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ISSUE DATE: SEPTEMBER 20, 2004 OPTIONS
Industrial wireless networks, HDTV ADCs for cell phones, Nanometer design, Eclipse 3.0

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September 20, 2004 - In This Issue

[Engineering Feature]
Wireless Industrial Networks—Untether Monitoring And Control
Let me get this straight. You want to replace a long twisted-pair cable with a wireless link? Are you nuts? That's what I said to my brother several years ago when he wanted my input on his project for a new control-system design in a...  — Louis E. Frenzel

[Technology Report]
EDA Lays A Foundation For The Nanometer Age
As ASIC, ASSP, and SoC designers squint down the road past 100-nm feature sizes, they can make out a world in which their tried-and-true assumptions about the design process are severely challenged. For one, the process will begin above RTL with...  — David Maliniak

[Leapfrog: Industry First]
ADCs Look To Bring HDTV To U.S. Cell Phones
HDTV on a 2-in. screen? Such a concept may challenge North American readers as the ultimate example of putting 10 pounds of goods in a five-pound sack. But Europeans, more accustomed to public transit and consistent phone and digital broadcast...  — Don Tuite

[Design View / Design Solution]
Write Less Code And Deliver Java Apps Faster With Eclipse 3.0
Writing desktop applications has always been about compromises. If you want your application to be truly native, you need to select the platform and use its frameworks, toolkits, and low-level APIs to build your application...  — Jed Anderson , et al.

[Ideas For Design]
Automatic Switch Handles RS-232 Or RS-485 Serial Data
The need arose for a programmable control system that handles 8-bit data to have both RS-232 and RS-485 modes. This requirement was satisfied with a serial communication controller-transceiver, an octal buffer, and a two-line port (Rx and Tx for...  — Theodore Karatzas

[Ideas For Design]
Sense Small Capacitance Changes Over A Wide Range
With this simple circuit connected to a serial port, small capacitance deviations on the order of 0.01 pF can be easily sensed over a wide range of several hundred picofarads (see the figure)....  — Hans Krobath

[Editorial]
Surviving The Hurricanes: Trials Of Life Without Power
As I write this, our technical editor Bob Milne is evacuating from his home in Edgewater, Fla., racing ahead of Hurricane Frances. We hope that Bob and all of his fellow Floridians got out on time, in front of Frances' fury. But evading the storm...  — Mark David

[POV: Point Of View]
Full-System Simulation: Escape From Reality
A major transformation in complex system-level design is under way, as ever-increasing numbers of electronic systems are being implemented as software. The critical progression for the delivery of a typical working system has moved away from...  — Peter S. Magnusson

[Pease Porridge]
Bob's Mailbox
Dear Bob: There's an error in your recent "Mailbox."* What you "heard" about the 555 timer is a bit off the mark. Your story mixed up the 555 with my work on semicustom ICs, which happened about the same time. If you want the...  — Bob Pease

[TechView: The Industry]
Environmentally Friendly DVD Writes Data At 1X To 16X Speeds
Writable DVDs have become a "hot" technology for many consumers. But nothing cools down their enthusiasm more than the long write times for 4.7-Gbyte disks. Now, Philips Optical Storage has unveiled a disk that can be written at speeds from...  — Dave Bursky

[TechView: The Industry]
BTX, PCI Express, DDR2, And Serial ATA Reshaping PCs
PCs don't drive technology the way they used to. Yet significant developments in form factors, bus systems, motherboard specifications, storage interfaces, and memory type in the second half of 2004 will alter PC appearance and functionality, both...  — Joe D'Elia

[TechView: The Industry]
Workshop Aids Grant Seekers
A two-day workshop for engineers seeking federal funding will teach entrepreneurs how to "read between the lines" of government solicitations to win Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grants. "SBIR Grants for the Curious Engineer in Business"...  — John Novellino

[TechView: Analog & Power]
Hardware Algorithm Fine-Tunes Converters For Best Compression
Future analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) that implement Samplify Systems' latest algorithm could compress digitized, band-limited signals by adapting to the signals' bandwidth and dynamic range. With it, designers would be able to stream...  — Don Tuite

[TechView: Analog & Power]
Versatile HDD Preamp Can Take On Many Roles
A low-power preamp for mobile notebook hard-disk drives (HDDs) lets manufacturers offer as much storage capacity in 2.5-in., 7200-rpm drives as is found in today's desktop PCs--without a battery-life penalty. Agere's PA7700 brings read/write speeds...  — Don Tuite

[TechView: Analog & Power]
Development Board Shortcuts FPAA-Application Design
Designers or students who want to explore the possibilities of Anadigm's field-programmable analog arrays (FPAAs) can now do so with a development platform from Servenger LLC. The company's PAM-5000R Programmable Analog Module (PAM) is...  — Don Tuite

[TechView: Communications]
Network-Services Processor Chip Solves Mounting Bottleneck Issues
As the Internet connections to local-area networks via edge devices have grown, the architecture of the overall system has become fragmented and difficult to manage. Other problems also have emerged, including duplicated functionality in equipment,...  — Louis E. Frenzel

[TechView: Communications]
Trio Of Chip Introductions Solves Contemporary Clock Issues
The Octeon network service processors come with two, four, eight, or 16 MIPS processors. The devices also may be cascaded to further improve performance. Designers used to take the clock circuit in digital systems pretty much for...  — Louis E. Frenzel

[TechView: Communications]
Wireless Apps Amp It Up With E-pHEMT
Designated the MGA-425P8, Agilent's enhancement-mode pseudomorphic high-electron mobility transistor (E-pHEMT) power amplifier targets wireless equipment operating up to 10 GHz. This monolithic microwave IC (MMIC) can be used in 802.11a/b/g wireless...  — Louis E. Frenzel

[TechView: Communications]
Power Amp Boosts Output In 5-GHz 802.11a Products
A new power amplifier for the 5-GHz band, which is used by the 802.11a wireless local-area network standard, is designed for access points, laptops, PCMCIA cards, and other devices using the 11a standard. Developed by SiGe Semiconductor,...  — Louis E. Frenzel

[TechView: Communications]
High Availability And Differentiated Services Come To Network Processors
The network processing forum (NPF), an international industry consortium of networking semiconductor, software, and OEM equipment manufacturers, has added two new implementation agreements (IAs) to its growing list of network-processor standards and...  — Louis E. Frenzel

[TechView: Embedded]
Tiny CompactFlash-Based System Runs uClinux
System-on-modules and compact motherboards attempt to provide computing solutions, but often with a proprietary form factor. CData Solutions takes the standards route even to the point of placing a Freescale Coldfire microcontroller into a...  — William Wong

[TechView: Embedded]
News Clips
Dual-Processor SoC Streamlines Secure VoIP Designs Secure voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) requires IPsec support like that found in Renesas' 200-MHz, 32-bit SH7710 system-on-a-chip (SoC). The SH7710 also includes an SH3-DSP CPU core to handle...  — William Wong

[TechView: Embedded]
Ada Gets Eclipsed IDE
It was bound to happen. ADA developers can now take advantage of the eclipse integrated development environment (IDE). Aonix's Ada Development Toolkit, AonixADT, integrates the Ada compiler support from the company with the open-source Eclipse...  — William Wong

[TechView: Components & Test]
WLAN Instrument Handles Tough 802.11 a/b/g Requirements
To meet stricter wireless local-area-network (WLAN) testing requirements at 2.5 and 5.0 GHz, LitePoint Corp. has introduced the IQflex 802.11 a/b/g instrument. The dedicated unit, based on the company's IQview 802.11 a/b/g WLAN test solution, is...  — Roger Allan

[TechView: Components & Test]
High Volumetric Density Distinguishes 0603-Size Ceramic Capacitors
By implementing 1-µm ultra-thin dielectric films, the GRM18 series of ceramic capacitors can achieve extremely high volumetric capacitance in a 0603 case size (1.60 by 0.80 mm). Available in values ranging from 0.50 to 1000 pF in voltage ratings...  — Roger Allan

[TechView: Components & Test]
Wide-Dynamic-Range Spectrum Analyzer Spans 20 Hz To 50 GHz
Very low displayed average noise levels prevail in the FSU50 spectrum analyzer, which features a dynamic range of 20 Hz to 50 GHz. At 50 GHz, the analyzer exhibits a displayed average noise level of ­118 dBm (at a 10-Hz bandwidth). At 2 GHz,...  — Roger Allan

[TechView: Components & Test]
Go Modular With High-Resolution Encoders
A "one-size-fits-all" solution describes the AEDA-3200 series of three-channel, high-resolution, ultra-miniature incremental optical encoder modules. These plug-and-play modules meet the requirements of general-purpose housed encoders and integrated...  — Roger Allan

[TechView: Components & Test]
USB Module Promotes Plug-And-Play Connectivity
Thanks to an integrated data-acquisition (DAQ) device, the SCXI-1600 USB DAQ module makes all of National Instruments' 40 measurement and switching modules USB 2.0-compatible in a plug-and-play manner. The 16-bit, 200-ksample/s SCXI-1600 works with...  — Roger Allan

[TechView: Digital]
Next-Generation Search Engine Hastens IPv6 Operations
A fourth-generation network-search-engine (NSE) architecture accelerates Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) operations and enables value-added services in 10-Gbit/s applications. Initial products based on this architecture, developed by Integrated...  — Dave Bursky

[TechView: Digital]
Core Offers A Double Dip Of Security And Compression
Available as a block of intellectual property from iTop Corp., the PCISAAC (PCI secured and accelerated/compressed) processor combines a PCI interface, LZW (Lempel Ziv Welch) compression and decompression, and AES (advanced encryption standard)...  — Dave Bursky

[TechView: Digital]
Get A 40% Boost In Speed And Utilization Via Enhanced Tools
Development tools for D-Fabrix, Elixent's reconfigurable algorithm processing (RAP) technology, have been upgraded. This means greatly enhanced performance for the D-Sign v1.4 tool suite, including a 4× drop in synthesis times and placement...  — Dave Bursky

[TechView: EDA]
ESL Tools Analyze, Optimize CPU-Based Designs
Automating the process of optimizing and accelerating processor-based designs, the Triton tool suite from Poseidon Design Systems is based on a SystemC software and hardware co-simulation environment. Furthermore, the suite employs transaction-level...  — David Maliniak

[TechView: EDA]
Linter Is First To Support SystemVerilog Standard
Basic rule-checking capabilities for all SystemVerilog 3.0 design constructs are now available in the nLint tool. Continuing to drive support for the Accellera SystemVerilog standard, nLint enables early detection of design problems in IC development...  — David Maliniak

[TechView: EDA]
EDA Roundup
Co-simulation of electrical and mechanical systems is made possible by integrating Cadence's PSpice technology with Matlab and Simulink products from the Mathworks. The PSpice SLPS interface for Cadence's OrCAD products creates a simulation...  — David Maliniak

[TechScope]
Moore's Law Marches Forward
Going one more with Moore's. That's the case with a 70-Mbit static random-access-memory (SRAM) chip packed with over 500 million transistors. Using 65-nm technology, this chip from Intel features gates that measure 35 nm with a 1.2-nm gate oxide...  — Richard Gawel

[TechScope]
Underdog Robot Takes Underwater Competition
The field included MIT and other seasoned specialists in engineering and marine technology. Yet Carl Hayden High School, a rookie team from the deserts of Phoenix, Ariz., grabbed first place in the Explorer class of the Third Annual ROV Design and...  — Richard Gawel

[Design FAQs]
Power>> Step-Down Regulators—Part 1: The Fundamentals
Sponsored by: NATIONAL SEMICONDUCTOR
What's a buck converter? A buck converter, or step-down voltage regulator, provides either isolated or non-isolated, switch-mode dc-dc conversion with the advantages of simplicity and low cost. The figure shows a...  — Sam Davis

[Ahead Of The Curve]
When testing jitter, which results should you believe?
An expert viewpoint brought to Electronic Design by Agilent Technologies, Inc. Today's data-transfer schemes are reaching amazing speeds in the gigabit-per-second range, but nothing in life...  — Paul G. Schreier

[New Products]

• Component Specifier: Switches/Relays  — Richard Gawel

• Packaging & Interconnects: NEMA 4X Aluminum Boxes With External Flanges Simplify Mountings  — Roger Allan

• Packaging & Interconnects: Rack Drawer Has Fold-Down Flat-Panel Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse  — Roger Allan

• Packaging & Interconnects: More Card Guides Equals Easier Use Of Subracks  — Roger Allan

• Packaging & Interconnects: SOIC Adapters Bring Cost-Effective Upgrades To Older Relays  — Roger Allan

• Packaging & Interconnections: CompactPCI Extender Boards Facilitate Card Testing/Debugging  — Roger Allan

• Packaging & Interconnects: Lightweight, Rugged VXI Chassis Comes Packed With Power  — Roger Allan

• Packaging & Interconnects: Screw-Termination Blocks Augment General-Purpose Relay Designs  — Roger Allan

• Communications: Stacked RJ45/USB Connector Reduces PC-Board Footprint  — Dave Bursky

• Communications: Get Up To Eight T1 Lines Via Scalable Access Router  — Roger Allan

• Communications: Unmanaged Ethernet Switches Deliver Copper And Fiber Ports  — Dave Bursky

• Communications: Set-Top-Box Front End Demodulates And Forward-Error Corrects  — Dave Bursky

• Communications: Phase-Locked-Loop Hard Macros Shed 2/3 Of Their Required Area  — Dave Bursky

• Communications: Twin Tuners With Optimized Video Interfaces Facilitate STB Designs  — Dave Bursky

• Embedded: Transmeta Crusoe Drives Fanless Motherboard  — William Wong

• Embedded: Application Kit Demos Linux-Based Data Acquisition And Control System  — William Wong

• Embbedded: Dual Hyperthreaded P4 CompactPCI SBC Handles Six Video Channels  — William Wong





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