October 27, 2003 Magazine Archive

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ISSUE DATE: OCTOBER 27, 2003

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Success Story: Heart pacemakers, 3D optical switch, Versatile 64-bit CPU, Novel distributed-power architecture, Grounding mixed-signal circuits properly

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October 27, 2003 - In This Issue

Leapfrog: First Look -- Minimizing Q Improves Converter Efficiency
In a classic zero-current/zero-voltage (ZC/ZV) converter, the amplitude of the resonant circuit’s signal can be hundreds of volts. Compare that to a sine amplitude converter (SAC), where the oscillation is just a few volts peak to peak. In the... — David G. Morrison

New Products: More Analog & Power
Small, Simple DC-DC Converters Target Point-Of-Load Schemes Suited for powering chip sets in point-of-load dc-dc architectures, the MIC2198 and MIC2199 converters offer outputs down to 0.8 V with current capabilities of up to 20 A. Both... — Lisa Maliniak

New Products: More Embedded
Low-Cost VME/CompactPCI SBCs Pack 850-MHz Celeron Two versions were created for the V165 Miser single-board computer (SBC): CompactPCI and VME. The SBC comes with an 850-MHz Celeron processor, 64 Mbytes of RAM, two 10/100BaseTx Ethernet... — William Wong

[Success Story]
Medtronic Sets The Pace With Implantable Electronics
When Earl Bakken started Medtronic back in 1949, little did he realize that his pioneering work in electrical heart pacemakers would spawn a vast industry whose devices would save millions of lives and improve the quality of life of millions more... — Roger Allan

[Leapfrog: Industry First]
3D MEMS-Based Optical Switch Handles 80-By-80 Fibers
Cost-effective transparent connectivity is possible thanks to an optical switch core module that routes light from any of 80 input fibers to any of 80 output fibers. Developed by Glimmerglass, the palm-sized subsystem is based on 3D... — Roger Allan

[Leapfrog: First Look]
Sine Amplitude Converters: A New Class Of Topologies For Dc-Dc Conversion
A new type of power-conversion topologies known as "sine amplitude converters" is the driving force behind the high performance achieved by Vicor's line of voltage transformation modules (VTMs). The BGA-packaged VTMs are integral dc-dc conversion... — David G. Morrison

[Design View / Design Solution]
How To Ground Mixed-Signal Circuits Properly
Obtaining the best performance from analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) has long eluded many circuit designers—so much so that they’ve concluded that the performance claimed in data sheets isn’t possible in practical circuits... — Nicholas Gray

[Design View / Design Solution]
Banish Those "Wall Warts" With Power Over Ethernet
The new Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) standard, IEEE-802.3af, will free wireless access points from ac outlets and allow a central uninterruptible power supply (UPS) to service an entire IP telephone installation. It also means bringing Ethernet into... — Dave Dwelley , et al.

[Ideas For Design]
Random-Number Generator Auto-Balances Its Bit Output
The "white noise" generator supplies one of the simplest methods for producing random data with hardware. To convert this noise to logic levels, many designs use a standard logic gate and fish around for the gate input threshold by injecting the... — Larry Gooding

[Ideas For Design]
Single Alkaline Battery Drives White LED
Although the boost circuit in Figure 1 comes off as rather simple (only two npn transistors), its benefits include low startup voltage and long battery life. White LEDs have gained immediate popularity... — Clayton B. Grantham

[Editorial]
Coming Soon: Fuel Cells For Laptops, Cars, Homes
I had the good fortune to participate in the 2003 Emerging Technologies Conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, last month. From a broad spectrum of technology trends, one stood apart, ready to transform the... — Mark David

[POV: Point Of View]
The New Gate Count: What Is Verification's Real Cost?
Throughout the past two decades, the semiconductor industry has seen gate counts rise in accordance with Moore's Law. Only recently has there been a rethinking of this model, as the realities of nanoscale chip design and manufacturing have hit... — Alain Raynaud

[Pease Porridge]
Bob's Mailbox
Dear Bob: Re: "What's All This Spicey Stuff, Anyhow? (Part III):"* Spice is a modeling tool. Modeling is necessary because "worst-case" parts are seldom available for use in a test circuit, and because some situations can only be modeled.... — Bob Pease

[Beyond Technology]
Job Market Heats Up in Tech Specialty Fields
Is the job outlook going to get any rosier over the next several months? The signs don't seem to point in that direction, except for specialty technology jobs. The economy may be edging up, but hiring will see only slight improvement by year's end,... — Ron Schneiderman

[TechView: The Industry]
64-Bit CPU Targets Eight-Way And Low-Power Environments
The 64-bit Opteron CPU line from Advanced Micro Devices is growing quickly, even as a host of chips rolls off the fab lines. In the lead are four- and eight-way chips for the high-end and low-power versions for embedded applications. Even gamers are... — William Wong

[TechView: The Industry]
Silicon-Based Light-Emitting Chip Lowers Optocoupler Costs
Researchers at STMicroelectronics have developed a silicon-based light-emitting device for optocouplers and similar applications. While the low light level that basic silicon can emit isn't very useful, silicon doped with erbium or one of the other... — Dave Bursky

[TechView: Analog & Power]
Power Electronics Technology Show Examines Power’s Present, Future
A conference devoted to a subject as broad as power electronics has a great deal of ground to cover. So, it's no wonder the upcoming Power Electronics Technology exhibition and conference runs nearly a week long in its presentation of R&D and... — David G. Morrison

[TechView: Analog & Power]
Quadrature Demodulator ICs Achieve Linearity On Par With Passives
I/Q DEMODULATOR ICs (or quadrature demodulators) have been available for some time, but they've generally lacked the high linearity required in some high-performance radio designs. Yet this has changed with Linear Technology's LT5515/5516 direct... — David G. Morrison

[TechView: Communications]
Platform Dials Up Easier Design For 2.5G Cell Phones
With constantly changing standards, upgrades, and new features to keep handset manufacturers competitive, the hardware and software continue to get more complex. Yet with Motorola's i.250-21 Innovative Convergence platform, OEMs and ODMs (original... — Louis E. Frenzel

[TechView: Communications]
Wi-Fi Power Amp Maximizes Data Rate And Range
The RangeCharger SE2525L power amplifier (PA) fills a glaring void in modern WLAN-connected laptops. This PA for 802.11b and the newer 802.11g Wi-Fi transceivers includes advanced features that ensure maximum output power, minimum data errors, and... — Louis E. Frenzel

[TechView: Embedded]
RTOS Eyes Fault Tolerance And Safety-Critical Applications
Aviation systems demand a lot from a real-time operating system (RTOS), but BAE Systems' CsLeos seems ready for the challenge. Designed from the ground up to meet the requirements of the DO-178B Level A certification, CsLeos also supports the robust... — William Wong

[TechView: Embedded]
Platform Spurs Move To UML 2.0
Rhapsody 5.0 takes advantage of UML 2.0 (Unified Modeling Language) enhancements to provide a more robust, model-based development environment. Rhapsody 5.0 includes a few unique enhancements as well. It supports UML profiles, including the... — William Wong

[TechView: Embedded]
News Clips
Real-Time Profiler Exposes Run-Time Details RTXC Quadros developers now have a way to record and examine run-time interaction between tasks and the real-time operating system with the Quadros Execution Profiler from... — William Wong

[TechView: Components & Test]
Team Effort Yields High-Accuracy Jitter Measurements For Scopes
A joint licensing agreement has borne fruit with what's considered one of the industry's most accurate and repeatable jitter oscilloscope measurement systems for high-speed serial buses. The agreement merges Amherst Systems Associates'... — Roger Allan

[TechView: Components & Test]
Temp-Compensated Piezo Substrates Elevate Performance Levels
New temperature-compensated piezoelectric substrates from Ziptronix help improve the performance of a wide range of wireless communication and consumer electronic devices. Based on the company's ZiROC room-temperature covalent bonding process, the... — Roger Allan

[TechView: Components & Test]
350-MHz To 2-GHz DSOs Span Wide Range Of Price/Performance Ratios
The WaveRunner 6000 series of DSOs represents a new industry standard for performance in a bench oscilloscope. Five models cover the 350-MHz to 2-GHz band. Each DSO WaveRunner 6000 channel except the 6030 has a 5-Gsample/s real-time... — Roger Allan

[TechView: Digital]
Flow Controller Manages High-Capacity Queuing Of Broadband Data Streams
Two new sequential flow-control managers combine the critical functions required to manage sequential streams of high-speed data—high-speed buffering, switching, domain transitions, multiplexing/demultiplexing, and random/sequential access. As... — Dave Bursky

[TechView: Digital]
Voltage Translators Stuff 32 Lines In A 96-Contact Package
The industry's first 32-bit-level translator, the AVCB324245, provides flexible bidirectional level translation between 1.5-, 1.8-, 2.5-, and 3.3-V interfaces. Useful in portable consumer, networking, datacom, and computing applications, the... — Dave Bursky

[TechView: Digital]
Breaking News: Analog PSoC Family
An enhanced family of analog programmable-systems-on-a-chip (PSoCs) can handle rail-to-rail inputs and perform 14-bit analog-to-digital conversion (up to four independent converters on one chip), each with exceptionally low-noise, low-input-leakage,... — Dave Bursky

[TechView: EDA]
Free PC-Board Layout Tool Handles More Pins And Parts
It's not unusual for EDA vendors of pc-board design tools to offer free versions of the full packages, typically with limits on component and pin counts. But Cadstar Express, the downloadable version of Zuken's Cadstar 6.0 pc-board design package,... — David Maliniak

[TechView: EDA]
Alliances Drive Adoption Of PCI Express IP
Two separate partnerships between Synopsys and intellectual-property (IP) providers hope to speed the adoption of the high-speed PCI Express architecture. In teaming with Rambus Inc. and Artisan Components Inc., Synopsys hopes to demonstrate the... — David Maliniak

[TechView: EDA]
EDA Update: Hardware/Software Coverification Tool
Developed for FPGAs using soft-core CPUs, Aldec's CoVer hardware/software coverification tool targets embedded-system design. It combines Aldec's Active-HDL design-entry package with new CoVer technology that enables software and hardware teams to... — David Maliniak

[TechView: EDA]
EDA Update: Platform Developer Package
A low-cost entry into C-based system-level design is available in Celoxica's Platform Developer's Package (PDP). The package lets designers target C algorithms to off-the-shelf development boards or evaluate C-based design methodologies.... — David Maliniak

[TechScope]
Microbe Turns Sugar Into Electricity
A tiny bug can be a big help in creating clean energy. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have discovered a microorganism that can oxidize carbohydrates for stable, long-term electricity production. Rhodoferax ferrireducens... — Richard Gawel

[TechScope]
Telemedicine Gets Mobile—And Fashionable
Some medical conditions require constant attention, but mobility and independence are hard to give up. That's why a group of French laboratories and manufacturers have combined their talents to produce the V-TAM, a shirt laced with medical sensors... — Richard Gawel

[TechScope]
Supercomputer Monitors Nukes With 11-TFLOPS Speed
Los Alamos National Laboratory has a new guard on the watch, and he's pretty fast. Designed by Linux Networx, the Lightning Linux cluster has a theoretical peak of 11.26 trillion operations per second (TFLOPS). This system will support the Advanced... — Richard Gawel

[Basics Of Design]
Op Amps
Sponsored by: ANALOG DEVICES
No matter what area of electronic design you’re involved with, op amps play a key role in the conditioning and amplification of analog or "real-world" signals. A list of op-amp applications could fill a page, but some of the more common examples are... — Gene Heftman

[New Products]

• VME Arbitrary Waveform Generator Extends Output To 300 kHz — Roger Allan

• Expanded DFT-Focused Test System Takes On More Applications — Roger Allan

• PC-Based Resistance Test System Tests And Plots Linearity Accurately — Roger Allan

• DMM Test Lead Kit Suits Many Multimeter Applications — Roger Allan

• Debugger And Validation Platform Speeds Up Silicon Debugging — Roger Allan

• PCI Driver Software Cuts The Cost Of Real-Time LabView — Roger Allan

• 3U/6U Eight-Slot Chassis Ups CompactPCI/PXI Performance — Roger Allan

• 3-V, 100-MHz Dual Video Op Amp Slashes Cost, Not Performance — Lisa Maliniak

• Active EMI Filter For 48-V Systems Saves Space On Telecom Boards — Lisa Maliniak

• Tiny 50-W DC-DC Converters Ante Up 1.2-V Outputs — Lisa Maliniak

• Charger/Power-Supply Combo Keeps 12-V SLA Batteries Fresh — Lisa Maliniak

• Turnkey Development System Targets AdvancedTCA — William Wong

• OpenGL Has Integrity — William Wong

• Low-Cost Single-Board Computer Features eCos System — William Wong

• CompactPCI Rack Handles PICMG 2.16 And 2.17 — William Wong

• PC/104 Boards Expand Digital I/O — William Wong

• RTOS/Network Stack Integrates Tightly With MPC85T MCU — William Wong

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