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ISSUE DATE: JANUARY 19, 2004 OPTIONS
Legal issues for designers, Power-supply ICs, AC-coupled video signals, Mars Rovers

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January 19, 2004 - In This Issue

[Engineering Feature]
Don't Get Ensnared In Design's Legal Issues
Like it or not, legal issues permeate every aspect of our working lives. Design engineers sitting in their cubicles are no exception. They face IP protection, patent disputes, product liability, damage to the environment, and other serious...  — Ron Schneiderman

[Leapfrog: Industry First]
Power-Supply ICs Propel Switchers Into Non-Isolated Applications
Offline switching ICs have reached such high levels of integration that switching power supplies can now supplant low-cost linear supplies, even in low-power applications requiring just a few watts. However, most of these chips were developed with...  — David G. Morrison

[Design View / Design Solution]
Get A Grip On Clamps, Bias, And AC-Coupled Video Signals
Why should you ac-couple your video signals? If you haven’t asked this question, you should. If the reason is government mandate, customer specification, or industry protocol, you’re probably doing the right thing...  — William Stutz

[Ideas For Design]
Double Maximum Load Current With Two Parallel Converters
Automotive, industrial, and FireWire peripherals all call for high-efficiency, space-saving power supplies with high current capabilities at very high voltages. The problem is that high-voltage, monolithic (where the power switch is included)...  — Keith Szolusha

[Ideas For Design]
Modified LDO Regulator Sinks PECL-Termination Current
The positive emitter-coupled logic (PECL) used in high-speed telecommunications requires odd supply voltages: a positive VCC of +3.3 V, and a termination voltage (VTT) equal to VCC − 2 V = +1.3 V. The...  — Ken Yang

[Editorial]
Engineering Expertise Triumphs In Mars Rovers
I'm really happy to see so much media focus on the Mars Exploration Rover program. Space exploration frequently gets buried in the back pages of the paper, while I scratch my head thinking, "Why isn't this front page news?" Part of the...  — Mark David

[POV: Point Of View]
Spice: A Tool For All Seasons
Spice is an eminently useful tool for analog design. It has its eccentricities, so to speak, and they have led to some harsh criticism. But its capabilities far outweigh its foibles. The "ice" in Spice, developed by the University of California,...  — William H. Morong

[Pease Porridge]
Bob's Mailbox
Hello Bob: I don't know if you remember me but I worked at National Semi a while back, both in quality assurance and for the automotive group as an apps engineer. I have a Spice story for you. Recently, while preparing for a job interview, I...  — Bob Pease

[TechView: The Industry]
Enhanced Cooling Methods Use Less Power And Space
Two new techniques promise significantly greater cooling capacity for electronic equipment while taking up less space and using a lot less power. The Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Mechanical Engineering, developed the technologies and...  — John Novellino

[TechView: The Industry]
Industry Shift Mandates New Chip Design Strategies
The fundamental structural changes in the electronics industry over the past several years will force semiconductor makers to adopt new design strategies to remain competitive. Previously, explosive growth from a steady stream of...  — Derek Lidow

[TechView: Analog & Power]
Power ICs Migrate To Open-Frame Packaging
Long known for building high-power IC amplifiers in hybrid packaging, Apex Microtechnology is now offering products in open-frame packages. The new packages, which resemble open-frame dc-dc converters, cost significantly less than the hybrids, are...  — David G. Morrison

[TechView: Analog & Power]
Power-Supply News
Output current ratings of non-isolated point-of-load converters continue to rise. The latest example of this trend is the SIL40C from Artesyn Technologies, which delivers 40 A in a 2.4- by 1.25-in. horizontally mounted package. A vertical-mount...  — David G. Morrison

[TechView: Analog & Power]
Energy-Metering ICs Simplify Reactive-Energy Measurement
Thanks to an on-chip DSP, the ADE7753 and ADE7758 energy-metering ICs facilitate the measurement of reactive energy. Existing energy-metering chips require a microcontroller (MCU) or external DSP to compute reactive power. But in the AD7753/7758,...  — David G. Morrison

[TechView: Communications]
Automatic Monitoring And Control Define 3.2-Gbit/s VCSEL Drives
The LTC5100 vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) driver has set its sights on short- to medium-range (< 20 km) applications, including Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel, short-reach Sonet links, and backplane interconnections....  — Louis E. Frenzel

[TechView: Communications]
New ICs Turn Passive Optical Networks Into Reality
The ultimate home or office broadband connection consists of optical fiber. While it has been too expensive for local loop connections, fiber's cost is beginning to drop. Recent developments have provided new components that make it possible to...  — Louis E. Frenzel

[TechView: Communications]
ADC Moves DSPs Closer To Software-Defined Radio Antennas
Every passing year sees radio transceivers get nearer to the ideal software-defined radio (SDR). The "ideal" will occur when the antenna is connected directly to a DSP baseband processor, which performs all radio functions like filtering, frequency...  — Louis E. Frenzel

[TechView: Embedded]
InfiniBand Ties Together Dual SMP Computing Blades
InfiniBand is keeping its promise of a high-performance, low-latency interconnect fabric with Sky Computer's SmartPac hardware series. Dual-processor, symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) blades connected by an InfiniBand switch lie at the center of the...  — William Wong

[TechView: Embedded]
News Clips
New 32-Bit Core Improves Execution And Memory Efficiency The Arm968E-S core from Arm Ltd. is based on the Armv5TE architecture with the improved Arm-Thumb instruction set featuring added DSP support. Two tightly...  — William Wong

[TechView: Embedded]
8-Bit MCUs Harness Motor Control
Symbiotic peripherals make motor control manageable. Many 8-bit microcontrollers have been used for motor control. But performance always limits these chips to relatively simple applications, while systems that are more complex turn to DSPs....  — William Wong

[TechView: Components & Test]
Scope Option Measures Jitter From 50 Mbits/s To 40 Gbits/s
The industry's first jitter subcomponent-analysis option, the 86100C Infiniium Digital Communications Analyzer with Jitter (DCA-J), accurately measures all types of jitter from 50 Mbits/s to 40 Gbits/s. Random, deterministic, data-dependent, and...  — Roger Allan

[TechView: Components & Test]
Novel LCD Technology Elevates Mobile Performance
A new Thin-Film-Transistor (TFT) liquid-crystal technology promises to bring high performance to LCD panels up to 6.5 in. in diameter. Sharp's mobile Advanced Super View LCD technology, used in displays for the company's AQUOS LCD TVs, has been...  — Roger Allan

[TechView: Components & Test]
InfiniBand Connector Assemblies Achieve Under 1% Crosstalk
Featuring less than 1% nearest-neighbor crosstalk, a new line of Direct Attach cable connector assemblies from Meritec supports InfiniBand and other high-speed data-transfer protocols like 10-Gbit Fibre Channel, Serial ATA 2, and Serial Attached...  — Roger Allan

[TechView: Digital]
DSP Core Combines Best Of VLIW And SIMD Approaches
Performance and cost are intimately linked in DSP applications for cell phones, music players, and other consumer systems. The DSP must offer enough performance for the current requirement at the right price point as well as have enough headroom and...  — Dave Bursky

[TechView: Digital]
Logic-Level Translators Simplify Systems While Maintaining Speed
Flexible bidirectional level translation between 1.5-, 1.8-, 2.5-, 3.3-, and 5-V voltage nodes is possible with a new family of dual-supply-level translation transceivers. Texas Instruments' SN74LVC1T45, SN74LVC2T45, SN74AVC8T245, and SN74AVC-20T245...  — Dave Bursky

[TechView: EDA]
Online Design Environment Demystifies Op-Amp Puzzles
The specification of operational amplifiers requires designers to sort through a rat's nest of parameters. There are dozens of suppliers, selection guides, databooks, and FAEs to consult. To make the task easier, National Semiconductor's "Amplifiers...  — David Maliniak

[TechView: EDA]
DSP Design Platform For FPGAs Sports JTAG Link
Designers looking to reduce overall simulation time when using the MathWorks' Simulink can opt for the latest version of System Generator for DSP (v6.1). This latest generation from Xilinx lets DSP designers link their custom boards via a generic...  — David Maliniak

[TechView: EDA]
EDA Update: C-To-VHDL High-Level Synthesis Tool
A C-TO-VHDL high-level synthesis tool is now downloadable from the Center for Embedded Computing Systems of the University of California, Irvine. Called SPARK, it takes the behavior of an application specified in C as input (with some restrictions)...  — David Maliniak

[TechScope]
Tiny Guitar Rocks The Nano World
Nanoelectromechanical Systems (NEMS) have researchers rockin' and rollin' at Cornell University: Lidija Sekaric, an applied physics graduate student, recently built a playable microscopic guitar. Its strings are really silicon bars...  — Richard Gawel

[TechScope]
Copy CDs Without A Computer
If you want to copy a CD, you don't need a computer anymore. The CD-Backup from EPO Science & Technology Inc. duplicates compact discs in any format, including CD-ROMs and audio, video, and photo CDs. The device can identify the source CD's...  — Richard Gawel

[TechScope]
Goodbye Internet, Hello UltraNet!
Perhaps the Internet isn't cutting it anymore. Current networks are struggling to efficiently manage vast amounts of data. That's why the Department of Energy's Office of Science has awarded Oak Ridge National Laboratory $4.5 million to design a new...  — Richard Gawel

[Basics Of Design]
EDA: PCBs Are Not So Simple Anymore
Sponsored by: MENTOR GRAPHICS
Printed-circuit boards (PCBs) are at the heart of the modern electronic packaging found in almost every consumer electronics product. In essence, a PCB creates the connections between components within a system. Mass reproducibility...  — David Maliniak

[New Products]

• Component Specifier: Resistors/Capacitors/Potentiometers  — Roger Allan

• Embedded: Bluetooth Module Provides Serial Link For Basic Projects  — William Wong

• Embedded: CompactPCI SBC Delivers Quad PowerPC Processors  — William Wong

• Embedded: Linux Supports 440 PowerPC  — William Wong

• Embedded: Multimedia MCU Incorporates MPEG-4 Acceleration  — William Wong

• CORBA ORB Runs On DSP  — William Wong

• Embedded: 6U Backplane Handles PICMG 2.16  — William Wong

• Embedded: Data-Acquisition Device Plugs into USB Port  — William Wong

• Embedded: Linux Runs On Low-Power Connectivity Engine  — William Wong

• Embedded: RTOS Targets Automotive And Telematics Applications  — William Wong

• Embedded: PCI Mezzanine Card Sports 400-MHz Processor Bus, Pentium M  — William Wong

• Embedded: Development Kit Brings Linux To PowerPC Processor  — William Wong

• Embedded: Flash Drives Geared For Embedded Systems  — William Wong

• Test & Measurement: Frequency Converter Helps Make Wi-Fi Measurements  — Roger Allan

• Test & Measurement: High-Temperature PC/104 DAQ Card Operates Without Interrupts  — Roger Allan

• Test & Measurement: Powerful Bit-Error-Rate Tester Works At 1500 Mbits/s  — Roger Allan

• Test & Measurement: Low-Cost NI-DAQmx I/O Cards Set Price/Performance Ratios  — Roger Allan

• Test & Measurement: Test Cards Expand Functionality Of Multichannel I-V Test System  — Roger Allan

• Test & Measurement: Protocol Analyzer Expanded To Support 4-Wide SAS Analysis  — Roger Allan





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