Technology Editor Bill Wong takes a look at Vudu’s Internet movie delivery service and hardware.

Thinklogical, a provider of KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) extension, switching, and secure console server devices, has incorporated Icron Technology’s ExtremeUSB Core Design License in the new VelocityKVM system.

Technology Editor Bill Wong takes a look at the Archos 7 mobile video player.

Seiko Epson Corp. has selected Actel’s ProASIC3 FPGAs for use in the new Multimeter Storage Viewer P-7000 and P-6000.

DisplayPort, a new interface standard from the Video Electronic Standards Association (VESA), simplifies display design and its associated connections. It also supports higher resolutions with robust electrical characteristics. Although the immediate application of the DisplayPort interface is in notebooks and display monitors, it is designed to be robust for many embedded and internal applications, such as digital TVs.

The economy may not be growing, but processing power and storage continue to climb. For example, the lab got a little crowded with the arrival of Intel’s software development platform (see the figure). Inside this massive rack-mount system are four of Intel’s latest hex-core Xeon “Dunnington” processors. That’s 24 high-performance cores in one box. Its care and feeding includes a RAID array of eight...

The key reason for using an RTOS is determinism, which typically means precise management or time and space resources. Unfortunately, many problems require more complex solutions, including virtual memory and virtual-machine support. Virtual-memory systems drive RTOS programmers nuts, because a single page fault can mess up timing. In most instances, the trick is to lock down applications that require real-time support. This sometimes means not using the...

Real-time operating systems (RTOSs) tend to be a checkbox item for many embedded projects. But is an RTOS always necessary? The answer is application-specific, so understanding what one will deliver is key to determining whether it becomes a requirement or an extravagance. In general, an RTOS can be used anywhere a non-RTOS is employed. However, it’s rare to find an operating system with a matching RTOS that has exactly the same application programming ...

The multicore Opteron processors in AMD’s “Shanghai” line are designed for performance, but their new Smart Fetch technology can also save power. A core can detect when a thread becomes idle. After a programmable delay, the core flushes its L1 and L2 cache to the chip’s L3 cache before shutting down. In addition to a faster startup, this gives other cores access to the core’s working set. Power savings up to 21% are possible when cores aren’t running...

Lots of PIC programmers will want to get their hands on the MPLAB ICD 3 from Microchip (see the figure). It uses the faster USB 2.0 interface to improve chip programming times by a factor of 15. The higher-speed interface also moves data to and from memory quicker, providing a snappier debugging interface. This makes operations like single stepping faster. The MPLAB...

With my new role as Group Editorial Director, I’m going to miss doing my column in each issue of Electronic Design. So here I am joining the “blogosphere.”

I use this display circuit to expose students to the concepts and characteristics of scanning displays. Basically, a message is delivered to the CPU (a Microchip PIC16F76) over an RS-232 interface. The message is displayed on a vertical array of eight LEDs, which are spun by a dc motor. As they spin and take on new positions, the LEDs are updated with new lines of bit patterns, producing the display. In this way, the software allows the eight LEDs to emulate an 8-by-80...

At one time, reference designs were simply helpful guides to the finer details of designing a part into a board. Those days are long gone. The complexity of today’s devices, in addition to the fast pace of many markets, has forced some reference designs to evolve beyond educational tools into manufacturing documentation for fully defined end products (Fig. 1). This dual role leaves...

DIGITALLY CONTROLLED POTENTIOMETERS (DCPS) find uses in a wide variety of systems for setting bias currents, variable reference voltages, and calibration settings. In industrial control and automation applications, high accuracy is a must. DCPs with 1024 taps are available, but for a few dollars instead of tens of cents. A dual, 32-tap, 50-k DCP is available for 40 cents. Can we use both of the DCPs in the package and reach similar performance to the 1024...

HERE’S A C/C++ PROGRAM that converts decimal numbers ranging from 0 to 99,999 to binary and binary coded decimal (BCD) formats. Using a simple algorithm in conjunction with pointer arithmetic and bitwise shifting increases the conversion speed without introducing excessive memory overhead and programming complexity. When decimal numbers are within the range of 0 to 9, their binary and BCD representations are identical, requiring only four bits...

SOME BACKGROUND Also known as state diagrams, statecharts can be found on napkins and coding screens as designers turn ideas into application code. They’re simple to use and understand, as they’re just a bunch of “circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explainin’ what each one was, to be used as evidence against us,” to quote Arlo Guthrie and his classic song, “Alice’s Restaurant.” Events cause transitions...