[Engineering Feature] Serving Up Multimedia In The Digital Home
As multimedia content grows exponentially throughout the home, designers face mounting consumer demands for storing, massaging, and sharing this content. Lots of work has already been done in these areas and standards abound, but naturally more is in the pipeline. For those whose vision is a central repository of digital content on a system such as a media server (see the HP MediaSmart Server shown on the cover), thereâ??s a need to display that content...
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Joseph Desposito
[Technology Report] Multicore Projects Mean Multiple Choices
When it comes to multiprocessing, whatâ??s good for the hardware goose is not necessarily good for the software gander. The ideal hardware architecture for a multicore design is a heterogeneous (asymmetric) single instruction-set architecture (ISA) that essentially includes both high- and low-complexity cores to achieve lower power and higher throughput, somewhat mitigating Amdahlâ??s Law1. Now imagine that Amdahlâ??s Law (used to find a systemâ??s maximum...
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Daniel Harris
[Leapfrog: First Look] 32-Bit MCU Blends Together Old And New
Microchip needed to move into the 32-bit space, which was encroaching on its 8- and 16- bit market. But the company didnâ??t follow the line of ARM adopters. Instead, it looked at the silicon landscape and chose MIPS Technologiesâ?? M4K core to herald its entry into this competitive space (Fig. 1). It has lots of company, too. Almost all of ARMâ??s licensees are adopting its Cortex-M3 with standard parts for...
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William Wong
[Design View / Design Solution] Designing A Multi-Gbps Memory Interface Requires Scrutiny
Popular consumer electronics products like gaming consoles, digital TVs (DTVs), and PCs offer more features and greater performance with each successive product generation. The data-intensive nature of these products tightly links the capability of their DRAM memory interfaces with the ability of the product to support larger feature sets and greater performance. Multi-gigabit-per-second (multi-Gbps) memory-interface architectures enable these...
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Scott Best
[Ideas For Design] Consider Thermal Dissipation In Class D Audio Power Amplifiers
Designers of multimedia products must provide high-quality audio functions, including high-output speaker modes. This places greater demand on the systemâ??s audio amplifiers. Linear amplifier efficiency is about 50%, so a small increase in output power comes at the cost of a large increase in current consumptionâ??and excessive heat dissipationâ?? which typically requires bulky heatsinks. These thermal considerations are...
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Jihad Hammoud
[Ideas For Design] Input Clock Adjusts Frequency Of Digital Ramp Generator
Itâ??s not always easy to design a ramp generator whose ramping frequency can be changed without manipulation of capacitors or inductors. Many ramp circuit designs are available, but they may not be flexible when it comes to varying the rise time. The digital ramp generator circuit in the figure, however, can vary the ramp frequency from less than 1 Hz to about 30 kHz just by varying...
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Nick Ierfino
[POV: Point Of View] Multicore Processors Revolutionize Real-Time Embedded Systems
The proliferation of multicore processors has done more than provide a boost in processing power to server applications. Multicore chips also pose the opportunity to revolutionize how embedded systems are constructed. Developers now can host real-time operating systems (RTOSs) and general-purpose operating systems (GPOSs) on separate cores of a single multicore processor to create systems that once required multiple hardware platforms. The benefit is a reduction in ...
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Paul Fischer
[Editorial] Stuff Your Stocking With Holiday Goodies This Season
I wonder how many people will buy presents that incorporate some kind of MEMS device this season. There are a lot of choices out there. At the recent MEMS Congress in San Diego, keynote speaker Philippe Khan of Borland fame noted that the Apple iPhone and Nintendo Wii have brought MEMS into the mainstream. His current company, Fullpower (www.fullpower.com), seems all set to take advantage of the rapidly growing MEMS sensor...
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Joseph Desposito
[Pease Porridge] Bob's Mailbox
Bob: While my full-time job is writing for Electronic Design, I still teach part-time and work on an NSF grant that is attempting to update the electronics curricula in community colleges. From my observations in my own college and across the country, most curricula are out of date with what is going on in the industry. (True, but not disastrously bad. We canâ??t ask that education for techs or for EEs be really up to date. That has almost always...
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Bob Pease
[TechView: The Industry] New Year's Eve Ball Celebrates Its Centennial By Going Green
As the stroke of midnight approaches on December 31, the throng of revelers in New York Cityâ??s Times Square and billions of TV viewers worldwide will count down and gaze at a descending, brilliantly lit ball to mark the new yearâ??no surprise there. However, the redesigned ball may raise eyebrows as it shines twice as bright as last yearâ??s ball, using half the power.. With the tradition hitting the century mark, the eventâ??s organizers thought the ball ...
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Roger Engelke
[TechView: Analog & Power] Jury Hands Power-One A Victory: What Does It Mean To Engineers?
On November 15, a Texas jury decided the lawsuit brought by Power-One against Artesyn Technologies (now part of Emerson Network Power) in 2005. The decision has ramifications for engineers who design power systems that step down a bus voltage at a â??point of loadâ?? such as an FPGA or processor. Immediately after the verdict, both companies issued positive statements to the press. â??The jury found both of the two asserted patents to be valid and found that...
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Don Tuite
[TechView: Digital] Terabyte Bandwidth Initiative Allows Signals To Board At Any Station And Still Arrive On Time
Christmas is coming early for system designers who want up to a terabyte of bandwidth as well as simplified pc-board layout. As part of its Terabyte Bandwidth Initiative (TBI), Rambus responded with a neat ideaâ??place more data bits on a given pin for a given clock transition than the typical one-bitper- pin per transition. The company also has devised a technology that allows for mismatches in trace length. For example, the DDR3 protocol allows for...
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Daniel Harris
[TechView: EDA] Power Comes To The Fore In FPGA Design Environment
Power is a chief concern for chip designers, and those who implement their circuitry on FPGAs are no exception. Pressure is mounting to follow the crowd toward low power, but FPGA designers need comprehensive design flows geared toward achieving their power-budget goals. Actel has stepped up with version 8.1 of its Libero Integrated Development Environment (IDE), which combines a pushbutton design flow and GUI wizards with power-driven layout...
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David Maliniak
[TechView: EDA] Function Library Smoothes Path For Matlab-To-C Synthesis
For many design teams, the MathWorksâ?? Matlab language has become the standard for signal-processing algorithm development. Likewise, C is the preferred vehicle for handing off those algorithms to downstream developers. But while Matlab functions are critical for algorithm development, those functions, which are expressed in M-code, have no equivalent Csource code for handoff. Translation of the functions from M-code to C is a time-consuming, manual job. And,...
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David Maliniak
[TechView: Wireless] Low-Power SoC Improves Wi-Fi Battery Life For Sensor Networks
When implementing a wireless sensor network, most engineers look to ZigBee or other alternatives from CrossBow, Dust Networks, and Z-Wave. Wi-Fi enjoys widespread use, familiarity, and low cost. But its network topology and high power consumption usually cause it to be dismissed early as a viable option. The GS1010 from GainSpan Corp., though, targets sensor networks. This 802.11 chipâ??s very low power consumption can provide up to 10 years of AA...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[TechView: Wireless] Battery-Free Wireless Module Empowers Mesh Sensor Networks
Wireless sensor devices are cable-free, but they still require a battery that will occasionally need replacement. While transceivers with lower power consumption have boosted battery life in some products, their batteries ultimately will die and require service. The GreenPeak Lime CM-08 module solves that problem for sensor monitoring and control devices (see the figure). Developed by GreenPeak Technologies, it...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[TechView: Wireless] Wireless Laptop Access Solution Uses 3G Technologies
Laptop users typically access the Internet via Wi-Fi and a nearby hotspot or access point. Alternatively, they may have a plug-in USB device or PC card for GSM/EDGE/WCDMA or CDMA. Soon, they also will be able to get embedded Internet access and e-mail from any of their nearby 3G cellular services thanks to Qualcommâ??s Gobi system. Mixing Qualcommâ??s MDM1000 chip set, related software, and APIs, Gobi supports the most popular and...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Engineering Essentials] Leveraging FPGAs In Portable Storage Applications
To stay â??connected and in touch,â?? consumers increasingly rely on their portable devices, ranging from smart phones, personal media players, and digital cameras to emerging solutions like electronic notebooks. Todayâ??s handhelds serve multiple roles and offer various functions that translate into a host of storage, feature, and technology challenges depending on the end application. At the same time, portable designers are...
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Wendy Lockhart
[EEPN In Electronic Design] LEDs Get Brighter And Brighter Still
Most components are on a quest to become the marketâ??s smallest part or consume the least power. Yet LEDs strive to become the brightest, and with good reason. Nowadays, LEDs are called upon to do more than act as function and alert indicators. They can replace incandescent and fluorescent fixtures as well as automotive headlights and signals, plus tackle backlighting chores. So, the brighter the better. Of particular importance are those ...
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Mat Dirjish
[EEPN In Electronic Design] Batteries Up, AMOLEDs Down, And Camera Modules Shrink
According to an October 2007 report by industry analyst firm NanoMarkets, the market for thin-film and printable batteries will generate revenues of $5.6 billion by the year 2015. Ultra-light and flexible, these power components feature customizable shapes, making them desirable for use in emerging portable electronics as well as viable for adding functionality to existing products like smartcards, radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, and sensor...
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Mat Dirjish
