[Cover Feature] Power Driver Scores A Whole In One
Variable-speed drives are the future for energy-efficient operation of electric motors for domestic appliance and industrial servo applications. However, conventional, discrete implementations cannot deliver the cost and size reductions necessary to ensure their widespread market acceptance. To deliver considerable energy savings, variable-speed motor drives must perform more sophisticated functions than their predecessors, including IGBT protection and linear current feedback...
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David Tam
[Direct Feature] Boosting Designer Flexibility
Texas Instruments developed a line of Fusion Digital Power solutions that it claims provides improved performance and greater design flexibility at a competitive cost. Many analogue-power systems effectively monitor and control power to meet the requirements of today's electronic systems. However, power-system designers face increasing pressure to manage more complex power requirements, such as higher efficiencies over wider loads, lower output voltages, and multiple power-supply...
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Paul Whytock
[Direct Feature] Filling The Generation Gap
Designers of mobile phone handsets are under pressure to deliver high-performance multimedia solutions that give the user access to new and emerging capabilities. These include video conferencing, movie recording and playback, high-end gaming, high-resolution digital camera functionality and mobile television. The processing required to handle these functions is beyond the resources provided by the baseband processor responsible for the basic phone functionality. As a result,...
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Armin Derpmanns
[Direct Feature] Cutting The Cost Of Custom Supplies
A generation of configurable power supplies that offer a variety of customised power solutions from 400 to 2200W, with samples available in 24 hours, has been launched by XP Power. The fleXPower family of AC/DC power supplies is 25% smaller by volume than other products in the market. Features of the power supplies include flexible series and parallel connectivity between units of different power levels, full medical and industrial approvals for safety and EMC, up to six outputs...
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Paul Whytock
[News Feature] Car Makers Put FPGAs In The Driving Seat
Market analysts expect the overall programmable-logic market to nearly triple in size between 2002 and 2008. But whilst growth in the sector has historically been driven by the demands of the communications and networking industries, the next stage of expansion is expected to come from the automotive and consumer markets. Analysts at Gartner Dataquest predict a tenfold increase in FPGA use in consumer applications between 2002 and 2008. This will be fueled by products such as new...
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Martin Mason
[Editorial] Format wars part II
It looks like the electronics industry is getting a replay of the video standards battle that raged between Betamax and VHS. Sony and Toshiba are currently standing toe-to-toe, waiting to see who blinks first in the supremacy battle surrounding Blu-ray and HD-DVD disc technology. But at least this time round, Sony has learnt the valuable lessons of history and is keen to negotiate a compromise. This bodes well for the electronics industry and consumers alike. Nobody wants to see a...
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Paul Whytock
[Upfront] Lowest-Power Solution For High-speed Data Serialisation
Fairchild Semiconductor has developed an ultra-compact serialiser/deserialiser called µSerDes, which the company claims provides the most-compact, lowest-EMI, and lowest-power solution for high-speed data serialisation in ultra-portable applications. The new FIN12 and FIN24 devices are aimed at solving the design challenges of reliable data transmission, in particular through the hinge or rotation axis in clamshell mobile-phone designs. These devices reduce...
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Paul Whytock
[Upfront] New Wave IC
Analog Devices came up with an IC that it claims simplifies the development of continuous-wave (CW) Doppler imaging in stationary and portable ultrasound systems. CW Doppler is an advanced Doppler technique, used in approximately 30% of today's cardiac ultrasound equipment. It allows physicians to accurately assess the physical state of arteries, veins, and blood vessels by quickly detecting blood flow and direction. The demand for both portable and stationary CW Doppler...
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Paul Whytock
[Upfront] Low-Power Dual-Port RAMs
Cypress Semiconductor unveiled a family of five high-performance More Battery Life (MoBL) dual-port RAMs for mobile phone and PDA applications. The devices enable high-speed interprocessor communication in next-generation phones that use multiple processors to handle video, games, e-mail, or music. The MoBL dual ports provide the industry's lowest operating and standby current—80% lower than previous-generation dual-ports, claims the company. At 1.8V, operating current is...
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Paul Whytock
[Upfront] Power Computing Portfolio Gets A Boost
Power management solutions company, ON Semiconductor, expanded its power-computing portfolio with the introduction of the NCP5214. This new DDR memory power controller integrates VDDQ and VTT termination voltages. This integration simplifies overall motherboard design and saves space in portable-computer applications, claims ON. The VDDQ voltage is supplied by a high-efficiency, synchronous, PWM controller that drives two external...
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Paul Whytock
[Point of View] Network-Centric Defence Fuels Deeper Outsourcing
The move toward network-centric communications and the need for highly advanced systems drives aerospace and defence primes to seek partners that have a legacy of IT, communications and optoelectronics capability. These partners should also offer a broad range of services, from design and printed-circuit assembly (PCA), to repair and field support. Such capability is critical as armed forces strive to bond sensors and strike platforms together to develop advanced C41SR (command,...
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Tom Lovelock
[Pease Porridge] What’s All This “Woman Scientist” Stuff, Anyhow?
After the president of Harvard, Dr. Lawrence Summers, got in hot water for questioning why so many women may not have the aptitudes for science, now it is my turn to put in my two-cents worth. The aptitude of women to be good at science, or engineering, is well documented to be at a lower rate than it is for men. This has been widely published by the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation (www.jocrf.org), which has been studying aptitudes since 1922. If you take the top 1/4 of men...
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Bob Pease
[Product News] Converter Design Will Cope With Consumers’ Demands
National Semiconductor expanded its data-conversion portfolio with the introduction of 12 low-power, 10 and 12bit ADCs that it claims offer guaranteed performance across three speed ranges between 50ksamples/s and 1Msample/s. National plans to complete the launch of this new family of products by the end of summer, when it will introduce 24 additional general-purpose ADCs, including two- and four-channel 8bit ADCs and single- and eight-channel products. In consumer applications...
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Paul Whytock
[Product News] Silicon Labs Steps Into The Power Arena
Silicon Laboratories entered the power market by offering the first of a family of products designed for power control applications. Based on a patented architecture, the Si825x family of single-chip digital power-supply controllers combine the flexibility and programmability of a DSP with the fast response of a hardware-based controller, says the company. This architecture provides digital power control and power-management functions for most isolated and non-isolated...
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Paul Whytock
