[Technology Report] Internet Appliances: Software Frameworks Are The Key
Internet appliances differ from many embedded products because Internet appliances require connectivity. But it takes more than network hardware and TCP/IP stacks to make a successful Internet appliance. Application connectivity provided by software...
—
William Wong
[Technology Report] DRAM Derby Heads For The Stretch
DRAM means cheap, standardized memory. We need lots of DRAM to feed our faster processors and ever-expanding network infrastructure and devices. Unfortunately, cheap memory usually means a standard DRAM form accepted by the industry. And that's not...
—
Ray Weiss
[Product Innovation] Single Instrument Analyzes Protocols And Logic
System designers today must deal with complex buses and equally complex bus-signaling protocols. This often requires using separate instruments, each optimized for either logic analysis or protocol analysis. But advances in bus operating speeds and...
—
Dave Bursky
[Ideas For Design] Low-Cost VHF Inductors Use Nylon Toroids
Toroidal inductors can be used in passive-filter and equalizer circuits in the VHF range. Although SAW filters have taken over many bandpass filter applications, LC low-pass and high-pass filters are still viable. When inductance values...
—
Contributing Author
[Editorial] Engineering Education: Who's Teaching The Teachers?
Today's advances in technology that we almost take for granted are the result of hard work, fortuitous discoveries, and innovative thinking. But the accelerated pace of the industry requires that designers rapidly acquire the knowledge and know-how...
—
Dave Bursky
[Pease Porridge] Bob's Mailbox
Dear Bob: I have a question for you. Can you give a simple description of the differences between commercial, industrial, and military temperature grades of the same chip? Are they the same silicon, just with looser specs for the...
—
Bob Pease
[Viewpoint] Do We Need Another Spice? Yes, And Here's Why
Analog circuit simulation has been inseparable from analog IC design. Spice simulators are the only way to test circuitry prior to integration onto a chip. Furthermore, the Spice simulation permits measurements of currents and voltages that are...
—
Contributing Author
[Editor's Notebook] Bipolar Is Not Only Alive, It's Even Quite Healthy
With the rate at which CMOS process technology has been expanding on all fronts during the last 20 years, older bipolar technology seems to be on its way out. CMOS devices are everywhere—in analog, digital, and even the RF domain. Some CMOS...
—
Ashok Bindra
[The Design Factory] Consensus Conspires To Produce Bad Designs
Once upon a time, the Universal Spaghetti Sauce Company's management began using cross-functional teams to design new spaghetti sauces. Supersauce was the first team to use this approach. Its sad story started when it met to develop a specification...
—
Don Reinertsen
[Letters] Letters
They're Knot Fooling Around I read Bob Pease's article with great interest ["What's All This Knot Stuff, Anyhow? (Part 1)," March 5, p. 142]. I have always liked a really good knot. Loading the ol' xmas tree...
—
Various
[40 Years Ago] Simulating Nine Common Nonlinearities
Analog simulation of discontinuous nonlinearities associated with electronic and electromechanical components is becoming a necessity. It is difficult to take advantage of an analog computer in control systems design unless the nonlinearities in the...
—
Steve Scrupski
[40 Years Ago] Strategic Air Command Gets $15-Million Data Processor
A $15-million data-processing system called Finder has been delivered to the Air Force Strategic Air Command. Developed by Melpar, Falls Church, Va., under subcontract from Convair, Fort Worth, the system can correlate and analyze military data,...
—
Steve Scrupski
[Forefront] High-Tech Measurement Strikes America's Favorite Pastime
Strike three! Yer out!" Common at Major League Baseball games, a better call when high-tech measurement is up at the plate might be "you're in!" The computerized Umpire Information System (UIS) is set to smack Major League Baseball into the...
—
Lisa Eccles
[Forefront] Lightweight Fuel Processor Powers Future Soldier System
Soldiers will be carrying more than guns, rations, and letters from home onto future battlefields. They'll also have heads-up tactical displays, laser range finders, thermal weapons sights, and global positioning systems. But all of this high-tech...
—
Lisa Eccles
[Forefront] Industry Tools Up For Array Packaging
Rising demand for array packaging helped boost sales of semiconductor packaging and assembly equipment by 81% last year, according to a report by Gartner Dataquest, Stamford, Conn. With customers in Asia and the Pacific purchasing 60% of the...
—
David G. Morrison
[Forefront] Tool Suite Promotes Smarter Component Selection
As a major components distributor, Arrow Electronics of Mel-ville, N.Y., has extensive access to data about the component supply chain. This data is now available to customers through Arrow Digital Solutions, a Web-enabled, subscription-based tool...
—
David G. Morrison
[Forefront] San Jose And Seattle Top High-Tech City Survey
Are you looking for some new opportunities? Then pack your bags and head for the Rockies! If high salaries are all you need, grab an umbrella and check out Seattle. Naturally, computer workers looking for some talented colleagues will find them in...
—
Richard Gawel
[Forefront] Configurable DSP Core Offers Instruction Parallelism
Designers looking to incorporate embedded DSPs in their SoCs have at least three options. They could try a general-purpose fixed DSP even though it may not particularly suit their application. Or, they could opt for one of the application-oriented...
—
David Maliniak
[Forefront] DoE Invests $6M In Photovoltaics Research
Hoping to reduce the cost of solar electricity, the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory has awarded $6 million in grants to fund advanced photovoltaics research at 11 universities and five companies. These researchers...
—
David G. Morrison
[Forefront] LED Vendor Eyes Brighter Future For Blue Chips
Uniroyal Optoelectronics of Sarasota, Fla., has significantly boosted the light output of its blue LED chips. Some recently shipped test chips have achieved brightness levels ranging from 3.5 to 4 mW, equalling the current industry-best performance,...
—
David G. Morrison
[Forefront] From The Labs
A transmission algorithm developed at the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory could ease the transition to high-definition television (HDTV). By compressing the HDTV data stream, the algorithm allows HDTV and standard...
—
Staff
[Forefront] Company Wire
Microsoft Corp. has allied with Internet services company NTT Communications Corp. NTT will provide net access for the new Xbox game console. Microsoft will offer services using NTT Communications' asymmetric dedicated subscriber line...
—
Staff
[Forefront] Cross-Platform Tools Ease Driver Generation
Generating cross-platform device drivers gets easier with WinDriver 5.0 and KernelDriver 5.0 from Jungo Inc. These cross-platform tools help create device drivers and kernel-level drivers for Solaris, Windows 2000/NT, Windows ME/98/95, Windows CE,...
—
William Wong
[Forefront] Ribbon Connector Cuts Assembly Costs
A novel insulation displacement connector (IDC) for terminating discrete wires or multiconductor ribbon cables also cuts assembly costs. Ranoda Electronics' EECOM-IDC uses the company's EECOM connector technology on the circuit-board (bottom) side...
—
Roger Allan
[Forefront] Scalable Proof Engine Verifies Sequential Systems
Temporal (also known as sequential) logic can now be verified in addition to combinational logic, thanks to Prover Technology's Tempo proof engine. This next-generation product complements Prover 4.0, which only verifies combinational logic....
—
David Maliniak
[Forefront] 1.5-A Buck Regulator Withstands 60-V Input
The LT1766 step-down 200-kHz switching regulator IC from Linear Technology features a peak switch current of 15 A. Able to withstand from 5.5 to 60 V of input, it achieves a high efficiency of up to 90% under a wide range of loads. Unlike...
—
Roger Allan
[Forefront] Integrated LNAs And PAs Serve As Drop-In Replacements
By combining microwave design expertise with thin-film-on-glass technology, Intarsia has fabricated highly integrated low-noise-amplifier (LNA) and power-amplifier (PA) modules for broadband wireless access and cellular applications. Designed as...
—
Ashok Bindra
[Careers] Assessing An Employer's Financial Health
It's not only the dot-coms that are laying off thousands of professionals. Established technology companies such as Lucent, Nortel, and General Electric have also announced layoffs that total in the tens of thousands. Telecom companies have suffered...
—
Peter Varhol
