[Technology Report] 3G Cell Phones: Still To Come
Disraeli said, "Everything comes if a man will only wait." Well, 3G cell phones still aren't here, and certainly not due to a lack of effort. Handset and basestation manufacturers and carriers are struggling with a variety of cost, technical, and...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Product Innovation] Hardware-Based IP Speeds Up Processor Multitasking
Today's high-performance processors spend a significant portion of their processing time switching from task to task, often executing hundreds of instructions each time. In a PC, that frequently involves a multimedia task, such as viewing an MPEG...
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Dave Bursky
[Design Application] Switch Fabrics Optimize Communications Backplane
If you're like a lot of design engineers, you want to design a high-performance communications system that's scalable, supports "five-nines" high availability (HA), and is low in cost—and you need to start now. You've seen the switched-fabric...
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Melissa Heckman
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[Editorial] Will Virtual Presence Replace the Handshake?
As an editor, I participate in numerous meetings during an average week. Many are in-person meetings in an office, at a convenient hotel, or on the exhibit floor of a trade conference. But today, a growing number of them are "remote"...
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Dave Bursky
[Pease Porridge] Bob's Mailbox
Dear Bob: I had a good laugh at your recent dialog with Allan Hurst (electronic design, Dec. 17, 2001, p. 25) on the subject of speaker wires. Allan was right when he said that the Hi-Fi trade is now 100 times worse...
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Bob Pease
[Celebrating 50 Years] Reader Polls/Flashback
FLASHBACK > 10 YEARS AGO FEBRUARY 20, 1992 FROM EARLY ON, COMPUTERS HAVE DRIVEN DIGItal-to-analog converters (DACs), generating random analog waveforms from lookup table memories. While system...
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Staff
[Forefront] Fuel Cells May Beat Batteries For Backup
A fuel-cell technology by Metallic Power, Carlsbad, Calif., promises a more economical, space-saving approach to power. The company recently demonstrated a 2.5-kW/3-kVA backup power source based on a zinc-air fuel-cell system. This...
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David G. Morrison
[Forefront] MEMS Technology Moves Into More Applications
Microelectromechanical system (MEMS) technology is branching out into new applications. MEMS makers are actively integrating their large analog devices with front-end and back-end digital circuitry to offer higher levels of system integration and...
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Roger Allan
[Forefront] 3-nm Wires Grown In The Lab
Chemists like Professor Charles Lieber of Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., may provide the answers about how to build very small computing devices. His group has developed a process where catalysts in an alcohol solution grow nanowires at room...
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William Wong
[Forefront] Software Lets SoC Tester Use EDA Design, Simulation Files
The SmarTest PG software for the Agilent 93000 system-on-a-chip (SoC) test system makes the tester "design ready" so it can accept EDA-generated design and simulation files. The software replaces the complex array of scripts and tools normally used to...
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John Novellino
