EDN articles from September 2006

EDN archives from September 2006

Using Spice to ease your life.
September 1, 2006... by Bonnie Baker A computer-based simulation of your analog and digital circuit is important. Such a simulation is important because using your preferred computer Spice program for analog simulation or IBIS (I/O Buffer Information...

The right video architecture can make all the difference.
September 1, 2006... by Ron Wilson, Executive Editor Digital-video broadcast and the iPod phenomenon have ignited a race to bring video to the palmtop. Processing architectures are at the center of the struggle. Video is going handheld. ...

Clash of the wireless-USB standards.
September 1, 2006... by Richard A Quinnell, Contributing Technical Editor Wireless USB is poised to enter the market. Understanding the differences between the two leading approaches will help developers choose the right one for their application. ...

PIC microprocessor drives 20-LED dot- or bar-graph display.
September 1, 2006... Noureddine Benabadji, University of Sciences and Technology, Oran, Algeria Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville The circuit in Figure 1 uses only five I/O lines to drive a dot- or bar-graph display of 20 LEDs. Although this...

PC's serial port controls programmable sine-wave generator.
September 1, 2006... Yongping Xia, Navcom Technology, Torrance, CA Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville This Design Idea describes a circuit that uses a PC's serial port to control a sine-wave generator that covers a frequency range of 2 Hz to 20...

I²C interface connects CompactFlash card to microcontroller.
September 1, 2006... Fons Janssen, Maxim Integrated Products Inc, Sunnyvale, CA Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville Logging data from a large number of monitored channels usually requires a lot of memory for storing the measured data. Unfortunately,...

IC and DMM form direct-read-out temperature probe.
September 1, 2006... Alfredo H Saab and Bich Pham, Maxim Integrated Products Inc, Sunnyvale CA Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville The simple temperature-measurement probe in Figure 1 can serve as an indispensable tool for troubleshooting and...

Sportslike competition drives science and technology education.
September 1, 2006... By Maury Wright, Editor in Chief We in the trade press are asked daily to spread the word about everything from new products to "can't-miss" upcoming events or seminars. Our role as filters of information means that we say no most of the...

Tiny computer holds embedded treasure.
September 1, 2006... By Warren Webb, Technical Editor The Waysmall series from Gumstix offers designers a line of Linux-based computer systems that easily fit into the palm of your hand. Housed in an 83x36x15-mm plastic case, these miniature systems provide...

An overview of on-chip compression architectures.
September 1, 2006... By Brion Keller, Cadence Design Systems Data-compression techniques can help manage the escalating cost of test in nanometer designs. The test time that scan tests require typically dominates manufacturing-test costs for digital...

Immersion-lithography road map hits dead end.
September 1, 2006... by Ron Wilson As the promise of EUV (extreme-ultraviolet) lithography fades, the old war-horse, 193 nm, is again rising up to fill the gap. By immersing the wafer and the front element of the lens in water, stepper vendors have been able...

Biometric sensor and preboot software lock down laptops.
September 1, 2006... by Maury Wright A handful of companies has for a number of years been pitching biometric sensors as the best protection for portable PCs and other electronics, and the technology is catching on with some enterprise-IT departments. But a...

Speedy Spice-accurate simulator targets analog, RF.
September 1, 2006... by Michael Santarini Most analog and RF engineers rely on Spice simulators for accurate circuit analysis, but Spice simulation is painfully slow. Over the years, EDA vendors have attempted to speed Spice simulation for engineers by...

Free tool tracks verification plans.
September 1, 2006... by Michael Santarini Formal-verification-tool start-up Jasper Design Automation is offering a free tool to help IC-verification teams generate and track verification plans. Craig Cochran, vice president of marketing at Jasper, says that...

Power-conversion and -management IC squeezes into embedded-system space.
September 1, 2006... by Margery Conner Zilker Labs' new ZL2105 digital-power-conversion and -management IC targets the needs of the embedded-system market. The device provides as much as 3A at 0.6 to 5.5V. The chip combines power-management and -conversion...

Modular instrumentation: LXI challenges PXI.
September 1, 2006... by Staff The PXI (PCI Extensions for Instrumentation) open, modular standard emerged almost a decade ago. The industry widely considers PXI the successor to the physically larger VXI (VME Extensions for Instrumentation). Overall, PXI is...

Vibration powers wireless sensor.
September 1, 2006... by Graham Prophet, EDN Europe The idea of wireless sensors that report measurements over communications protocols, such as 802.15.4, including ZigBee and other similar standards, is gaining ground. A key part of the concept is that such...

Spectrum analyzer adds phase-noise-measurement set.
September 1, 2006... by Graham Prophet, EDN Europe Rohde & Schwarz's new FSUP signal-source spectrum analyzer and phase-noise tester tests and characterizes RF-signal sources. It operates at 8, 26.5, or 50 GHz, depending on options. A typical task in...

Scope.
September 1, 2006... by Staff Chart your course Looking Ahead Staff The annual event for engineers who find their challenges below 25 kHz, the AES Audio Engineering Society Convention comes to San Francisco this year on Oct 5 to 8. A...

Megabit DRAMs led PC boom, despite claims that they were "too capacious".
September 14, 2006... by Maury Wright, Editor in Chief Toshiba ( www.toshiba.com ) led the procession of DRAM vendors to the 1-Mbit level in the mid-1980s, although, as a 1996 EDN article indicates, the jury was out on when the devices would find mainstream...

Dynamic RAMs.
September 14, 2006... by Maury Wright, Editor in Chief The high cost and 1-bit-wide organization of 1M-bit dynamic RAMs are now limiting their use. Nevertheless, prices could fall to $20 by year's end, and 256k 34-bit versions are emerging. Traditionally,...

Making waves: Eight years later, details still matter.
September 14, 2006... By Dan Strassberg, Contributing Technical Editor Understanding waveform-generator operation and specifications before you buy is as important today as it was eight years ago. It would be untrue and grossly unfair to the...

SDR goes to war.(software-defined radio)
September 14, 2006... by Nicholas Cravotta, Contributing Technical Editor The JTRS is working to bring interchangeable SDR to the military. But will it be good enough for commercial applications? SDR (software-defined radio) is not a new technology. The...

"Brick-wall" lowpass audio filter needs no tuning.
September 14, 2006... Diego Puyal and Pilar Molina, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville When a system's specifications call for a lowpass filter with a steep frequency-cutoff characteristic, an engineer can...

Fast-settling picoammeter circuit handles wide voltage range.
September 14, 2006... Rob Whitehouse, Analog Devices, Wilmington, MA Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville Evaluating analog switches, multiplexers, operational amplifiers, and other ICs poses challenges to IC-test engineers. A typical test scenario...

Kamen clobbers big-company management.
September 14, 2006... by Maury Wright, Editor in Chief As I promised in a previous column, I'll share some of Dean Kamen's thoughts on innovation, management, and leadership (Reference 1 ). Kamen is the founder of DEKA (Dean Kamen) Research and Development...

Voltage-regulator droop.
September 14, 2006... by Howard Johnson, PhD The circuit model in Figure 1 captures the important low-frequency behavior of most voltage regulators (Reference 1 ). Parameters C2 , R2 , and L2 represent a typical bulk decoupling-capacitor array. To model the...

Stacking up.
September 14, 2006... by Joshua Israelsohn, Contributing Technical Editor Advances in IC packaging and back-end manufacturing processes that take advantage of 3-D structures are beginning to blur the line between fabrication and packaging technologies. That...

Abracadabra: making system interconnect disappear with FPGAs.
September 14, 2006... by Andy Turudic, Altera Corp Advanced signal-conditioning techniques can solve interconnect problems. Designing system interconnect isn't the most glamorous engineering job in the world. Indeed, to most system or digital designers,...

Test set speeds next-generation wireless-device calibration.
September 14, 2006... by Dan Strassberg Agilent Technologies has announced the availability of a next-generation wireless-communications test-set platform, which the company calls ideal for calibrating mobile phones in high-volume manufacturing. The test set...

Dual computers boost system performance.(Brief article)
September 14, 2006... by Warren Webb Many aerospace and military applications require redundant or parallel processors to achieve extended availability requirements and meet performance goals. So, why not include redundant hardware on a single board? General...

Hall-effect hot-swap controller debuts.
September 14, 2006... by Paul Rako The new ACS760 series of ICs from Allegro Microsystems incorporates Hall-effect sensing to control inrush and protect the power buses in blade servers and other applications. This IC provides a major advantage over other...

32-nm CMOS begins to take shape.
September 14, 2006... by Ron Wilson At the Semicon West conference in San Francisco in July, the dim outlines of 32-nm CMOS began to take shape. The process will look more familiar to design teams than many had predicted, but the process is still far from...

Process coaxes carbon nanotubes into service as vias.
September 14, 2006... by Matthew Miller Researchers at Purdue University have developed a process that grows individual carbon nanotubes vertically atop a silicon wafer. Step 1 in the process uses anodization to create an array of cylindrical pores in a thin...

Magnetic material may put new spin on computing.
September 14, 2006... by Matthew Miller Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a magnetic semiconductor that could bring electron "spin," which engineers already exploit in storage applications, into the realm of information...

Nanoscale cavity amplifies LED output by seven times.
September 14, 2006... by Matthew Miller Precisely spaced grooves etched into a silicon cavity surrounding a semiconductor LED can make the LED as much as seven times brighter, according to researchers at NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology)....

Your name in lights, on your body.
September 14, 2006... by Matthew Miller Philips Research has demonstrated jackets featuring its Lumalive textiles, which integrate flexible arrays of LEDs into the fabric. The jackets feature 200x200-mm color panels and discreetly concealed battery and...

Receivers target high-volume GPS and DVB-H applications.
September 14, 2006... by Graham Prophet, EDN Europe Chipidea, a silicon-IP (intellectual-property) provider in Lisbon, Portugal, has expanded its IP for RF-CMOS circuit blocks with two products for handheld designs. With its IP offerings in the logic space,...

New US passports contain secure identification chips.
September 14, 2006... by Vinod Kataria, EDN Asia Infineon Technologies has received a multimillion-piece purchase order from the United States government to supply technology for a new electronic passport. The new passports facilitate international travel by...

Scope.
September 14, 2006... Edited by Ron Wilson Chart your course Looking Ahead Ron Wilson ARM Developers' Conference Ray Kurzweil will headline the ARM ( www.arm.com ) Developers' Conference, which will take place Oct 3 through 5 at the Santa...

Perceptions and realities.(Syscomp Electronic Design Limited)(Personal account)
September 14, 2006... by Peter Hiscocks, Syscomp Electronic Design Limited In the late '60s, I was a newly minted EE graduate from the University of Toronto. The job market was hot, and I was offered two jobs: One paid well as a "catalogue jockey" at the CBC...

Changing the PWM signal to dc.
September 28, 2006... by Bonnie Baker You can generate a variable dc reference voltage with a DAC or with a PWM (pulse-width-modulation) signal from your controller (Figure 1 ). The accuracy of the voltage source that the PWM/lowpass-analog-filter combination...

Circulating currents: The warnings are out.
September 28, 2006... by Paul Rako, Technical Editor Understanding how to avoid or minimize the effects of circulating currents can make your designs more robust. Every engineer should know the techniques for neutralizing this insidious phenomenon. ...

Medical devices demand stringent isolation techniques.
September 28, 2006... by Charles H Small, Contributing Technical Editor Safety regulations for medical devices mandate isolated power supplies and I/O lines. The goal of these regulations is simple: Don't electrocute the patient. You can use A variety of...

High-impedance buffer amplifier's input includes ESD protection.
September 28, 2006... Eugene Palatnik, Waukesha, WI Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville Certain measurement applications, such as for pH (acidity) and bio-potentials, require a high-impedance buffer amplifier. Although several semiconductor...

Composite-VGA encoder/decoder eases display upgrade.(Brief article)
September 28, 2006... Werner Schwiering, Joystick Scoring Ltd, Whitby, ON, Canada Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville An older computer system fed RGB video and composite-synchronization signals through four 75* coaxial cables to an RGB color...

Solenoid-protection circuit limits duty cycle.
September 28, 2006... Panagiotis Kosioris, Inos Automation Software, Stuttgart, Germany Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville Several safety-critical solenoids in a laser-measurement system on an automotive-assembly line required protection from...

SPST pushbutton switch combines power-control, user-input functions.
September 28, 2006... Eugene Kaplounovski, Vancouver, BC, Canada Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville This Design Idea describes an enhancement to a previous one (Reference 1 ). The circuit in Figure 1 uses a normally open SPST pushbutton switch, S1...

Electronic circuit replaces mechanical push-push switch.
September 28, 2006... Donald Schelle, Maxim Integrated Products Inc, Sunnyvale, CA Edited by Brad Thompson and Fran Granville Mechanical push-pushbutton switches (also known as alternate-action or push-on/push-off switches) can be bulky and expensive. As...

EDN at 50.(Editorial)
September 28, 2006... By Maury Wright, Editor in Chief Welcome to the 50th-anniversary issue of EDN . Although we've been celebrating with our "Milestones That Mattered" columns and other excerpts from the past all year, this issue includes a special section...

PC-centric architecture speeds HD-DVD to market.
September 28, 2006... By Maury Wright, Editor in Chief A 2.5-GHz Pentium 4 and standard Intel ( www.intel.com ) core logic mean that the HD-A1 could essentially function as a PC. In fact, the system employs the Linux operating system. The standardized design...

Miniaturization enables innovation-- past, present, and future.
September 28, 2006... By Maury Wright, Editor in Chief Ask someone on the street what miniaturization means to them, and they will most likely indicate a mobile handset or perhaps an MP3 player. Ask an engineer, and you'll probably get a Moore's Law-centric...

Designing dual-modulus dividers in an FPGA.
September 28, 2006... by Brian Boorman, Harris Corp A technique from deep in the digital designer's dusty bag of tricks may be just the ticket for generating moderate-speed clocks in programmable logic. It is often necessary for designers to implement a...

Dynamic frequency scaling optimizes SOC performance.
September 28, 2006... by Colin MacDonald and Anis Jarrar, Freescale Semiconductor A clock-extension scheme allows a design to run at its target operating frequency when the system is not accessing the key slow path and TO slow down when it is. Most IC...

Load-transient-response testing for voltage regulators.
September 28, 2006... By Jim Williams, Linear Technology Corp Variations occur in voltage regulators' transient loads; thus, the devices require careful evaluation and testing. Semiconductor memory, card readers, microprocessors, disk drives, piezoelectric...

Five questions about resistors.
September 28, 2006... By Gene Howell, TT Electronics, IRC Boone Division Understanding this ubiquitous part can help you avoid common circuit problems. The resistor is one of the simpler electronic components. Engineers seldom examine resistor...

Modeling skin effect in Spice.
September 28, 2006... by Cecil Deisch, Tellabs Operations Inc Skin effect causes increased losses as frequency increases. It also causes changes in signal velocity, degrading signal fidelity, especially the eye opening of high-speed data signals on long signal...

Audiophile amplifier offers 0.00003% THD1N.
September 28, 2006... by Paul Rako National Semiconductor, long a major player in the audio market, revisits that arena with the high-voltage, high-performance LM4562 dual audio op amp. The device operates from 5 to 34V, and THD+N (total harmonic distortion...

Mixed-signal module boosts wideband performance.
September 28, 2006... by Warren Webb Mercury Computer Systems' new Echotek Series ECV4-RFT (remote-fiber-transceiver) VME module combines high-speed ADC and DAC technology, FPGA silicon, and fiber communications to coordinate data streams to and from...

1-MHz gain-selectable amps compensate for bandwidth roll-off.
September 28, 2006... by Paul Rako Microchip's new MCP6G01 and MCP6G02 series of amplifiers use one pin to select a gain of one, 10, or 50 at 1 MHz, 350 kHz, and 300 kHz, respectively. The third pin is floating, yielding the third gain setting, and gain...

Software turbocharges IC-logic simulation.
September 28, 2006... by Michael Santarini With ICs becoming ever more complex and larger in gate counts, an ongoing demand exists for faster and higher capacity verification tools. EDA start-up Liga Systems addresses that need with its new NitroSim...

RF-signal-analysis instruments: now faster and smarter.
September 28, 2006... by Dan Strassberg The growing complexity of wireless-communication standards is motivating users of RF-signal-analysis instruments to demand units that can make more complex measurements than do existing products. Moreover, the economics...

India's CDAC develops digital hearing aid.
September 28, 2006... by Chitra Giridhar, EDN Asia The hardware-design group at India's government-funded CDAC (Center for Development of Advanced Computing), in Thiruvananthapuram has developed a low-cost DPHA (digital programmable hearing aid) that a user...

Preprocessing switch speeds data in DSP clusters.
September 28, 2006... by Graham Prophet, EDN Europe A new preprocessing switch from IDT incorporates the ability to perform preprocessing in the switch path, leading to an increase of as much as 20% in system efficiency. The switch has 40 bidirectional and...

Digi-Key: growing up, privately.(Company overview)
September 28, 2006... by Paul Rako Engineer Ronald Stordahl, inventor of the Digi-Key electronic-telegraph key, founded Digi-Key ( www.digi-key.com ) in 1972. The company went on to become the sixth-largest catalog-electronic-component distributor. EDN...

Scope.
September 28, 2006... Edited by Ron Wilson Chart your course Looking Ahead Ron Wilson It's going to be all about energy at the Fall Microprocessor Forum ( www.in-stat.com/FallMPF/06/index.htm ) in San Jose, CA, Oct 9 through 11. Keynote...

Software and processors: here, there, and everywhere.
September 28, 2006... by Steve Leibson, Tensilica Inc Software was almost nonexistent at EDN's debut 50 years ago. Now, software and processors are ubiquitous. During EDN 's inaugural publication year in 1956, hardly any software existed. Although the...

The thermal cost of performance.
September 28, 2006... by Joshua Israelsohn, Contributing Technical Editor Electric-energy efficiency serves as one measure of how far the electronics industry has come. Explore how lighting, measurement instrumentation, and audio amplification highlight the...

Minimum energy and power demands in analog ICs and the impact of self-heating effects in tiny transistors.
September 28, 2006... by Barrie Gilbert, Analog Devices You need a certain minimum energy to perform any practical operation. Raising a 12-oz can of beer from belly to lips consumes about 1J. The energy you need to execute a one-time function in...

Does virtualization drive the future?
September 28, 2006... by Ron Wilson, Executive Editor The ability of electronic systems to simulate reality has made them more intelligent. Could it make them self-creating? Over the 50 years since the first tabloid issue of Electrical Design News ,...