Design Talk
Integrating Intelligent Electronic Access Systems
October 14, 2010 6:22 am | by Steve Spatig, Southco, Inc. www.southco.com | Articles | CommentsAs security requirements become more stringent, engineers are looking to integrate electronic access systems (EAS) into cabinets, racks and other enclosures.
The current state of digital power
October 7, 2010 11:13 am | by Deepak Savadatti, International Rectifier | Articles | CommentsDigital power today is a small fraction of overall power industry revenue but is commanding a large share of industry attention and discussion. Traction for digital power solutions is evident based on a slew of product announcements from a multitude of suppliers, all playing to their strengths.
Securing Information in your Microcontroller Core
October 5, 2010 9:34 am | by Oyvind Strom, Director, AVR Products, Atmel Corporation | Articles | CommentsFor years, system designers have been trying to find a way to improve the microcontroller—the heart of their system designs. Improvements can range from increasing performance, lowering power consumption, increasing clock speeds and much more.
Protecting FPGAs from Power Analysis
October 4, 2010 5:34 am | by Pankaj Rohatgi, Cryptography Research | Articles | CommentsThe advantages of FPGAs include reduced time-to-market, field-reconfigurability, and lower up-front costs. These benefits, together with recent gains in size and performance, make FPGAs ideally suited for many commercial and government applications.
The Video Surveillance Problem
October 1, 2010 10:07 am | by Sean Gardner, Business Development Mgr, Texas Instruments | Articles | CommentsVideo surveillance is everywhere today, and the rise in camera deployments is making a big financial impact on the public and private sector’s IT departments’ operating expenditures. Storage costs are the main culprit and can add up to 50 percent of the cost of a new surveillance installation.
Securing Connected Systems
September 17, 2010 12:27 pm | by Chris Tapp, LDRA | Articles | CommentsThe adoption of networking in embedded systems is widespread and includes everything from domestic audio/video systems to SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems. Users are generally aware that viruses, worms and malware are attempting to infiltrate their personal computers...
Enhancing Simulation Studies with 3D Animation
September 17, 2010 7:27 am | by Saurabh Mahapatra, MathWorks | Articles | CommentsThe use of simulation studies to better understand the dynamic behavior of a system under investigation is at the core of verifying designs early in the development process. Despite the amount of data that such studies produce, a 3D representation of the system creates a more complete understanding of system behavior.
Lithium-ion Batteries Target Temperature Extremes
September 16, 2010 12:17 pm | by Jeffrey VanZwol, Micro Power Electronics | Articles | CommentsOEMs are requesting rechargeable Lithium-ion battery packs for portable devices that operate in explosive, as well as extreme hot and cold environments. Many portable military devices are used in very cold (-40º Celsius) environments, and many medical devices need battery packs that operate after exposure to 137º C steam sterilization...
Making a Big Difference with Micro Clinch Fasteners
September 16, 2010 7:01 am | by Brian Bentrim, Penn Engineering | Articles | CommentsToday’s wireless electronic devices from cell phones to e-readers exemplify ideal marriages of user-friendly form and function integrated into ever-smaller packages. The trend toward highly compact designs, however, presents an array of issues relative to component attachment...
High-Speed Load-Disconnects in Redundant Power System Architectures
September 14, 2010 7:44 am | by Chester Firek, Product Marketing Manager, Picor Corporation | Articles | CommentsDesigners of high-availability systems understand that the costs of system down-time can have a devastating impact on their end-customer’s business. For critical business and information systems such as data centers...
The True Meaning of MultiTouch
August 31, 2010 12:17 pm | by Larry Mozdzyn, Ocular Inc. | Articles | CommentsDespite what you may read in articles or hear in advertisements, typical gesturing on most smartphones is not a true multi-touch implementation. The touch controller for a gesture only interprets relative movements of one or two touches on the panel and reports these movements as predefined gestures.
Achieving Zero Defect Software Development
August 17, 2010 9:37 am | by John Greenland, Senior Sales Manager, LDRA Technology | Articles | CommentsZero Defect Software Development (ZDSD) is a results-oriented process that emphasizes the analysis, testing and reporting of the causality of defects. This process, which has evolved from the commitment to providing “five-nines” (99.999%) reliability for mission-critical applications...
Software-Development Planning is Critical to Product Success
August 6, 2010 5:57 am | by Keith Curtis, Technical Staff Engineer, Microchip Technology, keith.curtis@microchip.com | Articles | CommentsLet’s face it, all of our product design cycles are accelerating. To stay competitive, your company needs the next big thing, they need it yesterday, and it can’t cost any more than it has to if you are going to compete.
Motivation for graphical development on DSPs
July 28, 2010 11:44 am | by Joe Coombs, Applications Engineer, Texas Instruments | Articles | CommentsDigital signal processors (DSPs) have become ever-present in today’s world, populating everything from stereo systems and cell phones to automobiles and industrial equipment. Despite this proliferation, relatively few embedded developers are DSP-focused.
Powering Backlit Displays in Severe Environments
July 26, 2010 5:48 am | by Bill Abbott, Endicott Research Group, www.ergpower.com | Articles | CommentsWhen removed from the comfort of a controlled indoor environment, LCDs can be subjected to a variety of stressful conditions. Extreme temperatures, shock, vibration and variances in ambient light can impact backlight performance and lifetime.
Designing for Magnetostrictive Linear Position Sensors
July 8, 2010 11:47 am | by Matt Hankinson, Technical Marketing Manager, MTS Sensors | Articles | CommentsToday’s high-performance equipment calls for innovative components designed specifically to meet their market demands. The developments in linear-position sensors have proven to be an effective means for increasing productivity, quality assurance, and profitability in many industrial applications.
Scopes Deliver Advanced JTAG Debug Capabilities
July 7, 2010 6:01 am | by Joel Woodward, Agilent Technologies, Inc. | Articles | CommentsJTAG, also known as IEEE 1149.1, is one of the most successful electronic standards of all time. Invented over 20 years ago to uncover printed circuit board manufacturing, JTAG is now used in nearly 100% of printed circuit boards and has become a critical part of many integrated circuits.
High-Voltage Capacitors: Design and Testing
July 7, 2010 5:45 am | Articles | CommentsThere are many industries that depend on the proven design concepts that require high voltages to operate. Radar, X-ray machines, traveling wave tubes, down-hole logging, particle accelerators, aerospace ignition systems, partial discharge detection, power utilities and welding equipment are some examples.
Virtualization for Consolidation
July 7, 2010 5:37 am | by Mark Hermeling, Senior Product Manager for Multi-core and Virtualization, Wind River | Articles | CommentsMulti-core and embedded virtualization offer embedded device and equipment manufacturers the chance to consolidate and innovate. They can consolidate multiple individual processors into a single processor, whether single core or multi-core, and innovate by improving the capabilities of their devices beyond what was previously achievable.
Techniques to Avoid the White Screen of Death in Smartphones
June 21, 2010 9:03 am | by John Whalen, Business Development Manger, Fairchild Semiconductor | Articles | CommentsAn emerging trend in the mobile handset 3G space has been the adoption and expansion of user friendly applications, nowadays called ‘Apps’. These ‘Apps’ are custom software program applications that are written for a very specific function within a handset.
The High Speed Data Race
June 3, 2010 5:32 am | by James O. “Jim” Farmer, Enablence Systems | Articles | CommentsThe bottom line is that nothing, and I mean nothing, can beat a fiber connection, not now and not in the foreseeable future. Fiber offers the highest speeds you can achieve, not to mention its other advantages such as extremely low operational costs and versatile high quality transmission.
Understanding Low Outgassing Adhesives
May 18, 2010 12:53 pm | by Robert Michaels, V.P. Technical Sales, Master Bond | Articles | CommentsOne of the most common issues addressed by our technical service department nowadays involves the outgassing characteristics of adhesives and related encapsulation and sealing compounds. And that’s understandable because a growing number of high-tech industries have discovered that their products and manufacturing processes can be sensitive to outgassed chemical compounds.
Future Design Needs for Next-Generation Radar and EW Systems
May 5, 2010 4:54 am | Articles | CommentsNext-generation FPGA-based processing platforms for radar and electronic warfare (EW) systems provide a substantial increase in computational resources, as well as greatly easing the implementation effort in a floating-point datapath.
Security in Wireless Networks
April 20, 2010 5:06 am | by Joe Tillison, Technology Director, Wireless Sensor Networks, Avnet Electronics Marketing | Articles | CommentsIn March the Associated Press ran a story about security vulnerabilities in smart meters based on the research of InGuardians, Inc. The article highlighted the Achilles heel of any secure wireless system; the inadequate safeguarding of the security keys themselves.
Low-Cost Single-Chip Embedded Digital Video Recorder Solution for Video Surveillance
April 15, 2010 12:49 pm | by Anshuman Saxena, Senior Technical Lead Engineer, Texas Instruments, (anshuman@ti.com) | Articles | CommentsDigital video recorders (DVRs) take the analog video input from closed circuit televisions (CCTVs), digitize the input using video decoders and then compress this digital data before storing it on a local storage media like hard disk. The critical advantage that DVRs give over tape-based predecessors is that one can process the recorded data much better and perform event search, time search and more to play back specific content.
