In-Depth Technical Features

MEMS-based inertial sensor is not your grandfather's gyroscope
By Randy Torrance, Chipworks, 12/1/2008
The IC Insider looks at a MEMS-based gyroscope in microscopic detail, and finds that the ingenuity in this sophisticated sensor goes far beyond the process technology used to sculpt its mechanical features.

RFID in embedded designs: Your move
By Warren Webb, Technical Editor, 11/27/2008
With a built-in RFID reader, embedded systems can exchange data with tagged items to create a new category of applications in tune with their surroundings.

Power SOCs: A “crazy” idea that just might work
By Margery Conner, Technical Editor, 11/27/2008
For power-management ICs, fitting an entire power supply, including switching, control, and passive components, onto one chip enables greater power efficiency and lower heat dissipation. Sophisticated power-supply topologies, miniaturized magnetics, and faster switching devices may combine to make the power supply on a chip a reality.
Driving high-power LEDs in series-parallel arrays
By Chris Richardson, National Semiconductor, 11/27/2008
The light from an LED is proportional to the current flowing through it. The challenge for the drive circuitry for applications using multiple high-brightness LEDs is to get the same current flowing through each LED and to balance the requirements of size, power efficiency, legal/safety standards, and cost. Every branch requires some form of current regulation.
Get hardware fast: Use your evaluation kit to build a testbench
By Jon Pearson, Cypress Semiconductor Corp, 11/27/2008
Build a testbench using the microcontroller in your project to simplify the new-task learning curve, get a head start on hardware/firmware integration, and shorten the overall development cycle.
Tips for designing ultra-low power systems
By Kevin Belnap, MSP430 MCU Product Marketing Manager, Texas Instruments, 11/25/2008
Follow these tips to save power in battery-powered, microprocessor-based systems: Some involve simple coding techniques and others are hardware or system architecture related.
3G wireless data: about to break?
By Ann R Thryft, Contributing Technical Editor, 11/13/2008
Although the definitions of 3 and 4G wireless data networks, services, and terminals have been moving targets, some long-promised 3G capabilities are starting to appear. Meanwhile, 4G deployments have been delayed even further.
Solid-state drives challenge hard disks
By Brian Dipert, Senior Technical Editor, 11/13/2008
Hard-disk-drive vendors assert that more-than-50-year-old rotating storage will remain relevant for many years to come. Solid-state-drive suppliers scoff at these claims, calling hard-disk technology a has-been. Which camp is right?
Designing intelligence into door-entry and security systems
By Gordon Wilkinson, PhD, Trinity Convergence, 11/13/2008
Designers now have greater opportunity than ever before to design more intelligence and flexibility into personal-security systems by using mature and proven standards-based technology. Learn about some of the key challenges to implementing high-quality, cost-effective, and secure door-entry and video-monitoring systems using IP voice and video technology.
DDR3 SDRAM exposed: Inside a bleeding-edge, blazing-fast memory device
By Randy Torrance, Chipworks, 11/3/2008
The IC Insider reveals the densely packed real estate and impressive clock-synchronization circuitry that allow Samsung's 1-Gbit K4B1G0846D-HCF8 to achieve its 1066-Mbps data-transfer rate.
Multicore: the future of SOCs?
By Ron Wilson, Executive Editor, 10/30/2008
Will systems on chips follow server CPUs down the road to having many identical processor cores on a die?
Choosing the right processor candidate: the 35th annual microprocessor directory
By Robert Cravotta, Technical Editor, 10/30/2008
Welcome to the 35th annual EDN microprocessor/microcontroller directory. Once again, the companies and devices in the directory continue to evolve and grow in number. The company roster and product listings are testaments to the variety of processors available and the tremendous variation among requirements, features, and types of applications for which designers are using microprocessors and microcontrollers.
Designing very high-frequency signal generators with amplifier ICs
By Márian Štofka, Slovak University of Technology, Bratislava, Slovakia, 10/27/2008
Use high-speed op amps to make fast oscillators and pulse generators.
A turn-off: Power management complicates life for verification engineers
By Ron Wilson, Executive Editor, 10/16/2008
Advanced energy-saving techniques can cause vast difficulties in the verification process.
Power-over-Ethernet chips: to the spec and beyond
By Margery Conner, Technical Editor, 10/16/2008
Power over Ethernet allows a basic Category 5 or 6 cable to carry both data and power, enabling simple and inexpensive installations of equipment such as VOIP phones, cameras, and wireless-access points.
Start with the right op amp when driving SAR ADCs
By Miro Oljaca and Bonnie C Baker, Texas Instruments, 10/16/2008
Using the right operational amplifier in front of your data converter will give you good performance. Adjusting component values by production lot will give you the best performance.
Re-engineering obsolete ICs using FPGAs
By Vipin Ahuja, EmbeddedBlox Inc., 10/13/2008
This case study illustrates the design challenges and constraints encountered as FGPA design consultants at EmbeddedBlox re-engineered an obsolete low-power peripheral controller.
SMS for automobile security system developers
By Ankur Verma, 10/7/2008
This paper describes the development of an embedded security system for automobiles based on the ubiquitous short message service technology.
Virtualization: silicon and software salvation or technological tower of Babel?
By Brian Dipert, Senior Technical Editor, 10/2/2008
Stable, robust code speaks one language; new CPUs speak another. Is a software rewrite necessary to resolve the seeming contradiction, or can virtualization temporarily—or even permanently—ease the translation?
On time, every time: embedding real-time performance
By Warren Webb, Technical Editor, 10/2/2008
High-speed graphics, user interfaces, and networks represent the norm in embedded-system designs, and these performance issues dictate the use of multitasking firmware.
Extending SPI4.2 capabilities for Ethernet services
By Shakeel Peera, Lattice Semiconductor, 10/2/2008
With the proliferation of Internet Protocol-based systems in the telecommunications market, designers are turning to FPGAs to create intelligent Ethernet bridges and traffic managers.
Lithium-ion-battery-charging IC powered by charge-transfer, control innovations
By Randy Torrance, Chipworks, 10/1/2008
The IC Insider: Reverse engineering the Maxim MAX8814ETA 28V linear lithium-ion battery-charger IC.
DisplayPort versus HDMI: Do we really need two digital-display-interface standards?
By Ann R Thryft, Contributing Technical Editor, 9/18/2008
DisplayPort silicon is beginning to appear in PCs, LCD monitors, and graphics cards. But it will probably be at least five years before prices fall and volumes ramp enough to challenge HDMI in consumer electronics.
Silicon germanium: fast, quiet, and powerful
By Paul Rako, Technical Editor, 9/18/2008
SiGe processes can give analog-circuit designers fast, high-voltage transistors with low noise, whereas BiCMOS SiGe fits into CMOS process flows.
Making the transition from bit banger to gigabit guru
By Eric Bogatin, PhD, Bogatin Enterprises, Bill Hargin, Mentor Graphics, 9/18/2008
As high-speed serial interconnections infiltrate technology, system designers face a series of new signal-integrity problems to manage.
Speed acquisition made simple
By Dr David Lin, iC-Haus GmbH, 9/11/2008
Speed acquisition is of central importance in the control and monitoring of motion processes. We cannot imagine our industrially powered modern world without it, whether in control and automation systems or in the regulation of traffic. The following article aims to provide a summary of the various ways in which these diverse tasks can be tackled simply and efficiently using magnetic sensors based on the Hall principle.
Challenges and design decisions for measuring multicore performance
By Markus Levy and Shay Gal-On, EEMBC, 9/4/2008
The type of multicore processor you choose and the type of parallelism you apply in your application code will greatly affect the performance you will achieve. To ensure that you meet your goals, closely examine the benchmark scores produced by an industry-standard suite of multicore benchmarks.
Handcrafted analog gets automated assist
By Rick Nelson, Editor-in-Chief, 9/4/2008
EDA tools address simulation, verification, and layout for mixed-signal designs.
Shedding light on embedded debugging
By Robert Cravotta, Technical Editor, 9/4/2008
Embedded debugging gets a lot of attention for being a schedule and resource hog, but there may be more to it than just fixing bad software.
Optimize memory-system design for multimedia applications
By David Lautzenheiser and Agha Hussain, Silistix, 9/4/2008
The convergence of video and communications in inexpensive unified-memory architectures has made DRAM the most important and the highest-performance target in any system.

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EDN's technical features, written either by our staff engineer-editors or industry experts, dive deeply into diverse electronics topics, delivering how-to information, detailed expertise, and exclusive analyses of trends in enabling technologies and engineering.

In-Depth Technical Features

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