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WISH VERSUS
REALITY
“Right now, with deep-
By Bill Schweber
he AD9884 from Analog Devices makes
T
enabling millions of
signals with flat-panel displays—a task that
transistors on a chip,
involves considerable mixed-signal process-
the gap may still be
ing and support functions. The device incorporates a trio of high-speed,
wideband, 8-bit A/D converters plus an input buffer, a pixel clock, and related circuits in a 128-lead
PQFP device. The IC has a
140M-sample/sec encoding rate with a 500-MHz
full-power bandwidth,
commensurate with displays of 128021024-pixel resolution using a 75Hz refresh rate.
The PLL within the
AD9884 develops a pixel
clock over a 20- to 140MHz range with less than
500-psec p-p jitter from a
what the industry
would like to build
using intellectual-property-based design
methodologies and
what can be built.”
—Robin Saxby, CEO of ARM
it easier to use your analog RGB video
horizontal sync input of
30 to 90 kHz. You can disable the PLL to use an external clock signal if you
prefer. An internal 1.25V
reference, programmable
gain, and clamp circuitry
further reduce the need to
provide peripheral functions. You program this
$25 (10,000) CMOS IC
via a two-wire serial bus,
and you can also get a
slower, 100M-sample/sec
version for $20.
3Analog Devices Inc,
Norwood, MA. 1-781937-1428, fax 1-781-8214273, www.analog.com.
3Circle No. 393
Simplify the analog-to-digital hassles
between RGB video outputs and LCD panels
with the AD9884 triple digitizer, which
includes clock-generating PLL.
Flash drive stores 160 Mbytes in 1.3-in. package
Flash-disk provider M-Systems has added support for an even smaller form factor
to its ATA-based product family. The Model IDE 1.3-in. products matches the 1.3in. form factor that Hewlett-Packard (www.hp.com) pioneered and abandoned with
its Kittyhawk magnetic disk drive. Available in capacities of 4 to 160 Mbytes, the
drives target handheld and ultraportable systems. You can specify the products in
standard (0 to 70 C), enhanced (225 to +75 C), and extended (240 to +85 C) versions. A standard 160-Mbyte product sells for $440 (OEM), and the company offers the same capacity in a 1.8-in. package for $427.—by Maury Wright
3M-Systems, Newark, CA. 1-510-413-5950, www.m-sys.com.3Circle No. 394
www.ednmag.com
Edited by
Fran Granville
Triple ADC with on-chip PLL carries
analog RGB over to flat-panel world
submicron technology
widening between
What’s hot
in the
design
community
R&D ON THE RISE
Paced by the fast-growing hightech industry, R&D spending in
the private sector is expected to
increase to $157.1 billion this
year from about $143.1 billion
in 1998, according to an annual
survey by contract-research
company Battelle Memorial
Institute and R&D magazine.
—James P Miller, The Wall
Street Journal, Thursday, Dec
31, 1998.
January 21, 1999 | edn 13
leading
edge
Analog front end for ADSL extends
linearity and local-loop length
hereas many asymmetrical digital-sub-
W
scriber-line (ADSL) front ends have speci-
fications that suit loops 12,000 to 16,000 ft from
the central office, this distance covers only 60% of
US residents. In contrast,
Datapath’s DSP8000 analog
front end offers high linearity
and low noise, providing an
18,000-ft loop covering more
than 95% of residents. The
DSP8000 (for remote-termi-
nal end users) and similar
DSP8001 (for central-office
sites) sport 14-bit linearity
from 4.416M-sample/sec A/D
and D/A converters, plus a receiving noise floor of 2150
dBm/Hz above 300 kHz. The
9
8
7
14 BITS,
2150 dBm/Hz
11 BITS,
2145 dBm/Hz
6
5
DATA RATE
(MBPS)
10 BITS,
2140 dBm/Hz
4
8 BITS,
3 2140 dBm/Hz
2
1
0
2000
4000
6000
8000 10,000 12,000 14,000 16,000 18,000
LOOP DISTANCE
(FT)
Higher linearity and receiver noise floor have a major effect on the data
rate and distance you can achieve in ADSL implementations.
DILBERT By Scott Adams
ICs comply with the ADSL
T1E1.413 standard, yielding 8
Mbps downstream and 800
kbps upstream on short lines
and 1.5 Mbps bidirectionally
on longer loops.
Each 128-pin PQFP IC requires four external precision
resistors plus a few bypass/decoupling capacitors, as well
as standard plain-old-telephone-system “reject” filtering and high-voltage line drivers and receivers. Within the
5V devices are fourth-order
lowpass filters for the transmitting and receiving paths
with 5% cutoff-frequency accuracy, programmable attenuation and gain for each path,
and a 12-bit DAC for the voltage-controlled crystal oscillator. You configure the analog
front ends via a four-wire serial port; power consumption
is 675 mW in frequency-division mode and 825 mW with
full echo-cancellation operation enabled. The DSP8000
and DSP8001 cost $22.50
(100) each.—by Bill Schweber
3Datapath Systems Inc, Los
Gatos, CA. 1-408-366-1766,
fax 1-408-366-1955, www.
datapathsystems.com.
3Circle No. 395
FAST FPGAs
FOCUS ON PCI
DynaChip has made several
tweaks to its year-old DL6000
architecture, and the end result
is the DY6000 family (see “Budding FPGAs beat last year’s
crop,” EDN, March 26, 1998, pg
18). Each logic block now contains an 8-to-1 multiplexer; 16input AND-OR logic; arithmetic
logic that can, for example, implement a 2-bit adder or seveninput XOR function; and dual
flip-flops. You can now drive
each synchronous port of the
32-bit dual-port RAM in each
logic block with a different clock
as fast as 125 MHz.
Speaking of megahertz, the
two on-chip analog PLLs, which
operate as fast as 205 MHz, can
not only divide and multiply an
input clock, but also enable you
to insert programmable latency
from 24 to +2 nsec. DynaChip
made many of these enhancements with PCI and other highperformance interfaces in mind.
The company claims that its 64bit firm core runs zero-wait-state
PCI as fast as 66 MHz, consuming one-third of the largest device in the DY6000 family and
leaving approximately 36,000
gates for other functions.
The 55,000-gate DY6055,
now in production, offers 1600
logic blocks; 51,200 bits of RAM;
3840 flip-flops, including I/O
registers; and 320 I/O signals. It
costs $174 (1000) in 240-pin
QFPs or $229 (1000) in 432bump BGAs. The DY6009,
DY6020, and DY6035 are available for sampling. The company’s DynaTool back-end placeand-route software also supports the DY6000 family.
—by Brian Dipert
3DynaChip Corp, Sunnyvale,
CA. 1-408-481-3100, fax 1-408481-3136, www.dyna.com.
3Circle No. 396
FACTOID3International Data Corp reported in December that more than 500,000 copies of Linux shipped during the year, more than three
times the number shipped in 1997, making it the fastest-growing server operating system.
14 edn | January 21, 1999
www.ednmag.com
leading
edge
RISE-TIME ACCELERATOR GETS YOUR
BUS MOVING IN THE
FAST LANE
To speed the rise time and thus
improve performance of your
System Management Bus (SMBus), the LTC1694 from Linear
Technology provides dual active
pullups that dynamically boost
transition currents to 2.2 mA on
data and clock lines. This approach improves data integrity,
timing margins, and system robustness, despite long bus
traces or the connection of additional peripherals. The five-pin
SOT23 device operates from
nominal 5 or 3.3V supplies and
yields 1-msec rise time with a
200-pF bus capacitance. The accelerator costs $1.15 (1000).
—by Bill Schweber
3Linear Technology Corp,
Milpitas, CA. 1-408-432-1900,
fax 1-408-434-6441, www.
linear-tech.com.
3Circle No. 397
Power-distribution IC switches divide
loads and conquer battery limits
y shutting down blocks of circuitry, you ex-
B
tend battery life, reduce thermal loads, and
isolate failures in your designs. Members of three
power-distribution switch families from Texas In-
struments let you segment
and then enable or disable
your system’s loads, including
hot-swap and Universal Serial Bus applications. The families—TPS201XA, TPS202X,
and TPS203X—offer a selection of multiple current ratings, positive- or negative-enable logic levels, and optional
overcurrent indication. All
switches have a maximum 50mV on-resistance and 45msec overcurrent-response
time. The eight-pin SOIC/
DIP and 14-pin TSSOP
switches handle continuous
currents from 0.3 to 3A, depending on model, and cost
$1.01 to $1.11 (1000).
—by Bill Schweber
3Texas Instruments Inc, Dallas, TX. 1-800-477-8924, www.
ti.com.3Circle No. 398
Power switches in the TPS201X,
TPS202X, and TPS203X families let
you segment and then control
power-distribution subsystems.
DIGITALLY DIM YOUR LCD BACKLIGHT OVER 100-TO-1 RANGE
Cold-cathode-fluorescent lamps (CCFLs) find extensive use in backlighting LCD monitors but require complex drive circuitry. Avoiding that complexity, the LX1686 from Linfinity Microelectronics implements a new
architecture for the drive circuitry. The architecture eliminates some external passive reactance components,
allows you to use a smaller step-up transformer, and yields a wide brightness-adjustment ratio. The 24-pin
IC includes dual 100-mA drive outputs that can connect directly to FETs or bipolar transistors.
Within the IC, the fixed-frequency PWM control circuit has two feedback loops—one to regulate lamp
By dynamically boosting
SMBus current during signal
transitions, the LTC1694 significantly improves system timing
integrity and reduces hard-totrace soft timing errors.
current and the other to regulate open-circuit, or “strike,” voltage amplitude. The LX1686 provides and
automatically monitors the special start-up voltage sequence that CCFLs require. The device also controls
both its output current burst to minimize overshoot, which shortens lamp life, and its output pulse jitter,
which can cause flicker from beat frequencies. The IC costs $3.30 (1000).—by Bill Schweber
3Linfinity Microelectronics Inc, Garden Grove, CA. 1-714-372-8335, fax 1-714-372-3566, www.linfinity.com.
3Circle No. 399
FACTOID3Linux scored highest of nine competitors in overall satisfaction in a recent survey conducted by Datapro, posting a score a bit
lower than 3.8 on a zero-to-five scale, in which five means “completely satisfied.” In overall product quality, Linux fared worse, placing
seventh among the nine with a score of about 3.8.
16 edn | January 21, 1999
www.ednmag.com
leading
edge
LOW-COST TOOLS
EASE mC-BASED
SYSTEM DESIGN
The PSDsoft tool suite from WSI
makes life a little easier for designers of support chips for
mCs. WSI developed the tools
for use with its PSD chips, which
integrate programmable logic,
in- system-programmable (ISP)
flash, EEPROM or EPROM,
SRAM, I/O, and programmable
functions on one chip. The $89
Windows-based PSDsoft simplifies adding external logic and
memory to mC-based systems.
PSDsoft supports HDL-based
logic design, simulation of
PSD-chip CPLD functions, mCinterface configuration, memory mapping, and programmable-function configuration on
PSD chips. It also automatically
generates C code for implementing ISP functions. The tool
suite comes with templates for
bus-interface configuration for
many mCs, including the 68HC11, 8031, 80196, and 3150.
PSD chips contain all required
logic for the interface, which
means you need no additional
chips. Device-configuration options include bus width, multiplexed or nonmultiplexed operation, and mC bus-control
settings for most popular 8- and
16-bit mC buses.
PSDabel, WSI’s version of the
Abel PLD programming language, lets you do your PSD
logic design using Boolean
equations, truth tables, and
state diagrams. An optimizer automatically reduces logic by
eliminating redundancy and
maximizing resources. When
you finish configuring your device, logic design, and mC
firmware, PSDsoft helps you
merge these results and map
them to a target PSD. Finally,
PSDsoft generates PSD-macrocell-usage reports along with a
pinout diagram for next-level
board design.—by Jim Lipman
3WSI, Fremont, CA. 1-510-6565400, fax 1-510-657-5916, www.
wsipsd.com.3Circle No. 400
18 edn | January 21, 1999
Bigger+smaller MOSFET switches cut
parts and design overkill
n cost-sensitive designs—and which rare ones
I
these days aren’t?—any overdesign or the need
for small external components can add expense to
your bill of materials. Recognizing this fact, two
MOSFET vendors offer entries with functions tailored to
an application’s precise needs.
From Vishay Siliconix, the
PWM-optimized Si4824DY
IC has asymmetric, dual, 30V
n-channel MOSFETs in a single SO-8 package. One MOSET is a 17.5-mV device, and
the other is a 40-mV device;
together, the MOSFETs work
well in synchronous-buck
dc/dc-converter designs with
optimal on-resistances for
both the switching and the
synchronous portions of the
design. Gate charges for the
MOSFETs are just 12 and 31
nC, adding to the efficiency of
the 63-cent (100,000) devices.
Along the same application-optimized concept, the
FDC6325L from Fairchild
Semiconductor combines a
low-on-resistance p-channel
MOSFET with a smaller nchannel MOSFET driver in a
six-pin SOT package. The
company designed this integrated load switch for highside power switching. It lets
you drive the p-channel device directly from low-voltage
logic circuits, eliminating the
need for an external levelshifting transistor. Operating
from battery voltages of 2.5 to
8V, the FDC6325L has 130
and 180 mV maximum onresistance at 5 and 2.5V, respectively, and can switch
continuous loads as high as
1.8A (5A pk). A similar device, the FDC6326L, handles 3
to 20V loads but with on-re-
sistance values of 125 mV at
12V and 200 mV at 5V. The
devices cost 49 cents (1000)
each.—by Bill Schweber
3Vishay Siliconix Inc, Santa
Clara, CA. 1-408-567-8220,
fax 1-408-567-8995, www.
siliconix.com.
3Circle No. 401
3Fairchild Semiconductor
Corp, Sunnyvale, CA. 1-408822-2000, fax 1-972-9108039,
www.fairchildsemi.
com.3Circle No. 402
The Vishay Siliconix Si4824DY puts a larger and smaller on-resistance
pair of MOSFETs in one package for use in synchronous-buck dc/dc converters.
The Fairchild Semiconductor FDC6325L and FDC6326L each incorporate a
larger p-channel device with a smaller n-channel device as a driver, so
you can drive the MOSFETs without external level-shifting circuitry.
www.ednmag.com
leading
edge
NICKEL-ELECTRODE
MLCCs BOOST
CAPACITANCE,
LOWER IMPEDANCE
A new line of multilayer ceramic chip capacitors (MLCCs) from
Taiyo Yuden uses nickel electrodes to lower cost (versus
units using palladium or silverpalladium). The chip capacitors
are available in values of 0.1 to
100 mF in Y5V, X5R, and X7R formulations. The company claims
that the low-impedance, nickelbased capacitors used in bypass
or smoothing circuits outperform tantalum and aluminumelectrolytic units with capacitance values two to 20 times
Nickel replaces precious metal
in Taiyo Yuden’s multilayer
capacitors; the result is low
impedance and high volumetric efficiency.
higher. Their advantages over
tantalum and aluminum capacitors include lower effective series resistance, lower heat generation, no polarity, and smaller
sizes. Case sizes range from
120.520.5 mm to 3.22
1.621.6 mm. Prices range from
1 cent to $1.50 (OEM).
—by Bill Travis
3Taiyo Yuden USA, San Jose,
CA. 1-408-573-4150, ext 16, fax
1-408-573-4159, www.t-yuden.
com.3Circle No. 403
Voodoo offers new features
for believers, trade-offs for skeptics
he Voodoo3 architecture from 3Dfx Interactive
T
continues the single-chip-integration trend the
company began with its Voodoo Banshee (see
“Hot summer delivers scorching graphics,” EDN,
Oct 22, 1998, pg 16). The
Voodoo3 family, currently
comprising two devices, offers
substantial functional and
performance improvements
over Voodoo2-based chips.
However, 3Dfx made some
surprising feature-set tradeoffs to achieve these goals.
Voodoo3 contains both 2and 3-D graphics cores, plus
hardware assistance for digital-versatile-disk decoding.
Unlike Voodoo Banshee, the
3-D core offers the same dual
texture-rendering pipelines
and single-cycle, single-pass
multitexturing capability as
the 3-D-only Voodoo2. The
company has also cranked up
the performance, claiming
more than 7 million-triangle/sec rendering for the highend, $45 (10,000) Voodoo3300. The device also offers a
366-megatexel/sec fill rate, a
350-MHz RAMDAC capable
of 204821536-pixel resolution at 75-Hz refresh, and a
183-MHz core operating frequency. These capabilities exceed those of the current 3-D
performance leader: two Voodoo2 chips operating in a
scan-line-interleave mode.
Corresponding specifications for the $35 (10,000)
Voodoo3-200 include 4 million-triangle/sec rendering, a
250-megatexel/sec fill rate, a
300-MHz RAMDAC capable
of 204821536-pixel resolu-
tion at 65-Hz refresh, and a
125-MHz core operating frequency. Both chips include a
22 Advanced Graphics Port
(AGP) sideband interface
(with 42 AGP support
planned for this year), a
video-module-interface port,
and direct connection to
3Dfx’s optional LCDfx flatpanel-display-driver chip. According to 3Dfx, both chips
are available for sampling and
will enter volume production
in the second quarter.
So what’s not to like about
Voodoo3? First, the chips support only a maximum 16Mbyte frame-buffer size, a curious limitation in this era of
cheap DRAM and constantly
growing game texture-map
sizes. The company based
Voodoo3 on its Voodoo2 3-D
core (which itself is a minor
derivative of the original
Voodoo architecture). This
decision undoubtedly let 3Dfx
quickly get Voodoo3 to market, but it also means that the
chips don’t output 24-bit color and support only 16-bit Zbuffer precision. Both factors
reduce image quality, and, although these trade-offs may
make the chips faster, why do
the devices need to render
new frames at rates that far
exceed most viewers’ ability to
perceive them? Although image quality is perhaps a secondary consideration in today’s shoot-’em-up games, it
will become much more important as 3-D expands into
other PC applications.
—by Brian Dipert
33Dfx Interactive Inc, San
Jose, CA. 1-408-935-4400, fax
1-408-262-8874, www.3dfx.
com.3Circle No. 404
Higher integration and faster clock rates push Voodoo3 2- and 3-D
performance to new heights, but image quality needs similar attention.
FACTOID3 Working with the nonprofit Community Foundation and local and state governments, the Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group
plans to raise $20 million in two years for its Housing Trust Fund to make housing in the Valley more affordable to low-income workers.
20 edn | January 21, 1999
www.ednmag.com
leading
edge
FLASH!
FOUNDRY MIGRATES
LOGIC/MEMORY
PROCESS TO 0.35 mm
Taiwan Semiconductor
Manufacturing Co (TSMC) has
developed a process for integrating logic and flash memory at 0.35 mm. The merged
process, EmbFlash, combines
logic with a split-gate
flash/EEPROM. You can
choose from more than 10
flash cores, providing as much
as 4 Mbits of memory.
EmbFlash operates over 2.5 to
3.3V. Flash-core endurance is
greater than 100,000 program/erase cycles, and TSMC
guarantees data retention for
more than 100 years after
10,000 cycles.—by Jim Lipman
3TSMC, San Jose, CA. 1-408437-8762, fax 1-408-441-7713,
www.tsmc.com.
3Circle No. 405
All-in-one chip set makes
digital cameras a snap
ierra Imaging’s Raptor II makes key improve-
S
ments on the first-generation chip set that Ep-
son (www.epson.com) and other camera manufacturers use. Raptor II includes two chips; one
contains an image processor
and 32-bit ARC Cores
(www.arccores.com) RISC
CPU with a separate 8-bit microcontroller handling system
functions. Raptor II directly
interfaces to Universal Serial
Bus; iRDA; RS-232C; NTSC
and PAL video, including SVideo; ATA; LCD; and as
many as three motors. Add
memory, a lens, an image sensor, and a display, and your
hardware design is complete.
The company optimized
Raptor’s II architecture for
CMOS and CCD sensors as
large as 8 million pixels, but
the chip set interfaces to those
as large as 16 million pixels.
Although camera users might
like high-resolution pictures,
they expect continued reduction in picture-to-picture delays. Raptor II responds with
performance 10 times faster
than its predecessor, outputting fully processed JPEG
images as fast as 3.3 million
pixels/sec or displaying 3202
240-pixel video images at 30
frames/sec. Sierra Imaging
also focuses on extending battery life; Raptor II runs at 2.5V
with 3.3V I/O signals and offers extensive system-powerdown-control facilities.
The company’s next consideration was software support. The real-time Sierra
system-software platform requires 300 kbytes of memory.
Sierra Imaging also offers a
fully functional reference-design kit with documentation
and customization suggestions. Chip-set sampling
($100) will begin in April, and
the company schedules volume production ($20) for
July.—by Brian Dipert
3Sierra Imaging, Scotts Valley, CA. 1-408-461-2070,
fax 1-408-461-2072, www.
sierraimaging.com.
3Circle No. 406
Mezzanine modules speed VME data transfers
Real-time radar, high-frequency sonar, image-processing, and transient-capture systems based on the VMEbus use auxiliary
high-speed datapaths to transfer data between multiple processors and superfast
I/O peripherals. These datapaths offload
VME’s limited backplane-bus data rates to
extend the overall bandwidth of the application. Overcoming the data-rate limits,
two new plug-in mezzanine modules from
Pentek allow you to select a standard busbypass technique that matches your system. The model 6220 velocity-interfacemodule mezzanine board attaches directly
to the company’s DSP boards to provide a
single-slot, high-speed Raceway interface.
Mercury Computers (www.mc.com) developed the high-speed Raceway synchronous-backplane fabric, which operates independently of the VMEbus and provides
multiple, simultaneous, 160-Mbyte/sec
data channels between boards. Another
22 edn | January 21, 1999
new mezzanine module, the model 6226,
supports the Front Panel Data Port
(FPDP) standard for a front-panel-ribboncable interface based on a 32-bit parallel
communication link that delivers data at
160 Mbytes/ sec. Pentek’s quad-DSP
board accommodates two FPDP modules
to give one bidirectional data-port per
processor. Prices for the models 6220 and
6226 start at $2000 and $995, respectively. Both modules will be available in the
second quarter.—by Warren Webb
3Pentek Inc, Upper Saddle River, NJ. 1201-818-55900, fax 1-201-818-5904,
www.pentek.com.3Circle No. 407
Two new mezzanine velocity-interface modules give
160-Mbyte/sec datatransfers
to VME-based DSP boards.
www.ednmag.com