57 results found for Leapfrog: Industry First, displaying items 1 - 20
March 29, 2007 Six-Channel, Low-Power IC Makes Sense Of Sensing Interfaces
The cost-competitive climate of the consumer, medical, industrial, and automotive markets has perpetuated a marked rise in sensor applications, prompting greater use of "deeply embedded" functions. As a result, the user hardly ever or even never interfaces with the embedded function, which is very tightly coupled with the environment around it. In many of these applications, high-level code reconfigurability is less important than lower costs. A full-blown microcontroller...
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Roger Allan
February 1, 2007 USB Stacks Up With A Modular Industrial Form Factor
The stackable PC/104 form factor has proved itself indispensible in numerous applications. But its Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) is moving toward oblivion as the number of chips that can directly interface with it nears zero. USB, one of the interfaces replacing ISA, is ubiquitous on PCs and laptops. Embedded systems tend to be the last to jump on the bandwagon, though USB will be found on most PC/104 single-board computers (SBCs). What's lacking is a stackable version...
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William Wong
February 2, 2006 A New Player In The 32-Bit Procesor Field
Atmel took a turn away from the pack when it designed its 8-bit AVR. Now, the company is bucking the trend toward the 32-bit ARM architecture with its AVR32 processor architecture. Needless to say, ARM and its partners don't have the 32-bit market sewn up by any means. In fact, a range of popular 32-bit microprocessors is available, including three families from Freescale alone. The competition should be healthy. Still, the AVR32 melds system design components like DSP and...
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William Wong
August 18, 2005 Signal-Conditioning IC: A Low-Cost ASIC Alternative
Sensors are ubiquitous, providing the signals that feed our computer-centric world. The outputs for these sensors, though, must be signal-conditioned for computer use. This depends not only on the application involved, but also on the type of sensing technology employed. As a result, many OEMs turn to expensive ASICs and their embedded codes, which can take one to two years and cost $1 million to $2 million to develop. The cost factor becomes more noticeable with the spread of...
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Roger Allan
July 21, 2005 Uncooled Thermal Imaging Has Mass-Market Appeal
Low-cost thermal imaging is here, and it's kicking the door open to mass-market applications. The culprit is a CMOS-compatible active thin-film technology platform devised by RedShift Systems Inc. The technology behind the platform is based on Princeton University's research in applying thin-film semiconductors to tunable optics. Traditional microbolometers use the thermo-electric effect to detect infrared (IR) signals in a semiconductor. Yet RedShift's technology employs...
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Roger Allan
May 12, 2005 Accelerometer Offers Economical Low-G Sensing
Portable handheld consumer electronics have proven successful market-wise for microelectromechanical-system (MEMS) sensors. This is particularly true for sensing low levels of gravity and protecting data in devices that fall and crash on the ground. Low-g sensing is a tough technical challenge for design engineers, requiring extremely sensitive sensors with low noise levels and very small footprints. Because these sensors target consumer items, they also must be...
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Roger Allan
November 15, 2004 Inside The VTM
A VTM employs a zero-voltage switching and zero-current switching (ZVS/ZCS) topology called a sine amplitude converter (SAC) (see the figure). The power train is a low-Q, high-frequency,...
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Don Tuite
November 15, 2004 Factorized-Power Module Completes Basic Picture
The missing element in the factorized-power architecture that Vicor Corp. announced in April 2003 has been an efficient buck-boost converter that operates well when VOUT is close to VIN. That final piece is now available in...
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Don Tuite
October 18, 2004 Power Supply Eyes Next Generation Of Blades
Five of these 850-W supplies will fit in a 1U rack enclosure, while I2C monitors volts and amps as well as controls VOUT and fan speed. Blade servers—hot-swappable, independent server cards that fit in a...
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Don Tuite
October 18, 2004 Blade Servers Represent A Large Potential Market For Power
Blade servers took off first in 1999 and 2000 with a number of startups, many of which have fallen by the wayside. Two survivors from that era are Egenera of Marlborough, Mass., and RLX Technologies in Houston. Egenera sells high-end servers to...
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Don Tuite
October 18, 2004 32-Bit Architecture Challenges 8-Bit Processors
Can developers utilize a 32-bit architecture with a clear upgrade path even when low power and compact size are high on the list of requirements? Arm Ltd. attempts to answer that question with its Cortex M3 processor, which offers a much smaller...
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William Wong
September 20, 2004 ADCs Look To Bring HDTV To U.S. Cell Phones
HDTV on a 2-in. screen? Such a concept may challenge North American readers as the ultimate example of putting 10 pounds of goods in a five-pound sack. But Europeans, more accustomed to public transit and consistent phone and digital broadcast...
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Don Tuite
June 21, 2004 Platform Straddles Prototyping And Emulation
Launched some two years ago, Emulation and Verification Engineering's (EVE) debut product—the ZeBu-ZV prototyping system—was touted as a "personal emulator." It remains popular as a prototyping platform, offering the best features of...
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David Maliniak
May 24, 2004 Fully Integrated PSoC Tops Speed, Efficiency Marks
It outputs 3 A of current and 10 W of power, yet it measures 8.1 by 12.5 mm, is 2.2 mm high, and takes up a mere 135 mm2 of pc-board space. In spite of these features, its bill-of-materials (BOM) cost competes with existing...
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Roger Allan
April 26, 2004 Programmable Engine Runs H.264 Baseline In Full-Duplex Mode
Ever since the first microprocessors surfaced, programmable processors have strived to replace dedicated logic to provide a lower-cost, more flexible solution. In signal processing, the same is true. A programmable solution is preferred if it can meet...
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Dave Bursky
February 2, 2004 Power-Management Chip Takes Charge In Handhelds
Offering the longest runtimes among the popular rechargeable chemistries, single-cell lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries can be found in many handheld devices. But multiple charging sources, multiple supply voltages within the product, demands for...
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David G. Morrison
November 10, 2003 RTL-Based Models Speed Pre-Silicon Software Checks
All too often, the success of a design project hinges on hitting a market window. And a key to hitting a market window is the delicate dance that goes on between the software and hardware design teams. How does the software team validate its work...
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David Maliniak
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