Scope: APEC 2008, credit crunch hits tech
Scope previews the upcoming Applied Power Electronics Conference, probes the connection between the subprime-mortgage fiasco and the tech sector, and reviews a late-1950s digital autopilot.
Edited by Ron Wilson -- EDN, January 10, 2008
Looking Ahead: To APEC 2008
The 2008 Applied Power Electronics Conference will happen February 24 to 28 in Austin, TX. Take your pick of controversies, tutorials, and papers on advanced topics in power-electronics design; they’ll all be there. Highlights will include a number of sessions on digital control of power circuits, including theory, modeling, and prototyping; on the quest for greater efficiency; on electromagnetic analysis for power-supply folks; and (inevitably) on power electronics in alternative-energy applications.
Looking Back:
At a computer-based combat autopilot
An airborne digital computer now in production can fly a jet aircraft through all phases of supersonic combat and is small enough to fit in the cabinet of a 21-in. table-model TV. The computer can make 9600 arithmetical computations in one second and 6250 decisions in a minute. Combining information from ground-control stations and the aircraft’s radar, the computer takes in 61 types of information and outputs 30 types, in the process monitoring 16 navigation and flight-control functions on a 1.8-second cycle. Instead of tubes, the computer contains 4000 diodes, and 75% of its wiring is etched circuitry.
—Electrical Design News, January 1958
Looking Around:
At the implications of the credit crisis
What does the global credit crisis that grew out of the US subprime-mortgage fiasco have to do with electronics? Unfortunately, there are several close links. Directly, any time less money is available to households—such as with the drying up of home-equity loans in the United States—demand falls for the big-ticket consumer items that carry a lot of electronics content. What’s more pernicious is that the spreading credit crunch and conscious tightening of business credit in China are making credit scarcer for businesses as well, reducing capital spending on electronics. In particular, that most capital-intensive purchase—a production fab—may become impossible without smoothly functioning global credit markets. The situation could improve if a country were willing to step up and pay the bill on its own, perhaps using a sovereign-wealth fund to invest directly in capital equipment. But that’s a step no one has taken yet.
