[Engineering Feature] Objectifying The Golden Ear
If you're designing the analog portions of audio systems, it helps to know two things: what your listeners expect, and how you're going to objectively demonstrate that you're delivering on those expectations. Yet it's difficult to relate engineering measurements to the subjective experience of hearing. The idea that hearing isn't a linear continuum started to crystallize for me in June. National Semiconductor wanted to show me some products it had optimized for the ...
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Don Tuite
[Technology Report] Industry Ready To Sign On To Statistical Timing Signoff
Until recently, statistical static timing analysis (SSTA) had been the darling of EDA-centric technical conferences and symposia for several years. At those conferences, SSTA was touted as "The Answer" to the most vexing problem facing the semiconductor industry: the inability of traditional corner-based signoff methodologies to keep up with the effects of process variability on yields and performance. But, alas, the hype surrounding SSTA is...
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David Maliniak
[Leapfrog: First Look] 10G Ethernet PCI Express Adapters Go Virtual
Ethernet continues to reign atop the list of high-speed interconnects, even as it moves into the 10-Gbit/s space (see "High-Speed Serial Technology Drives Board Interconnects" at www.electronicdesign.com, ED Online 15348). Combine this with the emerging PCI Express I/O virtualization, and the result is Intel's new 82598 10-Gbit/s Ethernet controller and its cousin, which uses the 1-Gbit/s 82575 chip (see "I/O Virtualization," ED Online 15358). ...
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William Wong
[Design View / Design Solution] Enhance Signal-Quality Analysis On High-Speed Serial Channels
Getting error-free data across a high-speed serial interface can be a challenge, whether that interface is a Gigabit Ethernet physical layer connecting a client to a router, or a low-voltage differential signaling port sending high-definition video content to a monitor. However, by determining the quality of the serial channel through bit-error-rate (BER) testing to establish the error rate, and using eye patterns to provide a visual representation of the stability and margins of the...
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Zeeshawn Shameem
[Ideas For Design] High-Power White LED Driver Runs Battery-Operated Portable Lighting
Many people consider white LEDs to be the future of lighting. Strung together, several LEDs can replace an incandescent lamp or a compact fluorescent lamp. High-power white LEDs need a dc voltage of about 3.6 V at a current of about 350 mA to achieve full brightness, about 40 lumens. In portable applications, white LEDs are often powered by sealed lead-acid (SLA) batteries having a typical output of 12 V. The circuit shown in the figure takes this ...
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Santosh Bhandarkar
[Ideas For Design] Hardware-Based LED Blinking Control Eliminates Software Overhead
LEDs are often used on manmachine interfaces (MMIs) or device front panels to illuminate switches or backlight text information so that the user knows what the device is supposed to be doing at the time. Occasionally, the designer wants these LEDs to start blinking at a particular rate to alert the user to a condition needing attention, such as a low battery. Many devices use embedded microprocessors or microcontrollers to handle the MMI, along...
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Ken Whiteleather
[POV: Point Of View] Short-Reach 10GBaseT Cuts Power Consumption In The Data Center
As IT managers deploy new applications in the data center, bandwidth demand is outstripping capacity. Applications such as video streaming and the relentless demand for storage are pushing IT networking infrastructures beyond their limits. At the same time, IT managers are under pressure to reduce power consumption in the data center as well as the total cost of ownership (TCO). Fortunately, the next evolution of Ethernet is approaching deployment readiness. The...
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Stephan "Mike" McConnell
[Editorial] A Bag Full Of Components Graces Most Electronic Designs
As an EE, you might remember your first encounter with the components needed to build an electronic circuit or device. For me, it was an AM radio kit my uncle gave me. I still remember looking at the bag of resistors, capacitors, and other components such as the case and speaker and thinking, "Wow, that's a lot of parts." But I was used to building plastic models, which also had lots of parts, so I was confident that I could make this move into electronics. ...
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Joseph Desposito
[Pease Porridge] Bob's Mailbox
Many people wrote in about "What's All This Canyon Turn Stuff, Anyhow?" (Aug. 16, 2007, p. 16.) Some suggested the pilot should do a Chandelle, an Immelman, a Wingover, or a Hammerhead Stall. Tony Schrock suggested www.scootworks.com/rdrc/aerobat. html for illustrations of these and other maneuvers. But as the plane was fully loaded and underpowered, and the elevation was 8000 ft, and the day was...
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Bob Pease
[TechView: The Industry] DARPA Chooses Urban Challenge Semifinalists
We're down to the semifinals, and the robots are ready. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has selected the 36 teams that will move on to the next round of the 2007 Urban Challenge, scheduled for October 26-31 at the former George Air Force Base in Victorville, Calif. The top 20 teams from this national qualifying event (NQE) will then participate in the finals on November 3. The program challenges teams to develop...
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Richard Gawel
[TechView: Analog & Power] Direct-Conversion 2.4-GHz Transceiver Chips Epitomize Design Reuse
Apair of 2.4-GHz transceivers from Maxim Integrated Products exemplifies state-of-theart design reuse in RF ICs. These zero-IF, RF transceiver chips both provide an RF-to-baseband receive path, baseband-to-RF transmit path, voltage- controlled oscillator (VCO), frequency synthesizer, crystal oscillator, and baseband/ control interface. The MAX2830 adds an RF power amplifier (PA) rated at 17.1 dBm and a transceive and antenna diversity switch. It...
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Don Tuite
[TechView: Communications] USB Audio Controller Chip Speeds Skype VoIP Products To Market
One of the fastest growing Internet services is digital telephony. Better known as voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), it lets users make phone calls over the Internet rather than through their usual telephone company connection. With over 220 million subscribers worldwide, Skype is the largest VoIP service provider. In the U.S., the cable TV industry is the second major supplier of VoIP, with Vonage in second place. If you make a lot of phone calls, especially...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[TechView: Digital] Can Robots Replace Immigrant Workers On Farms?
The folks on Capitol Hill and in the White House seem determined, one way or another, to reform immigration. The likely outcome will be tighter border control and fewer immigrant workers. This leaves farmers with a rather ugly dilemma: leave some fruit in the field to rot and raise produce prices-a trend that's happening now and scaring farmers-or find an alternative harvesting method. Companies like Vision Robotics Corp. (VRC) are making the latter possible...
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Daniel Harris
[TechView: EDA] DFM-Aware Yield-Driven Router Boosts Yields As It Speeds Closure
Manufacturability is paramount as IC designers move to process nodes below 90 nm. It's bad enough that tool runtimes are significantly longer and timing closure becomes much more challenging. But then designbased yield limiters, or "gotchas," sap performance and cause yields to plummet. Tied directly to the chip layout itself, these profit killers must be designed out from the start and can't be fixed in the fab. Yet a new generation of...
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David Maliniak
[TechView: EDA] Tool Facilitates Hard-IP Quality Risk Assessments; Collaboration Puts Collected Info Online
As the first deliverable in its planned suite of IP-ecosystem tools, the Fabless Semiconductor Association (FSA) has released version 3.0 of its Hard Intellectual Property (IP) Quality Risk Assessment Tool. The tool collects information about an IP vendor, its design methodology, and the IP family under evaluation to develop a risk assessment profile across seven criteria: IP design, integration, verification, process technology, product documentation, ...
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David Maliniak
[TechView: EDA] Digital Interface Analysis Kicks Up Spice A Notch
Spice has long been a favored tool for pc-board signal-integrity signoff, but it's always possible to improve on a good thing. To that end, Synopsys and SiSoft have integrated the former's HSpice simulator with the latter's Quantum-SI tool. The combo automates the analysis of entire digital interfaces for both timing and signal integrity. Further, Quantum-SI leverages computer server farms to run HSpice's highaccuracy simulations in parallel, increasing analytical throughput....
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David Maliniak
[Engineering Essentials] Shrewd Thermal Management Helps Defeat The Heat
Despite great strides made by electronic system designers in developing products that perform sophisticated tasks, engineers may encounter performance-limiting factors beyond electronic circuitry - like thermal management. Even if good design practices and reliable components are in place, system reliability can suffer if appropriate temperature controls are not implemented. That's why circuit designers should have a basic understanding of how to manage operating...
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Sam Davis
[EEPN In Electronic Design] Components & Assemblies: We’re Picking Up Where EEPN Left Off
Some Electronic Design readers may be familiar with EE Product News, or EEPN, which covered products that design engineers might specify for their designs. Each month in print and daily online, plus a weekly email newsletter, the publication presented new products and emerging technologies in every category to help design engineers get their creations off the drawing board, into a prototype, and off to market as fast as humanly possible. Categories...
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Mat Dirjish
