Cover Story

• SRAMs strive to specialize
  SRAM manufacturers are responding to tough business conditions and changing customer needs with a range of devices targeting specific applications. This trend may mean fewer supply options and tougher architecture decisions, but the end result is an optimized part for your unique requirements.
  — Brian Dipert, Technical Editor

Design Features

• Analog components add fiber to your communications diet
  To effectively interface between the digital electronic world and the optical world, you need to use analog components designed to accommodate the unique characteristics of electro-optical components.
  — Bill Schweber, Technical Editor

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• At last: benchmarks you can believe
  New industry-standard, real-world benchmarks—the cumulative efforts of 21 µP and DSP vendors—give you the tools to confidently select a processor for your next embedded-system design.
  — Markus Levy, Technical Editor

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• Overvoltage tolerance eases the transition between 5 and less-than-5V systems
  In a perfect world, all systems would run on the same supply voltage. In the real world, the supply voltage is constantly changing. An overvoltage-tolerant device makes the transition to different supply systems and subsystems a little less painful.
  — Craig Klem and Lee Sledjeski, Fairchild Semiconductor

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• Fieldbuses: Look before you leap
  Use this handy comparison chart to find the best fieldbus for your application.
  — MTL Instruments Group

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• Digital-radio-receiver design requires re-evaluation of parameters
  When you design a digital receiver, you need to look at some conventional performance parameters in a new way, and you need to examine factors that are unique to this architecture.
  — Brad Brannon, Analog Devices Inc

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• Board layout boosts power-supply performance
  You can often trace the difference between a power supply that produces a steady, clean, and quiet output and one that produces noisy, unreliable power directly to the supply's board layout.
  — Philip Rogers, Texas Instruments Inc

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• DSO fault triggers reveal what went wrong
  The concept is simple: constantly look for faults before digitizing the signal; stop acquisition when something goes wrong. The scope's memory then reveals what led to the failure. It took scope designers many years to perfect this invaluable approach.
  — W E Swift and W A Farnbach, Farnbach and Swift Technology

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Leading Edge

• Firewire IC targets hot portable applications
• CompactPCI handles avert live-insertion mishaps
• Access Web from any phone
• Portable PC accepts CompactPCI modules
• Fibre channel PCI cards offer copper or GBIC connection
• SRAMs take a new approach
• USB controller gets hard-wired
• High-speed sockets accommodate RIMM
• RF synthesizers further succumb to integration's allure
• NT workstation sports 450-MHz Xeon processors
• Hordes of tools emerge for programmable-logic design

• RC network squeezes into 0603 size
• RF LNA attenuator lets you step lively
• Test-executive software is standard but customizable
• Innovating an innovation
• Multichannel digital delay isolator immunizes I/O from signal ailments
• IC SLICs extend POTS ringing range
• Timing-generator buffers go with the flow of spread-spectrum PC clocks
• Dual op amp virtually vanishes, delighting designers
• Hot-swap controller IC is critical to accomplishing successful RAID

Leading Edge Europe 

• Add graphics to embedded-system applications
• Low-power DSPs serve infrastructure and terminal applications
• Quad-DSP boards speed data routing with crossbar switches

• Op-amp design cuts drift over time and cuts out 1/f noise
• Fast 8-bit microcontroller runs "virtual peripherals" in software
• Module design cuts the cost of embedding the PC architecture

Design Ideas

• Low-voltage interface circuits translate 1.8 to 5V
• Laser-diode driver stabilizes sensitivity parameters
• Voice-storage chips talk to each other
• 3.3V converter delivers 3W from Li-ion battery

• Pulsing charge pump drives capacitive loads
• Short-circuit finder uses few parts
• "Tube" circuit provides linear tuning

Products

• New Product Database (registered users only) 

Columnist

• Hot plugging and beefy guys named Mark—Howard Johnson, PhD

How it works

• Ink gets an upgrade—Gary Legg, Executive Editor

Departments

• Editorial Staff
• Business Staff