[Engineering Feature] All A-Board!
Aerospace and military applications that are more sophisticated and complex are spawning a new breed of single-board computers (SBCs). Thatâ??s because the users in these areas have rather formidable demands, such as greater ruggedness, higher reliability, more power performance, less power dissipation, and a smaller form factor. As a result, board and systems integrators are scrambling to find ways to pack as much technology as possible on the...
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Roger Allan
[Technology Report] FPGAs Pushing MCUs As The Platform Of Choice
Falling FPGA prices and ever-improving tools make FPGA development more palatable to designers who aren’t well versed in this arena. Likewise, the increased number of choices and improved sophistication of soft processor cores for FPGAs create new options for developers who would otherwise look only at stock, offthe- shelf microcontrollers. There are many reasons why designers should consider FPGAs as a development and deployment platform. Processors ...
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William Wong
[Leapfrog: First Look] Copper Energy Saves Plenty Of Energy—And Pennies
Find a penny, pick it up, and all the day you’ll have good luck. That saying has been around since pennies were actually made mostly of copper, not just copper-coated like they are today. Copper can also be found in our bloodstream. It has been used to carry water and transfer heat. Most recently, it has been used for interconnects in semiconductors. But what about putting the metal to work as part of a nonvolatile memory technology? Researchers from...
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Daniel Harris
[Design View / Design Solution] Add Modular Plug-In Functionality To Any Embedded Design
Utilizing modularity in an embedded design opens up a number of new possibilities when compared to standard embedded applications. It enables the design of compact form-factor devices, without sacrificing functionality. Modularized embedded designs can be designed economically, because they can be tailored to the application—avoiding unnecessary functionality and cost. They’re also production-friendly, since they open up new diagnostic possibilities without...
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Brant Ivey
[Ideas For Design] Adapt DC Voltage To Perform PWM DImming Of High-Brightness LEDs
High-brightness LEDs (HBLEDs) are making inroads into more traditional lighting applications that include a dc distribution system (for example, 24-V MR-16 track lights). HBLEDs are more efficient, and they have a potentially longer lifespan than do halogen or xenon lamps. Because hysteretic controllers are inexpensive, simplify lighting designs, and require no compensation networks, they’re well-suited for driving HBLEDs....
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Jim Christensen
[Ideas For Design] Trick A BJT-Based Converter Into Starting At Only 250 mV DC
The converter described below, based on a silicon bipolarjunction transistor (BJT), can operate at as low as 250 mV, which is probably a record for a converter not based on a JFET or germanium transistor. How is this possible? The VBE threshold is not clear-cut, depending on current density and other factors. But 250 mV is way below the lowest accepted values. There has to be a trick and there is, sort of. The big difficulty is in the starting....
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Louis Vlemincq
[Editorial] Is Solar Energy Really Ready To Rumble?
At the recent International Electronics Forum (IEF) in Dubai, UAE, I attended two days of presentations about the semiconductor industry. The speakers were from all parts of the world and offered unique perspectives. But the talk I found most interesting was given by Mark Pinto, CTO and senior vice president at Applied Materials, as his presentation tackled “Energy Conversion: Photovoltaics.” Photovoltaics (PV) have been making great strides in the last...
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Joseph Desposito
[POV: Point Of View] Is China's Fabless Industry Ready For Cross-Border Collaboration?
In today’s flat but increasingly complex world, no one entity can do it all—not even Cisco or IBM, both prominent proponents of business collaboration and participation in clusters. The semiconductor industry came to this realization earlier than other high-tech sectors. Twenty years ago, TSMC established a service—what was then a novel idea—of making ICs for other companies. Other independent foundries followed, nurturing a new industry sector called fabless...
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Lilly Chung
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[Pease Porridge] Bob's Mailbox
HI BOB, I have been collecting some new but mostly museum-grade test instruments. Along with purchases from various instrument rental houses, flea markets, and so on, for a while I bid on items in government liquidation auctions. Occasionally, I won. The starting bid was always $50, and some I got at that price. Some went way higher but seldom approached the original list price, and I gave up way before that. Often, the shipping costs to a pickup and forward...
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Bob Pease
[TechView: Analog & Power] Energy Harvesting Goes Commercial
Last June at Darnell’s Nanopower Forum, Face International demonstrated prototypes of its Lightning remote switching technology for home and business wiring (see “Zombies And Energy Harvesting” at www.electronicdesign.com, ED Online 15788). At that conference, Lightning was essentially a charge stored in clouds of hope. By...
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Don Tuite
[Engineering Essentials] Signal Generators Step Up And Deliver Come Test Time
All electronic circuits and equipment receive input signals and process them into new and different output signals. When you’re designing and testing circuits and equipment, where do you get those input signals? You could build your own signal source for a specific application, but that isn’t necessary. That’s because there’s a signal generator available for any type of signal, no matter what type of equipment is being designed or under test....
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Louis E. Frenzel
[EEPN In Electronic Design] Optical Bonding And Surface Treatments Improve Displays
Why should you consider optical bonding for your portable design? Do you need anti-glare or anti-reflective enhancements in the product? Should you plan on a more powerful backlight for your thin-film-transistor (TFT) LCD display? Start by evaluating the ambient light levels your product is most likely to encounter. REFLECTION MANAGEMENT Everyone has experienced unwanted glare obscuring information they need to see on a...
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Terry Trover
[Lab Bench] Micros Find Their Way Into Blue-Ribbon Science Fair Projects
Held last month in Atlanta, the Intel ISEF 2008 brought together more than 1500 students from around the world as they presented their award-winning projects from state and regional science fairs. Individuals and teams competed in more than 17 categories, including a healthy showing in the Engineering: Electrical and Mechanical (EE) division. A number of students used development kits in their work. Chris King’s Electromagnetic Levitation: A Digital Control ...
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William Wong
