May 22, 1997

New media resources slash design-cycle times

Maury Wright, Technical Editor

Tight market windows have heaped pressure on engineers to minimize time spent designing. Engineers, however, can turn to a growing number of third parties for immediate design help via the Internet and other multimedia vehicles.

Lately, you've probably found that time-to-market pressures have resulted in seemingly unreasonable time goals for new designs. Designers caught in this trap can turn to IC or board vendors for help via application notes, reference designs, programmable-logic core designs and other resources. Sometimes, however, you may find that third-party resources provide an even better jump-start for a new design--especially given that third parties don't limit their resources to a single manufacturer's products. These resources include technology databases, reference designs, industry standards, seminars, virtual trade shows, and others from sources ranging from entrepreneurs harnessing new media opportunities to the venerable electronics distributor. You can tap into this wealth of information via multiple channels, including the Internet, CD-ROMs, and even the trusty old telephone.

As you may expect, the Internet and the World Wide Web provide good places to turn for information because the medium offers immediate help when you can locate needed information. (Note that EDN's Web site--www.ednmag.com--offers links to all of the Web sites mentioned here, and the box, "For more information...," lists the appropriate URLs.)

Reference designs prove to be among the most valuable design aids that an engineer can access. Unfortunately, you may have a hard time tracking down a reference design that closely matches your project. EDN hopes to alleviate that problem by publishing a list of industrywide reference designs that will appear on EDN's Web site around June.

Other Internet resources include IC databases. One Web site that every designer should know about, QuestLink Technology, includes a searchable database of practically all of the ICs from more than 150 semiconductor vendors. You can search for ICs based on functions such as "clock generator," "nonvolatile memory," and "Ethernet transceiver." The functional search capability simplifies the task of comparing parts from multiple vendors, and even finding an alternative part for an IC you are currently using. You can also search the database based on manufacturer name or part number.

Search for ICs by function

QuestLink searches yield a list of ICs that match the search criteria with a one-line description of each IC. You can click on most of the ICs in the database to retrieve additional information immediately. In fact, QuestLink hosts a one-page description with basic specs of most of the ICs in the database to which you get immediate access. The database also includes links to full manufacturer data sheets and even white papers and application notes for many of the ICs. The links typically retrieve the additional data in Portable Document Format directly from the Web site of the IC manufacturer. QuestLink offers the search capability and the one-page IC summaries to any and all comers. You must register with QuestLink to retrieve the PDF files. Registration, however, costs nothing and takes only a couple of minutes.

A number of other Web sites also offer IC databases. For example, Hearst Business Publishing now offers its IC Master via the Internet, although you must be a subscriber to the IC Master to access the data. A normal subscription costs $190, and a CD-ROM subscription costs $235. The online IC Master contains data, including package and pinout, on more than 80,000 ICs. Unfortunately, the online version is a relatively hard-to-use translation of the paper product. It offers neither as much search flexibility as QuestLink nor the ability to retrieve detailed data sheets on the ICs.

Another Internet IC directory, The Chip Directory, proves to be the best of the bunch in quickly searching for an IC by a generic functional description. The Chip Directory includes a detailed list of function types and cross links to related functions that you can scroll through surprisingly quickly. Once you narrow your search to a specific topic, such as "DRAM," you get a list of part numbers with a simple description, such as "1M×9," and the manufacturer's name. Click on one of the listings, and you get the manufacturer's name, address, phone and fax numbers, and pointers to Web sites.

An engineer in the Netherlands, Jaap van Ganswijk, developed The Chip Directory on an almost-hobbyist basis. Other Internet sites worldwide mirror the impressive site. For example, Hitex Development Tools hosts The Chip Directory in the United States. Online access to the data is free, although Hitex sells the database on CD-ROM for $20.

You might suspect that distributors would challenge these independent sources as viable hosts for IC data. Several major IC distributors have such data on their Web sites, but you would generally do better to stick with QuestLink or The Chip Directory to quickly locate data sheets for ICs. The distributors present information only on the vendors they represent and generally don't offer search capabilities that match those of QuestLink and The Chip Directory. Several of the distributors' Web sites can provide immediate price information that could prove valuable in deciding whether an IC might fit into your design. Digi-Key not only provides prices but lets you leverage the distributor's ability to ship parts immediately with Internet-based orders.

The distribution community does offer numerous services and resources that can expedite design. Moreover, the list of these resources grows almost daily as IC manufacturers have come to depend on the distributors to handle front-line marketing and technical support. You should become familiar with the services and resources of a number of distributors because competition has led the distributors to develop unique offerings targeted at design. You can find some of these resources on the Web sites of Arrow, Digi-Key, Hamilton Hallmark, Insight, Marshall, Sager, and Wyle. In other cases, the Web sites simply provide a window to a much wider array of resources such as technical-support engineers and design centers.

Live seminars via the Internet

Marshall and Hamilton Hallmark have led the way with Internet content. For example, Marshall offers live technical seminars via its Web site. The company has been providing audio seminars for some time and has just begun offering live video feeds on some seminars. Designers can register free to attend the seminars. The system also allows attendees to ask questions in real time. By turning to the Internet, Marshall can provide access to the ultimate expert on an IC or a technology. The expert presenters are unlikely to be available to travel nationwide for traditional seminars. Moreover, the Internet-based presentations allow designers to gain this firsthand knowledge without spending the extra time required to travel to a traditional seminar. You can find archives of past seminars and schedules for future ones on the Marshall Web site. Other valuable features of the site include 24-hour access to technical-support engineers in the Electronic Design Center section of the site.

Hamilton Hallmark, meanwhile, has a number of compelling tools on its site, including some reference-design kits that its technical-support center developed, such as a Power-PC-based design targeted at embedded systems (Figure 1). You can download the designs, including source software and the EDA files necessary to manufacture the designs. When Hamilton initially develops a reference design, it first makes it available to existing customers in a private section of the Web site. After 90 days, the company posts the design in the public section of the site, so that anyone can access it.

Hamilton offers its customers a number of other Web and personal resources. For example, customers can search Hamilton's database of products and download key parameters for products, such as ICs. The distributor also has a technical-support center available to its best customers that can provide person-to-person design help during any phase of a project.

Product development

Other distributors are taking diverse paths in offering design help. Wyle, for example, designed and sells a development system for the Texas Instruments (Dallas) 320C2xx family of DSPs. TI hadn't devoted the resources necessary to offer such a system, so Wyle stepped in and offers the 320C203 DSP Development System for $149. The system includes a DSP board, a power supply, an assembler, and a debugger.

Not everything that the distribution community does may be readily evident, yet you may be benefiting from some of its activities without realizing it. For example, Arrow claims that its investment in the information-technology infrastructure allows the company to dispense information on new technologies directly and immediately to the designers that are likely to need the information.

Turnkey ASICs and FPGAs

Design centers are likely the most visible of all the distributor services that target design. The design centers typically can provide any range of services--from helping you map an ASIC design into an ASIC vendor's technology to complete turnkey designs of an ASIC or even boards. Wyle started the trend in 1984 and now has five US centers and one European center. The distributor claims to have completed almost 1000 designs. Hamilton was also early to adopt the concept and has three centers.

Expect significant growth in ASIC- and programmable-logic-design services. Arrow is planning its first design center, and Wyle plans to announce eight additional design centers in June. Newcomer Insight may have the most aggressive plans that include not only multiple design centers but also separate companies that will offer ASIC- and programmable-logic-design services.

Last fall, Insight formed Mesa Design Services (formerly, Memec Design Services) as an independent entity. Its charter is to offer design services for Xilinx (San Jose, CA) FPGAs. The services include turnkey designs, although the company also plans to produce and sell cores and macro functions that it has developed. Mesa has announced approximately a dozen cores ranging from UARTs to DMA controllers to DSP filters. Data sheets are available on the company's Web site, and prices start at $2000. You needn't be an Insight customer to buy Mesa services or products, although the sister companies hope to build symbiotic relationships with customers. Mesa plans to have design centers in eight cities by year-end.

Following on the heels of Mesa Design Services, Insight recently an-nounced the formation of IntegrASIC. IntegrASIC does not yet have a facility independent of Insight but should soon. The new company will offer products and services similar to those that Mesa offers yet targeting ASICs rather than FPGAs. The company plans to open three design centers this year.

EEs meet for virtual labs

Designers that need help accelerating projects using standard µPs and DSPs have a number of other independent resources to which they can turn. Two sites stand out as good resources for engineers because they offer EEs access to an indexlike window to Internetwide information. Moreover, the sites include compelling content, such as virtual trade shows, virtual labs, and a forum for engineers to communicate and share knowledge. The two sites--TechOnLine and EG3 Communications' EE Toolbox--both include areas dedicated to specific market segments or engineering disciplines. TechOnLine was founded dedicated to DSP information and now also includes partitions for data acquisition, EDA tools, embedded systems, and imaging. The EE Toolbox's specialty areas are DSPs; embedded systems; industrial embedded computing; µPs and microcontrollers; real-time operating systems; and "smart" technologies, such as the Internet and multimedia.

Don't forget about standards organizations and facilitators when you start rounding up reference material. Many of your projects probably require that you develop interfaces that comply with either formal or de facto standards. Moreover, many standards are in a constant state of flux, and you need to be up-to-date. In some cases, you may be able to find standards information and design aids on CD-ROM. Moreover, the low costs of CD-ROMs today allow the publishers to offer regular updates.

For example, ENDL offers a CD-ROM that covers much of the activity of the ANSI X3 data-storage committees and the ad hoc Small Form Factor Committee, which ENDL operates. Subscribers get a new CD-ROM every two months with all of the activity and interim-standard work in SCSI, Fibre Channel, SSA (Serial Storage Architecture), and others. You access the CD-ROM using your favorite Web browser. All subscribers must pay a one-time $1500 corporate fee. The corporate fee allows an organization to buy a $360/year individual subscription or a site license for intranet usage of the material. For example, a corporation would pay $2160 plus the one-time $1500 fee to put the material on an intranet for 60 users.

One other type of resource that can prove useful comprises databases of vendors, vendor capabilities, industry experts, and process technologies. For example, Cypress Information Re-sources offers the WebChip IC-vendor database, which costs $395 and details the capabilities and strengths of IC vendors. The company also offers a $995 IC-expert database and a $1395 process-technology database. All of these databases are currently available only on disk, and the buyer's computer must host them. However, don't be surprised to see the data on the Internet down the road.

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