[Cover Feature] Memory Matters
In addition to industrial applications, image processing is beginning to play an increasing role in automotive engineering. In this market CMOS image sensors are used for applications like capturing the sitting position of the driver and co-driver for optimum airbag triggering. The common denominator of all these applications is the need for digital circuitry for control and data processing functions. CHOOSING THE CONTROL LOGIC The main function of...
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Joerg Kaleita
[Direct Feature] Smart Moves
There was a time when digital audio was neatly segregated into Hi-Fi and telephony. Hi-Fi generally meant stereo and 16bit resolution, sampled at 44.1kHz – the original Compact Disc (TM) specification. Telephony was mono and low-resolution, typically digitised at 8bits and 8kHz. Different types of mixed-signal ICs appeared to suit each application. Hi-Fi audio codecs were quick to make use of multi-bit sigma-delta technology to improve sound quality, while phone parts...
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Yan Goh
[Direct Feature] High Altitude Attitudes
Unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly referred to as UAV's, are defined as powered aerial vehicles sustained in flight by aerodynamic lift over most of their flight path and guided without an onboard crew. They may be expendable or recoverable and can fly autonomously or piloted remotely. UAVs, either remotely piloted or self-piloted, can carry cameras, sensors, communications equipment or other payloads for reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering missions, and more challenging roles are...
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Dave Garcia
[Direct Feature] Soft Error Hits The Ground
Users of ICs at high altitude are aware of the potential for errors caused by the presence of high-energy neutrons. Now there is concern such phenomena could compromise the reliability of systems at ground level. Research, focusing on the phenomenon as it affects the SRAM cells used to program some FPGAs, suggests there may be a problem at ground level. Historically, interest in neutron-induced errors has focused on data corruption in memory devices. Such corruption occurs when...
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Ken O'Neill
[Direct Feature] Flexibility—A Mixed-Signal Blessing
Conventional mixed-signal semiconductor technology allows analogue control and signal processing functions, such as amplifiers, ADCs and filters, to be combined with digital functionality, such as microcontrollers, memory, timers and logic control functions on a single, chip. Some of the more recent mixed-signal semiconductor developments, however, have significantly simplified the implementation of mixed-signal solutions by allowing many more functions to be integrated into a...
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Bob Klosterboer
[Editorial] Designer Limbo—How Low Do Soft Errors Go?
How low can a neutron particle get? Or, more accurately, does the soft error phenomenon occur at ground level? At the core of this question is the continuing debate about soft errors, those unseen invaders of SRAMs that descend from the high atmosphere and pass through a chip, change the charge stored in a nearby transistor thereby causing a soft error. There is no physical damage involved, but the chip temporarily contains erroneous data. Where do these space invaders...
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Paul Whytock
[Upfront] Development Solution For Powertrain Platforms
Automotive manufacturers and their suppliers now have a development solution from Metrowerks to build embedded powertrain platforms based on the MPC5500 family of microcontroller unit (MCU) architectures from Freescale Semiconductor. The solution provides hardware, software development tools, emulators, an RTOS and test analysis technologies. It will eliminate the time and costs associated with purchasing and integrating components from multiple vendors, says the company....
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Paul Whytock
[Upfront] Broadband For Mobile Phones Steps Closer
STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments are sampling the industry's first standard cdma2000 1xEV-DV solution. Considered a strong technology migration path for cdma2000 operators, the 1xEV-DV standard provides users with broadband capabilities via their mobile phones, PDAs and other mobile devices. The companies claim this will enable internet connectivity at ten times the speeds provided by current cdma2000 1X and GPRS solutions, while simultaneously supporting the voice...
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Paul Whytock
[Upfront] Backplane Investment
HARTING Integrated Solutions has expanded its backplane facility in Northampton. Investment in the production area includes a RoBAT robotic backplane tester and a second HARTING CPM2001/S semi-automatic press-in machine to add to the existing semi-automatic and fully automatic units. These new units join surface-mount, pin-in-hole intrusive reflow and wave-soldering machines and four Terotest Lynx backplane testers. All this equipment is housed in a static-safe environment....
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Paul Whytock
[Upfront] Tiny Micro Hits The Spot
Microcontrollers are getting so tiny they're hard to find. Microchip's latest, the 1-MIPS PIC10F line, fits into a small SOT-23 package. Using an on-chip, 4MHz oscillator (1% accuracy), the six-pin PIC10F provides four I/O pins, using the remaining two for power and ground. It's tough to get much smaller than this. Making its European debut in London earlier this month, the PIC10F is also small in price at $0.49. For that you get 16bytes of RAM and 256 12bit words of flash memory....
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Paul Whytock
[Upfront] Board Appointments
Concurrent Technologies has added the PP 312/01x to its range of CompactPCI boards. The board has the low power 1.8GHz Intel Pentium M processor 745 (formerly codenamed Dothan) that increases the L2 cache size from 1 to 2 Mbytes and also provides an improved performance to power dissipation ratio. It supports up to 2Gbytes DDR ECC SDRAM. In addition to two PMC sites with front and rear I/O, the PP 312/01x supports dual Gigabit Ethernet, PICMG 2.16 (packet switching backplane), PICMG 2.9...
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Paul Whytock
[Upfront] AWR Unveils Next-Generation Analogue And RFIC Design System
Applied Wave Research, the high-frequency EDA tools company, has launched Analog Office 2004 software for next-generation analogue and radio frequency integrated circuit (RFIC) designs. This latest version, which AWR claims is the first complete IC design system in over a decade designed and optimised from the ground up for designers of analog and RF ICs, has been enhanced to provide a unified design environment. The Analog Office 2004 toolset spans the complete IC design flow, from...
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Paul Whytock
[Upfront] CoolFlux Collaboration
Synopsys and Royal Philips Electronics collaboration will provide designers with access to Philips' ultra-low power CoolFlux DSP core via Synopsys' DesignWare Star IP programme. The agreement provides more than 25,000 DesignWare Library users with access to the CoolFlux DSP core for use in low-power consumer audio applications, ranging from hearing instruments, MP3 players, and headsets. The CoolFlux DSP is the very first DSP core in the DesignWare Star IP programme, and...
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Paul Whytock
[Upfront] SPI Design Takes An Integrated Approach
Communications IC company Integrated Device Technology (IDT) has expanded its portfolio of flow-control management (FCM) products with a family of packet-exchange devices. The new family includes the IDT88P8344, which the company claims is the industry's first system packet interface (SPI) exchange product that integrates switching, aggregation and rate adaptation of four lower rate SPI-3 interfaces to the higher rate SPI-4 interface in VPN firewall cards, Ethernet transport and...
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Paul Whytock
[Upfront] Positive Indicators In The German Electronics Market
It seems the recession is over. The quarterly reports of semiconductor companies indicate a steady growth and, not surprisingly, Germany, as probably the biggest semiconductor market in Europe, has a good growth too. The monthly market research of ZVEI Fachverband Bauelemente (Zentralverband Elektrotechnik- und Elektronikindustrie e.V.) shows up to April 2004 an increased business since the beginning of the year. The book-to-bill-ratio since December 2003 is over 1.00 (December...
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Wolfgang Patelay
[Point of View] Fail-Safe Factors
Military and avionics systems continue to define the upper limit of the term software reliability. The consequences of the failure of a safety-critical system onboard a civil or military aircraft are immeasurably more serious than a glitch in a consumer appliance or internet service delivery. Embedded automotive systems now perform critical vehicle control functions and, therefore, have failure modes that are potentially fatal to the user. The term 'total reliability' sets software for...
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Christopher Smith
[Pease Porridge] What’s All This Mnemonic Stuff, Anyhow?
'On Old Olympus' Topmost Top, A Fat-Eared German Viewed A Hop.' Isn't it amazing? I read that back in '56 in Sinclair Lewis' Arrowsmith. That is a little rhyme to help medical students remember all the nerves in the head. I never learned all the nerves, but I think one of them was the Occipital nerve. However, the little rhyme sure does work, because I have remembered it over 46 years. I bet a number of old doctors and medical students still remember that. Tricks like...
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Bob Pease
[Product News] Diminutive Display
Toshiba Electronics Europe has expanded its family of active matrix thin film transistor (TFT) liquid crystal displays with the introduction of a space-efficient transmissive 6.5-inch (17cm) product. The display, which combines good performance with compact module size, is suitable for industrial control, warehousing systems, electronic point-of-sale (POS) terminals, ticket and information kiosks, medical systems, test and measurement equipment, and other applications where a clear quality...
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Paul Whytock
