[Engineering Feature] Weapons Of Mass Protection
Uniformed security officers, bomb-sniffing dogs, and video cameras hanging off light poles may always be constant fixtures of homeland security. But the demand for new and innovative technologies has turned into big business—and it may grow larger in the wake of the London bombings and reported threats to the U.S. In the short term, look for radiation-detecting pagers, RFID-based location tracking systems, unmanned robotic vehicles, and devices that sniff out electronic...
—
Ron Schneiderman
[Technology Report] Packaging Rides The Z Axis Into The Third Dimension
The push for 3D packaging of semiconductor ICs directly results from market demands for smaller and lower-profile, lighter, and lower-cost packaged ICs that consume less power. With such market forces at play, package designers are feeling the strain to keep pace with their IC chip designer brethren. For several decades, IC designers could leverage the advantages of a silicon die's planar area (the X and Y directions) to define and pack in more transistors and gates. Getting the...
—
Roger Allan
[Leapfrog: First Look] Magnetoresistive RAM And Rad-Hard MCU Go To The Extreme
CONTROL APPLICATIONS IN SPACE-BASED SYSTEMS RANGING from low-earth orbit to deep-space exploration need microcontrollers that can withstand extreme levels of radiation and temperature. To meet those requirements, Silicon Laude leveraged Actel's RTAX-S series of radiation-tolerant FPGAs. Also, Silicon Laude implemented a radiation-hardened and radiation-tolerant version of the MCS8051 microcontroller in the UT6325 rad-hard FPGAs from Aeroflex. Adding a nonvolatile 64-kword by...
—
Dave Bursky
[Leapfrog: First Look] 10GbE MAC Streamlines Multiprotocol Traffic
ALLITERATIVE MANTRA FOR THE DAY: CUTTING COMPONENT count curbs cost. Nowhere is this statement more true than with 10-Gbit/s line cards. Taking that alliteration to heart is the A2122 Redhawk 10-Gbit/s Ethernet (10GbE) media access controller (MAC), developed by Ample Communications. The chip combines two full-duplex 10-Gbit/s MACs on the line side, a pair of XAUI or system packet interfaces (SPI-4.2) on the system side, and Ample's statistical multiplexing technology to minimize...
—
Dave Bursky
[Design View / Design Solution] Carefully Weigh The Tradeoffs Of Cell-Based Vs. Structured ASICs
With the emergence of 90-nm process technology, ASIC designers get to explore uncharted levels of performance and density. However, it has also unleashed a slew of challenging design-integrity issues, from crosstalk and noise to IR drop and timing closure. Complicating the development process is a growing array of silicon integration options. Today’s designers can implement designs using either a cell-based or structured ASIC methodology. General Design Goals...
—
John Gallagher
, et al.
[Ideas For Design] One-Wire Serial Bus Carries Isolated Power And Data
Medical and industrial applications often require galvanic isolation of 2500 V ac or higher for the safety of patients and equipment operators. The isolation barrier conveys not only power to the sensing element, but also data to or from that element. Each data signal crossing the barrier-requires isolation. Consequently, designers can typically save costs in these applications by choosing a serial bus rather than a parallel bus. Serial buses include SPI, I2C, and the...
—
Bich Pham
, et al.
[Ideas For Design] Smart Solenoid Driver Reduces Power Loss
Solenoids and relays used in electronic control applications consume lots of power. The current required for activation is typically three to 10 times higher than the minimum needed to hold the relay or solenoid in the ON position. Thus, reducing the driver's operating current after the solenoid or relay is switched ON will save power and reduce thermal loading. The technique presented here substantially reduces power dissipation when the device is ON. The circuit employs an op...
—
S.V. Nakhe
[Editorial] ARRL's Role In Rescue Offers Lessons For Future
Investigations into the communications breakdowns in our national emergency response systems continue. Yet I'm struck by the contrast between the hue and cry for upgraded infrastructure solutions and the much quieter revelation that old-school ham radio provided the only trustworthy communication during Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans emergency departments' radios were wiped out when broadcast towers lost backup power generators. Police and fire departments only had citizen-band...
—
Mark David
[POV: Point Of View] WiMAX Advances Broadband Wireless Dramatically
Broadband wireless access is on the verge of a significant breakthrough that will change the way users access voice, data, and video—the "triple play"—through the broadband pipe. For the past decade, different broadband wireless solutions have fallen short due to various reasons. Most significantly, they were proprietary systems—expensive, incompatible, and lacking broad-based industry support. Available spectrums were regulated, and the implemented systems were...
—
Keith Horn
[Pease Porridge] What's All This Marketing Stuff, Anyhow?
Okay, marketing is a dirty and nasty job, but somebody has to do it. Sometimes I put on my "marketing hat" and try to do some of it myself. But the best insight into that is the quote I have paraded before a couple thousand attendees at my recent linear seminars: "The only valid market survey is... a signed purchase order." Well over 2000 people attended these seminars, and nobody knew who said that. Answer below. Hint: He was one of the Fairchild Eight. Your chances of guessing the right...
—
Bob Pease
[TechView: The Industry] Where The Homeland Security Dollars Are
You might think that the market for homeland security (HLS) devices in the U.S. is very large. And you'd be right. But to increase your chances of success in this arena, you have to think globally. The U.S., at $23.9 billion, will make up 52% of the global HLS market this year. Yet it will comprise only 47% in 2010 and 42% in 2015, according to forecasts by the Homeland Security Research Corp. The company is predicting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.1% for the U.S. in that...
—
John Novellino
[TechView: Analog & Power] Fresh Design Ideas Benefit AC-DC Supplies
Is it possible to say anything new about designing ac-dc supplies? Frank Rene, president of global product development at XP Power, sent along a list of five incremental enhancements that added up for his company. First, solder power semiconductors directly to the pc board and then bond them to the chassis, rather than insulating them and bolting them to the chassis. Countering the expense of thermal bonding materials, assembly costs go down. This also reduces size of the supply...
—
Don Tuite
[TechView: Digital] Preconfigured Compute Optimized "Supercell" Reduces Time-To-Market
Time-to-market drives many design decisions in the ASIC arena. By precombining and verifying a collection of key blocks of circuit intellectual property (IP), designers at Kawasaki Microelectronics America (K-Micro) hope to further accelerate the design process. The Topaz computing subsystem is a large megacell (or supercell) based around the MIPS32 24Kf 32-bt RISC processor, which combines many of the popular CPU support functions ASIC designers typically would want to integrate...
—
Dave Bursky
[TechView: EDA] EDA Vendor Sets Its Sights On The Automotive Market
According to some estimates, the electronics content in automobiles will represent 40% of their end price by 2010. Today's vehicles have as many as 22 separate systems with significant electronic content. That translates into quite a bit of design work, and Mentor Graphics is positioning itself to be at the center of the automotive design process. By folding in the recently acquired Volcano automotive networking tools and SystemVision, a simulator for automotive mechatronic...
—
David Maliniak
[TechView: EDA] Tool Automates Generation Of SystemVerilog Testbenches
THE SYSTEMVERILOG INFRASTRUCTURE is built out further with Synopsys' introduction of Pioneer-NTB. This testbenchautomation tool delivers native SystemVerilog testbench generation to users of third-party simulators. As a result, verification engineers can adopt a single, standards-based verification infrastructure in mixed-simulation environments. The efficiency gains are among the chief advantages of using a tool such as Pioneer-NTB with either Synopsys' VCS, Cadence's NC-SIM, or...
—
David Maliniak
[TechView: Wireless] NSA Certifies Software-Defined Military Radio
Military battlefield operations require encrypted communication—even at the handheld level. The Falcon III tacticalhandheld transceiver from Harris Corp. uses software-defined radio (SDR) techniques to achieve secure multiband, multiemission operation over a wide frequency range. In fact, the National Security Agency (NSA) has certified it for military use. Also known as the AN/PRC-152, the Falcon III operates in the military bands from 30 to 512 MHz with 10-Hz tuning...
—
Louis E. Frenzel
[TechView: Wireless] Very Linear Power Amplifier Covers 2.4- And 5-GHz WLAN Bands
Today's portables need more power if they're going to take advantage of wireless local-area networks (WLANs). Developed by SST Communications, the dual-band SST13LP02 fits laptops, plug-in cards, and WLAN router/gateway/access points using 802.11a/b/g. This indium-gallium-phosphide heterojunction-bipolar-transistor power amplifier offers 20-dBm gain for 802.11b and 18 dBm for 802.11g in the 2.4-GHz band, as well as 18 dBm for 802.11a in the 5-GHz band. By covering the full 4.9- to 5.8-GHz...
—
Louis E. Frenzel
[Embedded in Electronic Design] It's True. No, False. Wait, It's 2.6 Volts
Analog microcontrollers certainly aren't new. But they've advanced dramatically by getting smaller, more powerful, and less expensive. And their applications are far-ranging, from process and motor control to interfacing with the latest micromachines, such as 3D accelerometers. Despite the presence of analog microcontrollers, analog system design is still tough. Current analog-microcontroller options may not be as extensive as the number of op amps or comparators on the market,...
—
William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Tiny Modem Module Simplifies Communication
If your embedded design requires a modem, Radicom Research offers a potential solution with its Half-Inch Modem. Actually, the module is a 1- by 1- by 0.3-in. board, but that's still tiny enough. The modem uses an AT command set. It also features Digital Line Guard (DLG) support and a built-in data-access arrangement for direct connect to a telephone line. There's support for data connections up to 56 kbits/s and fax connections of 14.4 kbits/s. Voice recording and playback, dual-tone...
—
William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Compact 8-Bit MCU Module Is Ethernet-Friendly
The RCM3750 from Rabbit Semiconductor combines a 22-MHz Rabbit 3000 MCU with a 10/100BaseT interface. The small module (2.95 by 1.20 by 0.89 in.) features an RJ-45 jack and a 40-pin header. The header exposes the module's four serial ports and 33 digital I/O. The low-power module (175 mA at 22.1 MHz, 150 mA at 11 MHz) also contains 512 kbytes of SRAM, 512 kbytes of flash memory, and a 1-Mbyte serial flash chip. Pricing for the RCM3750 starts at $61. A $329 development kit includes Dynamic C...
—
William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] One 16-Bit Architecture To Bind Them All
Processor architectures tend to follow one track or another. But that's not the case with Microchip's latest 16-bit product line. The company removed a few pieces from its 16-bit digital signal controller (DSC) and cranked out a general-purpose processor. The dsPIC 33 is the base implementation (Fig. 1). It includes extra features like a DSP engine and motor-control support not found in the line of general-purpose processors, the...
—
William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] New Products
MicroTCA Reaches Fruition Artesyn Technologies is one vendor at the forefront of MicroTCA. This standard uses the 2U (half height) and 4U (full height) AdvancedTCA mezzanine cards (AMC) as its main board, offering a more compact solution suitable for a range of applications (e.g., wireless basestations or workgroup routers). The proposed Virtual Carrier Manager (VCM) and MicroTCA standards are working their way to approval. Systems will handle up to 12.5-Gbit/s...
—
William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] 8-Bit MCU Controls Sensorless, Brushless Induction Motors
Motor-control applications are the targets eyed by the Z8 Encore! MCU family. Included is support for sensorless brushless dc (BLDC) and ac induction motors, as well as firmware, development tools, and turnkey solutions. The on-chip analog-to-digital converter's Time Stamp feature can be coupled with the three-phase pulse-widthmodulation (PWM) output module to deliver high-accuracy speed control. Analog peripherals permit current sampling and support for torque and speed control. The chip...
—
William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] PGA Dev Kit Speeds Design
Xilinx's PowerPC and MicroBlaze Development Kit, Virtex-4 FX12 Edition, comes with everything you need to check out sophisticated FPGA applications. It includes a development board with 1-Gbit Ethernet and serial interfaces, Platform Studio, over 60 IP cores, a JTAG probe, and a host of reference designs. Suitable for hard-and soft-core processor support, it costs $895. www.xilinx.com ...
—
William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] VMM Mixes Linux And DSP/BIOS
Jaluna's virtual-machine manager (VMM) OSware, Linux Edition for Texas Instruments' TMS320C6000 DSP v1.2 supports Linux in a virtual-machine environment plus TI's real-time DSP/BIOS in another. The combination enables low-level services to use the DSP services while handling Linux applications on the same TMS320 DSP. A Virtual Ethernet IP stack and a virtual console support both environments at the same time. www.jaluna.com ...
—
William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Serial RapidIO Backplane Base Suits Rugged VME COTS System
The PowerMP4-60 is designed for rugged, high-bandwidth embedded applications. Thales Computers' system starts with a 19-in. 7U rack with eight VME64x slots connected to a Serial RapidIO backplane. It can handle Intel and the 1-GHz PowerPC G4 7457 CPU boards. The front-panel data port (FPDP) operates at 100 Mbits/s. Available software includes Linux, LynxOS, and VxWorks. Pricing starts at $18,000. www.thalescomputers.com ...
—
William Wong
[TechScope] Radiation Detectors Protect First Responders
It's the ultimate nightmare—nuclear contamination. First responders need to know the level of contamination before they venture into potential catastrophes. As they investigate radiation leaks or terrorist threats, these officials can rely on two devices from Berkeley Nucleonics. The nukeALERT II1703M Personal Radiation Detector (PRD) and the palmRAD 1621M Dosimeter discretely detect and measure gamma radiation. Targeting non-technical users, applications include emergency...
—
Richard Gawel
[Web Exclusive] Multifunction Flash-Card Chip Supports IR, USB, And 15 Card Types
The USB2232 simplifies the design of smart peripherals. Developed by Standard Microsystems Corp., it merges a consumer infrared (CIR) controller, a 480-Mbit/s USB interface, and a 15-in-one flash media card reader onto a single chip. Thanks to an on-chip 1.8-V regulator for low-power operation, the USB connection or the system’s power supply can power the chip. The USB2232 also incorporates power-FETs and short-circuit protection so it can supply power to the flash media...
—
Dave Bursky
[Web Exclusive] Voltage Reference Yields 1-mV Precision From 12-Bit ADCs
Speaking of new approaches to familiar products, bandgap voltage references have been around since the mid-1970s. Buried-zener references have been around since the early 1980s. Now Intersil has some new versions of its voltage references based on technology Xicor developed for depositing a precise charge on a floating gate. The most interesting is Intersil’s X60008-41, which provides a precise 4.096-V reference. It provides precise 1-mV resolution when used with a 12-bit...
—
Don Tuite
