[Technology Report] The Future Of Sensors
Sensors have made serious inroads into automotive, medical, industrial, and aerospace applications. But you ain't seen nothin' yet. Rising concerns for safety, convenience, entertainment, and efficiency factors, coupled with worldwide government...
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Roger Allan
[Leapfrog: First Look] Compiler Leverages Automation Power Of CPU Core
If you're already on the configurable processor bandwagon, you know all about the beauty of having programmability after silicon implementation, the benefits of fixing bugs in software, and the freedom of implementing changing standards on-the-fly....
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David Maliniak
[Ideas For Design] Simple Circuit Controls Pulse Transition Rates
Some applications require that pulse transition rates be controlled to minimize distortion and crosstalk in subsequent systems. The choice of active filtering generally results in elaborate and expensive designs, especially because good transient...
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John McGaughey
[Editorial] Moore's Law On Track At DAC, But Taking Some New Turns
Last month's Design Automation Conference in San Diego was a great place to tap into the energy and enthusiasm that is revitalizing the world of semiconductor design. Based on the signs, the next couple of years will be very fertile in terms of...
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Mark David
[POV: Point Of View] Low-Speed Serial I/O Thrives Amid High-Speed Hype
Neglected amid the volume of recent press on high-speed serial interfaces, where the cutting edge is now exceeding 10 Gbits/s, has been the quiet adoption of lower-speed serial interfaces in a variety of equipment types. So why all the noise about...
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Gordon Hands
[Pease Porridge] What's All This Floobydust Stuff, Anyhow? (Part 13)
When I go on a plane trip, I carry a mid-size, self-addressed, padded envelope in my briefcase—about 7 by 9 in.—along with five 37-cent stamps and some suitable stickers or tape for sealing it up. Why? Because I might forget to put my...
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Bob Pease
[TechView: The Industry] MEMS Memory Targets High-Speed Flash Applications
Flash and EEPROM are getting more competition. The Nanomech nonvolatile memory technology by Cavendish Kinetics uses a moveable micro-encapsulated cantilever system to store information. Each submicron cantilever stores one bit. Only 25 picojoules...
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William Wong
[TechView: EDA] Testbench Technology Shores Up Simulator
The latest VCS simulator release from Synopsys brings the tool deeper into the verification world. A cornerstone of the company's Discovery verification platform, VCS 7.1 is enhanced with support for the same constraint-solver engines found in...
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David Maliniak
[TechView: EDA] Tool Optimizes FPGA/CPLD Assignments
With FPGA pin counts rising to 2000, and projections seeing that number balloon to over 3000 by 2007, a crisis of complexity is rising in pc-board routing. Routing pinouts for such complex devices has forced board-layer counts to 50 and higher. Add...
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David Maliniak
[TechView: EDA] Breaking News
Superthreaded Route Acceleration, now offered in Cadence's NanoRoute router, provides a tenfold productivity gain while maintaining timing and signal-integrity results. Superthreading combines the advantages of multithreaded routing with the...
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David Maliniak
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Linux On A Stick
Measuring a mere 20 by 80 by 8 mm, the gumstix 400x single-board computer is powered by a 400-MHz PXA255 XScale processor. It comes complete with 64 Mbytes of SDRAM and 4 Mbytes of flash memory. The 400x consumes less than 250 mA, suiting it for...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Take A Stab At Full-Scale Simulation
Simics 2.0 from VirtuTech is ambitious in implementation and scope. It can simulate one board or a complete network with multiprocessor systems. The simulated systems actually run production code. For example, a simulated, multiprocessor Sparc...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Contending With New Standards
Serial interconnects will wreak havoc on bus-oriented architectures like PC/104. This will eventually lead to new form factors like the PICMG (PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group) Advanced Mezzanine Card (AMC) standard. AMC is a...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] EPIC SBC Saves Power
Versalogic tapped Intel's ultra-low-voltage Celeron processor for its first EPIC (Embedded Platform for Industrial Computing) single-board computer (SBC). The VL-EPIC-1b features a 400-MHz Celeron plus a pair of serial ports, two USB ports, PS/2...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] Crusoe Shows Up In PC/104-Plus SBC
An 800-MHz Transmeta Crusoe TM5500 processor powers Kontron's new MOPSlcd PC/104-Plus single-board computer (SBC), consuming as little as 20 mW in deep-sleep mode. The SBC has a 10/100BaseT Ethernet interface, dual serial and USB ports, a parallel...
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William Wong
[Embedded in Electronic Design] CompactPCI SBC Features Low-Power Celeron M
Entry-level applications can get processing power at a low price with the ICP-CM single-board computer (SBC). Inova Computers' board comes with a 600-MHz or 1.3-GHz processor and up to 1 Gbyte of SDRAM. This SBC includes a pair of Fast Ethernet ports,...
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William Wong
[TechScope] Breathalyzer Uncovers Diabetes
About 17 million Americans have diabetes, but nearly 6 million of them don't know it. Testing for it can be tricky, too. Urine sugar tests and blood tests after fasting are low in sensitivity and may be inaccurate. The glucose tolerance test can be...
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Richard Gawel
[TechScope] Runners Stay On Pace With GPS System
Running enters the 21st century with Garmin's Forerunner 201. Using GPS technology, it accurately measures the distance the runner travels and maps out the route on its screen. It additionally provides precise latitude, longitude, and altitude data,...
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Richard Gawel
[TechScope] Army's Laser Passes Live Rocket Test
The missile was launched. The warhead was live. The threat was greater than any other the team had ever faced. But the MTHEL's laser successfully shot the missile down—and we're not talking about the climax of the latest big-budget sci-fi movie....
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Richard Gawel
