Verification Methodology for Low Power--Part 3
 This is the third of four weekly serialized installments from the Verification Methodology Manual for Low Power. In the previous chapter, we looked at the preparation for verification at various levels of abstraction from testbench and RTL to post layout. In this chapter, we cover the basic verification process and flow, including both static and dynamic verification.
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Verification Methodology for Low Power--Part 2
This is the second of four weekly serialized installments from the Verification Methodology Manual for Low Power. Part 1 covered Multi-Voltage Testbench Architecture—Testbench Structure and Components. Part 2 covers Multi-Voltage Testbench Architecture—Coding Guidelines as well as Library Modeling for Low Power. Part 3 addresses Multivoltage Verification—Static Verification. Part 4 covers Multivoltage Verification—Dynamic Verification and Hierarchical Power Management.
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Batteries Made From Ordinary Paper
Using nanotechnology, Stanford scientists are producing ultra-lightweight, bendable batteries and supercapacitors in the form of everyday paper. Coating a sheet of paper with ink made of carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires makes a highly conductive storage device. The small diameter helps the nanomaterial ink stick strongly to the fibrous paper, making the battery and supercapacitor very durable. The paper supercapacitor may last through 40,000 charge-discharge cycles. The nanomaterials also make ideal conductors because they move electricity along much more efficiently than ordinary conductors. More...
Energy-Harvesting Rubber Chips Could Power Pacemakers, Cell Phones
Power-generating rubber films developed by Princeton University engineers could harness natural body movements such as breathing and walking to power pacemakers, mobile phones and other electronic devices. The material, composed of ceramic nanoribbons embedded onto silicone rubber sheets, generates electricity when flexed and is highly efficient at converting mechanical energy to electrical energy. More...
Interview with Alex Shubat, Virage Logic CEO
Virage Logic recently acquired ARC International, adding configurable processor cores and audio and video modules to their already wide range of mixed-signal IP offerings. More recently Virage acquired NXP's horizontal advanced CMOS intellectual property (IP), engineering talent and equipment. These guys clearly have a vision and are executing a plan, so Low-Power Design's editor John Donovan sat down recently with Virage Logic CEO Dr. Alex Shubat to find out just what it is. Some of the answers may surprise you. More...
Verification Methodology for Low Power--Part 1
This is the first of four weekly serialized installments from the Verification Methodology Manual for Low Power. Part 1 covers Multi-Voltage Testbench Architecture—Testbench Structure and Components. Part 2 will cover Multi-Voltage Testbench Architecture—Coding Guidelines as well as Library Modeling for Low Power. Part 3 addresses Multivoltage Verification—Static Verification. Part 4 covers Multivoltage Verification—Dynamic Verification and Hierarchical Power Management.
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Putting Intelligence in ‘Bricks’
While software defined radios have added significant flexibility to public safety portable radios, the next step in the progression of capabilities is to add cognitive capabilities to public safety portables. A radio is considered cognitive if it is aware of its environment and internal state and can make decisions about its radio operating behavior based on that information and predefined objectives. More...
Sustainable Energy -- Without the Hot Air
"I’m concerned about cutting UK emissions of twaddle – twaddle about sustainable energy. Everyone says getting off fossil fuels is important, and we’re all encouraged to “make a difference,” but many of the things that allegedly make a difference don’t add up...This is a straight-talking book about the numbers. The aim is to guide the reader around the claptrap to actions that really make a difference and to policies that add up." -- David JC McKay More...
Designing Low-Cost Single/Multi-Cell Li-ION Battery Chargers
Li-ION rechargeable batteries, with a projected yearly market growth rate of approximately 20%, are widely used in smart phones, portable media players, and digital still cameras. This battery type is widely adopted because of its high energy density on both gravimetric and volumetric basis, low self discharge rate, and low maintenance. Li-Ion batteries are also lighter in weight than NiCad and NiMH batteries. More...
Reducing Power with Advanced Clock Tree Synthesis and Optimization
Clock trees pose a growing challenge to advanced node IC design, particularly with regard to the chip power consumption. Clocks are the single largest source of dynamic power usage, which makes clock tree synthesis (CTS) and optimization as a good place to achieve significant power savings. It has become essential to have a power-aware, multi-corner multi-mode (MCMM) CTS with smart clock gate handling, slew shaping, register clumping, and other advanced techniques for reducing power, skew, area, and buffer count. More...
Five Tips for Reducing Light Load Power Consumption
It can be quite a challenge to meet today’s mandated efficiency requirements for power supplies. Just understanding the requirements is difficult enough, thanks to the dizzying array of initiatives and directives that vary by end equipment, power level, and governing authority. These include Energy Star, the California Energy Commission, and the EU Stand-by Initiative, to name a few. However, after a quick glance at any of these the energy conservation initiatives, it becomes clear that one of the greatest challenges for the power supply designer is to minimize the power loss at light loads and no load. Here are five ways to remove those last few milliwatts from an offline flyback supply. More...
Voltage Supervisors Pull Multiple Duties
The market drives digital signal processor (DSP), microcontroller and field programmable gate array (FPGA) manufacturers to continually increase clock frequencies for higher performance while, at the same time, also demanding lower power consumption. These two opposing criteria led to the development of multiple power rail devices. Whether implemented using digital or analog technologies, voltage supervisors mitigate the conflict between performance and low power in multiple power rail devices.More...
Half a Billion Smartphones to Ship in 2014, Says Report
According to a new study, smartphone shipments worldwide grew 18% in 2009 to 171 million units at a $67 billion level, providing bright market opportunities for both handset and chip vendors in the current economy. The Smartphone semiconductor and display revenue also covered in the report reached $11.7 billion. With the economy expected to continue improving, Forward Concepts forecasts a compound annual growth rate of 24% for Smartphones to the 496 million unit level in 2014.
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"Most Secure" Security Chip is Hacked
Deep inside millions of computers is a digital Fort Knox, a special chip with the locks to highly guarded secrets, including classified government reports and confidential business plans. Now a former U.S. Army computer security specialist has devised a way to break those locks. Tarnovsky figured out a way to break chips that carry a Trusted Platform Module, or TPM, which are billed as the industry's most secure and are estimated to be in as many as 100 million personal computers and servers, according to market research firm IDC. More...
Wireless Sensors That Live Forever
Soon enough, say some engineers, miniature wireless sensors will be located in spots where it would be inconvenient, to say the least, to change their batteries—inside your body, within the steel and concrete of buildings, in the dangerous innards of chemical plants. But today, even the most robust nodes can be counted on to last only a few years. Ideally, engineers need a sensor that can last forever without external power sources or battery changes. According to research presented in December at the International Electron Devices Meeting, in Baltimore, that dream is within reach.
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A Little Chip Designed by Apple Itself
Sure, the screen is nice. But the iPad’s most important component, at least for Apple’s future, may be the A4, the fingernail-size chip at the tablet’s heart. With the A4, Apple has taken another step toward challenging the norms of the mobile device industry. Device makers typically buy their primary chips from specialized microprocessor companies. But for the iPad, Apple chose to design its own — creating unique bonds between the chip and Apple’s software.
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Mobile Touch Screens Could Soon Feel the Pressure
 Forget swiping or pinching--the next generation of portable touch-screen devices will be able to distinguish between a gentle touch and a hard poke. Peratech, a U.K. company, has signed a $1.4 million deal to license its pressure-sensing touch-screen technology to Japanese screen manufacturer Nissha, which makes displays for companies including LG and Nintendo. Peratech's technology is one of several approaches that can be packed into portable devices. But it uses a novel quantum mechanism to sense pressure, and this promises to be more sensitive and more efficient than the other approaches.
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Smart Dust? Not Quite, but We’re Getting There
In computing, the vision always precedes the reality by a decade or more. The pattern has held true from the personal computer to the Internet, as it takes time, brainpower and investment to conquer the scientific and economic obstacles to nudging a game-changing technology toward the mainstream. The same pattern, according to scientists in universities and corporate laboratories, is unfolding in the field of sensor-based computing. More...
When Low-Power Design Gets Personal
 I lost my hearing in Hong Kong in 1996. Well, everything much over 1 kHz, that is. By all rights I should have lost it during rock concerts back in the ‘60s, but I guess the crowds made it hard to get too close to the speakers. Getting too close to pile drivers turned out to be a big mistake. I took delivery last week on a pair of sub-miniature, 16-channel wireless hearing aids. These little puppies are awesome. More...
Backlight LED Driver System in Small Format Liquid Crystal Displays
This paper describes the different building-blocks needed to power LED backlights in small format LCDs. A switched capacitor voltage regulator is desirable for applications requiring low cost and small solution size. The constant current regulator approach adds to these features excellent current matching and brightness control. Last but not least the inductive boost solution yields the lowest power consumption over the entire supply voltage range. More...
MRAM—The Future of Non-Volatile Memory?
Today’s portable electronics have become computationally intensive devices as the user interface has migrated to a fully multimedia experience. To provide the performance required for these applications, the portable electronics designer uses multiple types of memories: a medium-speed random access memory for continuously changing data, a high-speed memory for caching instructions to the CPU, and a slower, nonvolatile memory for long-term information storage when the power is removed. Combining all of these memory types into a single memory has been a long-standing goal of the semiconductor industry. More...
Print vs. Online: How Do You Reach Engineers?
Engineers who have long read EDN and EE Times in print are increasingly doing so online instead, all the more so as print books continue to disappear. Is print dead, killed by the Internet, or is it just in temporary remission due to the recession? Following an interview with Low-Power Design editor John Donovan on Rick Jamison's Synopsys blog, Donovan and RTC Group CEO John Reardon square off on the future of print vs. online communications media. Feel free to add your two cents' worth at the Listening Post.
Optimizing Video Encoders with Digital Signal Processors
Video compression allows for digital video encoding, using as few bits as possible while maintaining acceptable visual quality. However, video compression involves sacrificing some degree of picture quality for a lower bit rate that facilitates transmission and storage. In addition, compression requires a high level of performance from the processor as well as versatility in design, since different types of video applications have different sets of requirements for resolution, bandwidth and resiliency. The extended flexibility provided by digital signal processors (DSP) address these differences and take full advantage of the options offered by advanced video compression standards to help system developers optimize their products. More...
Calling All Designers: Time to Get Creative with Cellular Functionality
Cellular handsets play the roles of MP3-player, TV, radio, navigator, camera, web browser, PDA, and, yes, telephone. Feature-creep provides opportunities for the system designer but semiconductor integration takes them away at the same time. The hottest new feature in handsets is GPS to enable navigation features and location-based services. But the standalone GPS chip is going away, as suppliers of Bluetooth chips integrate the GPS function in their offerings. More...
Use of Integrated Optical Proximity Sensors in Multi-Function Smart Phones
 Today’s smart phones are the focal point of technological convergence, combining mobile phone, MP3 player, camera, video, wireless internet, e-mail, gaming, Bluetooth, and navigation systems into one small device with the slim profile and light weight that consumers have come to expect. Short-range proximity sensors have become increasingly important components in managing a number of these features and making these feature-rich mobile devices more flexible and comfortable for the user, while simultaneously reducing power consumption and extending battery life. More...
Optimize Power Consumption in Portable Electronics Using Integrated Load Switches
The adoption rate of load switches continues to increase across a broad range of end equipment including portable electronics (mobile phones, portable consumer electronics, notebooks or any portable equipment). Load switches are increasingly used in power management architectures to distribute power from a single regulated source or to switch off any unused peripherals (camera module, WLAN module, SD Card slot, LCD display, etc.) with the goal of limiting current leakages and optimizing the power consumption in a system. More...
Reducing EMI in Digital Systems through Spread Spectrum Clock Generators
 Any device capable of generating signals with frequencies in the RF range is a potential source of Electro-Magnetic Interference (EMI). These signals can cause interference in the normal operation of electronic devices such as radios, televisions, cell phones and other types of equipment. The primary sources of EMI in most systems are the clock generation and distribution circuits. More...
High Efficiency Audio Designs for Portable Devices
With an ever increasing feature set found in today’s portable devices, a mobile phone can now function as a multimedia playback system, digital still camera and personal digital assistant (PDA). A portable media player (PMP) is now a navigation system, music player, global positioning system (GPS) and digital film library. Several systems are available with MP3 / MP4 playback, GPS, TV and gaming with web browser. Most manufacturers are now placing a greater emphasis on sound quality because sound is a key element to differentiate their products. Some manufacturers will even put more than one speaker in a system to improve the sound quality and output level. More...
Auto-Zero Operational Amplifiers: Inherent Benefits in Portable Signal-Conditioning Applications
At first glance, the term “auto-zero” operational amplifier (op amp) may appear to be something new, but in reality this architectural concept has been around for decades. This article will explore the history behind auto-zero op amps and provide a high-level overview of the architecture. Additionally, the article will explore the inherent benefits of this architecture for signal-conditioning applications. Finally, an example application will be analyzed to further compare the auto-zero architecture to that of traditional op amps. More...
How to Make Mobile WiMax Consumer Devices a Reality
With the completion of the IEEE 802.16e specification, mobile broadband service is now beginning around the world bringing fixed broadband services to homes and businesses. There are now over 75 commercial networks in operation worldwide supporting 1.3M subscribers. The bulk of these subscribers are using fixed WiMax service. To continue subscriber growth, network service providers have realized giving consumers the ability to “take the internet wherever you go” has huge potential. To do this effectively, mobile devices are needed that will mimic the internet experience at home regardless of location. More...
Lower Supply Voltages Enable Low-Power Portable Electronic Devices
The tremendous growth in the semiconductor industry over the last two decades has largely been a result of the scaling of CMOS devices which, over the years, has yielded lower costs with more die per wafer, smaller feature sizes and increased performance. However, device scaling has reached a point of threshold today, wherein its benefits are realized only if a device’s power consumption can be reduced by a few orders of magnitude. More...
Is Global Warming a Hoax?
Having long since been politicized, the debate over global warming has become yet another front in the political culture wars. With the climate change deniers being led by such flat-earth luminaries as James Inhofe and Darrell Issa, it’s easy for anyone with upwards of half a brain to dismiss their followers as a bunch of babbling idiots. While some of them clearly are, unfortunately, fellow tree huggers, they have a point. More...
Active Noise Cancellation Comes to Mobile Phones
All of us have experienced trying to make a mobile phone call from a noisy street, crowded restaurant or train station where the background noise can make it impossible to hear the incoming call. It can be worse when the person next to you in these situations is yelling into the receiver in an attempt to be heard. Active and passive noise canceling technologies can minimize background noise in high end headphones; however these technologies today can not provide the same benefits in mobile handsets. Clearly mobile handsets could benefit from noise cancellation. More...
Reducing EMI in Class D Audio Applications by Spread Spectrum Modulation Techniques
The use of Class D audio amplifiers has become increasingly widespread in portable applications. As complexity, size and audio performance have improved, the Class D topology continues to gain market share. So compelling a benefit is efficiency that Class D amplifiers are now used extensively in portable designs worldwide, as battery life and small profile become key differentiators for end-users. The efficiency advantage is more pronounced when one realizes the typical audio application will normally operate at less than one-third of the total output power specified. More...
High-Speed Video Bus Battle in Portable Designs
During the 80s, I vividly remember my friend sketching his first computer graphic image of a Marlboro cigarette box on a Commodore 64 screen. Using his DOS operating system, he programmed a software routine that would output the color value and address of every pixel and pixel fields onto the CRT screen. It took hours to finish the red, black and white image. More...
Verification Management: The Path of Evolution
It is a universal truth that evolution is a never ending progression. Whether biological or technological, evolution is all about overcoming the hurdles in the path of development. We evolve and cross one hurdle and soon face another, then evolve again. For example, new modes of transportation were invented to resolve the travel-time issue, and now there is too much traffic. Whether it is in the air or freeway, this is one of many hurdles we must cross in transportation. The verification industry is no different. More...
Simplifying Android Migration: Using Mobile Virtualization to Reduce Time, Risk and Cost
 The Android mobile device platform from Google and the Open Handset Alliance has ignited the imagination of mobile original equipment manufacturer (OEMs), developers and end users. Since its introduction, Android has enjoyed a rapidly growing market presence and bullish prospects for new deployments. Moreover, Android’s success as an open-source environment gives it additional momentum and rapid acceptance, and drives a fast-growing ecosystem of application developers. However, the underlying standard software components and an active developer community have not necessarily made it easier for OEMs to bring Android-based devices to market. More...
Virage Logic Turns Over a High Card
 Virage Logic announced today that it had completed its acquisition of NXP’s horizontal advanced CMOS semiconductor IP (SIP) technology. As part of the acquisition, approximately 150 former NXP employees and the assets associated with selected NXP advanced CMOS libraries, IP blocks and SoC infrastructure along with other classes of semiconductor IP, including approximately 25 associated patent families, are now part of Virage Logic. Virage and NXP also inked a $65 million strategic alliance that will give Virage cash flow and customers for many years. That’s part of the story, but Virage’s strategy going forward is the interesting part. More...
Paying Extra for Green Power, and Getting Ads Instead
 The solicitations have been flooding people’s mailboxes lately: pay a bit more on your electricity bill for 100 percent clean wind power. Or, the fliers say, buy “green power certificates” to offset your global warming emissions. But the participants are in a distinct minority, with a sign-up rate of only about 2 percent in programs run by utilities. The low sign-up rate raises a question: If large majorities of Americans favor increased government support for clean energy, as polls suggest, why are so many people reluctant to back such programs when it comes to paying extra themselves? More...
Processor Energy Savings Through Adaptive Voltage Scaling
Frequency and voltage scaling are common place in portable electronic processors. These devices are providing more and more functionality and demand the highest data processing efficiency. Adaptive Voltage Scaling (AVS) provides the lowest operation voltage for a given processing frequency by utilizing a closed loop approach. The AVS loop regulates processor performance by automatically adjusting the output voltage of the power supply to compensate for process and temperature variation in the processor. In addition, the AVS loop trims out power supply tolerance. When compared to open loop voltage scaling solutions like Dynamic Voltage Scaling (DVS), AVS uses up to 45% less energy. More...
Setting Sail Into Space, Propelled by Sunshine
About a year from now, if all goes well, a box about the size of a loaf of bread will pop out of a rocket some 500 miles above the Earth. There in the vacuum it will unfurl four triangular sails as shiny as moonlight and only barely more substantial. Then it will slowly rise on a sunbeam and move across the stars. Over the next three years, the Planetary Society will build and fly a series of solar-sail spacecraft dubbed LightSails, first in orbit around the Earth and eventually into deeper space.More...
Better Batteries Charge Up
A Texas startup says that it has taken a big step toward high-volume production of an ultracapacitor-based energy-storage system that, if claims hold true, would far outperform the best lithium-ion batteries on the market. EEStor claims that its system, called an electrical energy storage unit (EESU), will have more than three times the energy density of the top lithium-ion batteries today. The company also says that the solid-state device will be safer and longer lasting, and will have the ability to recharge in less than five minutes. More...
Everybody in the Pool of Green Innovation
 A POPULAR children’s song has a refrain — “the more we get together the happier we’ll be” — that may sound like a simplistic formula for solving the complex challenges of climate change and sustainability. But if any area is ripe for sharing and collaboration among organizations, it’s green innovation. In that spirit, several major corporations have taken inspiration from the open-source software movement and are experimenting with forums for sharing environmentally friendly innovations and building communities around them. The concept is straightforward: Companies pledge environmental patents to the commons, and anyone can use them — free. More...
Choosing the Right Central Logic Device for Your Portable Design
Most portable applications have a central logic device: field array programmable gate array (FPGA), digital signal processor (DSP) or microprocessor. Deciding the right device for your design is pivotal to the application capabilities and involves some important questions. More...
Developing Highly Integrated Solutions to Meet the Changing Demand of Multi-Mode Devices
 With an increasing number of travelers, both nationally and internationally, the world continues to become a smaller place and the desire for a single universal communication device grows. As the demand grows, so do the requirements – voice is still king, but the use of packet-based services, such as Web browsing, e-mail, file downloads and multi-media applications, is on the rise. These packet-based services require increased data rates which go beyond the capabilities of 2G technologies (GSM and CDMA) and require 3G and 4G standards. However, in order to maintain acceptable voice coverage, the devices must be backward compatible with established 2G networks. These multi-mode devices introduce a new set of challenges to the industry that will continue to increase as consumers demand more functionality. More...
Model-Based Design Accelerates Functional Verification
 Functional verification consumes from 50% to 65% of the development time and budget for today’s system-on-chip (SoC) projects. With fragmented tools and development methodologies that rely on manual scripting, collections of disparate verification tools, inter-tool incompatibilities with almost-standard transaction languages, and mismatched database sources, functional verification can itself become a project that deflects attention from the main development goals. Instead of optimizing and debugging product designs, engineers spend time debugging their workflow and compensating for gaps in their verification tool chain. More...
Hardware Software Co-design Accelerates Development of Smart Wireless Devices
 Trends in handheld wireless devices can change quickly. Driven by fickle consumer tastes, technologies and applications can drift in or out of fashion as easily as a pair of sunglasses. To capitalize on market demand for “what’s hot”, embedded device designers must apply new technologies rapidly and time-to-market becomes the Holy Grail. More...
Advanced Dynamic Voltage Scaling via VSEL, One-Pin EasyScale or I2C Interface
 In today’s applications dynamic voltage scaling (DVS) means either optimizing battery lifetime in portable applications, or saving energy and reducing heat in complex, multiprocessor environments. Interface and DVS functionality gives the system designer a new and highly advanced tool to achieve the best results in today’s complex applications. More...
Characterizing and Troubleshooting Digital RF Amplifier Systems
With the emergence of high-speed data services on the wireless mobile networks, new challenges have been placed on the design and operation of power amplifiers. The bursted nature of new wireless access technologies (3GPP - HSPA, LTE, WiMax, and 3GPP2 - 1xEV-DO) can wreak havoc on the modern amplifier design that previously had been designed for voice-only communication. More...
Next-Generation Design Issues in Communications
Next-generation communication systems are presented with many design challenges. We are moving into an age where the rules for spectrum access may change faster than new equipment can be fielded and faster than new software for the equipment can be developed. At the same time, heterogeneity is increasing. The rate of development of new technologies and new air interface standards (AISs) is continuing to grow. Research is now exploring many new modes for finding spectrum, for negotiating for use of spectrum, for adapting the modulation to fit into available spaces, and for protocols by which radios can exchange their capabilities in this new field of Cognitive Radio and Dynamic Spectrum. More...
‘Cleantech’ Could Be Economy’s Next Boom
 The U.S. economy sure could use the Next Big Thing. Something on the scale of railroads, automobiles or the Internet — the kind of breakthrough that emerges every so often and builds industries, generates jobs and mints fortunes. Silicon Valley investors are pointing to something called cleantech — alternative energy, more efficient power distribution and new ways to store electricity, all with minimal impact to the environment — as a candidate for the next boom. While no two booms are exactly alike, some hallmarks are already showing up. More...
Navy’s Fuel-Cell Plane Sets Endurance Record
The U.S. Navy has developed a hydrogen-powered aircraft that can fly for nearly an entire day without refueling. During a test flight last week, the Ion Tiger, an unmanned air vehicle, stayed airborne for approximately 23 hours and 17 minutes, setting an unofficial endurance record for a flight powered by fuel-cell technology. The electric fuel cell propulsion system onboard the aircraft features a 550-Watt (0.75 horsepower) fuel cell that researchers say is 4 times more efficient than a comparable internal combustion engine. More...
Time to Reinvent the Semiconductor Industry
The semiconductor industry has been the greatest single source of industrial innovation in recent history. But many of the advances have been incremental, such as the shift to high-k dielectric materials, and the move from aluminum to copper for on-chip interconnects. But as the old saw has it, after you've gone from the buggy to the car, building a better buggy whip won't do you any good. In electronics, building a better triode won't help. What the industry needs now is more like the shift from vacuum tubes to semiconductors. That's because two trends are driving the semiconductor industry to a momentous inflection point. More...
Ultra-Low Power Requires MCMM
ICs for smart phones, music players, and other portable products now depend on a palette of relatively exotic design methods, including multiple voltage domains, and dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS), to effectively manage power. These new techniques present a minefield of challenges to the entire design flow. This article outlines the challenges of designing ultra-low power portable designs. It describes tool capabilities that designers need to avoid excessive design margins and numerous lengthy iterations. It also describes results that are being achieved today by designers working on the most advanced SoC designs at 45nm. More...
Architectural Issues for Power Gating
A scalable approach to chip architecture is valuable since a system-on-chip design today often becomes a component in an even larger chip in a subsequent product generation. This article discusses some of the architectural issues involved in implementing power-gating designs. In particular, it addresses the issues of partitioning, hierarchy and multiple power-gated domains. More...
Good Embedded Communications is the Key to Multicore Hardware Design Success
 While multicore processors have certainly become an important part of many SoC designs, there are still several obstacles designers face in dealing with more than one processing engine on a chip. It’s time to look at self-timed network on chip (NoC) interconnect fabrics for embedded communication networks. More...
Solve Portable Design Problems Using Convenient Concurrency
Discussions of multicore chips, multiprocessors, and associated programming models for portable system design continue to be narrowly bounded by a focus on individual, general-purpose processor architectures, DSPs, and RTL blocks, which severely limits the possible ways in which you might use multiple computing resources to attack problems. More...
The Role of Digital Power in Portable Applications
Power management is vital to extending runtime for portable applications. Power conversion in these applications has been dominated by analog circuits, while the power management has been performed by embedded processors and simple sequencers. These analog solutions have served the system well. With recent trends in power solutions focusing on digital control, new opportunities emerge for portable power solutions.
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Can Renewables Become More than a Sideshow?
The great electrification projects of the 19th and 20th centuries created a world where (at least in developed countries) electricity is as common as clean water. They also created a world addicted to fossil fuels. Globally, over 40 percent of electricity is generated from coal and another 20 percent from natural gas, releasing billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year.
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A new telematics system may give troubled Chrysler the smartest cars on the road
 In a month or so, the financially strapped company soon to be formerly known as Chrysler will roll its 2010 models into its remaining showrooms. Some will carry a nondescript box, about the size of a high school textbook, that will ”change the way we relate to our cars.”
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Alternative Energy Projects Stumble on a Need for Water
 Here is an inconvenient truth about renewable energy: It can sometimes demand a huge amount of water. Many of the proposed solutions to the nation’s energy problems, from certain types of solar farms to biofuel refineries to cleaner coal plants, could consume billions of gallons of water every year. When push comes to shove, water could become the real throttle on renewable energy.
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Is there gold in Green Technology? A microelectronics perspective
 A panel this week sponsored by international science and technology interest group Monte Jade explored the realities behind the promise of huge new microelectronics markets from so-called Green Tech—the global drive to lower carbon footprints, reduce energy use, and shift to sustainable consumption. The panel combined venture capitalists, industry executives, and an executive from a key electric power industry organization, and produced a fascinating cross-fire of ideas.
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Status of Photovoltaic Technology
Last Friday I attended a very informative solar technology workshop put on by the IEEE at Freescale in Austin. It brought together experts in both microelectronics and solar technology who provided a wealth of information about both fields and the intersection between them. Dr. Jeffrey Mazer, an engineer with NIST, spoke on the “Status of Photovoltaic Technology and the DOE / EERE Photovoltaics Program.” Mazer spent much of his time explaining the physics and the different architectures for both silicon and thin film PV cells. The real imperative for the technology is to increase efficiency while bringing down costs. The bottom line, in short, is economic. More...
Low-Power Design Has a High-Power Payoff
Electricity use from power-hungry gadgets is rising fast all over the world. Americans now have about 25 consumer electronic products in every household, compared with just three in 1980. Worldwide, consumer electronics now represent 15 percent of household power demand, and that is expected to triple over the next two decades. To satisfy the demand from gadgets will require building the equivalent of 560 coal-fired power plants, or 230 nuclear plants. Most energy experts see only one solution: mandatory efficiency rules specifying how much power devices may use. More...
Smart Battery Management Considerations for Portable Applications
 Portable applications need the support of battery management systems to ensure that the productivity of batteries is maintained and to deliver the best power profile over the batteries’ lifetime. In most applications today, batteries need to be replaced often and a system that can offer a means to have efficiently managed so as to prolong its life can offer several benefits. In addition to a lower overall cost since the consumer will not have to continually purchase new batteries, prolonging battery life means fewer battery replacements, which in turn means less waste. More...
Near Field Communications
Near field communication (NFC) is an ultra short range wireless communication technology that uses magnetic field induction to enable connectivity between devices when they are in physical contact or within a range of a few centimeters. NFC has emerged as a technology for interconnecting consumer electronic devices from the convergence of contactless identification (e.g. RFID) and networking technologies, and aims at simple peer-to-peer networking through automatic connection and configuration. This article explains how it works.
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Google plans new mirror for cheaper solar power
Google is disappointed with the lack of breakthrough investment ideas in the green technology sector but the company is working to develop its own new mirror technology that could reduce the cost of building solar thermal plants by a quarter or more. Google is looking to cut the cost of making heliostats, the fields of mirrors that have to track the sun, by at least a factor of two, "ideally a factor of three or four."
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Largest Offshore Wind Farm to Go Online
 The world’s largest offshore wind farm is expected to go into operation on Thursday at a site 30 kilometers off the coast of Denmark. The farm, called Horns Rev 2 and built by a Danish utility, Dong Energy, consists of 91 turbines made by Siemens, a German engineering company, spread over a 35-square kilometer area. The farm is projected to generate 209 megawatts or enough electricity to supply 200,000 households.
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Have a Nice Day
With more than 50,000 new jobs, the renewable energy industry in Germany is now second only to its auto industry. One thing that has never existed in America — with our fragmented, stop-start solar subsidies — is certainty of price, connectivity and regulation on a national basis. So, right now, our federal and state subsidies for installing solar systems are largely paying for the cost of importing solar panels made in China, by Chinese workers, using hi-tech manufacturing equipment invented in America.
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Video Interview: Ian Wright of Wrightspeed, Inc. on Electric Cars
Would you be more inclined to buy an eco-friendly electric car if it could also leave Porsches and Ferraris in the dust? Now, thanks to a revolution in drive train technogies, you can have it both ways.
Electric vehicles have been around for more than a century. Heavy, ugly, slow, expensive, with short range and short life, they have been limited to golf carts and forklifts. From grocery getters to Formula One cars, pistons and gears have been the hot technology. That's about to change. More...
Video Interview: Pravin Madhani, Mentor Graphics
Video interview with Pravin Madhani, GM of Mentor Graphics Place and Route Division, by John Donovan, Editor/Publisher of Low-Power Design. Conducted at the EDA Tech Forum in Santa Clara, CA, September 9, 2009. In particular we wanted to know: How can you do reliable physical verification at 32 nm and below? How effective is multi-corner, multi-mode optimization in increasing the energy efficiency of an SoC design? What are the major hurdles that physical design and layout software have yet to surmount, and what sort of progress can we hope for in the next few years?
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Voice-over-Wi-Fi Implementation with Single Stream 802.11n
 The growth of wireless networks based on the IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN family of standards has been one of the most outstanding success stories of the technology industry in recent years. Apart from the standards themselves, the universal pervasion of WLANs has been assisted and accelerated by the availability of interoperability testing and certification by the Wi-Fi Alliance – so much so that the term “Wi-Fi” is widely used interchangeably with “WLAN.” In this article we provide a background to VoWiFi performance by examining the factors that enable it to provide a satisfying user experience. We elaborate on some of these requirements and describe how they are implemented in VoWiFi devices.
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Out of a Job? Create One!
 Being talented at engineering doesn’t correlate directly—or even closely—with being talented at doing business. Even if you think you have a knack for business, you still need to complete your R&D, build a prototype, prepare a marketing plan and a business plan, put together a team and stay alive until you can find the money to fund all your plans. That’s where technology incubators come into play.
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Mobile Processors Target Next Generation Mobile Consumer Devices
The mobile market is the highest growth end segment for the semiconductor industry. Many consumer electronics devices still use MCUs and ASICs. However, devices such as smartphones, MIDs, and mini-notes require higher level functionality, programmability, and connectivity. As a result, these mobile consumer devices are increasingly shifting toward merchant market processors, reports In-Stat.
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Wi-Fi Connectivity Becoming Pervasive on Devices
Wi-Fi enabled products continue to proliferate across nearly all categories, including computing, networking, consumer electronics and mobile devices. Over 1,000 new products were launched with Wi-Fi in 2008; 2009 promises to surpass that mark, reports In-Stat. Among the key growth areas is stationary consumer electronics (CE) devices with Wi-Fi. Stationary CE devices include products that require access to a power source, such as televisions and digital photo frames.
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£10 Million Sea Power Challenge
 Scotland is finalizing the terms of a contest in wave and tidal energy that takes inspiration from the prize that prompted Lindbergh's transatlantic flight in 1927 and successors like the X Prizes and the Virgin Earth Challenge. Dubbed the Saltire Prize, after the cross that is the central element in Scotland's flag, the prize of £10 million (about US $16 million) will be awarded in five years. Contestants will need the time to devise and demonstrate their technology because, by all accounts, Saltire is a very challenging challenge, so much so that only a Scottish company may be able to win it.
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U.S. Broadband Internet Speeds Lag Behind Other Advanced Nations
Fixed line internet speeds in the USA have increased by only 1.6 megabits per second (mbps), from 3.5 mbps in 2007 to 5.1 mbps in 2009, reports the Communications Workers of America (CWA). At this rate, it will take the United States 15 years to catch up with current Internet speeds in South Korea, the country with the fastest average Internet connections. The 2009 Speed Test shows that only 20 percent of those who took the test have Internet speeds in the range of the top ranked countries - including South Korea, Japan and Sweden. Also noted was that 18 percent do not even meet the FCC definition for basic broadband as an always-on Internet connection of at least 768 kbps downstream.
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CPU, Heal Thyself
 Sometimes, it’s worthwhile to abuse microprocessors: You can achieve increased performance by overclocking chips or decreased power consumption by running them at a lower voltage. But eliminating safety margins means that processors will occasionally make mistakes. With clever error detection and correction circuits, chips can be pushed right to their limit.
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FCC Launches Formal Probe of Wireless Industry
 The FCC has formally announced plans to launch a wide-ranging probe into the U.S. wireless industry.
The commission plans to investigate multiple issues in the wireless industry, including consumer protection and competitive business practices. Its plans were outlined in its agenda for a Thursday, Aug. 27, meeting, which also states that the FCC will consider an inquiry "to understand better the factors that encourage innovation and investment in wireless."
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Moving Forward On Smart Grid
Today’s power grid in America is a relic of the 20th Century. The idea behind smart grid is to inject a two-way information layer into the electricity distribution process. Smart grid components include advanced home meters, new grid management techniques and software. At the home or business, smart grid can aid conservation by showing customers their power usage and offering real-time choices about when they use electricity. Scaling up, smart grids allow utility managers to constrain peak load requirements through a combination of consumer incentives and accurate diagnosis of demand. Ultimately, smart grid technologies can open the door for more plug-in electric cars and vehicles. Added together, the impact of smart grid may help craft an environmentally-sustainable way of the life for the 21st Century. More...
"They're here!": Plastic Semiconductors
Plastic that conducts electricity holds promise for cheaper, thinner and more flexible electronics. This technology is already available in some gadgets -- the new Sony walkman that was introduced earlier this summer and the Microsoft Zune HD music player released last week both incorporate organic light-emitting electronic displays. Until now, however, circuits built with organic materials have allowed only one type of charge to move through them.
New research from the University of Washington makes charges flow both ways. The cover article in an upcoming issue of the journal Advanced Materials describes an approach to organic electronics that allows transport of both positive and negative charges.
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Virage Logic Announces Intent to Acquire ARC International
 August 18, 2009 -- Virage Logic Corporation today announced its intent to acquire publicly held ARC International plc. The proposed acquisition would expand Virage Logic's ability to serve the global semiconductor market by complementing its existing portfolio of physical IP and standards-based advanced interface IP with ARC’s processor IP, a necessary component for complex System-on-Chip (SoC) integrated circuits. More...
Wally Rhines: How Green Is My Silicon Valley?
 Mentor Graphics CEO Wally Rhines hosted a panel at DAC titled "How Green Is My Silicon Valley?" Low-Power Design wanted to know:
* Just how green is your Silicon Valley?
* Is green just the flavor of the month or is it here to stay?
* What impact do you think the shift toward green engineering will have on various components of the electronics industry?
* How would you describe the current state of the EDA industry, and how do you think it will—or should—change over the next few years?
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Smart Grids Bring Opportunities for EDA and Embedded Software Companies
Given the billions of dollars that are expected to flow into projects related to the smart grid, it is no surprise that hi tech companies are all lining up for a piece of the pie. Looking down the supply chain, it would then stand to reason that the EDA industry and the embedded software industry can hope to gain a small share of the dollars flowing from this initiative. More...
The Electronics Industry: The Power to Change
If Thomas Edison had known what his initial inventions would spawn, would he be delighted or horrified? The answer is probably a little bit of both. Given the amazing technological innovations over the past 150 years, and the dramatic improvements to our everyday quality of life, Mr. Edison surely would be pleased. However, these technological advances have come at a price. More...
What Can Engineers Do About Global Warming?
 On November 17, 2007 the UN released the final report of its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the group that won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their work. Normally understated UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, described climate change as “the defining challenge of our age.” The ministerial meeting in Bali a few months later resulted in agreement that something needs to be done soon. The devil is in the details, of course, but it's finally possible to be cautiously optimistic. More...
The LED's Dark Secret
The blue light-emitting diode, arguably the greatest optoelectronic advance of the past 25 years, harbors a dark secret: Crank up the current and its efficiencies will plummet. The problem is known as droop, and it’s not only puzzling the brightest minds in the field, it’s also threatening the future of the electric lighting industry. Tech visionaries have promised us a bright new world where cool and efficient white LEDs, based on blue ones, will replace the wasteful little heaters known as incandescent lightbulbs. More than a dozen countries have already enacted legislation that bans, or will soon ban, incandescent bulbs. But it’s hard to imagine LEDs dislodging incandescents and coming to dominate the world electric lighting industry, unless we can defeat droop. More...
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