By Alix Paultre | June 1, 2017
Packaging is a critical issue in wide-bandgap semiconductor development.
Buzz about the promise of wide-bandgap semiconductors abounds, but engineers are only just starting to look to them as real solutions, not mere hype. There are still birthing pains, but mainstream acceptance of the technology appears imminent.
Still, it is relevant to ask why wide-bandgap is such a disruptive technology.
A classic lives on: The µA741 operational amplifier is one of the most successful ICs ever produced.
Hard core analog design may seem like a black art to many EEs. And no wonder: Formal course work turns out to be inadequate; hard fought experience is everything. The learning never stops – a little here and a little there until theory gels into practice.
Bruce Trump has been learning all his life at two bastions of analog design – first Burr Brown and then Texas Instruments. The company recently put together a compendium of his blog posts on op amp design that is destined to be an invaluable resource for any EE who wishes to plumb the mysteries of analog.
The op amp, arguably the quintessential analog component, is ubiquitous because it’s a versatile building block. But versatility inevitably spawns complexity. Understanding the issues, interpreting the specifications and making wise tradeoffs pay off.
Bruce’s blog posts explore a multitude of op amp design issues: Power supply and output voltage ranges, offset voltages, input bias currents, stability and oscillation, dynamic behavior, noise, etc.
Like all analog greats, Bruce’s favorite activity was dealing with customer application issues. “I particularly enjoyed developing customer seminars and datasheets. It was a challenge to clearly explain the inner workings and applications of precision analog components,” he said.
Remember this (with apologies to Einstein): Stand on the shoulders of a giant to look farther.
May 30, 2017
The sports world is driven by athletes relentlessly driven to deliver their personal best, no matter what the contest.
Generating renewable energy is reaching a similar level of competitiveness among conservation-minded nations. Witness Germany’s setting of a national record in renewable energy production on a recent weekend in which 85 percent of all electricity consumed was produced through wind, solar, biomass, and hydroelectric power.
By Christoph Hammerschmidt | May 26, 2017
The electrification of the powertrain – at all levels — is a bonanza for semiconductor companies. From micro hybrids, where 48 V systems are accommodating the need for more on-board power, to all-electric vehicles with batteries capable of delivering many hundreds of volts, semiconductors play a vital role.
On average, cars with conventional internal combustion engines today contain semiconductors worth some $350.
May 24, 2017
South Korea is famous for high-tech cities, starting with the ancient capital Seoul, a high tech magnet for global innovation, and more recently, the $35-billion-dollar Songdo City project, built from the ground up on reclaimed land near the Yellow Sea, billed as a model for smart cities around the globe.
A major automobile maker –and user– South Korea is now going all out in its efforts to embrace self-driving cars, planning a new urban center, K-City, that will feature bus lanes, freeways and autonomous parking zones, and everything a self-driving car might encounter.
Delta-sigma analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are ideal for converting analog signals over a wide range of frequencies, from DC to several megahertz; they are the only low cost conversion method that provides both high dynamic range and flexibility in converting low bandwidth input signals. Delta-sigma converters have found homes in such applications as communications systems, consumer and professional audio, industrial weight scales, and precision measurement devices.
But, because Delta-sigma ADCs introduce delays into the signal chain, they have traditionally been relegated to high-resolution, very-low frequency applications.
Basically, these converters consist of an oversampling modulator followed by a low-pass digital/ decimation filter that together produce a high-resolution data-stream output. It is the phase response of the digital filter that is responsible for most of the delay in delta-sigma data converters (though a front-end amplifier, or logic interface may also contribute). This characteristic has prevented the use of these converters in multiplexed systems — it takes many clock cycles for the digital filter to settle after switching from one channel to the next.
However, the actual delay is predictable and deterministic. This paper discusses these sources of delay in depth and how all of the delays can be calculated with reasonable accuracy, allowing system designers to account for them in time-sensitive applications.
By Majeed Ahmad | May 23, 2017
Image courtesy of Blackberry
“No other technology segment is influencing the future of mobility more rapidly than cockpit electronics,” says Sachin Lawande, president and CEO of Visteon, a Tier 1 supplier exclusively focused on automotive cockpit and instrument clusters technology.
An all-digital cockpit is becoming a primary interface with a single system-on-chip (SoC) catering to both instrument cluster and infotainment systems while providing a unified driving experience across multiple displays in the car’s cabin.
By Alix Paultre | May 23, 2017
The electronic design industry is in the midst of a near-perfect storm of disruptive sea change, one sending ripples and waves large and small through our entire economy. Inter-related yet distinct, these challenges come from recent technological advances being commercialized and entering the marketplace. New topologies, methodologies, and materials have created opportunities, markets, and application spaces.
By Patrick Mannion | May 21, 2017
The “rotating coffee cans” atop Google’s autonomous vehicles were once symbolic of the future of driving. They are now quickly becoming quaint artifacts of a bygone era as low-cost LiDAR technologies emerge and more integrated approaches to object sensing start to take priority.
The highly contentious patent-infringement lawsuit between Waymo, Google’s autonomous vehicle group, and Uber, emphasizes what’s at stake, while at the same time distracting from the rapid pace of LiDAR technology development from startups and established companies alike.
The road to autonomous driving is built on Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), and new applications focused on safer driving environments for drivers, passengers, and pedestrians.
It’s an engineering environment comprised of forward-looking machine vision cameras, video sensors, radar, and light detection and ranging (LIDAR) sensors. These systems produce streams of raw video data – much of it need in duplicate or multiple copies for machine vision, viewing, parallel processing and data logging applications.
Replicating sensor data can take place in several different areas along the video design path. For instance, It’s possible to connect each sensor via separate cables to both machine-vision and data-logging electronic control units (ECUs). But this approach doubles the number of required cables.
A chip-level solution from TI bypasses this issue by splitting the data after sensor data aggregation. The DS90UB964-Q1 quad deserializer hub can aggregate raw data from up to four different sensors and create two copies of the combined data without external components such as splitters and bridge chips. In this instance data is received and aggregated into an MIPI CSI-2 compliant output for interconnecting to a downstream processor. A second MIPI CSI-2 output port is available to provide additional bandwidth or offers a second replicated output.
Machine vision algorithms (such as object recognition) can process one stream while recording another to memory for data logging. Furthermore, the connected sensors need not all be the same; combining multiple sensors of different type, resolution, and speed can enable true sensor fusion systems. For example, you can merge data from a combination of cameras with different frame rates as well as separate radar sensors.
Learn more about sensor data logging using MIPI® CSI-2 port replication in ADAS applications. *
May 19, 2017
Caption: Rienhard Ploss is all smiles – with good reason. Image credit: Handelsblatt
“Anticipated growth in sales of hybrid and electric vehicles in the next few years will spur power semiconductor sales to climb by CAGR 9.6 percent from 2015 to 2022 across all vehicles, taking Powertrain’s market share up to 54 percent of the total market, according to the report.
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