1043 results found for Embedded in Electronic Design, displaying items 1 - 20
October 9, 2008 3D Imaging: You've Just Got To See It
We’re used to seeing in 3D. Computer imaging has taken a while to catch up. Several developments are coming together, from multicore processors to high-resolution cameras to fast refresh displays, to make 3D imaging happen. 3D imaging likes parallelism. This opens up opportunities for using graphics processing units (GPUs) that are readily available (see “What Will You Do With 1 TFLOPS Of Double-Precision Power?” at...
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William Wong
October 9, 2008 Kit Combines RTOS And IDE
Looking to deliver the best of breed, IAR Systems, Micrium, and NXP Semicondcutors have put together their respective integrated development environment (IDE), real-time operating system (RTOS), and microcontroller in a single package. NXP’s industrial reference design (IRD) platform combines NXP’s ARM7-based LPC2468 with Micrium’s popular uC/OS-II RTOS with the IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM C/C++ compiler and debugger. IAR’s tools support C/C++ and MISRA C....
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William Wong
October 9, 2008 Implement Your DLP Ideas
Texas Instruments’ Discovery 4000 Starter Kit lets developers create applications based on TI’s digital light processing (DLP) system. Kits start at $4999 for a 1024-by-768, 0.55-in. digital micromirror device (DMD). The kit includes a board with the DMD and support FPGA and ASIC chips. Windows drivers are included. A 1080p version is available. The DMD can operate across the light spectrum from IR to UV, suiting it for many different...
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William Wong
October 9, 2008 DIMMs Do More DRAM
DRAM chip density continues to climb. But the hunger for more memory seems insatiable, especially with virtual systems running on multicore processors. One way to get more memory in a system is to support more memory sockets, though this requires more motherboard space and more drivers. Another is to use higher-density chips, yet this can be more costly. MetaRAM puts a DDR3 cont rol ler between the memory socket and memor y chips (...
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William Wong
October 9, 2008 DSC Lets Coprocessor Handle Real-Time Analog
Texas Instruments’ C2000 digital signal controller (DSC) gets a major boost with the Control Law Accelerator (CLA). This 32-bit floating-point controller speeds up the processing, often by a factor of five, of analog chores such as motor control and power-supply management. It executes programs stored in shared SRAM, up to 64 kbytes. The main 60-MHz C28x core has its own SRAM, flash, and boot ROM. It also has access to the full peripheral complement, while...
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William Wong
October 9, 2008 MCU Packs In Massive nvSRAM
Recording data on flash has limitations, so Cypress Semiconductor turned to nonvolatile SRAM (nvSRAM) with its latest PSoC family of 8-bit configurable microcontrollers. The PSoC NV can offer up to 256 kbytes of nvSRAM plus 2 kybtes of conventional SRAM and 32 kbytes of flash. The nvSRAM has a transfer rate of 1 Mbyte/s and eliminates the wear issues of flash. This can be critical in embedded data logging applications where replacement is not ...
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William Wong
October 7, 2008
MCU Goes Green Trying To Do Nothing
The trick to conserving power is to do nothing—or next to nothing. Most low-power microcontrollers utilize this approach in some fashion. Freescale’s MPC8536E incorporates a number of features to optimize power consumption in a network environment. Its gigabit Ethernet ports support packet lossless deep sleep. When in use, the Ethernet ports are active and filter incoming network traffic while the rest of the chip is in deep-sleep mode. Packets...
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William Wong
September 11, 2008 Go With The Flow—Dataflow, That Is
The parallel programming challenge will continue to grow as multicore platforms become more common and their complexity and number of cores continue to increase. The domination of sequential programming languages like C/C++ and, in some areas, Java must give way to extensions or new languages to manage multicore platforms. Tools such as Intel’s Task Building Blocks (TBB) enhance C/C++. The latest version of TBB adds the parallel_do construct that operates like...
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William Wong
September 11, 2008 Open Source Bites Board
Texas Instruments’ $149 Beagle Board can be purchased from DigiKey’s Web site. It contains a dual-core OMAPOMAPOMAPOMAP3 platform with a 600-MHMHz Cortex-A8 and C64+ DSP processor with video accelerator. The chip also has hardware support for Open GL ES 2.0 that can render up to 10 Mpolygons/s. The 430-MHMHz C64+ can handle HD video. Linux and Windows CE are available for the Cortex-A8, while DSP-BIOIOS and codecs run on the C64+. Open-source codecs are in the works. For...
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William Wong
September 11, 2008 Parallel Processing Gets Terminated
Intel’s Thread Building Blocks 2.1 adds a host of features, including the ability to terminate tasks. This is handy when a thread within a group determines that a solution has been found or an error has been detected such that the rest of the related computation can be terminated. Other new features include a parallel_do function that operates like a foreach loop found in other programming languages, recursive mutex support, and a new thread abstraction. The memory...
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William Wong
September 11, 2008 LabVIEW 8.6: More Multicore And More Embedded
During this year’s NINI Week, National Instruments announced LabVIEWIEWIEW 8.6 in addition to a wide range of other NINI hardware and software. And, this latest version of LabVIEW continues to push the limits of parallel processing. Many of its more than 1200 multicore optimized analysis and signal processing routines can take advantage of Intel’s Thread Building Block runtime. LabVIEW applications can push 1 million fast Fourier transforms a second (FFTs/s)...
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William Wong
September 11, 2008 Fanless PC/104 SBC Uses Less Than 5 W
Looking for a low-cost, low-power PC/104 SBC? Check out Diamond Systems’ Rhodeus. This fanless SBC is based on a 500-MHz AMAMD Geode LX800. Interfaces include Ethernet, two USB 2.0 ports, two serial ports, two PS/2 ports, and a floppy and IDE port. It can handle up to a 1-Gbyte SODIMM. Pricing starts at $350 with 256 Mbytes of DDR SDRAMRAMRAM. Diamond Systems ...
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William Wong
September 11, 2008 Eight-Core MCU Gets C Compiler
The eight-core Parallax Propeller microcontroller finally has a C compiler courtesy of ImageCraft. The ANSI C compiler supports a large memory model that exceeds the on-chip 2-kbyte limit of the eight cogs (cores). The package includes an IDE, C compiler, assembler, a range of runtime libraries, and debugging support. Applications are typically five to 10 times faster than the interpretive SPIN language tools available from Parallax. Pricing starts at...
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William Wong
September 11, 2008 MCU Packs 1-Mbyte SRAM
Renesas’ SuperH 32-bit micros now have up to 1 Mbyte of SRAMRAMRAM on-chip. The 144-MHz SH7262 and SH7264 are optimized for digital audio and media players with graphical displays, including 16-bit WQVGA displays that can be driven directly. The chip includes PWMPWMPWM support suitable for motor control, SD memory card interface USB 2.0 Hi-Speed host/device interfaces, and an audio signal processor and CD-ROMROMROM decoder. An external 16-bit bus provides access to...
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William Wong
September 11, 2008 32-Bit Flash MCU Targets Portable Devices
The NEC Electronics V850ES/Jx3-L microcontroller’s flash memory consumes only 0.9 mW/Dhrystone MIPS. It also only uses 1.5 µA in standby mode. The 32-bit, 100-pin processor has 16 kbytes of RAMRAMRAM and 256 kbytes of flash. Peripherals include a 12-channel, 10-bit ADC, dual 8-bit DACACs, three serial ports, three I2C ports, and five clock serial interfaces. Pricing starts at $6. Development tools and C compilers are available from NEC, IAR, and Green Hills Software....
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William Wong
August 14, 2008 Wireless Python Key To Mobile Robot
Programming wireless devices can be a chore, but the use of scripting languages like Python can turn rapid frustration into rapid development. I tested this theory with the Synapse Wireless EK2500 development kit, which I combined with iRobot’s Create here in the lab (see “Commanding The iRobot Create” at www.electronicdesign.com, ED Online ID ...
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William Wong
August 14, 2008 Rugged Gateway Links ZigBee And Cellular
Digi International’s ConnectPort X4 NEMA provides a rugged link between a cellular and ZigBee network. The gateway features Python programming support in addition to serial, Ethernet, and USB interfaces. The unit is designed to be a gateway to other Digi Drop-in Networking products (see “ZigBee Kits 5” at www.electronicdesign.com, ED Online ...
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William Wong
August 14, 2008 Fanless Mini-ITX Motherboard Stays Cool
ITOX’s G5G100-L10C Mini-ITX motherboard sports heatsinks to keep its 1-GHz Celeron M Ultra Low Voltage 373 processor cool. The chip has a 512-kbyte cache and a 400-MHz front-side bus. The system uses less than 17 W. The board utilizes the Mobile Intel 910GMLE Express chip set with the Intel ICH6M I/O controller hub and the GMA 900 graphics adapter. Also, there is a 1-Gbit Ethernet port, eight serial ports, two SATA ports, an Ultra- DMA/100...
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William Wong
August 14, 2008 ZigBee Chip Goes 32 Bits
Jennic’s JN5139 brings 32-bit computing to ZigBee Pro. It’s built around a 32-bit, 16 MIPS RISC core, 96 kbytes of RAM, and 192 kbytes of ROM. Developers can use the JenNet stack, 6LoWAPAN IP, or ZigBee Pro protocol stack. Peripherals include 21 GPIO, I2C, SPI, two serial ports, a four-channel, 12-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC), and dual 11-bit digital-toanalog converters (DACs). A 48-byte one-time programmable (OTP) eFuse stores the MAC ...
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William Wong
August 14, 2008 Rugged Displays Get Wide
Stealth Computer’s SV-2400 wraps a steel enclosure around a widescreen, 24-in. LCD. The system features an optional USB-based, capacitive touchscreen interface designed for rugged environments. The NEMA 4/IP56 LCD can withstand water, dust, and dirt. It features a 5-ms response time, 1920-by-1200 resolution, a 16:10 aspect ratio with 250 nits of brightness, a 160° viewing angle, and a 1000:1 contrast ratio. It accepts DVI and...
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William Wong
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