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The race to create tiny wireless sensors that could monitor anything from pressure in the eyes and brain to the stability of bridges appears to be heating up. Earlier this month, IEEE Spectrum reported on two approaches to creating an almost-indefinitely-running sensor using piezoelectric systems to convert tiny vibrations into power. Now, another team from the University of Michigan has created an alternative approach that uses solar power to keep the sensor running autonomously for many years.

This API provides users with a standard FPGA communication interface from C++ code. It is intended to encourage more widespread adoption of FPGAs and reconfigurable computing platforms—particularly among Windows application developers

When considering the resolution required for an A/D converter (ADC) integrated in a microcontroller (MCU), embedded systems designers must balance cost and performance. Higher ADC resolution implies higher-cost MCUs, but in some cases you can use other features in the MCU to enhance the ADC performance via software. That approach lets you achieve higher resolution using an inexpensive integrated ADC. Here's how to use of oversampling to achieve extra bits of resolution for an ADC integrated in an MCU.

Google PowerMeter allows consumers to access their power consumption data through a secure, Web-based iGoogle™ gadget. As a Strategic Partner, Microchip incorporated the recently announced Google PowerMeter API to create a Reference Implementation, which makes it much easier to develop products that are compatible with Google PowerMeter. Microchip's Reference Implementation demonstrates the device's activation, data transmission and status messages using readily available Microchip development tools. It can be used as a template for developers' own designs.

Anyone can bake a cake, but while some chefs bake dry, uninspired bricks of dough, there are other chefs who make cakes we would die for. The ingredients may be the same, but the outcomes are so very different. This is also the case between average electronic products and world-class, market-changing products. One of the most recent technical sensations is the capacitive touch screen. But what makes some touch screen-based products amazing, while others get such poor reviews?

How's this for a wedge issue on a slow news week? When Xilinx announced earlier this year that it was changing one of its foundry suppliers from UMC to TSMC for the 28-nm node, it seemed like a blow to differentiation—at least from a process technology standpoint—between Xilinx and Altera, which has been using TSMC for years. But while Xilinx chose to go with TSMC's high-performance/low power process, Altera said this week it is going with TSMC's high-performance process. Altera maintains that customers in the high end communications equipment market are much more concerned about performance than power. Luanne Schirrmeister, senior director of product marketing at Altera, put it this way: "In communications infrastructure, nothing is battery powered. Everything is plugged into a wall."

FPGA devices create compelling business drivers generating a tidal wave of FPGA adoption for the implementation of system PCB designs. Obviously, the time to market advantages and capacity/performance characteristics of FPGA devices have delivered on the promise for a viable alternative to more capital resource intensive custom IC/ASIC solutions as well as a successful consolidation vehicle for standard "off the shelf" components in system design creation.

Length-match your traces to within 100 mils. Or is it 10 mils? Or should you go down to 1 mil? Should you include the lengths of the vias? How about the lengths of resistors? Understanding the origin of length-matching requirements, coupled with some rudimentary signal integrity analysis, can help answer these questions.   Determining length requirements requires an understanding of flight time, electrical length vs. physical length, loading and signal quality. Those elements are vital in determining what the length really needs to be, as well as in determining the allowable trade-offs to meet system timing goals.