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Mentor Graphics PCB design contest
You have until Sept 24, 2010 to submit your PCB (printed circuit board) design to Mentor graphics for consideration in their annual design contest. Winners receive a TLA (technology leadership award) plaque. You will get global recognition of your company and design team through a press release and presentations / webinars. You may also be featured in industry publications. There are six categorie ... More
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Technical Editor Paul Rako looks at analog technology in power supplies, interface, the signal path, and life in general.
Tenet of Leadership #4: Keep your commitments
Your people take their signals from your behavior. You have to walk the talk. If you expect ownership, you have to show ownership. If you expect dependability, you have to show dependability. To be a great leader, people need to know that you understand their needs, are empathetic to their plight, and care about their success. Keeping your commitments to everyone in the organization (not just to t ... More
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Larry Pendergrass, vice president of New Product Development at Keithley Instruments, Inc., contributes his views on a variety of issues related to new product development leadership, including general leadership, innovation, strategy development and execution.
National’s new LED sim tool balances cost, heat, and space
Designing LED-based lighting requires balancing LED performance, power control topologies, and thermal management devices, while keeping cost and space requirements in line. The two biggest challenges in LED lighting design are managing cost and heat. Manufacturers rate their LEDs luminous efficacy at a certain level at the optimal light output to driving current. But you can overdrive those LEDs ... More
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Technical Editor Margery Conner's PowerSource streams the latest developments in electronic power design and related technologies. Follow Margery on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/margeryc.
STMicroelectronics ACST4, ACST6, and ACST8: AC-motor switches cut cost of control for appliance market
Targeting use in appliances, the ACST4, ACST6, and ACST8 switches include a power TRIAC. The TRIAC delivers enhanced commutation performance to turn a motor off without external components to suppress voltage transients and to ensure reliable switching. Unlike conventional TRIACs, the switches also integrate protection against surge voltages as high as 2 kV on the ac line. The ACST4, ACST6, and AC ... More
About this blog
EDN's technical editors highlight notable new products including analog and digital ICs, power components, sensors, passives, boards and systems, software, and more. To submit products for consideration, please see the information on our Editorial Opportunities page.
Politicians ears deaf to tech's cries, Would tech insider heed call for US competitiveness action?
It’s been more than a decade now that I’ve been reporting on the electronics sector and I can no longer count the amount of content I’ve written over that course of time regarding the cries for action on dwindling US competitiveness. More high-tech industry execs and engineers than I can count have lobbied our political officials for funding, for improvements to the education ... More
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Offering news and business analysis for the design engineer, Managing News Editor Suzanne Deffree filters the electronics industry's developments and trends to explain how what's happening in the board room today can impact the tech innovation of tomorrow. Follow Suzanne on Twitter, @Deffree. Suzanne also manages EDN's Twitter account, @EDNMagazine.
AMD's Bulldozer And Bobcat: x86 Architectural Innovation Is (Finally!) Once Again Where It's At
AMD rocked the x86 microprocessor world when, in 1999, it unveiled the Athlon microprocessor built on the company’s then-latest K7 microarchitecture (and whose design team, as a quick trivia aside, was led by now-CEO Dirk Meyer). K7 delivered performance-vs-power consumption and -vs-die size punches that knocked Intel back on its heels. Athlon had the not-yet-even-released NetBurst microarc ... More
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EDN Senior Technical Editor Brian Dipert exposes, analyzes and
opines on diverse topics in technology. Follow the Brian's Brain Twitter feed at www.twitter.com/BrianzBrain.
Transmitter signal integrity in itself is irrelevant
The integrity of a Tx signal is relevant only as it pertains to how the Rx sees it. In previous posts, I discussed Tx and Rx emphasis techniques used to compensate for channel losses. In this blog, I will share a few important scope setups that allow you to best replicate the CDR in your Rx. Loop BW The loop BW acts like a jitter filter. Jitter frequencies below the loop BW are tracked and rejecte ... More
About this blog
Jit Lim, Tektronix senior technologist for high-speed signal analysis, has an EE degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and more than 20 years of experience in the test-and-measurement industry. He has also designed some of Tektronix's highest-performance real-time scopes and published numerous technical papers. Lim brings his extensive experience in signal integrity, jitter analysis, and high-speed-signal physical-layer characterization to these blog posts.
The Congo, minerals, and the electronics industry
Something that industry is going to hear more about is the “Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act,” which was signed into law by President Obama on July 21, 2010. The Act includes a raft of measures arising out of the recent financial crisis and runs to 2,300 pages! Last year there was a bill in the US Senate known as the “Congo Conflict Minerals Act of 200 ... More
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Gary Nevison, director of legislation and environmental affairs at Newark and Farnell, contributes his views on the electronics supply chain and environmental compliance's most critical topics -- ROHS (all variations around the world), REACH, EUP, WEEE directives, and on whatever else comes up in this ever evolving business channel.
Heard at DAC: The question on everyone’s mind
One of the favorite pastimes at the Design Automation Conference each year-other than scoring the best hand-outs on the show floor-is trying to divine the subject of the buzz: that background level of conversation between attendees. Some years the subject is an unsolved design problem. Some years it is a new product, or a category of new products. Some years it is speculation on a business deal. T ... More
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EDN Executive Editor Ron Wilson explores how IC design teams really work: the struggle for power efficiency and performance, wrestling with semiconductor processes and design methodologies, the challenges of global design teams. How do we somehow herd architecture, IP, design and verification into a successful tape-out?
Polyteda
One startup I did run across that looks interesting is Polyteda. Let me first point out that this is all based simply on talking to them and I’ve not run their tools or done any other diligence. They have a next generation DRC facing off against Calibre (also they have LVS). They are based out of the Ukraine. When I had a development group in Moscow when I was at Compass one of the things I ... More
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Questions for the DAC Pavilion Panel on multicore design
As I wrote yesterday, I’ll be chairing a Multicore panel at DAC in Anaheim on Monday in the Panel Pavilion at DAC. This morning, I worked on creating some questions for the panelists with my good friend Markus Levy, President of the Multicore Association, who was the original person scheduled to be the moderator. Here are the questions so far: 1. What comes first with multicore, the hardwar ... More
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Leibson's Law: It takes 10 years for any disruptive technology to become pervasive in the design community. This blog is about the disruptive technologies that either have or will win over electronic engineers, some that won't, and why. Please feel free to link to these blog entries! Written by Steve Leibson, Technology Evangelist and Director of Strategic Marketing for Denali Software, formerly VP of Content for Reed Business, and formerly Editor in Chief of three publications including EDN and Microprocessor Report. You can email me at steven.leibson followed by the magic email symbol @ followed by att.net.
MRAM Moves to Higher Densities
Everspin introduced a 16-megabit MRAM product today focused on all applications requiring both SRAM performance and nonvolatile data storage. This latest product also addresses MRAM’s traditional high reliability and high-performance market segment, while advancing the technology to a higher density. The new MR4A16B is a 3.3-volt parallel I/O non-volatile memory product featuring 35ns acce ... More
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The Professor Memory blog covers critical new applications and the resulting shift in the value proposition of memory technologies. The professor identifies competitive advantages of the widening range of memory technologies, and forecasts potential market entry points that will be enabled by changes in market dynamics.
Stratix Strategy for Fifth Generation
Given Altera Corp.’s earlier statements regarding 28-nm processes and HardCopy architectures, the capabilities of Stratix V were known long before the April 19 launch of the family. Still, the justification for the 28-Gbit/sec transceivers and 1.6-Tbit/sec aggregate switching capability aims for a core transport application space that may be only a partial realization of the inherent d ... More
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Analyst Loring Wirbel covers programmable logic from an application perspective, providing a sneak peek at the vertical applications that help drive FPGA complexity, performance, and density. The blog will feature videos allowing engineers to spotlight their latest designs, along with news of products and corporate trends at FPGA vendors and the developers of third-party tools for programmable logic.
Robust Design: Patch-It Principle
The software patch is a much maligned technique for keeping systems robust because many users perceive that the majority of these patches as merely fixes of feature bugs that the developers should have taken care of before shipping the software. While there are many examples where this sentiment has a strong ring of truth to it, the patch-it principle is a critical approach to maintaining robust s ... More
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Welcome to The Embedded Master, the expert resource for embedded systems designers and developers. Daily news, insightful blogs, video demos, monthly contests, whitepapers and more for the embedded community
Join me at the Embedded Master Micro-site
I have found a new home at the Embedded Master-Microsite to continue the topics we were exploring here. Thank you to all of the people that sent me an email in response to the Tying up Loose Ends post. I have three series running at the micro-site at this time.Monday posts address the Robust Design series. Wednesday posts address the Question of the Week series. Friday posts address the Extreme P ... More
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Technical Editor Robert Cravotta explores processor and software-processing architectures and the impact they have on system and software development. Relevant architectures include microprocessors, microcontrollers, digital signal processors (DSPs), multiprocessor architectures, processor fabrics, coprocessors, and accelerators, plus embedded cores in FPGAs, SOCs, and ASICs. You can find out where Robert is posting by checking Embedded Insights. Follow Robert at Twitter at: http://twitter.com/robertcravotta
Using eight bits to save two bits
Do some inflection points make as much sound as one hand clapping? It seems that way. Why else would so many device manufacturers still use 8- or 16-bit processors, when modern 32- and 64-bit processors blow those parts out of the water? The answer, of course, is cost. 8-bitters are cheap. Unfortunately, this cost-saving measure comes at a, well, cost — lost productivity. Engineering time i ... More
About this blog
Industry leaders share their insights about processor and software-processing architectures and the impact they have on system and software development. Relevant architectures include microprocessors, microcontrollers, digital signal processors (DSPs), multiprocessor architectures, processor fabrics, coprocessors, and accelerators, plus embedded cores in FPGAs, SOCs, and ASICs. Moderated by EDN Technical Editor Robert Cravotta.
Delivering The Standard In Wireline Home Networking
In the year since my original post to this blog, "Setting the standard in wireline home networking", our industry has devoted many engineer-hours to progressing the wireline home networking standards currently in development. Now that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, it is time to turn our attention from setting the standard to delivering it. First: an administrative point. In this p ... More
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Industry leaders, moderated by EDN Senior Technical Editor Brian Dipert, share their thoughts on consumer electronics: past-event post-mortems, current developments and future trends. Follow the How We See CE Twitter feed at www.twitter.com/HowWeSeeCE.
Minimizing Video Processing Design Time with FPGA Development Kits and Reference Designs
Introduction Video standards and methods of encoding/decoding have made tremendous progress over the last decade with the availability of large system-on-a-chip (SOC) solutions using ASSPs, ASICs, or FPGAs. The majority of broadcast content is already streaming in high definition (HD) and is moving from an interlace format to a progressive format. Today’s broadcast equipment must be capable ... More
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Do you know enough about LEDs?
The majority of the people who read this blog are components distributors or other members of the electronics supply chain, so I won’t go into a whole repetitive blathering here about how huge the opportunity is for the electronics supply chain when it comes to LEDs or why it’s a long-term opportunity for the overall electronics industry with tremendous growth potential. Why tell you ... More
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What's happening in the electronics supply chain that will change the way business is done? News Editor Suzanne Deffree looks at environmental regulations, RFID, inventory levels, globalization, distribution, and a host of other issues that influence the electronics supply chain.
Module merges SUMIT interface with ISM form factor
Taking advantage of the latest small form factor announcements, ADLINK Technology just introduced the CoreModule 730 single board computer combining the SUMIT (Stackable Unified Module Interconnect Technology) standard expansion interface from the Small Form Factor Special Interest Group (SFF-SIG) with the newly defined ISM (Industry Standard Module) form factor. The new embedded computer is based ... More
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Technical editor Warren Webb comments on board-level embedded hardware, development tools, and software. No chips!
Capital spending: can it get worse?
After last week’s Wall Street plunge, it was a relief to receive word that all was not lost at least at Lehman Brothers as C.J. Muse, semiconductor equipment/display technologies analyst there continued to send out his reports. With word of a number of fab closures, sales and cutbacks as well as floundering equipment sales, Muse said in a report Friday that in terms of semiconductor ma ... More
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What's happening behind the scenes in the semiconductor manufacturing industry? Read this blog by Senior Editor Ann Steffora Mutschler to find out - and chime in with your thoughts and questions.
Design Ideas detail novel power supplies
You can employ a pin-limited microcontroller to develop a suitable dc/dc-boost-voltage converter with the aid of a few discrete components. Tiny microcontroller hosts dual dc/dc-boost converters details a simple circuit where a microcontroller powered by an AAA cell generates a high enough voltage to backlight an LCD. Small capacitor supports telecom power supply during brownouts shows how to keep ... More
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Design Ideas editor Charles H. Small introduces EDN's latest engineer-submitted circuit designs, providing links to related articles from our archives, design resources elsewhere on the Web, and just-plain-fun stuff.
DesignCon 2008: One step forward, two steps….
I attended DesignCon last week and covered two events: “Where’s the ROI on DFM?”, which was a lively business panel, and a panel moderated by EDA industry analyst Gary Smith on functional verification. I actually planned to write-up a few more events but was sad to find that the others I attended lacked substance and were largely product and/or marketing pitches. I’ve b ... More
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EDN Senior Editor Mike Santarini covers digital design and the EDA, ASIC, and FPGA industries. [Editor's note: As of Feb. 2008, this blog is no longer active and is presented here for archival purposes.]
OLED Sony TV shines at CES from afar
I didn’t attend the CES show. This is the second straight year that start-of-the-year management tasks have kept me from the show. In this case, however, I didn’t miss much from most accounts. But as I promised in my most recent post, I have to commend Sony for their introduction of an OLED TV even if it measures only 11-in diagonally. I’ve regularly blasted Sony for obsession ... More
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In this blog, EDN Editorial Director Maury Wright focuses on digital consumer-electronics gadgets and the converged networks that feed them with video, audio, and data. [Editor's note: As of Feb. 2008, this blog is no longer active and is presented here for archival purposes.]
