Design Features: March 14, 1996

Cover Story
Delivering digital video	Travelers on the widely hyped Information Superhighway have thus far found mostly roadblocks, but clearer roads are ahead. Designers now have the ICs necessary to implement the broadband network architectures that service providers have plotted. —Maury Wright, Technical Editor
Design Features The hottest new technologies and the latest design techniques to help you work efficiently and effectively.
PC graphics struggle to incorporate 3-D	Graphics-chip and -board makers are grappling with the next trend in PC graphics: widespread adoption of 3-D acceleration. Understanding the trade-offs involved in 3-D acceleration will keep early adopters from getting thrown —Richard A Quinnell, Technical Editor
Electromagnetic sensors put a spin on compasses	Determining direction using the earth's weak magnetic field entails the use of clever magnetic techniques and devices. —Bill Travis, Senior Technical Editor
Avoid pitfalls in dimming and shutting down CCFL backlighting for LCDs	Providing high-efficiency backlighting for LCDs is easier than it used to be thanks to ICs tailored for the purpose, but several elements of the circuit design still require care. Dimming and shutdown are two of them. —Jim Williams, Linear Technology Corp
Synchronous rectification: improving the efficiency of buck converter	Consider a complementary-switching synchronous-rectifier design with voltage-mode control for your next high-performance buck converter. —Jeffrey D Sherman and Michael M Walters, Harris Semiconductor