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In addition to voice connectivity, digital cellular wireless networks such as GSM and its enhancement, GSM-EDGE, can now provide increased data speeds up to a (theoretical) limit of 384ﾠKbps. Third generation mobile networks, such as CDMA2000 and WCDMA or UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications Standards) and TD-SCDMA (China only) are currently being deployed worldwide. These systems offer services such as video streaming, Internet browsing and, by using a technique called High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), they can in theory deliver downlink speeds up to 14,4 Mbps.

By using a simple value process it is possible to speed up the analysis and help identify the best approach to take when developing a constant current regulation scheme for automotive interior LED lighting systems. Various approaches exist to address this particular design challenge that may result in a slowdown of the design process while engineering analysis can be performed to consider the advantages and disadvantages of the different options.

IBM's light-powered links overcome the greatest speed bump in supercomputing: interconnect bandwidth

The embedded world is constantly changing. You might not have noticed, but if you take a minute to recall what a microcontroller system was like 10 years ago and compare it to today's latest microcontroller systems, you will find that PCB design, component packages, level of integration, clock speed, and memory size have all going through several generations of change. One of the hottest topics in this area is when will the last of remaining 8-bit microcontroller users start to move away from legacy architectures and move to modern 32-bit processor architectures like the ARM Cortex-M based microcontroller family. Over the last few years there has been a strong momentum of embedded developers starting the migration to 32-bit microcontrollers and, in this multi-part article, we will take a look at some of the factors accelerating this migration.

The potential for the QTC material to transition from an insulator to a conductor (i.e. change its electrical property) is influenced by how much deformation the material is experiencing as a result of the applied mechanical pressure. QTC can be used to produce low profile, low cost, pressure activated switches or sensors that display variable resistance with applied force and return to a quiescent state when the force is removed. The difference between a QTC switch and a QTC sensor is arguably only the speed and amount of physical input required to achieve the required switching point or resistance range.

The MAX13171E along with the MAX13173E/ MAX13175E, form a complete pin-selectable data terminal equipment (DTE) or data communication equipment (DCE) interface port that support the V.28 (RS-232), V.10/V.11 (RS-449/V.36, RS-530, RS-530A, X.21), and V.35 protocols. The MAX13171E transceivers carry the high-speed clock and data signals, while the MAX13173E transceivers carry the control signals. The MAX13171E can be terminated by the MAX13175E pin-selectable resistor termination network. The MAX13175E contains six pin-selectable, multiprotocol cable termination networks.

In case you haven’t realized it, the new trend in computer chip technology is multi-core. This is where most of the speed improvements moving forward will come from on our computers. To take full advantage of this however it is necessary to design your applications using Parallel Programming practices, also known as "parallelism". In today’s episode, we will meet with Stephen Toub, who will share with us some of the overarching concepts associated with parallelism, and some of the ways we are trying to empower developers to develop applications to take advantage of it.

The main goal of this article is to focus on the difficulties encountered by SoC integrators when selecting an embedded microcontroller (MCU). Indeed, the selection is based on MCU performances, but the comparison can be difficult and compromised when considering all the parameters influencing these performances.In this article, we will detail how to assess rigorously power consumption, area, speed, code density and processing power for an embedded MCU. For each performance, we will describe how the parameters have to be selected to enable a fair comparison between processor cores.

Xilinx Inc. today introduced the architecture for a new Extensible Processing Platform they claim will deliver unrivaled levels of system performance, flexibility and integration to developers of a wide variety of embedded systems. The ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor-based platform enables system architects and embedded software developers to apply a combination of serial and parallel processing to address the challenges they face in designing today's embedded systems, which must meet ever-growing demands to perform highly complex functions. The Xilinx Extensible Processing Platform offers embedded systems designers a processor-centric design and development approach for achieving the compute and processing horsepower required to drive tasks involving high-speed access to real-time inputs, high-performance processing and complex digital signal processing - or any combination thereof - needed to meet their application-specific requirements, including lower cost and power.

Synopsys, Inc., has unveiled the DesignWare Ethernet Quality-of-Service (QoS) Controller IP which implements the new IEEE specifications for audio video bridging (AVB) features. The DesignWare Ethernet IP solution supports the new IEEE 802.1AS and 802.1-Qav version D6.0 specifications. These specifications enable efficient networking of streaming audio video (AV) applications through IEEE 802.1 networks found in consumer electronics, automotive AV and professional sound system products. Synopsys' DesignWare Ethernet QoS Controller, which supports 10/100/1G data transfer speeds, allows designers to develop system-on-chips (SoCs) that deliver time-synchronized, low-latency audio and video over Ethernet networks with exceptional quality-of-service while retaining compatibility with legacy networks.