[Technology Report] Electronic Waste: Be Part Of The Solution
Electronic waste, or e-waste, is piling up so fast that no one can properly dispose of it. Recyclers process more than 1.5 billion pounds of electronics equipment annually. The International Association of Electronics Recyclers (IAER) says that...
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Ron Schneiderman
[Leapfrog: First Look] Dual-Core DSP Serves Up 40-Bit Precise GFLOPS
DSPs must deliver higher throughputs to execute the more complex algorithms today's demanding systems require. In applications like high-end audio, imaging, and beamforming, they have to produce that throughput at higher levels of precision. The DSP...
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Dave Bursky
[Ideas For Design] Use Wideband Op Amps In Single-Supply Applications
Most wideband op amps are easiest to use with split supplies. But they can be effectively employed in single-supply circuits. The big hurdle to overcome is keeping the inputs and outputs biased to mid-rail while maintaining a low-impedance node to...
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James Karki
[Editorial] Throwaway Electronics For A Throwaway Culture
I'm writing this on the 50th anniversary of the introduction of the color TV. A radio report noting the occasion recalled that the first RCA sets cost $1000 (nearly as much as a new car in 1954) and that buying one of the big mahogany wooden-cased...
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Mark David
[POV: Point Of View] ARCNET, The Engineer's Secret Weapon
ARCNET is one of the best-kept secrets in the world of embedded systems. You may run into ARCNET technology when you ride a train or drive a car, play a multiplayer racing arcade game or slot machine, or use a copier or ATM. You can find ARCNET used...
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Johnson C. Tan
[Pease Porridge] What's All This Doctoring Stuff, Anyhow? (Part 3)
Recently, I got an e-mail from Jim Stewart in Davis, Calif.: Bob, I wear glasses for nearsightedness and astigmatism and I'm 51 years old. For the last 15 years or so I've had problems with driving at night. My father and my brother-in-law also have...
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Bob Pease
[TechView: The Industry] IPMI 2.0 Improves Security, Remote Management
An enhanced version of the Intelligent Platform Management Interface, IPMI 2.0, provides a more secure environment for the embedded manageability of servers, server blades, network storage, network systems, and telecommunications equipment....
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Dave Bursky
[TechView: The Industry] Semis, Components Made Good Gains In Late 2003
That "second half" upturn that so many people had been predicting for the last three years finally happened in 2003. Semiconductor sales surged in the last six months of 2003, pushing the industry to 14.2% growth for the year, according to iSuppli's...
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John Novellino
[TechView: Analog & Power] 1.6-GHz 8-Bit ADC Consumes Just 1.4 W
With a 1.6-GHz sampling rate at 8 bits of resolution and a 1.4-W power dissipation from a 1.9-V supply, the ADC018000 8-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is primed for test-and-measurement and communications applications. At a 100-MHz input and...
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Roger Allan
[TechView: Components & Test] Stick-On Thermal Pads Help Get The Heat Out
The Gap Pad 2500 line of brown stick-on thermal pads, designed for mid- to high-performance applications, features 2.7 W/m-K of thermal conductivity. The soft and compliant resin formation pads are available in standard sheet sizes of 8- by 16-in.,...
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Roger Allan
[TechView: Digital] Industry Competitors Cooperate To Advance CMOS
In a consolidated effort to keep Europe at the forefront of semiconductor technology, the European Commission will seed-fund an integrated project called NANOCMOS to pioneer advances in materials, processes, device architectures, and...
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Dave Bursky
[TechView: EDA] Switch-Fabric Technology Enables On-Chip Networks
Traditional IC bus architectures are running out of steam. As engineers try to leverage more and more intellectual property (IP), hanging more IP blocks off of standard buses makes them wider and slower. This forces "mezzanining" into a...
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David Maliniak
[TechView: EDA] Processor Design Tools Generate C Compiler, RTL
Interest in creating programmable intellectual property (IP), especially embedded processors or application-specific IP (ASIPs), continues to rise as tools that overcome its hurdles emerge. The latest release of CoWare's LISATek tools exemplifies...
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David Maliniak
[TechView: EDA] EDA News
3D parasitic extraction technology enters the next generation in Ansoft's Q3D Extractor v.6. The tool speeds design of critical nets and interconnect components in IC packages, on pc boards, and in the connection path between them. It serves well in...
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David Maliniak
[Embedded in Electronic Design] DSP Or A GPP? You Decide
It's tough to be all things to all people, but designers keep trying. Designers starting with general-purpose processors (GPPs) attempt to add DSP registers and instructions, while digital-signal-processor (DSP) designers incorporate...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Making Reservations
An RTOS facilitates meeting some system-design constraints. But, minimizing interrupt latency isn't the only way to ensure that jobs get done within time specifications. Most developers think of a fixed-priority preemptive scheduling...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Bus And Board
RapidIO Fabric Ties Together TeraFLOP PowerPC System. The PowerStream 7000 from Mercury Computer Systems utilizes compute nodes that consist of a RapidIO ASIC, a 1-GHz 7447 PowerPC, 512-Mbyte SDRAM, and 8-Mbyte...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Java ORB Is Fast And Compact
ORBexpress ST for Java is a compact object request broker (ORB) for CORBA. It is faster and smaller than the standard Sun JDK ORB. Versions are also available for C/C++ and Ada. They deliver a middleware infrastructure that provides seamless...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Logging Software Supports RTOS
Vapid Log is being distributed by Enea Embedded Technology for its OSE real-time operating system (RTOS). Developed by Vapid Software, Vapid Log records and analyzes status and error conditions on a remote system. Logs of raw or summary data can be...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Linux Drives Quad Opteron System
The PerformanceWare 4464 from Pogo Linux is a 4U rack-mount server based on four AMD Opteron 800 processors. The two-processor 1464 version, which costs $2500, supports up to 12 Gbytes of RAM and has enough room for four SCSI drives. Both work with...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] PCI Express Switch Handles 48 Lanes
The PES-48G is part of IMC Semiconductor's new line of PCI Express switch chips. The 48-lane switch chip has 32- and 24-lane counterparts. The switch features a 200-Gbit/s on-chip bandwidth. The chips target high-performance graphics and computing...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Tool Configures Virtual Network
The DoubleWide Designer graphical configuration tool helps developers create complex, virtual networks for developing and testing embedded systems. The entire network is simulated on a single system, including test elements like Web servers and...
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William Wong
[TechScope] Infrared Cameras Find Hotspots In Routine Apps
Thermal imaging cameras aren't the stuff of spy novels anymore. Mundane applications like predictive maintenance and monitoring of plant equipment, electrical systems, roof inspection, moisture detection, and nondestructive product testing now...
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Richard Gawel
[TechScope] Two Firms Collaborate To Streamline Torpedoes
Weaponry aboard the nation's submarine fleet is more reliable than ever. Radstone Technology and Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems have teamed up to improve the MK48 Advanced Capability (ADCAP) torpedo upgrade program. Specifically, Raytheon will...
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Richard Gawel
[TechScope] Optical System Stumps Identity Thieves
Thanks to an analog authentication process, the OptiKey verification system raises identification technology to a new level by creating a unique signature in a submicron optical master. The optical master signature is then embedded in the ID label....
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Richard Gawel
[I Design] Eric Mendenhall
I design power electronics circuits and systems, focused on audio power amplifiers and switch-mode power supplies (SMPS) under 10 kW. I've been employed in the engineering field for almost 20 years. My career path has always centered around...
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Eric Mendenhall
[Basics Of Design] Power System Design Sponsored by: CELESTICA CORP.
With system voltages dropping, load currents rising, and clock rates increasing, effective power management is now crucial to system performance. Consider, for example, the integration of dc-dc converters that mount on pc boards along with their...
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Sam Davis
