EDN Europe April 2005 Archive
APRIL 2005
FEATURES:
Low-cost FPGAs move into consumer designs
Should you use an ASIC or a structured ASIC in your consumer design?
Don't bother with either, say the FPGA makers; there's a new class of low-cost
programmable parts competing for those sockets.
By Graham Prophet, Editor
Industrial-strength analog
Decades of process development have mostly focused on increasing the
density and speed of logic. Minimum gate dimensions have fallen from microns to
less than 10 nm. The world around you, however, has not undergone anything like
a similar process reduction. So signals, noise, and aperiodic events are as
big as or bigger than ever for many applications. What's an I/O designer to do?
By Joshua Israelsohn, Technical Editor
Design complexity requires
system-level design
The ambiguity of product specifications written in a natural language
often introduces design flaws that go undetected until later, making the
solution more expensive.
By Gabe Moretti , Technical Editor
Low-power differential
interface technologies for portable products
Although a number of recent publications have outlined the benefits of
using differential signalling technology over single-ended technology for serial
interfaces, less information exists on the hidden forces driving such migrations
at the signal-transmission level.
By Pravas Pradham and Jeff Ju, Fairchild Semiconductor
LEADING EDGE:
Fingerprint modules simplify
biometrics
Materials science enables capacitor doubling
Antenna module breaks new (balanced) ground
EDN/Texas Instruments Power Seminar Series
Network-on-chip replaces on-chip buses
Antenna diversity boosts cellular performance
Software toolkit simplifies using LabView for
digital-filter design
Scope introductions switch focus to general-purpose
instruments
SoC hardware debug techniques extended to system-level
DESIGN IDEAS:
Bandpass filter features adjustable Q and
constant maximum gain
Moving-coil meter measures low-level currents
MOSFET enhances voltage regulator's overcurrent
protection
Digitally programmable resistor serves as test load
Active pullup/pulldown network saves watts
Sine-wave step-up converter uses Class E concept
DEPARTMENTS & COLUMNS
Suffering from sensory deprivation?
By Bill Schweber, Executive Editor
