[Cover Feature] Power Perspective
Lambda, the UK-based global power-supply specialist was acquired from Invensys by TDK Corporation of Japan in a deal said to be worth around $235 million. The agreement includes Lambda's entire North American and European operations, as well as Invensys' current 58.2% shareholding in Densei Lambda KK. The deal is expected to create the second-largest power-supply manufacturer in the world, with the largest market share in the industrial power sector by some considerable distance,...
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Paul Whytock
[Direct Feature] Digital Power Conversion—Disruptive Or Sustaining Technology?
The term disruptive technology can be defined as a new and less expensive technology that enters a market where established technology does not provide the solutions needed by customers. By contrast, a sustaining technology provides small-step product-performance improvements and will almost always be replaced by the new technology. To illustrate the concept, we can look at the invention of the printing press that replaced the books laboriously handwritten by rows of scriptoria...
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Lou Pechi
[Direct Feature] Cutting Down Design Time
Software has become the key element enabling test system designers to keep pace with rapidly changing designs. It is at the heart of today's virtual instrument systems. The availability of a powerful, yet easy-to-use graphical programming language, such as National Instruments' LabVIEW, has accelerated virtual instrumentation into the mainstream of test system design and product design. Product designers have identified many instances where reconfigurability is needed at the...
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Ian Bell
[Direct Feature] Collaboration And The X Factor
Satisfying time-to-market goals is a crucial factor of a product's viability. Creating designs that can be manufactured is an integral step, especially for the smaller, faster, and increasingly complex ICs that fuel next-generation electronic products. Today's time-to-market issues are a compound effect of delays in design time, caused by longer wire delays and congestion, and yield challenges, caused by a variety of factors. The X Architecture helps resolve these challenges. By...
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Narain Arora
, et al.
[News Feature] PoL Position
With further integration and smaller feature sizes, processor core voltages are beginning to drop below 1V while their current consumption increases due to faster operating speeds. The advances of process technology must be matched with point-of-load power-supply design expertise. Power-management solutions that worked in the 80s and 90s may not work well with today's performance processors. Powering a processor poses several challenges, such as the placement of bulk and bypass...
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Rich Nowakowski
[Editorial] Power Up?
Welcome to this power-focused edition of Electronic Design Europe, in which you'll find 75% of the content is dedicated to developments in the worldwide power-semiconductor industry. For an editor like me, the power-semiconductor market is great. Its dynamism provides an infinite source of interesting and valuable technology news to use in this magazine. It has also proved to be a financial saviour for some semiconductor companies. It was power technology that helped many ride the...
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Paul Whytock
[Upfront] Accent, ARM, And Cadence Collaborate On Low-Power Design
Accent, ARM, and Cadence Design Systems announced that Accent successfully validated a low-power design flow using the Cadence Encounter digital IC design platform and ARM Artisan physical IP. The design flow targets low-power IC design and was proven on a design comprising a large portion of a SoC for a wireline application. Using the ARM Artisan Metro low-power IP with multi-voltage and multi-threshold capabilities, the design was implemented with a multi-supply...
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Paul Whytock
[Upfront] Packaging Partners
IMEC in Belgium launched its packaging and interconnect centre, APIC, which is committed to bringing together chip makers into research programs for future packaging and system-integration technologies. It will concentrate on bridging the interconnect gap between circuit and system, heterogeneous integration of RF components, and thermal management in high-power density...
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Paul Whytock
[Upfront] Eurofighter Contract
C-MAC MicroTechnology won a contract thought to be worth 11.6 million over the next five years from Galileo Avionica. The company will supply high-speed microelectronic and electro-optical modules for the Eurofighter Typhoon military aircraft, as well as the NATO NH90 and AgustaWestland EH101 Merlin helicopters. Galileo Avionica, a Finmeccanica Company, is now part of Selex Sensors and Airborne Systems, a joint venture of Finmeccanica and BAE Systems. C-MAC components...
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Paul Whytock
[Upfront] Mixed Fortunes For Samsung
Samsung Electronics financial results for the second quarter of 2005 show the company recorded sales of KRW13.59 trillion, an operating income of KRW1.65 trillion, and a net income of KRW1.7 trillion. This represented a 2% drop, 23% decrease, and 13% rise, respectively, from the previous quarter. Despite a drop in prices of some of its main products, such as memory chips, the company was able to maintain sales of more than KRW13.5 trillion due to the growth of the LCD and Digital...
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Paul Whytock
[Upfront] Devices Perform A Better Balancing Act
Analog Devices unveiled what it claims are the industry's only multichannel DDS (direct digital synthesis) devices that provide a solution to two common design challenges faced by system engineers in a range of applications. Allowing independent programming of up to four inherently synchronised outputs, ADI's four-channel AD9959 and two-channel AD9958 deliver better control to correct imbalances between multiple signals. This means is designers needn't spend as much time on this...
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Paul Whytock
[Upfront] Quantum Boss Shows The Right Patents Touch
Hal Philipp, CEO of Quantum Research Group, was granted US and European patents for a technology that eliminates ambiguity between adjacent keys in touch keypads and keyboards. The AKS (adjacent key suppression) technique uses an iterative technique that repeatedly measures a detected signal strength associated with each key, compares all of the measured signal strengths to find a maximum signal change, and then determines that the maximum signal change comes from the user-selected key....
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Paul Whytock
[Upfront] Dr. Justin Chiang Has Joined Fairchild
Dr Justin Chiang has joined Fairchild Semiconductor as vice president of System Power. Until recently, Chiang was the general manager of Tyco Electronics Power Components, a $300 million business unit within Tyco Electronics. He holds a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and is a graduate of Princeton University, New Jersey....
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Paul Whytock
[Point of View] Electric Avenue—Getting The Speed Controls In Place
Today, much of the electricity on the planet is consumed by inefficient electric motors from a bygone era. It is estimated that over 50% of all electricity is directed at powering motors that feature simple mechanical controls rather than electronic control advances. The refrigerator operating in many kitchens today is a good example. It uses a bi-metallic switch to turn the motor on when the inside temperature gets too hot, and then turns it off when the desired temperature is...
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David Tam
