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Electronix Express Newsletter
August 2006 Issue
Welcome to the August 2006 Issue of the Electronix Express Newsletter
1. Making Vehicles Safer by Making Them Smarter
According to semiconductor-market-research company IC Insights, electronic content made up 23% of the total price of an automobile in 2004, and it will make up 40% of the price by 2010. More recent in-vehicle electronics manage safety systems, such as air bags and intelligent restraint systems, which automatically attempt to adjust and change the environment in the vehicle to minimize the risk of serious injury and death to drivers and passengers while a crash is occurring.
In addition to new safety features, automobiles are incorporating more convenience features for assisting the driver and for providing passengers with information and entertainment.
An increasing number of emerging safety features, such as object detection around the vehicle, begin as convenience features in high-end vehicles. The feature supports adaptive cruise control, in which the system enables the vehicle to adjust the cruising speed based on the road position; distance; and relative speed of objects, such as other vehicles, without explicit driver intervention. A different implementation of the feature enables parking assistance and blind-spot-warning systems that can alert the driver when there is an object or vehicle in a risky position relative to the driver's likely goal position.
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2. Graphite May Write the Future for Nano Devices
Graphite, the material that gives pencils their marking ability, could be the basis for a new class of nanometre-scale electronic devices that have the properties of carbon nanotubes but could be produced using established microelectronics manufacturing techniques.
Using thin layers of graphite known as graphene, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US, in collaboration with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France, have produced proof-of-principle transistors, loop devices and circuitry.
Ultimately, the researchers hope to use graphene layers less than 10 atoms thick as the basis for electronic systems that would manipulate electrons as waves rather than particles, much like photonic systems control light waves.
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3. Newton's Life Lesson
Apple Computer's Newton MessagePad PDA wasn't a big commercial success, but the complex product served a life lesson that Apple took to heart in its blockbuster iPod. That life lesson was to keep it simple.
The Newton was to be Apple's next step in personal computing and portability beyond its Macintosh lineup. The system was one of the first major commercial devices to incorporate low-power ARM processors. The Newton also used 4 Mbytes of flash and 4 Mbytes of DRAM. It offered 30 hours of runtime before needing a recharge. The device combined word processing, a calendar, a calculator, an address book, and an infrared transceiver for wireless communications, among other features, as well as its main feature, handwriting recognition.
Ultimately, the device failed to take off because it had trouble synchronizing with the outside world, it was too large to fit into a pocket, and it had a $1000 price tag.
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4. Isolating USB
Universal Serial Bus (USB) enjoys extensive industry support and has become the standard way to connect peripherals to PCs. Designers rely on the USB port to interface computers with hundreds of custom peripherals. However, isolation issues restrict its use in many applications. Isolation improves common-mode voltage, enhances noise rejection, and permits two circuits to operate at different voltage levels. With isolation, the USB fits a whole new crop of applications. Two obvious areas that require isolation are the medical field, in which PC-based instruments attach to patients, and the industrial arena, in which large supply-rail offsets can occur.
The USB connector contains four wires. Two, bus voltage and ground, supply power, and two, D+ and D-, move the USB data. The bus-voltage wire provides 5V at as much as 500 mA of current-sourcing ability. The bidirectional D+ and D- signals operate at a 12-Mbps signal rate, or 83 nsec per bit cell. The D+ and D- signaling voltage is 3.3V.
Manufacturers build USB peripherals using a USB transceiver that connects to the D+ and D- lines and either drives or receives under control of an OE (output-enable) control pin. The middle portion, a USB SIE (serial-interface engine), handles translation of the bus signals that the transceiver sends and receives into data bytes and USB signals, respectively, for the application that implements the USB peripheral.
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5. Today's consumer electronics need fast, secure, reliable, inexpensive storage. And that means Flash technology.
Toshiba, the industry's leader and pioneer for all things Flash answers some questions related to Flash technology:
- A. What is the difference between SLC and MLC?
- SLC and MLC are both NAND-based non-volatile memory technologies. Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND and Single-Level Cell (SLC) NAND offer capabilities that serve two very different types of applications - those requiring high performance at an attractive cost-per-bit and those seeking even higher performance over time, that are less cost-sensitive.
MLC NAND Flash allows each memory cell to store two bits of information, compared to the one bit-per-cell SLC NAND Flash allows. As a result, 90 nanometer (nm) MLC NAND offers a larger capacity (typically twice the density of SLC) and at a cost point appropriate for consumer products multi-function cell phones, digital cameras, USB drives and memory cards.
- B. What is the difference between NAND and NOR Flash?
- Though they are both considered leading non-volatile Flash memory technologies, NAND and NOR Flash meet completely different design needs based on their individual attributes. NOR offers faster read speed and random access capabilities, making it suitable for code storage in devices such as PDAs and cell phones. However, with NOR technology, write and erase functions are slow compared to NAND. NOR also has a larger memory cell size than NAND, limiting scaling capabilities and therefore achievable bit density compared to NAND. Since code storage tends to require lower density memory than file storage, NOR's larger cell size is not considered a concern when used in these applications. NAND is typically used for storing large quantities of information in devices such as Flash drives, MP3 players, multi-function cell phones, digital cameras and USB drives.
- C. What level of Flash memory performance is required for most consumer applications?
- A major factor in determining the level of performance needed by consumer applications is extended usage - basically how many read/write cycles the memory will allow. The requirements of most consumer applications can be sufficiently met with the 10,000 cycles offered by 90 nanometer (nm) MLC NAND. Contrarily, SLC NAND, which is rated at approximately 100,000 cycles, is commonly considered most appropriate for applications requiring high performance.
For example, in a general application such as a USB drive, the 10,000 write/erase cycles of 90 nm MLC NAND would enable a user to completely write and erase the entire contents of the drive once per day for 27 years - well beyond the life of the hardware!
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6. Global DVD Market to Turn Blue
DVD player and recorder units will have a combined market of 176.6 million units sold worldwide in 2010, up from 140.8 million units in 2005. The forecast for 2006 predicts that Europe will be the strongest region for DVD players and recorders with a combined total of 38.4 million units sold.
The DVD player market benefits from versatility in form factors. DVD players can be seen in portable renditions, or integrated with VCRs, or in the back panel seats of SUVs. While DVD recorders have come down in price, there is still delineation in the pricing of DVD players and DVD recorders, each represents a different value proposition. The future of this market though is all about high definition DVD players based on blue laser technology; however, the future may be farther off than we would like. These players will enter the market at premium prices, and as there has been no compromise between the HD-DVD camp and the companies that sponsor Blu ray technology, a format battle seems inevitable. There will be some casualties, companies and consumers alike.
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