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ISSUE DATE: APRIL 14, 2003 OPTIONS
The standards process, Internet edge processor, Conference Preview: ESC, Non-isolated POL converters, Embedded in ED

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April 14, 2003 - In This Issue

[Engineering Feature]
Approving A Standard Is Anything But Standard
The GSM Association, representing the world's leading digital cell-phone faction, attacked competing standard supporters at a recent meeting in Cannes, France, for spreading "misinformation" about its favored standard, wideband-CDMA (W-CDMA). With 80%...  — Ron Schneiderman

[Leapfrog: Industry First]
Multi-Threading Hardware Revs Up Internet Edge Processor
Deterministic eight-way hardware multi-threading and a memory-to-memory instruction set make the 32-bit IP3023 a fast and efficient embedded network processor. Software I/O and a large on-chip RAM keep the die size small. The approach is so unusual...  — William Wong

[Design View / Design Solution]
Use 1TRAM Blocks To Embed More Memory On Logic Chips
Full article begins on Page 2 As the system-on-a-chip (SoC) era marches forward, there's a pressing need to embed large amounts of memory onto a logic chip and make the resulting technology as flexible and cost-effective as possible....  — Ranny Y.H. Lin , et al.

[Ideas For Design]
NAND Gates Enable Trigger Lockout For 555 Timers
Applications of commercially available integrated timers, including the NE/SE555, are fairly limited when used in their monostable mode. This is due to their inability to function with all types of trigger pulses. These timers work perfectly and...  — Rishabh Jain , et al.

[Ideas For Design]
QPSK Demodulator Is A Good Match For Low-Cost Modulator
This demodulator is suitable for the quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) modulator previously published by the same author, "Novel Low-Cost QPSK Modulator Needs No Adjustments" (electronic design, Sept. 16, 2002, p. 92). Also based on...  — Eduard Bertran

[Editorial]
A New Beginning: It's My Pleasure To Meet You And Be Part Of Your Industry
Wearing my newly donned hat of Editor-in-Chief, my goal in this column is both to introduce myself and to set the stage for creating a relationship with you. I'm honored to be working with the team here at Electronic Design—an incredible...  — Mark David

[POV: Point Of View]
Solving The Standby Power Challenge
Many electronic devices operate in low-power, functional, and nonfunctional states, ready for an externally activated signal. This is called the standby mode. These devices are always on, dissipating power even when the output power or load is zero....  — Wing Ling Cheng , et al.

[Pease Porridge]
What's All This Analog Computing Stuff, Anyhow? (Part 3)
In my last column, I showed you how to build an analog computer that simulates the motion of a car over its wheel when stimulated by a "bump" (electronic design, March 31, p. 20). Could these systems be simulated with Spice? Sure, these...  — Bob Pease

[Conference Preview]
What's Hot At ESC
THE EMBEDDED SYSTEM CONFERENCE (ESC) in San Francisco will bring a few surprises. But the real news will be the number of real products based on emerging technology, such as switch-fabric backplanes, Serial ATA, refinements on technologies like the...  — William Wong

[TechView: The Industry]
DC-DC Chip Set Crafts Compact Bus Converter
Distributed power architectures that use an intermediate voltage bus look for streamlined approaches to implement the bus converter. An International Rectifier chip set offers such a tailored solution. Built around a new primary-side...  — David G. Morrison

[TechView: The Industry]
Hot Product
THE HARDI ASIC prototyping system (HAPS) promises real-time speed, real-time debugging, and full ASIC functionality for ASIC prototypers. Version 2.1 of HAPS offers higher capacity and 50% more user I/O than earlier versions. Up to 8 million...  — David Maliniak

[TechView: Analog & Power]
PSMA Redraws Power Technology Roadmap
The Power Sources Manufacturers Association (PSMA) is updating its five-year technology roadmap for the power electronics industry. In a day-long meeting held in Miami just before the start of February's Applied Power Electronics Conference,...  — David G. Morrison

[TechView: Analog & Power]
Breaking News
> The LPS125, a 3- by 5- by 1.29-in. open-frame switcher from Astec Power, delivers 130 W with 30 CFM of airflow. It features active power-factor correction and a universal input. For more, visit...  — David G. Morrison

[TechView: Analog & Power]
ICs To Squeeze Preamp And ADC Into Electret MICs
By combining digital modulation and gain functions into a tiny low-cost IC, designers at National Semiconductor Corp. made it possible to deliver a digitized audio output from electret condenser microphones (ECMs). The new ICs will replace...  — David G. Morrison

[TechView: Communications]
One-Chip NPU Halves Cost
The PayloadPlus APP540 network processing unit (NPU) integrates four separate chips into one seriously powerful next-generation network processor. The integrated chip cuts product development costs by at least 50% compared with the nearest...  — Louis E. Frenzel

[TechView: Communications]
Board-Level Shielding Solution Solves Wireless EMI Problems
Designing RF products is hard enough, but nothing is more difficult than ferreting out RF leakage and interference in a new design. Once you figure out the problem, you invariably need a custom metal shield between one or more parts of the product....  — Louis E. Frenzel

[TechView: Components & Test]
2.5-GHz Scope Breaks Performance Ground
The 54853A 2.5-GHz Infiniium oscilloscope provides four full-bandwidth 2-Gsample/s channels. Developed and produced by Agilent Technologies, the oscilloscope can capture four full-bandwidth, real-time single-ended and differential signals off a single...  — Roger Allan

[TechView: Components & Test]
Faster Servo-Loop Enclosures Reset The Accuracy Bar
Because models in the new series of Flex-Mount commutating-motor feedback encoders use the same physical mounting as resolvers, they provide better accuracy of up to 2048 pulses/revolution and real-time feedback for faster servo loops. A user can pull...  — Roger Allan

[TechView: Components & Test]
Dual-Sided Fine-Pitch Packages Blend Performance, Cost Benefits
The high performance of array packages combined with the low cost of lead frames can be found in the dual fine-pitch no-leads DFN and enhanced DFN+ packages. Advanced Interconnect Technologies' (AIT) DFN and DFN+ permit passive-component integration...  — Roger Allan

[TechView: Components & Test]
Correction
According to Computer Access Technology's revised data, users of the company's FCTracer can independently trigger and record on eight 1- or 2-Gbit/s Fibre Channel ports (see "Analyzer Accelerates Multi-channel Monitoring, electronic design,...  — Staff

[TechView: Digital]
FPGAs Go Mobile
By requalifying its antifuse FPGA technology to operate from -40°C to 125°C, and up to 150°C junction temperatures, Actel's family of low-gate-count devices meets the low-cost and high-reliability requirements of many automotive...  — Dave Bursky

[TechView: Digital]
Breaking News
> The SCS3015 full-function timing signal generator helps simplify the internal timing design of Sonet/synchronous-digital-hierarchy network devices like routers and asynchronous-transfer-mode switches. Implemented within an Actel ProASIC FPGA by...  — Dave Bursky

[TechView: Digital]
Hot Product
WITH A FULLY REVAMPED internal architecture, the TM8000 processor from Transmeta can execute up to eight instructions per clock. This represents a significant performance improvement over Transmeta's previous Crusoe CPUs. The processor also offers...  — Dave Bursky

[TechView: EDA]
Tool Reveals SoC Hot Spots
With system-on-a-chip (SoC) process geometries shrinking below 100 nm and supply voltages falling to 1 V and less, dynamic full-chip power integrity becomes harder to verify and achieve. Apache's Tomahawk-SDL takes on power-grid design and...  — David Maliniak

[TechView: EDA]
Virtual Prototyping Makes Its Way To FPGAs
Today's FPGAs offer densities of 10 million gates and clock speeds of 400 MHz. Thus, ASIC design starts are trending down while FPGA design starts are on the rise. What's missing is an EDA tool flow for FPGAs that brings some of the advantages of...  — David Maliniak

[TechView: EDA]
PSL Gains Support
> TRANSEDA'S VN-PROPERTY property checker and analyzer now supports Accellera's Property Specification Language (PSL, formerly known as IBM Sugar). For details, visit www.transeda.com. > ON THE HEELS of its acquisition of...  — David Maliniak

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
Silent Java
Java has gone the way of C and C++. It's mainstream, ubiquitous, and silent. Okay, it's not completely silent, but well below most people's radar. Java announcements and standards are being approved all the time. Yet for the most part, these are not...  — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
Will The Real-Time Java Please Stand Up?
The first commercial implementation of the Real-Time Specification for Java is now available from TimeSys. The standard's importance is indicated by its Java Specification Request, JSR-1, on the Java Community Process Web site, www.jcp.org....  — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
Serial ATA Hard-Disk Drive Targets Embedded Servers
Look for Serial ATA drives to go into servers and high-performance embedded applications. Desktop and typical embedded applications will follow suit, but only when Serial ATA motherboards become more common. The 36.7-Gbyte Western Digital (WD) Raptor...  — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
MIDP 2.0: A Matter Of Trust
Targeting MIDP mobile devices like cell phones and PDAs, the MIDP 1.0 specification provided a starting point for MIDlets (MIDP application packages). But basic security and user-interface support limited MIDlet use. MIDP 2.0 solves these problems by...  — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
Java Development Tools Speed MIDlet Creation
Java development tools continue to steadily improve, as does compiler and interpreter performance. Most major Java development packages include support for J2ME and MIDP. There is, of course, Sun Microsystems' SunONE (Open Net Environment) Studio...  — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
Modeling Tool Links Large Teams
The new Statemate 3.2 modeling system developed by iLogix adds hyperlinked documents and Web publishing, along with a host of new improvements designed to enhance large project support. For example, the link to Telelogic's...  — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
uClinux Supports Intel IXP425
SnapGear released a version of the GPL, royalty-free uClinux and tool chain for the Intel Xscale-based IXP425. The operating system works with RTLinux (www.fmslabs.com) and RTAI (www.aero.polimi.it/~rtai/) if real-time support is...  — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
MCU Simplifies Motor Control
Developing electric motor-control applications tends to be difficult. Microchip's flash-based PIC18Fxx39 family of microcontrollers (MCUs) should change that tune, though. The family's Programmable Motor Processor Technology (ProMPT) motor control...  — William Wong

[Embedded in Electronic Design]
Linux Platform Used For GNU Tools
More vendors are moving their development platforms onto Linux as the open-source operating system's popularity continues to rise. Green Hills Software announced that its Multi Integrated Development Environment is now available for...  — William Wong

[Letters]
TiVo Success Story: Not A Hit With Everyone
Dear Editor: Thanks for the interesting article on TiVo ["The TiVo Box Redefines Television Viewing," Feb. 3, p. 41]. As you say, it is a consumer electronics success story, but let me tell you the two big reasons I won't ever have one...  — Various

[Product Report]
Non-Isolated DC-DC Converters Provide Many POL Power Options
Because they're smaller and less expensive, non-isolated point-of-load (POL) dc-dc converters are supplanting venerable brick-style isolated dc-dc converters for generating the array of voltages required by today's pc boards. And because their small...  — Lisa Fakhry

[New Products]

• 50-A Latching Power Relay Handles 12,500 VA  — Lisa Fakhry

• Surface-Mount DIP Switches Cut Size In Half Without Sacrifice  — Lisa Fakhry

• Induction Motor Softstarters Eschew High-Inrush Currents  — Lisa Fakhry

• Three-And Five-Slot Chassis Tout Rack-Mount Flanges  — Lisa Fakhry

• USB Power Manager Quickens Battery Charging Time  — Lisa Fakhry

• Supply Outputs 50 A From Voltages Down To 1.5 V  — Lisa Fakhry

• Test Kit Heightens Accuracy Of Temperature Measurements  — Lisa Fakhry

• Versatile Probes Feature Unique Adjustable Tip  — Lisa Fakhry

• Differential Probe Pushes Bandwidth Beyond 3.5 GHz  — Lisa Fakhry

• DVI Analyzer Tests Signal Quality From Any Video Source Or Cable  — Lisa Fakhry

• Digital Test System Gets Speed Bump From Clocks  — Lisa Fakhry

• 0.01%-Accurate Digital Manometer Series Covers 1-To 3000-kPa Range  — Lisa Fakhry

• CAD Translation Software Expands File Compatibility  — Lisa Fakhry

• IDE Enhances Synthesis For Next-Generation FPGA Designs  — Lisa Fakhry





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