[Technology Report] The Multicore Era Seeks A Parallel Paradigm
Parallel programming is hard. But debugging it is even harder. Unfortunately, taking advantage of multicore solutions like Intel’s 80-core TeraScale prototype will require some type of parallel-programming technique (Fig. 1). The first challenge is to find parallelism that can be exploited. The next is using a tool to exploit the parallelism. Another goal is bug-free code. Parallel...
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William Wong
[Leapfrog: First Look] Dueling 12-Bit ADCs Make Their Debut
The highest demand and the most vigorous competition between companies that make analog-todigital converters (ADCs) lie in the sampling range from 50 to 65 Msamples/s in 10- and 12-bit resolutions. Market demand is highest for eight- and 10-channel devices with the lowest possible power consumption per channel. In late January, within days of each other, Texas Instruments and National Semiconductor announced groundbreaking new chips for that market...
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Don Tuite
[Leapfrog: First Look] Old Ideas In New Design = Lower Power, Higher Performance
Elegant designs have always blended old and new while meeting certain criteria. In the case of VIA Technology’s Isaiah architecture, these criteria included higher performance, lower power consumption, and pin-compatibility with the company’s C7 line of x86-compatible microprocessors. The result was a chip design with twice to four times the performance within the same package and power envelope. The architecture’s execution pipeline is key to...
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William Wong
[Design View / Design Solution] Zero-Drift IA Takes The Strain Out Of Sensor Measurements
Sensor measurements typically translate physical phenomena of interest into electronic-circuit parameters such as resistance and capacitance, which can then be read with a bridge circuit. Bridge circuits produce an output voltage or current signal that is ratiometric with respect to temperature and powersupply voltages, thereby enabling the measurement system to be immune to these variables. Sensor examples can include: Thermistors for temperature...
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Prashanth Holenarsipur
[Ideas For Design] Interfacing Linear Sensors To An ADC Requires Only Basic Math
Adding “intelligence” to measurement systems has become commonplace because 8-bit microcontrollers are inexpensive and widely available, and they can be programmed in many of today’s popular higher-level languages (e.g., C and Basic). Often, the main challenge is signal- conditioning the sensor’s output into a signal-ended voltage that can fully exploit the input span of the microcontroller’s analog-to-digital converter (ADC). By using basic math and a...
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Robert F. Coughlin
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[Ideas For Design] Use "Extra" LED Driver Channel To Provide Constant-Voltage Source
LED applications are booming: backlighting for LCD TVs, projectors, and computer displays, camera flashes, and vehicle brake lights and taillights are just a few. All require constant-current LED drivers that offer a high dimming ratio, high efficiency, precise adjustable current, and low cost. To save space, some LED drivers can handle multiple strings of LEDs. For instance, the LT347drives four LED strings, totaling 100 W. If all of the driver channels aren’t...
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Hua (Walker) Bai
[Editorial] From Basic Basement Webcams To High-Tech Telepresence Suites
I ’ll admit I’m late to the webcam thing. But when my daughter-in-law suggested a webcam as a Christmas present last December, I jumped at it. She and my son live in Tennessee and I don’t get a chance to see the grandkids very much—Cal, who is two and a half years old, and Autumn, who is four months. We went to a Best Buy in the Nashville area and picked up two Microsoft LifeCams at $99 each, which I thought was a bit expensive, since I often see ...
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Joseph Desposito
[Pease Porridge] Bob's Mailbox
DEAR RAP: You answered one question for me last year (“Why are FETs so expensive in India?”), and I now have another. How does a bipolar op-amp-based non-inverting dc amplifier amplify dc signals that are below a 0.6-V bipolar threshold (e.g., an LM358- based non-inverting dc amplifier)? (Okay, you want a gain of +1.5 or 2 or 3 for a small signal that is barely above ground, such as +0.1 or +0.2 V? And the LM358 uses a small...
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Bob Pease
[Engineering Essentials] Make Your Next Design As Solid As A Rock
Just as most electronic products today contain at least one embedded controller, most also have at least one crystal oscillator. In fact, some multiprotocol networking and telecom equipment can contain 10 or more different crystals. A crystal oscillator usually sets the processor clock frequency and operational frequencies of networking speed or wireless channels. Crystals provide the accurate timing required by most modern products, in addition to the...
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Louis E. Frenzel
[Engineering Essentials] High-Def Video Brings Telepresence Into Focus
Imagine that you’re walking into a darkened conference room. You switch on the lights and make a few phone calls. All of a sudden, three of your colleagues from across the globe appear at the conference room table as if they were sitting there in the dark all along. This represents the essence of telepresence—an ultra-high-end video-conferencing system. These systems employ high-definition video on 50-in. or larger flat-panel displays with audio designed...
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Joseph Desposito
[EEPN In Electronic Design] OLEDs Get Ready To Break Size Barriers
Sharing technical expertise to solve the manufacturing challenges in producing organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), Saint Gobain Recherche (SGR) has partnered with Novaled to create a breakthrough in glass substrates. The development, based on a unique, high-performance metallic anode, demonstrates the feasibility of large-area OLED displays. Teaming up under a two-year research program, SGR and Novaled have sought to develop basic technologies for ...
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Mat Dirjish
[EEPN In Electronic Design] Get The Right Power Supply To Tackle Peaks And Valleys
A power supply with high peak-current capability can support loads that are higher than the nominal continuous power for short periods of time, without the unit shutting down or damage occurring. Typical constraints on this capability include time (duration of the current peak) and the percentage of time the supply must support the higher load (duty cycle). Products often requiring high peak current include print heads, pumps, motors, and disk...
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Ken Peterson
[Lab Bench] If Your Programming Language Doesn't Work, Give Scala A Try
Assembly language provides fine grain control. But it’s rarely used these days, with the exception of some operating-system hackers or 8-bit embedded programmers working on small modules. The performance of C compilers essentially blew the advantage out of the water ages ago. Yet in both cases, arbitrary memory access was the way to go. This worked well with single-processor solutions, and it works reasonably well with symmetric and asymmetric ...
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William Wong
[Analog/Mixed-Signal Design] Squeeze 10-Bit Performance From An 8-Bit DAC
Few things are more frustrating than a requirement for some feature that exceeds the ability of your present hardware. Say you’re designing a product that has historically required an 8-bit digital-to-analog converter (DAC). Conveniently integrated on the system microcontroller, the DAC has never been a problem until marketing suddenly insists that it is absolutely necessary for the DAC to output 10 bits. Of course, it’s too late to change microcontrollers, and...
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Dave Van Ess
