[Engineering Feature] Cautiously Optimistic Exhibitors Revisit ESC In 2007
Don't expect the same old stuff at the 2007 Embedded Systems Conference. This year's show
will be virtually bursting at the seams, with
many vendors setting up shop outside the
main exhibit hall. Vendors seem to be
cautiously optimistic, now that issues like the European Union's Restrictions on Hazardous Substances (RoHS) are being addressed...
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William Wong
[Technology Report] DSL Dominates Broadband Worldwide
We often take high-speed Internet service for granted. Today, it's easy to send e-mails with huge attachments, catch up on the latest music, or watch the hottest videos all instantly and online. Yet these broadband connections aren't as prevalent in the U.S. as they are in some parts of Asia and Europe, despite the fact that the technology is here to make it happen. High capital-expenditure investments, ruthless competition, and self-serving government regulations have limited...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Leapfrog: Industry First] Six-Channel, Low-Power IC Makes Sense Of Sensing Interfaces
The cost-competitive climate of the consumer, medical, industrial, and automotive markets has perpetuated a marked rise in sensor applications, prompting greater use of "deeply embedded" functions. As a result, the user hardly ever or even never interfaces with the embedded function, which is very tightly coupled with the environment around it. In many of these applications, high-level code reconfigurability is less important than lower costs. A full-blown microcontroller...
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Roger Allan
[Leapfrog: First Look] Ferroelectric Liquid-Crystal Tech Delivers Cost-Effective Holographic Storage
Holographic storage isn't new. Already, it has found its way into specialized areas that require massive amounts of storage and aren't so strangled by cost restrictions. With dropping device costs and shrinking system size, it's set to take on a broader range of applications. Another reason for this rosy outlook is that holographic storage, as well as projection systems, can now take advantage of ferroelectric liquid-crystal (FLC) technology. Displaytech's SLM-1216-1 module...
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William Wong
[Design View / Design Solution] Micro Means Modularity In Telecom
In the summer of 2006, the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG) approved the MicroTCA telecommunications architecture, a small-form-factor platform addressing tight size and cost constraints. MicroTCA takes advantage of mezzanine cards developed for the AdvancedTCA platform by eliminating the need for carrier cards. What results is a scalable low-cost platform for building next-generation packet networks. MicroTCA is the latest generation of open-architecture platforms...
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Stuart Jamieson
[Ideas For Design] Lead-Acid Battery Charger Becomes A Subfunction In A Microcontroller
This design implements a charger for a lead-acid battery as a subfunction in a microcontroller whose main function can be any more complex task. Furthermore, the MCU gets its power from the same battery. The charging process is so slow and uses so little processor time that it doesn't jeopardize the MCU's primary task. The goal of the circuit (...
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Vasilj Davidovic
, et al.
[Ideas For Design] Drive Smart Cards With A Low-Cost MCU's UART
The growing need for security and enhanced functionality in the banking, identification, and telecom markets has increased the use of smart cards worldwide, to the detriment of the low-security magnetic-stripe cards. However, the development of the hardware and firmware needed for proper communications in a system based on a smart card poses new challenges to designers. Unfortunately, only some high-end microcontrollers have a dedicated UART (universal...
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Carlos Cossio
[POV: Point Of View] Performance Is A Plus, But Debugging Dogs Developers
Developers are looking to new solutions and approaches to test and debug increasingly complex software without compromising quality or schedules. The old methodologies, based around debugging and testing the software on physical hardware, are no longer adequate. Adding urgency to the quest for new tools is the transition to multicore processors, which allow for better computing performance while keeping power consumption low. However much they add to computing performance,...
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Paul McLellan
[Editorial] Get Kids Involved In Electronics Before We Become Extinct
I just finished reading through dozens of your responses to Communications/Test Editor Lou Frenzel's online commentary, "Whatever Happened To The Electronics Hobbyist?" Lou really struck a chord, as so many of you have followed a parallel path from hobbyist to amateur radio afficionado to electronics engineer. You fondly recall the good old days and recount some of your favorite hands-on...
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Mark David
[Pease Porridge] What's All This Capacitor Leakage Stuff, Anyhow?
We all know that capacitors have a shunt resistance (leakage) and that leakage resistance should be pretty easy to measure, right? Wrong! I've measured a lot of capacitors for short-term soakage (dielectric absorption) per www.national.com/rap/Application/0,1570,28,00.html. After the short-term soakage stops, it's possible (not easy) to measure the leakage. For example, if you charge a...
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Bob Pease
[TechView: The Industry] Shift To Digital Improves Aircraft Early Warning Systems
Military aircraft depend on analog technology to detect enemy ground radar. Analog circuits can hold a multitude of continuous values across any given range. But this continuous-scale analog implementation can be difficult to calibrate and maintain in radar warning receivers. So, scientists at the Georgia Tech Research Institute have turned to the digital domain, which doesn't need calibration and is more robust. Their digital crystal video receiver (DCVR) is part of...
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Richard Gawel
[TechView: The Industry] Build A Color Printer For The Cost Of A B&W Model
Static electricity can destroy chips, but it may also lead to cheaper and smaller color printers. Lawrence Schein, a former IBM and Xerox researcher, believes that electrostatic technology pioneered by Ben Franklin over 200 years ago could be used to create color laser printers that cost less and are up to 70% smaller than current models. "This is the biggest innovation in laser printing in many years," he says. Harnessing static electricity for text and image reproduction is...
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John Edwards
[TechView: Analog & Power] Amp Designers Find Novel Ways To Use Charge Pumps
Internal charge pumps are fairly common in op amps, where they're used to achieve a "rail to rail" output swing. Now, they're being used in other amplifier applications to provide output swings well beyond the range of the supply voltage as well as to solve some challenging design problems. Maxim Integrated Products now offers a pair of video amps and an audio power amp that illustrate this trend. The MAX9509/9510 video amps operate on 1.8 V yet deliver the 2-V p-p...
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Don Tuite
[TechView: Analog & Power] Self-Contained POL Modules Hit The Mainstream
More point-of-load (POL) dc-dc converter modules with internal inductors and FETs are hitting the market. The idea is to make designing with switching regulators no more challenging than using old-fashioned three-terminal linear regulators. Linear Technology's LTM4601, LTM4602, and LTM4603 include inductor, power MOSFETs, dc-dc controller, compensation circuitry, and I/O bypass capacitors and have current ratings from 6 to 12 A. Each device comes in a 15- by 15- by 8-mm...
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Don Tuite
[TechView: Digital] Design Tip: Create An FPGA-Based Design
It's easy to implement a video and image processing (VIP) upconversion design by using hardware interface components and libraries of parameterizable hardware processing functions. These functions can be used to perform video functions like color space conversion, gamma correction, chroma resampling, deinterlacing, alpha blended mixing, 2D finite-impulse-response (FIR) filtering, 2D median filtering, scaling, and line buffer compilation. All of the video processing required...
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Tam Do
[TechView: Digital] 56-nm MLC NAND Writes 10 Mbytes/s
Toshiba's latest 8- and 16-Gbit multi-level-cell (MLC) NAND flash memory devices offer a write performance of about 10 Mbytes/s. Also, up to 4314 bytes may be written at one time. Available now, the 8-Gbit devices cost $12 and the 16-Gbit devices cost $22, both in sample quantities. Toshiba America Electronic Components CHIPS.TOSHIBA.COM...
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Daniel Harris
[TechView: EDA] SystemVerilog Verification Reaches For Higher Productivity
In its continuing efforts to harness the considerable verification power of SystemVerilog, Synopsys has rolled out extensions to the verification methodology spelled out in its System Verilog Verification Methodology Manual (VMM). The three components, VMM Planner, VMM Applications, and VMM Automation, are intended to make it easy for verification engineers to develop and deploy VMM (...
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David Maliniak
[TechView: EDA] Sequential Power Optimization Tool Pinpoints Clock-Gating Opportunities At RTL
By applying sequential analysis techniques at the register-transfer level (RTL), Calypto Design Systems' PowerPro CG identifies microarchitectural changes that result in a lower-power circuit. According to Calypto, initial customer designs have seen power reductions of up to 60% without any impact on functionality, area, or performance. By analyzing the sequential behavior of synthesizable RTL designs across multiple clock cycles, PowerPro CG identifies chip regions that can be...
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David Maliniak
[TechView: Wireless] ICs Keep AM/FM Radio On Top Of Broadcast Media
Who would've thought that the oldest technology in electronics, analog radio, would still be a big success today? Yet AM and FM continue to thrive despite digital HD radio's availability throughout the U.S. Now, Silicon Labs' latest radio chips support and even enhance AM/FM's viability. The Si4730 and Si4731 support the worldwide AM and FM bands, 520 to 1720 kHz and 76 to 108 MHz, respectively. These single-chip radios only need an external AM antenna coil and capacitor, a...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[TechView: Wireless] High-Linearity Mixers, Modulators, And Demodulators Improve Basestation Performance
The most critical circuits in any radio design are the mixers and IQ modulators/demodulators as they establish the basic specifications for the entire product. Linear Technology's LT5557 down-converting mixer, LT5571 quadrature modulator, and LT5575 I/Q demodulator step up to tackle these challenges. The LT5557 targets 3G and WiMAX basestation receivers, power-amplifier (PA) linearization circuits, and wireless local-area network (WLAN) products. It incorporates a...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Modules Combine Build And Buy Decision
Complete custom designs are economical for large volumes or high-priced solutions, so the decision to build or buy usually isn't an either/or discussion. The plethora of different boards and module standards as well as the corresponding vendor support shows how important buying is to the embedded designer. Many board standards also are combined with module standards. AdvancedTCA, MicroTCA, CompactPCI, VME, and VXS can take advantage of plug-in modules and mezzanine standards...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Eclipse-Based Module Kit For $99
Netburner's Eclipse Ethernet Development Kit is based on the Mod5270 Core Module, which features a 32-bit, 147-MHz Freescale ColdFire processor with 512 kbytes of flash and 2 Mbytes of external SDRAM. The module has 10/100 Ethernet, 47 digital I/O, three UARTs, I2C, SPI, four-channel DMA, four 32-bit timers, and four programmable interrupt timers. The Eclipse IDE with CDT (C/C++ Development Tool) is augmented with the uC/OS RTOS, a TCP/IP stack, and a Web server. The kit...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Module Builds On Lantronix XPort
Mosaic Industries' compact (2 by 2.5 in.) Ethersmart Wildcard module links a Lantronix 10/100-MHz Ethernet-based XPort (see "Ultra-Small Server Web-Enables Any System") with other Wildcard modules like the 16-MHz Freescale 68HC11F1-based QCard Controller. The host can power down the XPort to conserve power. The Ethersmart Wildcard costs $140. ...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Off-The-Shelf Chips Take The Semi-Custom Route
Selecting support chips is a bit easier with QuickLogic's ArcticLink. The chip is based on QuickLogic's FGPA technology, but it employs a number of fixed logic blocks such as the USB 2.0 On-The-Go (OTG) and storage interface block (see the figure). The other blocks can be customized...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] 32-Bit Processors Proliferate
The 32-bit microcontroller class spans an ever-widening performance envelope, as Freescale and Renesas have announced chips at opposite ends of the spectrum. Freescale's MPC8544E (see table) targets networking applications with its pair of 1Gbit Ethernet interfaces. The PCI...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] IDE Gets Snappy
Genuitec's latest incarnation (see figure) of its MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench Java and J2EE integrated development environment (IDE) adds new simple non-integrated applications (SNAPs) based on the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) (see "...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Drive Controller Can Do CAN
Up to 127 Performance Motion Devices ION Drive systems can be connected using the systems' controller-area network (CAN) interface to create complex, multi-axis motor control systems (see figure). Each unit provides an output capability of up to 15 A peak and 500 W at 56 V. A...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Microkernel RTOS Adds Wear-Level Flash Memory Manager
Microkernel RTOS Adds WearLevel Flash Memory Manager Green Hills Software's �µ-velOSity 2.2 small-footprint real-time operating system (RTOS) uses as little as 1600 bytes of program memory and 1000 bytes of RAM. Also, it now includes a wear-leveling, fault-tolerant flash management system for flash memory. This can be used in conjunction with µï¿½-File, a PC-compatible file system that supports the POSIX, C standard I/O, and C++ I/O streams interfaces. The OS supports...
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William Wong
[Basics Of Design] Streamlining Heterogeneous System Design
Complex homogeneous systems are common in server environments that use symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP) or clusters of similar platforms. Yet complex embedded systems frequently incorporate different and even unique platforms. When it comes to designing systems and software for heterogenous systems, designers often need a multitude of tools designed for each platform within the system. Reducing the support software and number of tools can simplify the problem as well as...
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William Wong
[Design FAQs] Multimedia Automotive Networks Sponsored by: FUJITSU
What network technologies are used in the automotive space? Automotive networks typically consist of a hierarchy of networks, starting with local interconnect network (LIN), controller-area network (CAN), and FlexRay for system control and multimedia networks such as IDB-1394 and Media Oriented System Transport (MOST). The differences in network speed are obvious (...
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William Wong
[Engineering Essentials] Communication And Common Sense Rule In PCB Design
Like many other commodity items that go into system hardware, printed-circuit boards (PCBs) have evolved significantly over the years. Since their invention circa 1936 by Paul Eisler, an Austrian engineer working in England on radio sets, PCBs have served as the central nervous system for most electronics assemblies. They took over when circuit complexity became too much for earlier point-to-point construction techniques. Along the way, PCBs became substantially more...
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David Maliniak
