2008... by David Marsh As a circuit designer who also often lays out quite complex boards, I found the temptation to purchase Charles Pfeil's new book--BGA Breakouts & Routing: Effective Design Methods for Very Large BGAs --irresistible, and I...

Analyzer/exerciser validates 5-Gbps SuperSpeed USB 3.0.
October 2, 2008... by Dan Strassberg Although USB (Universal Serial Bus) 3.0 with its 5-Gbps SuperSpeed technology probably won't reach the market in volume until mid-2010, manufacturers are now developing computers and peripheral devices employing the new...

Automotive EEPROMs use two cells per bit for ruggedness, reliability.
October 2, 2008... by Graham Prophet With the aim of ensuring reliable operation and long life in the demanding automotive environment, Rohm has introduced a series of EEPROMs that employ a double-cell structure. The BR25Hxx0 devices, which are SPI...

Henry Ott EMC seminar, San Francisco, Oct 15 to 17.
October 2, 2008... by Paul Rako I just got a flyer from Henry Ott about a three-day seminar on electromagnetic-compatibility engineering (www.hottconsultants.com/emccourse_3-day.html ). Cost is $1375. Henry is a former Bell Labs researcher that really...

CriticalBlue's David Stewart.
October 2, 2008... Ann Steffora Mutschler David Stewart is founder and chief executive officer of CriticalBlue (Edinburgh, Scotland) and has more than 20 years' experience in the EDA and semiconductor industries, 10 of which he spent at Cadence Design...

Good as gold.
October 2, 2008... by Thomas Black, Digital Products Company During my career, I worked with a team on medical imaging. Our system had a 400-MHz ADC board behind its large VME backplane. The board employed early ECL (emitter-coupled-logic) technology and used...

A turn-off: Power management complicates life for verification engineers.
October 16, 2008... by Ron Wilson, Executive Editor Advanced energy-saving techniques can cause vast difficulties in the verification process. There is intense pressure on all levels of chip engineering to reduce power consumption. That situation, in...

Power-over-Ethernet chips: to the spec and beyond.
October 16, 2008... by Margery Conner, Technical Editor Power over Ethernet allows a basic Category 5 or 6 cable to carry both data and power, enabling simple and inexpensive installations of equipment such as VOIP phones, cameras, and wireless-access points....

Precision analog bests digital in speed, noise, simplicity, and ease of implementation.
October 16, 2008... Paul Antonucci, Alberti's Window, Watertown, MA Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Every once in a while, I read that analog is on the way out, and everything should be digital. Recently, I was involved in a design project that...

Mutliplexing technique yields a reduced-pin-count LED display.
October 16, 2008... Saurabh Gupta and Dhananjay V Gadre, Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, Dwarka, New Delhi, India Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville "Charlieplexing" as a method of multiplexing LED displays has recently attracted a lot of...

Derive a simple high-current source from a lab supply.(Brief article)
October 16, 2008... Roger Griswold and Alfredo Saab, Maxim Integrated Products, Sunnyvale, CA Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville When electronic testing requires an adjustable current source, you must often build that piece of test equipment in the...

White spaces and black hearts.
October 16, 2008... by Paul Rako, Technical Editor Google co-founder Larry Page is still pushing radio white-space proposals (Reference 1 ). White space refers to the unused television channels in a region, along with the spectrum-guardband buffer between...

The shot heard 'round the world.(Wallace Clement Ware Sabine)
October 16, 2008... by Howard Johnson, PhD Professor Wallace Clement Sabine removed a cheap, nickel-plated pistol from his waistcoat, raised the weapon above his head, and pulled the trigger. An earsplitting crack washed over the auditorium, penetrating every...

Start with the right op amp when driving SAR ADCs.
October 16, 2008... by Miro Oljaca and Bonnie C Baker, Texas Instruments Using the right operational amplifier in front of your data converter will give you good performance. Adjusting component values by production lot will give you the best performance. ...

AC/DC-power supply ups power density with innovative magnetics, digitally controlled modules.
October 16, 2008... by Margery Conner Incorporating a new dual-function-transformer design, digitally controlled modules, and an online product configurator, a new series of digitally controlled power modules joins Lambda's NV-Power (www.nv-power.com ) line....

$1799 mixed-signal scope takes 1G sample/sec/channel in real time.(Link Instruments)(Brief article)
October 16, 2008... by Dan Strassberg Link Instruments' $1799, PC-based MSO (mixed-signal oscilloscope)-9212 features 1G-sample/sec real-time sampling, or 50G samples/sec for repetitive signals, and a 2 million-point/channel data buffer with fully...

Low-cost, 60- to 300-MHz DSOs offer deeper memory, more features.(digital storage oscilloscopes)
October 16, 2008... by Dan Strassberg Buyers at the low-priced end of the DSO (digital-storage-oscilloscope) market may not demand breakthrough features or bandwidths beyond 10 GHz, but they do insist on solid value, ruggedness, and ease of use. Those who...

POE devices cater to higher-powered applications.
October 16, 2008... by Margery Conner Manufacturers of PDs (powered devices) that rely on the IEEE 802.3af POE (power-over-Ethernet) standard rather than ac wall power can shrink board space and the BOM (bill-of-materials) costs. They achieve this reduction...

IBM, ITRI explore solid-state *racetrack memory*.
October 16, 2008... by Ann Steffora Mutschler IBM Corp has started joint-development work with ITRI (Industrial Technology Research Institute) to explore the "racetrack-memory" approach to solid-state memory. IBM Fellow Stuart Parkin, PhD, conceived the idea...

Tiny lens harnesses oscillating water droplets.(Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)(Brief article)
October 16, 2008... by Matthew Miller From cell phones to military drones, many applications demand small, light optical lenses but can't spare much power for focusing them. Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute claim to have developed an innovative...

Slimmer light guide heralds ultrathin-LCD panels.
October 16, 2008... by Matthew Miller Philips Research recently displayed a prototype of a 32-in. LCD television that measures only 8 mm thick--about 20% as thick as the slimmest commercially available panels. The key to the skinny design is a 1-mm-thick...

Programming presents opportunity for distribution.
October 16, 2008... Edited by Suzanne Deffree With forecasters projecting that the programmable-IC market will grow at a CAGR (compound-annual-growth rate) of more than 17% from 2007 to 2011, components distributors are taking notice. "From a distributor's...

Sensors to drive global MEMS market to $8.8 billion in 2012.
October 16, 2008... Edited by Suzanne Deffree The global market for MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) will expand to $8.8 billion in 2012, up from $6.1 billion in 2006, according to data from iSuppli Corp (www.isuppli.com ). "The markets for mainstay...

EU recharges battery directive.(European Union)(Brief article)
October 16, 2008... Edited by Suzanne Deffree The EU (European Union) has implemented its New Batteries Directive, prohibiting vendors from placing on the market certain batteries and accumulators with a proportional mercury or cadmium content above a fixed...

Repeat offender.
October 16, 2008... by Glen Chenier, Teeter Totter Tree Stuff A few years ago, I designed a multiplexer that interfaced four T1 twisted-pair telephony lines to optical fiber. The integrated-CMOS T1 line drivers automatically generated the correct analog pulse...

A unique, low-cost approach to power-supply design.(Company overview)
October 30, 2008... Interview conducted and edited by Paul Rako CamSemi's David Baillie discusses how his UK-based fabless-semiconductor company established a global presence. David Baillie is chief executive officer of CamSemi (Cambridge Semiconductor),...

Japanese automakers focus on safety.
October 30, 2008... By Sang-Soo Pac, Associate Editor Sensors that monitor conditions inside and outside cars protect you on the road. Although "green" vehicles are attracting a lot of attention these days because of a growing interest in environmental...

Migrating software into hardware.
October 30, 2008... Interview conducted and edited by Ann Steffora Mutschler EDN talks with David Stewart, founder and chief executive officer of CriticalBlue, about hardware/software co-design, multicore programming, and more. David Stewart is founder...

On-chip instruments track malicious RTL.
October 30, 2008... by Rick Nelson DAFCA's founders take a new approach and discover the company's technology can fill an unexpected market need. A 2005 US Department of Defense report outlines the potential problems malicious code can cause (Reference 1...

As design outsourcing matures, challenges appear.
October 30, 2008... By Ron Wilson, Executive Editor There has been much angst about design outsourcing in recent years, most of which has come from US-based designers who have lost or who fear losing their jobs. But as the industry gets more experience with...

Irish government ENABLES funding and partnerships between universities and industry.
October 30, 2008... By Margery Conner, Technical Editor How can a relatively small country become a force in key electronics technologies when it lacks a military-industrial juggernaut to power high-tech R&D? Ireland has bet on government funding and the...

Environmental compliance, 2.0.
October 30, 2008... Interview conducted and edited by Suzanne Deffree Farnell/Newark's Gary Nevison discusses several EU environmental regulations that are impacting electronics design across the globe. Managing legislation and environmental affairs for...

GreenPeak's technology targets *green* power.(Interview)
October 30, 2008... Interview conducted and edited by Warren Webb A global pioneer in ultralow-power wireless-sensor and -control networking crafts battery-free wireless networks. GreenPeak Technologies is a global pioneer in ultralow-power...

A multicore, parallelapproach to computing.
October 30, 2008... by Graham Prophet XMOS puts multiple processing cores, each with its own memory and I/O system,on a single chip. David May is chief technical officer of fabless-semiconductor start-up XMOS, based in Bristol, England. Long an advocate...

Do you question your sanity?
October 30, 2008... by Bonnie Baker Have you ever been in need of a second opinion when your sanity is at stake? The pulse oximeter may be able to provide that second opinion if your brain is oxygen-deprived. This condition could affect you if you are a...

Multicore: the future of SOCs?
October 30, 2008... by Ron Wilson, Executive Editor Will systems on chips follow server CPUs down the road to having many identical processor cores on a die? From the early days of SOCs (systems on chips), when the devices were simply single-chip...

DC-accurate, 32-bit DAC achieves 32-bit resolution.
October 30, 2008... W Stephen Woodward, Chapel Hill, NC Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Some applications, such as ADC testing and calibration, require a DAC with extremely good resolution, monotonicity, accuracy, and resolution. In these...

Digitally programmable instrumentation amplifier offers autozeroing.
October 30, 2008... Marián Eatofka, Slovak University of Technology, Bratislava, Slovakia Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville The current trend in advanced instrumentation amps is to use no external resistors. In these amplifiers, a...

C# application controls simple ADC.(analog to digital converters)
October 30, 2008... Yury Magda, Cherkassy, Ukraine Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville This Design Idea describes a simple and low-cost ADC that you control using the serial port of a PC running Windows XP/Vista. The hardware comprises Microchip's...

Perform bitwise operation in Excel spreadsheets.
October 30, 2008... Bruno Muswieck, Eletroeste, Uruguaiana, Brazil Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville Microsoft's (www.microsoft.com ) Excel helps engineers with calculus and graphics to solve problems. But engineers often have to perform bitwise...

Choosing the right processor candidate: the 35th annual microprocessor directory.(Directory)
October 30, 2008... by Robert Cravotta, Technical Editor Find the perfect processor candidates and development tools for your project Welcome to the 35th annual EDN microprocessor/microcontroller directory. Once again, the companies and devices in the...

Physics and economics.
October 30, 2008... by Rick Nelson, editor-in-chief You're all aware that a relationship exists between the theories of economics and electrical engineering. As the economist Charles C Holt has written with regard to his collaboration with economist AWH...

Compact fluorescent lights: not always the best solution.
October 30, 2008... by Margery Conner, Technical Editor After mentioning in a PowerSource blog post my difficulties with CFLs (compact fluorescent lights) and their tendency to burn out after less than a year of use, I was surprised by the number of comments I...

Third-party IP: placement, blocks, and clocks.
October 30, 2008... by Pallab Chatterjee, Contributing Technical Editor In the last few columns, I have discussed questions you should ask your IP (intellectual-property) providers before launching into a new design (references 1 through 4 ). Wrapping up this...

ESC accelerometer complies with safety standards.
October 30, 2008... by Margery Conner ESC (electronic stability control) for automobiles is a well-established technology: In 2007, manufacturers sold more than 20 million ESC-equipped cars, accounting for approximately one-third of total auto sales. ESC's...

UWB IC targets handset, automotive, and industrial uses.
October 30, 2008... by Graham Prophet Staccato Communications' second-generation UWB (ultrawideband) Ripcord2 IC integrates RF-front-end, digital-baseband, MAC (media-access-controller), and I/O functions. The single-chip, all-CMOS device covers WiMedia bands...

A guide to SI.
October 30, 2008... by Dan Strassberg The following paragraph--paraphrased from the conclusion of Chapter 1 of A Signal Integrity Engineer's Companion by Geoffrey Lawday, PhD; David Ireland; and Greg Edlund--summarizes what the book is about and how the...

PSoC processors add nonvolatile SRAM to support continuous-data-logging applications.
October 30, 2008... by Robert Cravotta Cypress Semiconductor's PSoC NV (programmable-system-on-chip/nonvolatile) family of processors integrates nonvolatile SRAM with the company's PSoC architecture. Devices in the PSoC NV family include 64 to 256 kbytes of...

Industry says *no* on 450-mm wafer size but no pushback on Intel.
October 30, 2008... by Ann Steffora Mutschler I'm starting to wonder what the real story is behind all the talk on the 450-mm wafer size. At the July Semicon West in San Francisco, "450" was the buzz, with most equipment vendors saying they won't go down that...

Gigahertz-class processor stresses energy efficiency for applications with varying usage scenarios.
October 30, 2008... by Robert Cravotta Freescale's MPC8536E PowerQUICC (quad-integrated-communications-controller) III processors include advanced power- and energy-management features to support embedded media applications, such as printers and...

*Crystal* oscillator comes without the crystal.
October 30, 2008... by Graham Prophet Silicon Laboratories is offering a new class of oscillator as a frequency reference. The all-silicon Si500 series uses neither a MEMS (microelectromechanical-system) frequency system nor a crystal, but it challenges...

Dennis Monticelli, champion of analog innovation.
October 30, 2008... by Paul Rako Dennis M Monticelli in 1974 received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of California--Santa Barbara and joined National Semiconductor Corp upon graduation. In 2000, he became a National...

Stick to the schematic.
October 30, 2008... by Barry Harvey, Intersil Inc I recently needed to re-create a settling-time-measurement jig I built 25 years ago. It transmits and receives 10V swings and is flat enough and magnifies enough to see 0.01%/division within 35 nsec on an...

Worldwide product innovation despite varying standards.
October 30, 2008... by Steve Scheiber, Contributing Technical Editor Global companies with products headed to the international stage face complex, confusing, and sometimes-conflicting regulations. For a multinational electronics manufacturer, selling...

A look at global compensation and job satisfaction.
October 30, 2008... by Rick Nelson, Editor-in-Chief Engineers contend with technical challenges as salaries pace inflation. Engineers worldwide reported varying levels of job satisfaction as their salaries struggle to keep pace with inflation, according...

Grooming the innovators of the future.
October 30, 2008... by Rick Nelson, Editor-in-Chief, and Jessica MacNeil, Contributing Editor Corporate sponsors in the electronics industry are working with General Motors and the US Department of Energy to provide real-world engineering experience to...