[Engineering Feature] Inside iPod
It was an unusual strategy for a design engineer, but it was appropriate for the job. Elaine Wherry, manager of usability and design at Synaptics Inc., put on her hooded sweatshirt so she would blend in at college campuses. Her mission was to understand user requirements for a digital music player. On campus, she observed people jog, ride bikes, walk, sit quietly, and in myriad other ways, enjoy their tunes. She made similar observations in libraries, airports, and other venues...
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John H. Day
[Design View / Design Solution] Nanometer Yield Enhancement Begins In The Design Phase
In moving to nanometer process technologies at 130 nm and below, semiconductor designers face a variety of physical and electrical effects that can significantly degrade circuit performance. For these nanometer designs, traditional corrections applied after tapeout are simply ineffective, requiring more broadly based development strategies. With nanometer processes, silicon success depends on the designer's ability to anticipate manufacturing concerns before tapeout. To achieve...
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Mark Miller
[Ideas For Design] Multiphase Voltage Regulator Tackles 150-A Applications
Power demands of the latest microprocessors from AMD, IBM, Intel, and other vendors continue to soar. Indeed, CPUs currently under development for next-generation servers require 150 A or more, while desktop processors require 120 A. Along with these stringent requirements come additional constraints such as cost, board area (power density), and thermal environment, which further inflame the design challenge. To explore the various options for voltage-regulator design, this...
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Ralph Monteiro
, et al.
[Ideas For Design] High-Power LED Driver Accepts Wide Input-Voltage Range
The advent of high-power LEDs that can replace incandescent bulbs has produced a need for circuits that efficiently match the LEDs to available power sources (batteries, car electrical systems, etc.). The circuits should also be able to regulate and control the LED light output, despite variations in output voltage from the power source. The circuit of --->Figure 1---> starts and operates a 1-A LED from a voltage that...
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Alfredo Saab
, et al.
[Ideas For Design] Standalone Circuit Converts Square Waves To Sine Waves
Many microcontrollers or PICs will have uncommitted digital-to-analog converter (DAC) outputs that can be used to generate sine waves. But these are generally low resolution (8 to 10 bits), yielding a total harmonic distortion (THD) in the 1% range. Or, using a fifth- or seventh-order switched-capacitor filter with a square-wave output ties up two I/O pins on the MCU. One output is used for the filter input and one for the filter clock. Also, the two outputs must be square waves and...
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John R. Ambrose
[Ideas For Design] Forecast Kudos, APEC
Our January 13 Technology Forecast was a monumental effort. Along with the great stuff in print, look for commentaries by our staff and industry pros online at www.elecdesign.com. I'd also like to thank the folks who spent hours briefing me: Linear Technology's Robert Dobkin; Analogic Tech's Richard Williams; ADI's Lew Counts, Steve Sockolov, and Eric Nolan; Intersil's Simon Dutton; Artesyn's Todd Hendrix; True Circuit's John Maneatis; IR's Steve Clemente; ON Semi's Jeff...
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Don Tuite
[Ideas For Design] LED Charge Pumps Get Smarter
Five tri-mode, high-efficiency charge pumps for white LED backlight and color LED applications combine a load switch (13) and a high-efficiency (1.53 or 23) charge pump with an internal sensing circuit that monitors the required voltage on each constant current-sink input. The load switch and charge pump modes are set based on the input battery voltage and current sink input voltage. Advanced Analogic Technologies' AAT3151/2/3/6 products can drive four or six individual LEDs with a...
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Don Tuite
[Ideas For Design] EMI Filters With ESD Protection Reduce Interference In Cell Phones
Three electromagnetic interference (EMI) filter arrays with electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection in Thin DFN (TDFN) packages are designed for high-speed LCD display and camera data interfaces with maximum data rates up to 54 Mbits/s per line. Signal components from 800 MHz to 2.9 GHz are attenuated by at least 25 dB. The typical 3-dB point is 110 MHz. All three arrays exhibit extremely low parasitic inductance (10 to 20 pH) due to their TDFN-package ground pads. ON Semiconductor's...
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Don Tuite
[Ideas For Design] Miniature SIP Converter Family Offers A Wide Voltage Selection
For board-level applications with very tight space requirements, a family of converters in miniature SIPs features tight line load regulation, continuous short-circuit protection, and 3 W of output power in a miniature SIP package. The 15 models in MicroPower Direct's D300RP series operate from 5-V dc, 12-V dc, or 24-V dc inputs and provide single outputs of 5, 9, 12, 15, or 24 V dc. Standard features include ±0.5% line/load regulation, 1000-V dc input/output isolation, continuous...
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Don Tuite
[Ideas For Design] Tiny Boost Converters Drive Three, Four, Or Five LEDs
A family of synchronous boost converters in 1.5- by 1.5-mm packages can power up to five series of white LED backlights in smart phones, PDAs, digital still cameras, and other handheld electronics. Texas Instruments' TPS6106x family of specialized dc-dc converters supports input voltages from 2.7 to 6 V and integrates a 400-mA power MOSFET and synchronous rectifier, eliminating the need for an external series Schottky diode. Their 1-MHz fixed switching frequency enables the converters to...
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Don Tuite
[POV: Point Of View] Putting Design For Manufacturing Into Action
"Design for manufacturing," or DFM, is such a buzzword these days. Everybody seems to agree that DFM is critically important. However, there is also an ironic consensus that the term DFM is vaguely defined. This is especially true for those in the chip industry who are developing or employing tools to create cutting-edge semiconductors, from physical design through manufacturing of nanometer-scale processes. A Web search yields many articles that offer opinions on...
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Clive Wu
[Editorial] Rise To The Responsibility Of Global Tsunami Monitoring
In the aftermath of last month's catastrophic tsunami came a rising chorus questioning the absence of a warning system. Fueling the furor was news that the seismic monitoring station run by the U.S.'s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had detected the tectonic shifts and 9.0 seismic shocks, and it had known about the potential for a tsunami...
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Mark David
[Pease Porridge] Bob's Mailbox
Hi, Bob: I have a problem and could use your help. It initially sounded easy to me, but proved not so. I need to find an analog circuit for the following problem: I have 13 resistors with different values. I know the list of values and need to randomly pick two resistors from those 13 to put into the circuit. The circuit should be able to tell me which one is the larger resistance value. If possible, please provide some advice on this problem that has puzzled me for a...
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Bob Pease
[TechView: The Industry] Dutch Team Grows III-V Semiconductor Nanowires On Ge And Si
A team of scientists from Philips and the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience in Delft, the Netherlands, has successfully grown III-V semiconductor nanowires on germanium and silicon substrates. III-V semiconductors cannot be fabricated on silicon or other group IV materials by conventional thin-film deposition and lithographic structuring. Fundamental issues such as lattice and thermal expansion mismatch prevent growth. Expansion mismatch prevents a growth mode in which the...
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Paul Whytock
[TechView: The Industry] UL Program Tests For RoHS Compliance
The European Union's Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive won't take effect until July 2006, but many OEMs are already concerned. Failure to comply could keep their products out of the EU—or even result in civil or criminal penalties. Help is available through the Underwriters Laboratories Restricted Substances Compliance Solutions (RSCS) program. The RSCS can help OEMs monitor the compliance of supply-chain partners, reduce the cost of internal...
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John Novellino
[TechView: Analog & Power] California Sets Green Power-Supply Standards
The California Energy Commission's (CEC) latest standards place new energy-efficiency requirements on a host of products. Taking effect over the next two years, the standards must be cost-effective based on a reasonable use pattern. In other words, they must not result in added total costs to the consumer over the application's lifetime. The standards are small in relation to California's total energy usage, as the state and its 40 million people represent the world's...
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Don Tuite
[TechView: Analog & Power] Dual Ideal Diodes Manage Power
Two monolithic ideal diodes (see the figure)—both able to supply up to 2.6 A from 2.5- to 5.5-V input voltages—have been integrated into the LTC4413 power control. Housed in a 10-lead, 3- by 3-mm DFN package, this Linear Technology device suits low-loss diode OR-ing, automatic or microcontroller-controlled switchover from primary to auxiliary power, battery load sharing, and high-side power switching. It also can be used to...
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Don Tuite
[TechView: Embedded] Modules Attack Signal Processing, Video
PCI mezzanine card (PMC) modules offer expansion capabilities for single-board computers with PMC slots. Two new entries in this arena have expanded the designer's playing field. Bittware's T2-PMC contains a Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGA; a 64-bit, 66-MHz PCI interface; up to 256 Mbytes of SDRAM; and four 600-MHz ADSP-TS201 TigerSharc DSPs. The board delivers over 4 Gbytes/s of throughput using the ATLANTiS (Advanced Transfer Link Architecture for New TigerSharc) interface....
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William Wong
[TechView: Embedded] PC/104 Modules Manage Motion Control, Wireless Apps
PC/104 continues to expand into all embedded areas. Priced at $540, Performance Motion Devices' Magellan-PC/104 Motion Controller handles multiple motors with up to four axes. It supports dc brushed, brushless dc, and step motors. Also, it can communicate via a 16-bit parallel bus, CANbus, or serial port. The board provides servo loop rates of up to 50 µs/axis and a 5-Mcount/s quadrature encoder input rate. In another breakthrough, Arcom's latest development kit...
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William Wong
[TechView: Communications] Programmable Wireless Chip Refines ISM VHF/UHF Radios
The popular FCC-assigned industrial-scientific-medical (ISM) bands for unlicensed wireless applications are used for everything from remote keyless entry for cars to industrial telemetry applications. On top of that, many companies offer single-chip transceivers. The updated EZRadio chips from Integrated Associates will fuel that popularity. These chips should ease implementation of ISM-band applications as well as boost performance. The IA4420 and IA4421 transceivers can be...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[TechView: Communications] Digital PLL Perks Up Performance In T1-E1, Other TDM Apps
Thanks to a digital phase-locked loop (DPLL), the ZL30109 DS1/E1 System Synchronizer chip brings timing and synchronization to multitrunk DS1 and E1 transmission equipment. DPLLs typically use a DSP filter in the PLL's loop filter to greatly improve stability and reduce jitter. Loop-filter bandwidths of 1.8 kHz and 922 Hz are available with the ZL30109. Designed by Zarlink Semiconductor, this chip fits use in digital-subscriber-line access multiplexers (DSLAMs), Voice over...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[TechView: Embedded] Embedded: Entry-Level Switched Fabric Board Manages PICMG 2.16 Or Vita 31.1
The FP 100/008 10-port, 10/100 Ethernet switch handles switch-fabric chores in a CompactPCI PICMG 2.16 and ANSI VITA 31.1 packet switched environment. The nonblocking, layer 2, unmanaged switch targets low-power, low-cost telecom applications. It supports port-based virtual local-area network (VLAN) or IEEE 802.1Q VLAN with up to 64 VLANs. The board has PICMG 2.9 IPMI system monitoring and hot insertion/removal support. Ports 10 and 9 are brought out to the front and rear panels,...
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William Wong
[TechView: Digital] Stunning Advances To Captivate ISSCC Attendees
A truckload of the latest innovations awaits designers attending next month's IEEE International Solid State Circuits Conference, Feb. 7-10 at the San Francisco Marriott. In fact, the 2005 ISSCC will offer the conference's largest technical program in its over-25-year history. Highlighted developments will range from nanotechnology to billion-plus transistor CPUs and 8-Gbit flash memories. Three plenary sessions that all focus on the impact of nanotechnology on different...
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Dave Bursky
[TechView: Digital] Chip Set Does It All For Small Disk Drives
Miniature disk drives with form factors ranging from 1.8 to 0.85 in. often lack the full suite of functions needed to support the mechanical head-and-disk assembly. The TrueStore chip set hopes to fill that void. Developed by Agere Systems, the chip set includes the read-channel preamplifier, a motor controller, and a hard-disk controller (see the figure). It can handle data-transfer rates of up to 350 Mbits/s, enabling...
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Dave Bursky
[TechView: EDA] Reconfigurable OPC Tool Revamps ECOs And Re-spins
At process geometries of 90 nm and below, IC yield is virtually impossible to achieve without optical proximity correction (OPC). But runtimes for OPC tools become very lengthy at 90 nm. Furthermore, design modifications that require quick changes to mask data (engineering change orders, or ECOs) come fast and furious at the end of a design cycle, and each can trigger a new OPC run. A "second generation" of OPC tools (at least that's what some call it) has an early arrival...
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David Maliniak
[TechView: EDA] Front-End Tool Shoves Verification Into The Limelight
Many design teams now strive to create a viable design specification for early hardware/software coverification. Esterel Technologies' latest Esterel Studio release fills that bill by allowing designers to capture a design specification and then automatically generate the hardware description in RTL or C. The Esterel Studio 5.2 tool suite includes an editor; simulator; assertion-based verification; and VHDL, Verilog, C, and C++ code generators. It's intended for use in design...
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David Maliniak
[TechView: EDA] EDA Roundup
Support for the Spirit 1.0 specification is now offered by Mentor's Platform Express tool, an XML-based system-on-a-chip (SoC) design creation platform. The SPIRIT 1.0 spec defines a standard XML data set to ease intellectual-property (IP) integration issues during the SoC design process. With this standard, IP providers can create an IP databook in XML, documenting features, data files, and configurability options for IP. Platform Express uses that XML data to automate the IP...
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David Maliniak
