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August 3, 1998
WHAT'S HOT IN THE DESIGN COMMUNITY
In the race for the fastest processor in computationally intensive applications,
General Micro Systems has zoomed to the forefront with a new 450-MHz, dual Pentium II
available in both VME64 (V2P2) and CompactPCI (C2P2) versions. In addition to their
blazing speed, the boards provide space for 1 Gbyte of 100-MHz main DRAM plus 1 Mbyte of
Level 2 cache.
For embedded applications requiring no hard disk, the V2P2 and C2P2 provide 72 Mbytes
of M-Systems' (www.msys.com) Disk-On-Chip flash memory
and as much as 750 Mbytes of SanDisk (www.sandisk.com)
1.5-in. flash IDE. M-Systems provides software to emulate a hard disk.
I/O includes dual 10/100-MHz twisted-pair Ethernet interfaces, a 40-Mbyte/sec ultrawide
SCSI with autotermination, and a 64-bit Advanced Graphics Port engine with 8 Mbytes of
video RAM optimized for 3-D rendering. Dual ultra-DMA 33 IDE interfaces, a pair of
Universal Serial Bus ports, and a parallel port are standard.
Until now, CompactPCI single-board computers could not support multiprocessors be-cause
of PCI-to-PCI bridge-chip limitations. The C2P2 is the first to deploy Digital Equipment's
(www.digital.com) new 21554 PCI Draw Bridge chip that
connects independent PCI buses and enables data sharing.
Prices for the V2P2 and C2P2 start at $7200 with 0.5-Gbyte main memory and two 400-MHz
Pentium processors. Both boards are available now.
--by Warren Web
General Micro Systems, Rancho Cucamonga, CA. 1-909-980-4863, fax 1-909-987-4863, www.gms4vme.com.
A chip from Colorado MicroDisplay uses "dynamic nematic liquid crystal on
silicon" (DNLCOS) to provide full-motion SVGA video with 8003600-pixel resolution.
The company claims that the product is the first full-color, full-motion LCD chip that
accommodates a high refresh rate using off-the-shelf nematic liquid-crystal material.
Wearable displays using the chip target applications for business and consumer software,
multimedia programs, Internet content, games, and digital-versatile-disk-based movies.
The chip has an active area of 9.637.2 mm with a 12312-mm pixel pitch. It produces
24-bit color resolution using field-sequential technology at a 75- to 90-Hz frame rate.
The company offers an SVGA evaluation kit that includes an eyeglass-style monocular
headset, a display-driver board, a cable and connectors, an RGB LED illumination module,
and a magnifying lens that provides a 268 diagonal field of view. The kit also includes
evaluation/prototyping software, a system-interface unit, and a system-documentation and
image-test CD. The display chip costs $50 in volume.
--by Bill Travis
Colorado MicroDisplay Inc, Boulder, CO. 1-303-546-9700, fax 1-303-546-9800, info@comicro.com.
Xilinx has expanded the feature sets of its Alliance and Foundation programmable-logic
design-tool packages. You use the Alliance Version 1.5 software with third-party synthesis
and simulation tools for high-density chip design. According to Xilinx, the new Alliance
has a 50% average faster place-and-route compilation time than the previous version. The
company also claims that you can design devices with a 30% higher average clock speed,
based on customer designs using XC4000XL devices with densities of 10,000 to 50,000 gates.
The AKAspeed suite of features is key to Alliance's success. AKAspeed helps engineers
with their performance-driven designs. AKAspeed includes a minimum-delay feature, voltage
and temperature prorating, a graphical constraints editor, a graphical floor- planner, and
Xilinx's core-generator tool for developing parameterized digital cores. You use
minimum-delay simulation for complex asynchronous designs and for checking designs with
potential clock-race conditions. Programmable-logic chips prorated for temperature and
voltage conditions, long available for nonprogrammable-chip designs using ASIC libraries,
let you design more accurately for best- and worst-case operating conditions. The
graphical floorplanner lets you interactively shift module position on a chip to decrease
module-routing runtimes and increase chip-speed performance. LogiCore lets you access
Xi-linx's own DSP, PCI, or general-purpose cores or to access AllianceCore third-party
cores for informational purposes or for designs. Available products include both hard,
firm, and soft cores.
Alliance runs on Unix and Windows platforms. The tools supply device-family-specific
support for all Xilinx products and will support the high-density Virtex FPGAs that will
be available this year. Alliance prices start at $95 on PCs and $750 on workstations; you
can get free evaluation software from Xilinx's Web site.
Enhancements of the new Foundation Version 1.5 tools, a tool suite for
programmable-logic designs having as many as 50,000 gates, include pushbutton design
flows, improved integration with FPGA Express, Synopsys' (www.synopsys.com) synthesis tool, an embedded project
manager, and access to VHDL and Verilog simulators from Aldec (www.aldec.com) and Model Technology (www.model.com). The project manager lets you invoke
synthesis and other tools from within the Foundation environment.
Xilinx claims that using customer and core designs with 30 to 250 macrocells on XC9500
devices provides a 15% silicon-performance improvement and 36% netlist-to-bit-stream
runtime improvement over the previous version. Foundation supports all Xilinx
programmable-logic families. The tools run on Windows platforms and have a starting price
of $95.
--by Jim Lipman
Xilinx, San Jose, CA. 1-408-559-7778, fax 1-408-559-7114, www.xilinx.com.
Elo TouchSystems preconfigures Universal Serial Bus-compatible touch monitors for
instant operation in a plug-and-touch environment in Windows 98. You can add the monitors
to systems or networks by simply plugging them into the computer without loading separate
device drivers. The plug-and-touch family includes 15- and 17-in. IntelliTouch kiosk
monitors, 14- and 15-in. AccuTouch desktop touch monitors, and the Scribex
signature-capture pad with pen. Unit prices for the IntelliTouch and AccuTouch monitors
start at $800. Applications for the IntelliTouch products include public display systems,
such as merchandising kiosks, video-game terminals, and computer-based training systems.
AccuTouch applications include terminals in restaurants, hospitals, and factories, for
example.
Elo also announces new software technology for Windows NT. MonitorMice allows you to
run a network of as many as 32 touch monitors from one PC. You can configure a system with
one PC and four Elo touch monitors, for example, for less than $6000. The company asserts
that a conventional system with dedicated PCs could cost as much as $15,600. Using
MonitorMice, you connect multiple touch monitors to a PC through a multiport video card
with each touch monitor running separate applications or functions within a screen.
Alternatively, using a video splitter, the same PC can simultaneously run identical images
on as many as 32 monitors.
--by Bill Travis
Elo TouchSystems Inc, Fremont, CA. 1-510-608-3200, fax 1-510-739-4657, www.elotouch.com.
Most of today's high-end 3-D and integrated 2-D/3-D graphics chips support the advanced
graphics port (AGP) as their only system interface. But until now, if your PC or embedded
system provided only a PCI bus, you had either to add AGP's cost and complexity or to
resign yourself to using yesterday's graphics technology. Now, you have a third
alternative to reaching your objectives: Real 3D's StarFighter PCI board. The board uses
Intel's i740, which not only requires AGP 2x, but also stores all texture-map data in
system main memory, not locally. However, Real 3D developed the R3D-040 chip, which tricks
the i740 into thinking it's on an AGP bus, whereas the R3D-040 interfaces to the rest of
the system over PCI. The bridge chip reroutes AGP texture-map accesses to its own local
memory, supplementing the i740's frame buffer, and includes hardware acceleration for
setup and rasterization of polygon strips and fans.
The StarFighter board line currently includes a $199, 12-Mbyte version with a 4-Mbyte
frame buffer and 8-Mbyte texture memory; a $239, 16-Mbyte version with an 8-Mbyte frame
buffer and 8-Mbyte texture memory; and a $279, 24-Mbyte version with an 8-Mbyte frame
buffer and 16-Mbyte texture memory. Volume prices are available for the board and the
R3D-040 chip.
--by Brian Dipert
Real 3D, Orlando, FL. 1-407-306-7302, fax 1-407-306-3358, www.real3d.com.
National Semiconductor introduces a chip set to support as high as
160031200-pixel-resolution, SXGA-to-UXGA/HDTV digital-monitor interfaces. The chip set is
the first for the proposed low-voltage differential-signal (LVDS) display-interface (LDI)
standard for the emerging LCD-monitor market. The LDI chip set provides a 224-MHz
effective pixel clock and a 10m cable drive and is backward-compatible with National's
LVDS flat-panel-display interface that has become the de facto standard for notebook
computers. In addition to the digital interface, the LDI standard specifies a 30-pin
connector that supports the extended-display-identification-data (EDID) structure as well
as the Universal Serial Bus.
The chip set comprises the DS90C387 transmitter and the DS90CF388 receiver. The devices
have dual RGB channels for inputs and outputs with CMOS/TTL-compatible voltage levels. The
chip set serializes and translates the input signals to LVDS to take advantage of the high
speed and low EMI during transfer to the receiver chip in the monitor. Each RGB channel
operates with a pixel clock of 32.5 to 112 MHz, giving the chip set an effective pixel
clock as high as 224 MHz. The "dual-pixel" architecture allows for
high-resolution data display and is compatible with two-chip receiver panels with dual
pixel-timing controllers. In addition, the chip set transmits control signals during the
blanking interval for enhanced reliability.
The LDI chip set adds dc balance, deskew and oversampling, and pre-emphasis for
reliability and cable-distance drive capability. The dc- balance coding reduces
intersymbol interference on long cable interfaces, whereas the deskew and oversampling
circuitry reduces the impact of cable skew and optimizes the sampling of high-speed serial
data. The pre-emphasis feature adds dynamic switching current during transitions to
counteract the distributed capacitance of long cables for reliable single-bit
transmissions.
The introduction of the LDI standard escalates the battle with Silicon Image's (www.siimage.com) PanelLink technology for the interface
to digital monitors. National claims that LDI has many advantages over PanelLink
technology. For example, LDI requires only one termination resistor on each of nine LVDS
twisted pairs instead of four passive termination components on each of PanelLink's four
twisted pairs. On the other hand, PanelLink uses only four twisted pairs to LDI's nine,
yielding a substantial savings in cable costs.
The DS90C387 and the DS90CF388 chips are available for sampling. Each chip costs $11
(1000).
--by Stephen Kempainen
National Semiconductor, Santa Clara, CA. 1-800-272-9959, www.national.com.
Much of the predicted Year 2000 troubles have focused on mainframe applications, but
PCs will also need fixes. In particular, embedded systems based on PC technology running
mission-critical applications may be at risk. Most PCs bought in the last year have a BIOS
that supports a four-digit year. Award (www.award.com)
software has included such support in its BIOS since 1995. Unfortunately, millions of
older PCs require a fix, including those embedded systems that companies don't regularly
upgrade the way they upgrade desktop PCs. Now, Award's Unicore subsidiary that specializes
in BIOS updates has developed an ISA card that can retrofit any BIOS with a four-digit
date. The company has tested the $79.95 Millennium/Pro card with BIOS implementations from
AMI (www.ami.com), Phoenix (www.phoenix.com), and Compaq (www.compaq.com).
Many people think first about the need for operating-system and application-software
fixes for the Year 2000 problem. If all PCs reacted the same at the stroke of midnight
come Dec 31, 1999, you could guard against the problem at the application-software level.
Unfortunately, different BIOS implementations have been programmed to take different
actions. All PCs use a real-time clock chip with a 100-year clock. When 2000 comes, the
clock ICs will produce "00'' for the year. Some BIOS implementations will report the
"00," others will reset the chip to "80'' and report 1980, and still others
will report other years in the 1980s.
The Millennium/Pro card adds a 1-kbyte block of code at the back of the BIOS to prevent
incorrect dates when 2000 comes. The BIOS extension executes each time the system boots,
and you can see a boot message indicating the card is in place. Essentially, the card
bides its time until midnight of 2000. Then, in real time, the BIOS extension traps
references to the date, in turn continuing to provide a correct date to the operating
system and applications. It deciphers the failure mode of the installed BIOS, resets the
clock chip, and lives happily ever after providing a four-digit year. The board has no
switches or settings, making it simple to install. Unicore claims that if your system
boots once the card is installed, you'll experience no incompatibilities with any drivers
or other software.
--by Maury Wright
Unicore Software, North Andover, MA. 1-978-686-6468, www.unicore.com.
Vendors are providing you with an increasingly broad choice in A/D converters that
sample at 65M samples/sec--a threshold value for many IF-sampling communications, video,
and instrumentation designs--and with resolutions that provide trade-offs in spurious-free
dynamic range (SFDR), SNR, power consumption, and cost. The latest entry in the 12-bit
camp is the CLC5956 from National Semiconductor. This IC features a 73-dBc SFDR and 67-dB
SNR at 5 MHz; corresponding figures 55 dBc and 60 dB at 250 MHz. Input bandwidth is 300
MHz (-3 dB) for this 48-pin TSSOP device, which operates from a 5V supply, typically
consumes 615 mW, and costs $29.80 (1000). To simplify testing the IC and to minimize
design-in difficulties, National also offers the CLC5956PCASM evaluation board, with a
schematic, a board layout, and CAD files.
--by Bill Schweber
National Semiconductor Corp, Santa Clara, CA. 1-800-272-9959, www.national.com/pf/CL/CLC14061.html.
Simplex Solutions is offering COmprehensive Semiconductor Measurement of Interconnect
Capacitance (COSMIC), a free methodology for checking interconnect extraction-tool
accuracy and associated test structures, from the company's Web site.
COSMIC uses an "active" capacitance-measurement scheme, based on technology
developed at the University of California--Berkeley. Relying on balanced MOS circuitry,
COSMIC can measure capacitances with femtofarad accuracy. Traditional passive
capacitance-measuring techniques are useful only down to picofarad capacitances, which are
too coarse for capacitance validation of chips fabricated on processes smaller than 0.5
mm. Simplex uses COSMIC to validate its own Fire & Ice 3-D extraction tool on test
chips from both Chartered Semiconductor (www.csminc.com)
and United Microelectronics (www.umc.com.tw). Results
of the validation show Fire & Ice numbers within 10% of actual silicon.
TestChip Technologies (Dallas, TX), a supplier of test chips to semiconductor
manufacturers, has added the COSMIC test structures to its public library and has agreed
to use COSMIC on future test chips.
--by Jim Lipman
Simplex Solutions, Sunnyvale, CA. 1-408-617-6100, fax 408-774-0285, www.simplex.com.
Galileo and Allayer are both expanding their switch architectures and chip sets to
include Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet ports. With the recent finalization of the IEEE
802.3z Gigabit Ethernet standard, switch designers are looking for standards-compliant
chips to reduce the cost for Gigabit ports on switches. A new chip from Allayer and a new
architecture and five chips from Galileo aim to reduce the cost per switch port for
Gigabit Ethernet.
Allayer adds the AL1000 two-port Gigabit Ethernet switch chip to its family of chips
for Ethernet switching. The AL1000 contains the digital circuitry to implement the
switching functions for two Gigabit Ethernet ports with full- or half-duplex operation.
The device also has the expansion ports for the Ring of Switches (RoX) bus to link as many
as four AL1000 chips for an 8-Gbit port switch. However, the RoX bus can transfer data at
4 Gbps between all port chips, so it is nonblocking in 90% of network-traffic conditions,
according to Allayer. In addition, the AL1000 manages two low-cost
synchronous-graphics-RAM interfaces for buffering incoming and outgoing packets for the
two Gigabit ports. The AL1000 will be available this month. The device comes in 352-bump
BGAs and costs $120 (1000).
Galileo is introducing the GalNet-II architecture and five chips to implement designs.
The GalNet-II switching architecture uses a hybrid between a pure crossbar switch and
shared-bus architectures. A four-port crossbar-switch chip connects as many as four
switch-controller chips through individual point-to-point G.Links, proprietary 2.4-Gbps
links based on low-voltage differential signaling. G.Links can also connect two switch
controllers to each other. The controller chips have either 8- to 10/100-Gbps Ethernet on
a shared bus or 1-Gbit Ethernet port each. For efficient G.Link bandwidth use, GalNet-II
controller devices segment frames into cells before transmitting them into the switch
fabric. The cells prevent large frames from blocking smaller ones with higher priority.
The five devices for Galileo's GalNet-II switch include three eight-port Fast Ethernet
switch controllers that each have a switching engine with support for 12,000
media-access-control addresses. In addition, the devices support IEEE flow control,
priority, and virtual-LAN standards and Internet Protocol Multicast. The eight-port
controllers differ only in their management features. The GT-48320 single-port Gigabit
Ethernet switch controller complies with IEEE Gigabit Ethernet standards and all the
management and switching features in the Fast Ethernet controllers. The GT-48300 four-port
crossbar device provides 12-Gbps cut-through switching between the G.Link ports. A switch
design can cascade multiple crossbar devices to support more than four G.Link ports. The
crossbar device provides a 33/66-MHz, 32-bit PCI-bus processor interface for managed
GalNet-II systems.
All the devices are available now. The GT-48310 eight-port switch controller with
advanced management sells for $96 (10,000), the GT-48311 eight-port controller with
standard management sells for $70 (10,000), the GT-48312 eight-port controller without
management sells for $60 (10,000), the GT-48300 four-port G.Link crossbar sells for $50
(10,000), and the GT-48320 Gigabit Ethernet controller sells for $96 (10,000).
--by Stephen Kempainen
Allayer Technologies, San Jose, CA. 1-408-573-8880, www.allayer.com.
Galileo Technology, San Jose, CA. 1-408-367-1400, www.galileoT.com.
The virtues of Class D amplifiers for audio applications are well-known: Like their
switched-mode power-supply cousins, they deliver efficiency of approximately 90%, thus
reducing both your supply requirements and thermal load. STMicroelectronics (formerly,
SGS-Thomson Microelectronics) offers a trio of monolithic Class D power amplifiers--rated
at 10, 18, and 25W output power with 10% THD into a 4V load--which the company claims are
the first commercially available IC devices.
The functionally similar ICs operate from supplies as high as ±25V and include standby
and mute functions and protection against overvoltage, output-short-circuit, and
thermal-overload conditions. Available in a 20-pin power DIP with a copper, heat-spreading
lead frame, the 10W TDA7480 requires no heat sinking. The 18W TDA7481 and 25W TDA7482 are
available in 15-lead packages with heat-sinking tabs. Prices range from $2.40 to $3
(10,000); the vendor is working on stereo and quad versions as well.
--by Bill Schweber
STMicroelectronics, Lexington, MA. 1-781-861-2650, fax 1-781-861-2678, www.st.com.
You've seen the tiny, single- or dual-output, low-dropout (LDO) voltage regulators in
SOT-23 and SOIC packages, which allow you to put the regulator close to the load for
optimal performance. But the board space that even these LDOs require can quickly add up
when you need multiple devices to support four, six, or even eight supply rails, such as
in cell phones. The R53210L regulator series from Ricoh helps you in these situations by
incorporating eight LDOs plus three undervoltage detectors, a battery monitor, three LED
drivers, and a ringer driver, into a 737-mm-sq, 0.5-mm-pitch, 32-pin QFP.
Ricoh factory-trims six of the eight outputs to 2.5 to 3.3V (in 0.1V steps) with 2%
accuracy. You can program the other two outputs with 8-bit resolution via a three-wire
serial interface (0.5 to 2.492V output for one LDO and 1.008 to 3V for the other). You use
this interface for individually enabling and disabling each of the eight LDOs, for
controlling other IC functions, and for checking status bits. Maximum output currents are
20 to 300 mA, depending on the LDO, and one LDO has 150-mA output for driving the motor of
a phone vibrator. The R5310L costs $3.50 (10,000).
--by Bill Schweber
Ricoh Corp, San Jose, CA. 1-408-944-3399, ext 122, fax 1-408-432-8372, www.ricoh-usa.com.
The WLMPMC power-management controller from Lambda Electronics provides precise
monitoring and control of the front-end supplies in distributed-architecture
telecommunications power systems. The mP-based system can monitor and control as many as
60 high-power rectifiers and associated batteries. The Windows 95-based WLMPMC works with
Lambda's WLR5600 switch-mode rectifier, which delivers 100A at 48V. If you connect 20
WLR5600 units in parallel, they can deliver 2000A from a rack only 2.2m high. The WLMPMC
measures 44 mm high (1U in rack terms), 485 mm deep, and 280 mm wide. It offers
front-panel programming, remote-alarm capability via modem, and a back-lit LCD. The
controller has UL, CSA, BABT, and CE-Mark certification. The unit price is $800.
--by Bill Travis
Lambda Electronics, Melville, NY. 1-516-694-4200, ext 279, fax 1-516-752-2627, www.lambdapower.com.
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Aug 13 to 15
Hot Interconnects 6, Stanford, CA, is a
symposium on high-performance interconnects, focusing on system buses and interfaces to
networks. Presentations cover developments in chips, software, and systems. Other topics
include fast routers and look-ups, server interconnects, network interfaces, fast links,
and switching.
Hot Interconnects, Los Gatos, CA. Fax 1-408-867-5831, www.hoti.org.
Aug 16 to 18
Hot Chips 10, Palo Alto, CA, is a
symposium that focuses on high-performance chips, systems, and related topics. Topics
include RISC, CISC, and VLIW processors; 3-D graphics and multimedia chips; embedded CPUs,
chip sets, and DSP chips; special-function chips; low-power chips and technologies;
intelligent and high-performance memory chips; field-programmable and reconfigurable
chips; compilers and binary translators; benchmarking and performance evaluations; and new
technologies.
Hot Chips, Los Gatos, CA. Fax 1-408-867-5831, www.hotchips.org.
Aug 23 to 27
Surface Mount International, San Jose, CA,
focuses on developments in high-density packaging, surface-mount-technology manufacturing
issues, electronics manufacturing services, and component technology. An OEM multimedia
stage showcases new products. A chip-scale pavilion presents chip-scale technologies and
advanced assembly technologies, such as BGA and flip chip. The Electronic Industries
Association, the Surface Mount Technology Association, Miller Freeman Inc, and the
Institute for Interconnecting and Packaging Electronic Circuits co-sponsor the event.
Visit www.surfacemount.com. |
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