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ISSUE DATE: JANUARY 20, 2003 OPTIONS
Contract manufacturing, Multiphase power control

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January 20, 2003 - In This Issue

[Engineering Feature]
Contract Manufacturing Swoops In On Product Design... And EE Jobs
It was once called offshore assembly because that's all it involved—the intricate and delicate assembly of complex integrated and hybrid circuits using cheap labor available outside of the U.S. But today we call it contract manufacturing, or...  — Ron Schneiderman

[Leapfrog: Industry First]
Power Solution Takes On Next-Generation CPUs
A multiphase synchronous buck-converter architecture repartitions functions in silicon to create a scalable design suitable for many phases. Conceptually, the multiphase approach to building synchronous buck converters is scalable. The converter's...  — David G. Morrison

[Ideas For Design]
Use Rotary Potentiometer To Drive Solid-State Volume Control
This design idea details how a standard volume control can be replaced by its solid-state equivalent. Digital potentiometers are often advertised as replacements for rotary volume controls. To simulate these controls, many circuits employ up/down...  — Wayne Sward

[Ideas For Design]
Simple CATV Upstream Fiber-Optic Receiver Uses DC-Pilot AGC
Upstream fiber links in a community antenna television (CATV) system are usually among the most difficult elements of the network to align properly. Set-top boxes and cable modems employ "long-loop" automatic gain control (AGC) (in other words,...  — Jon Munson

[Editorial]
A New Look And Exciting New Forums Ring In 2003
As you've already noticed, Electronic Design is sporting a different graphic look. We've also spruced up several perennial editorial favorites and created a number of stimulating new editorial forums. Last year we conducted focus groups and online...  — Dave Bursky

[POV: Point Of View]
The Need For Hybrid Optimization
Surely, designers of ASICs and application-specific standard parts (ASSPs) using cell-based methods need sophisticated tools to get the job done. Yet ASIC/ASSP designers still rely on the old EDA workhorses—logic synthesis, simulation, and place...  — Debashis Bhattacharya

[Pease Porridge]
Bob's Mailbox
Dear Bob: I found Eric Kinast's observations (Electronic Design, Oct. 28, 2002, p. 84) about photosensitivity most interesting. I wasn't aware that small metal-can packages can have light leaks. Years ago, I resolved to always use...  — Bob Pease

[TechView: Analog & Power]
In-Circuit Offset Adjustment Debuts With New Op Amp
A new high-slew-rate dual precision CMOS operational amplifier can change the input offset while in circuit. Developed by Advanced Linear Devices Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif., the ALD2724E and ALD2724 offer an alternative to junction FET (JFET) input op...  — Tets Maniwa

[TechView: Analog & Power]
High-Precision Reference Cinches Error-Budget Belt
To address the growing need for ever tighter error budgets in mixed-signal systems, Maxim Integrated Products of Sunnyvale, Calif., has introduced a family of low-temperature-drift voltage references. The MAX6133 series tightens the error budget by...  — Tets Maniwa

[TechView: Analog & Power]
“Amp In A Mike ” Replaces FET
The single FET in an electret microphone's housing may soon become an endangered species. National Semicon-ductor Corp. of Santa Clara, Calif., has two amplifiers that replace the junction FET (JFET) in current electret mikes. A high-gain...  — Tets Maniwa

[TechView: Communications]
Waiting For ZigBee
With all of the wireless standards on the books, you would think we pretty much had the wireless front covered. But we don't. We really need a cheaper, simpler, lower-power, longer-range standard that doesn't necessarily need to be fast, and we're...  — Louis E. Frenzel

[TechView: Communications]
Long-Haul Optical Faces A Long Road To Recovery
Long-haul optical revenue accounted for 51% of the total optical market in 2001, says a recent study by Probe Research, Cedar Knolls, N.J. Yet this niche saw its numbers fall by over 50% in 2002. Minor improvements are expected by 2004, but even then...  — Richard Gawel

[TechView: Communications]
Low-Cost Wireless Components Simplify Data Acquisition
The Xecom RF XE 900 Smart Transceiver coupled with the XE 924 base-access point cost-effectively links up to eight microcontroller-based embedded systems to a central data-collection point using a modem connection to the telephone line. The system...  — Roger Allan

[TechView: Digital]
Single Chip Controls Both Hard-Disk And DVD Drives
Designing a personal video recording system just became simpler with LSI Logic's DMN-8650. This highly integrated chip controls both a hard-disk drive and a recordable DVD drive, but it also handles audio, video, and picture playback functions. It...  — Dave Bursky

[TechView: Digital]
Conference News
Mark your calendars for next month's International Solid-State Circuits Conference, scheduled for Feb. 9-13 at the San Francisco Marriott. Many sessions detailing techniques for circuit operation at low voltages will address the conference's theme,...  — Dave Bursky

[TechView: Digital]
Immersion Lithography Taps Into Water For Better Resolution
To make smaller transistors so chips can pack more gates and deliver higher performance, lithography must use shorter light wavelengths to form the smaller features. To that end, developments to extend the use of 193-nm lithography have turned to...  — Dave Bursky

[TechView: Components & Test]
TFT LCD Prototype Sets Size Record
With a 52-in. wide screen designed for HDTV, the 52W unit recently demonstrated by L.G. Philips Co. Ltd. is the world's largest thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display (TFT LCD). Its 1920- by 1080-pixel resolution or 2.07 million pixels is more...  — Roger Allan

[TechView: Components & Test]
Prepare For A Virtual Interface Standard
Look for a "virtual" analog-sensor interface standard sometime this year. It will define the IEEE P1451.4 Working Group's Transducer Electronic Data Sheet (TEDS) to facilitate sensor interfacing via the Web. National Instruments (www.ni.com) is...  — Roger Allan

[TechView: Components & Test]
Market News
OEMs routinely buy switches by the million. Yet many buyers are switching vendors, too. According to Venture Development Corp., Natick, Mass., 40% of OEMs surveyed changed switch vendors during the previous year. The most common reasons for the change...  — Richard Gawel

[TechView: Components & Test]
Flash-Memory Parts Trim Height To 0.2 mm
SILICON STORAGE TECHNOLOGY has come up with what may be the thinnest and—in most densities—the smallest footprint form-factor memory parts for demanding next-generation Bluetooth applications, which typically restrict device heights...  — Roger Allan

[TechView: EDA]
Timing Checks Go Full Chip
Nanometer design will require new thinking in timing closure. Historically, design teams relied on static timing analysis, which depends on the abstracted behavior of individual gates to perform timing calculations. But at nanometer geometries, the...  — David Maliniak

[TechView: EDA]
Hot Product
Doubling the capacity of Magma's previous release, the company's Blast Fusion APX Advanced Physical Design System provides a complete netlist-to-GDSII design flow for extremely complex SoC designs. Incorporating placement, routing, timing closure, and...  — David Maliniak

[TechView: EDA]
IBM, Synopsys Partner On Foundry Flow
IBM and Synopsys are developing a design reference flow for IBM's 0.13-µ>m process technology that will give foundry service customers a smooth path from chip design to production. The RTL-to-GDSII flow is based on a suite of Synopsys' back-end...  — David Maliniak

[New Products]

• 5000-VRMS Isolated Error Amplifier Fits Functionality Into Tiny Package  — Lisa Fakhry

• Low-Voltage MOSFET Family Tackles Telecom,Computing Apps  — Lisa Fakhry

• Inductorless DC-DC Converter Achieves 500-mA Continuous Output  — Lisa Fakhry

• Next-Generation CPU Specs Attained By Switching Power Solution  — Lisa Fakhry

• 60-A Output Rectifiers Provide Fast Recovery Times  — Lisa Fakhry

• TCXOs Reduce Phase Noise In CDMA,GSM Products  — Lisa Fakhry

• SMD Clock Oscillator Offers Desert-To-Arctic Temperature Rating  — Lisa Fakhry

• Low-Jitter VCXOs Slash Bit-Rate Errors  — Lisa Fakhry

• Timing-Control Module Supports 14 Input Signals  — Lisa Fakhry

• Mini Surface-Mount Clock Oscillators Bring Flexibility To Portable Designs  — Lisa Fakhry

• MIPS-Based Processing Module Doubles PCI Performance  — Lisa Fakhry

• PrPMC Module Targets New Control Plane Processor  — Lisa Fakhry

• Linux Camera Accelerates Embedded-Vision Design  — Lisa Fakhry

• True 16-Bit PC/104 Module Turns Into DAQ Subsystem  — Lisa Fakhry





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