[Technology Report] SANs—Sharing Storage To Infinity And Beyond
Just as you can never be too rich or too thin, you can never have too much storage capacity on your computer. At one time, a 5- or 10-Mbyte hard drive on a PC was a big deal. Today, 30- to 60-Gbyte drives are common on even the low-end PCs, with that...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Leapfrog: First Look] Nowhere To Go But Up In SoC HW/SW Codesign
So far, 2004 has seen a parade of new tools emerge to facilitate a true electronic-system-level (ESL) design flow. Meanwhile, some of the existing tools that facilitate ESL design are now undergoing major upgrades. CoWare's ConvergenSC falls into the...
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David Maliniak
[Ideas For Design] Triple-Output DC-DC Converter Uses Ceramic Capacitors
Even the smallest modern electronics systems now require more than one power-supply voltage. The challenge is producing the required voltages in as little board space as possible. Designers can produce three output voltages using a single controller...
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Dongyan Zhou
[Editorial] Get Me The Unified Device Or Get Me To The Chiropractor
With a backpack and a carry-on bulging with personal electronics, I felt like a true champion of the electronics industry as I headed for the Embedded Systems Conference this month. Then again, considering my sore back, maybe I was more of a...
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Mark David
[POV: Point Of View] External R&D Is Driving New Product Technologies
The economy is rebounding, companies have stopped cutting budgets, and the race is on to develop new product technologies quickly. We all know that getting to market first provides a significant competitive advantage. While optimism abounds, however,...
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Kevin Stark
[Pease Porridge] Bob's Mailbox
Dear Bob: I designed magnetic stripe readers in the eighties and would like to comment on your recent "Bob's Mailbox."* Three tracks are defined on the standard card. Most credit, ATM, and debit cards use track two in the middle of the stripe....
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Bob Pease
[TechView: The Industry] OLED Displays Spice Up Mobile Phones
With the arrival of newer, slicker display technologies like organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), the LCD looks like the newest "old" technology in the fast-moving mobile handset market. Indeed, OLEDs have strong potential in mobile phones. Yet LCD...
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Kimberly Allen
[TechView: The Industry] Automobile "Electronification" Picks Up Speed
The automobile is in the midst of a historic transition from a primarily mechanical machine to a primarily electronic device. The evidence of this evolution is plain. The North American OEM market for automotive electronic products is expected to...
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Lance A. Ealey
[TechView: Analog & Power] 80-Msample/s 14-Bit ADC Takes On 500-MHz Inputs
It's crucial for cellular basestation designers to get the most dynamic performance out of their components. A new option, the LT1750 14-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC) from Linear Technology, samples at 80 Msamples/s while accepting input...
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Roger Allan
[TechView: Embedded] Smart LCD Simplifies Displays
Simple display needs should not require complex solutions. Amulet Technologies abides by that motto with its line of Smart GUI Modules, now available in VGA (640 by 480) and half-VGA (480 by 320) resolutions. Each unit has its own on-module processor...
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William Wong
[TechView: Embedded] News Clips
Fibre Channel Controller Increases Data Integrity The dual-channel LSIFC929XL controller delivers 2-Gbit/s connectivity for storage-area networks with improved data integrity thanks to a new data-integrity field. Integrity checks then can be...
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William Wong
[TechView: Digital] Cross-Foundry Partnering Ensures Design Portability
The industry's first cross-foundry design enablement program, just inked between Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing and IBM Corp., will support leading-edge chip development starting at the 90-nm process node. The program builds on the existing...
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Dave Bursky
[TechView: EDA] ASIC-Style Synthesis Embarks On FPGA World
With as many as 40% of ASIC and ASSP designers doing FPGA prototyping, Synopsys decided to spin a version of its Design Compiler (DC) synthesis tool for FPGA designers. The new tool, dubbed DC FPGA, aims squarely at designers doing prototype work on...
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David Maliniak
[TechView: EDA] Chip-Integration Flow Spans Multiple Design Domains
By coupling a new chip-integration flow with the latest release of its Virtuoso chip editing tool, Cadence will enable designers to perform full-scale physical IC integration across multiple design domains. These domains include analog, custom...
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David Maliniak
[TechScope] MPEG-2 Video System Brings History To Life
Technology is keeping the dream of Martin Luther King Jr. alive at the Nashville Public Library. Visitors to the library's Civil Rights Room can use Adtec Digital's Soloist 2 Broadcast MPEG-2 player to watch footage and documentaries covering the...
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Richard Gawel
[TechScope] Molecular Movement Steps Up DNA Research
The chance to unravel the mysteries shrouding DNA was the seed that sprouted a novel microchip design. Eric Simone, a senior biomedical engineering major at Johns Hopkins University, fabricated and tested a chip that moves and isolates DNA and protein...
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Richard Gawel
[TechScope] Companies Hit The Road For Wireless Safety Systems
Wireless technology promises safer roads throughout America. So say Mark IV Industries, Raytheon, Sirit Inc., and TransCore, which will work together to develop a new generation of dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) technology for the U.S....
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Richard Gawel
