EP&Dee no 3 - March 2013

MARCH, 2013 足 ISSUE NO. 3, VOL. 11

DESIGN & MANUFACTURING

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PRODUCTS

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EASTERN

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Bridging the skills gap in embedded consumer design p16

MARCH 2013 Table of Contents

Win a Microchip F1 Evaluation Kit

EDITORIAL 4 The changing face of distribution: 3D isn’t just for the TV…or the printer Distributors distribute, right? Common sense dictates this to be, well obvious and true. But the past 5 years have seen a transformation of the high-service electronics distribution industry where business models and service levels have been redrawn to become more relevant, more competitive and more attractive.

EP&Dee is offering its readers the chance to win a Microchip F1 Evaluation Kit, containing an F1 Evaluation Platform and PICkit3. The F1 Evaluation Platform is a simple development tool for Enhanced Mid-range PIC microcontrollers (PIC12F1XXX/PIC16F1XXX) and demonstrates the capabilities & low power enhancements of these new

EMBEDDED WORLD 2013 - INDUSTRY NEWS (p 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11) 10

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COVER STORY Bridging the skills gap in embedded consumer design The effective use of COTS solutions and manufacturer development kits reduces the learning curve for implementing new technologies and enables embedded products to get to market faster, explains Martin Hill of Microchip Technology.

16 DESIGN FEATURES

12 From Visual Studio to FPGA Hardware A snapshot on the current state-of-the-art in FPGA software to hardware compilation.

20 Microcontrollers for human/machine interfaces Please touch!

Today, touch functionality is absolutely indispensable for a modern humanmachine-interface. All leading micro-controller manufacturers offer sophisticated solutions here. This means that developers are spoilt for choice.

22 It's easy to over-specify your AC/DC supply but you shouldn't.

You can buy more supply than you need, yet less is actually often better, says Don Knowles, VP Engineering at N2Power.

24 Agilent E363xA Series - Programmable DC Power Supplies One of the product groups offered by TME consists of so-called programmable DC power supplies.

26 Driver Assistance Systems with the Power of FPGAs FPGAs can be leveraged to quickly bring new driver assistance innovations to market.

30 Measuring energy flows in cross-border rail traction operations New standards impose accuracy requirements for energy metering that represent a massive step-change relative to prior industry practice.

PRODUCT NEWS Embedded Systems (p 14, 34, 35, 36, 37) Active Components (p 38, 39) Display (p 40) Sensors (p 41)

The kit includes a F1 Evaluation Platform, PICkit 3 In-Circuit Debugger, USB Cable, Platform & Demonstration Guide, Source code for included demonstrations and Board schematics.

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For the chance to win an F1 Evaluation Kit, please visit: http://www.microchip-comps.com/epdee-f1 and enter your details in the online entry form.

38 Group Publisher Director Gabriel Neagu Managing Director Ionela Ganea Accounting Ioana Paraschiv Advertisement Irina Ganea WEB Eugen Vărzaru

© 2013 by Eurostandard Press 2000

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PIC microcontrollers. Included with a PICkit3 for quick programming, this kit provides a platform for general purpose development and gives you the ability to develop code for any PIC12F1XXX/PIC16F1XXX microcontroller. Quick & easy development is ensured with the integrated functionality including: prototyping area, LCD control, system current monitoring, temperature sensing, Real-Time-Clock, LED drive, button control, and BLDC motor control.

EP&Dee | March, 2013 | www.epd-ee.eu

Contributing editors Radu Andrei Ross Bannatyne Consulting Marian Blejan Bogdan Grămescu Mihai Savu Asian Reprezentative Taiwan Charles Yang Tel: +886­4­3223633 charles@medianet.com.tw

EP&Dee Web page: www.epd­ee.eu EP&Dee Subscriptions: office@epd­ee.eu

EUROSTANDARD PRESS 2000 Tel.: +40 31 805 9955 Fax: +40 31 805 9887 office@esp2000.ro www.esp2000.ro VAT Registration: RO3998003 Company number: J03/1371/1993

EP&Dee (Electronics Products & Design ­ Eastern Europe) is published 10 times per year in 2013 by Euro Standard Press 2000 s.r.l.

It is a free to qualified electronics engineers and managers involved in engineering decisions. Starting on 2010, this magazine is published only in digital format.

Copyright 2013 by Euro Standard Press 2000 s.r.l. All rights reserved.

INDUSTRY NEWS

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

The changing face of distribution:

3D isn’t just for the TV…or the printer.

by Chris Sullivan Technical Marketing Farnell element14

Distributors distribute, right? Common sense dictates this to be, well obvious and true. But the past 5 years have seen a transformation of the high-service electronics distribution industry where business models and service levels have been redrawn to become more relevant, more competitive and more attractive. Relevant in the sense of keeping pace with shrinking development cycles and rapid advances in technology, competitiveness in a global economy that transcends geography and traditional allegiances, and attractiveness by offering more value to the engineer.

Distribution is 1D So distributors have gotten smarter; they know the 1D of the traditional Distribution model doesn’t cut it anymore. At the heart of highservice distribution is hard core asset management of a vast array of relevant products, all available for fast delivery – giving designers what they want, when they want it and at a competitive price. On top of this core offering, new services have been developed and layered by the distributor: free technical support, packaging options such as full and half reels, re-reeling, drilled tubes and guarantees for moisture sensitive parts. Products can be searched for and found by architecture, tech-

fabricators allow distributors to broaden their services and move further to the left of the product development continuum. (Figure 1) Development and Distribution is 2D High-service distributors no longer just provide the parts needed to assemble and produce a board level product or test equipment needed to verify the design; they are becoming more involved in Development, the 2D offer they have already adopted. A number of distributors for example provide their own PCB layout and editing tools such as EAGLE. They invest in the software and IP, they develop the roadmaps and they support the engineer.

This board-level integration is also Figure 1: The product development continuum, where the level of abstraction manifest in the way increases as you move to left from the physical prototype or manufacturing pilot. distributors have woven their parts databases into other mainstream PCB tools. nology type, application or end market (oh, From within the UI of most PCB/ CAD tools, and part #); customers with affinity for a preengineers can access millions of orderable ferred distribution partner can be rewarded parts in real time, check on detailed informathrough loyalty programs; and, alliances with tion such as parameters, stocking, pricing, specialist third-party providers such as PCB

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compliance and download symbols, footprints and datasheets. They can also, referencing the comment above, directly connect with a PCB fabricator and get prototype PCBs delivered to their door…all without leaving their familiar development environment.

The focus on development can also be seen in the increasing levels of embedded software tools that distributors provide and the technical support they wrap around it.

Development Boards and Kits (including exclusives), RTOS, JTAG, debuggers, Flashers, EDA tools and IDEs to name but a few, can all be supplied. A rich pool of engineering knowhow has been made available online as

distributors exploit their extensive network of global supplier relationships to aggregate content such as app notes, datasheets, video tutorials, blogs, manuals, white papers, code snippets and design examples.

This aggregation of engineering knowhow by the distributor is also embracing ‘developer’ generated content through active participation in bespoke communities and social media. The largest design engineering

INDUSTRY NEWS

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

community, Newark’s element 14 Community, is a space for peer review, discussion, debate, fun (!) and the sharing of ideas and experiences. It’s a channel that semiconductor companies and component suppliers are becoming increasingly tuned into as it gives extra voice to the developer and a deeper insight and understanding into what drives them.

• Little or no training is required due to compact and intelligent, focus free and built in intelligence design.

• The thermometer simultaneously saves thermal heat map data and visual images to an included MicroSD card which can be viewed in SmartView software which can then produce reports for your customer highlighting areas of concern.

Using conventional wisdom, this is not what you would expect from a 1D high-service distribution business model.

Design, Development and Distribution is 3D So as this model continues to evolve, so distributors will continue their journey to the left of the product development continuum. To enable this, adding a true Design capability to the high-service distribution offer is a logical next step.

This offers an even greater level of depth about the design process that builds upon a distributor’s core competence in asset management, the global logistics and supply chain muscle, and the development solutions that support the engineer from end to end.

Figure 2: Design, Development and Distribution brings together the essential services and products designers need to understand, evaluate and access new technology quickly.

By providing new solutions that are increasingly more abstract than boardlevel components, distributors are increasingly placing the designer, the developer and the engineer at the heart of their strategies, (Figure 2) turning the myth of single source distribution into a very real possibility. n

It’s no Fluke as Farnell element14 Announces Stock of Revolutionary Thermometer Product Farnell element14 announces it will stock the VT02 Visual IR Thermometer from Fluke which is revolutionising temperature measurements with thermal blending.

The product exists in the new tool category for Visual IR Thermometers and works by taking a visual image and applying a thermal heat map over the image thus displaying an image with both temperature and visual contextual content.

The product offers five key benefits over other temperature measurement devices: • Ability to view visual image of exactly what is being measured giving an accurate temperature measurements.

• Eliminates the task of taking multiple grid temperature readings manually by providing one blended image.

• Near mode allows the user to get as close as 6 inches to allow close up blended images supporting diagnosis. Blended images allow simultaneous tracking of both hot and cold.

The thermometer will be useful in the following industries: • Electrical – inspection of wiring and potential overloaded circuits; • HVAC Refrigeration – inspections on ducts, blowers and motor assemblies; • Industrial – preventative maintenance on motors, bearings or electrical systems; • Automotive – troubleshooting engines, brakes and heating / cooling systems; • Property Management and remodelers – installing in floor heating systems and basic temperature inspections.

To view the Google Hangout on the Fluke VT02 click www.youtube.com/watch?v= G68VXIy-iPI&feature=plcp

www.epd-ee.eu | March, 2013 | EP&Dee

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INDUSTRY NEWS

EMBEDDED WORLD 2013

ULP-COM is now SMARC™ The Standardization Group for Embedded Technologies (SGET) has officially announced the ratification of the new SMARC™ Computer-on-Modules specification. Kontron played the leading role in the development of the specification which had the working title ULP-COM. This new Smart Mobility ARChitecture for ARM/SoC-based extremely compressed Computer-on-Modules was approved within a short time frame. The speedy ratification goes to underline the market’s need for a new ARM/SoC-based form factor standard, as well as, the agility of the newly created SGET body.

Coinciding with the adoption of this new standard, three design lines have already become available at Kontron. Developers can now begin engineering innovative ultra-low power devices based on the new SMARC™ standard. The ratification of the SMARC™ standard underlines Kontron's power to innovate in its role as an international technology leader and as a 'standardizer' of Computer-onModules. With over 15 years of

experience in the development of COMs, Kontron provides extensive support along with notably long-term product availability.

Industrial customers, partners and module manufacturers profit from the high level of investment security which Kontron offers.

Kontron's success story began in 1998 with DIMM-PC® which, in 2000, led to the ETX® standard being licensed worldwide. The X-board® specification followed in 2002 and ETX Express® as the technological basis for PICMG’s® COM Express® technology was launched in 2003. COM Express® was finally developed by members of the PICMG® standards consortium, and Kontron was a major contributor to the technology.

KONTRON www.kontron.com

Maxim Integrated Demonstrates a Drop-In Analog Front-End (AFE) Solution for Industrial Sensors and Equipment at Embedded World At the 2013 Embedded World Exhibition, Maxim Integrated Products, Inc. presented the Cupertino (MAXREFDES5#) subsystem reference design, a precise drop-in-ready isolated 16bit analog frontend (AFE). This highly integrated subsystem reference design meets the needs of industrial sensors, process control, and programmable logic controllers (PLCs).

Its analog -10V to +10V, 0 to 10V, and 4-20mA inputs support the ubiquitous analog outputs of industrial sensors. In addition, both power and data are fully isolated.

Maxim provides all the hardware design files, example driver code, and test results needed to speed design development.

Industrial control and automation applications often require isolation, high resolution, and a wide range of input voltages.

Many industrial sensors have

high or wide-ranging analog output voltages. Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and microcontrollers often cannot accept these high analog voltages directly. The Cupertino

design solves this problem by providing an interface solution between the sensor and the controller while also integrating isolated power and data, all in a small 96.52mm x 20.32mm form factor. The Cupertino AFE connects directly to FPGA/CPU development kit expansion ports that conform to the Pmod™ standard from Digilent.

MAXIM INTEGRATED www.maximintegrated.com

Atmel Expands Third-Party Ecosystem of Tools and Software Partners for Recently Launched ARM Cortex-A5 Processor-based Family Atmel® Corporation announced the company has expanded its third-party ecosystem of tools and software partners for its recently launched ARM® Cortex®A5 processor-based family of products. Partner companies include ARM, Timesys, Express Logic and IAR. According to the 2012 Embedded Study conducted by UBM, 61 percent of its respondents said the microprocessor’s (MPUs) ecosystem (software, tools support, etc.) is one of the most critical aspects for their MPU designs. In this same study, respondents indicated that Embedded Linux and Android are two operating systems they had planned to use in the next 12 months for their embedded designs.

The expanded list of tools and

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software partners enable embedded design engineers using the Atmel SAMA5D3 series of ARM Cortex-A5 processor-based MPUs the ability to design on a variety of systems including embedded Linux, Android and other real-time operating systems. Each partner company offers a tool enabling embedded designers the ability to get to market faster.

• Qt, the leading solution in the embedded market for user interface implementation by Timesys, provides the perfect tools for engineers to design a rich set of widgets and reference designs for devices powered by embedded Linux.

• The ARM DS-5™ toolchain offers a complete development studio for Linux developers that need to optimize their code for

EP&Dee | March, 2013 | www.epd-ee.eu

performance and power management, or for designers that want to debug firmware.

• Partnering companies IAR and Express Logic offer tightly integrated solutions that assist designers in developing applications that deliver TCP/IP, USB, and OS functionality, along with real-time performance to meet today’s most demanding software requirements.

Partner Quotes • ARM Quote • Timesys • Express Logic • IAR More details on all our thirdparty partners and vendors are available here: www.atmel.com/thirdpartysupport ATMEL www.atmel.com

INDUSTRY NEWS

PRQA announces support for MISRA C:2012 PRQA | Programming Research, a global leader in static analysis, announces that its tools offer support for MISRA C:2012 (MISRA C3), with an updated compliance module for QA•C Version 8.1, in anticipation of the new version of the coding standard which will be published on 18 March. The new standard contains a number of improvements over previous versions and extends support to the C99 version of the C language (ISO/IEC 9899:1999).

“This latest version of MISRA C provides a new benchmark for effective and safe use of the C Language,” said Paul Burden, co-author of the MISRA C Guidelines and PRQA’s representative on the MISRA C working group for the past 13 years. “With support for C99, a range of improvements and detailed explanation of the rationale behind individual rules, MISRA C3 is an indispensable resource for anyone who cares about software quality and is developing systems in C.” MISRA C:2012 includes support for C99, a version of the C language that was not widely implemented when MISRA C:2004 (MISRA C2) was published, while maintaining guidelines for C90. Other developments include some additional rules, and a wide range of improvements designed to make it easier for users to understand and use the guidelines.

These are based on the wide experience gained from users of MISRA C2 around the world, and include: • Elimination of areas of ambiguity to ensure consistent interpretation of the rules.

• Classification of rules as either “mandatory”, “required” or “advisory”.

• A more explicit recognition of “decidability”, the extent to which enforcement of a rule can be guaranteed.

• Improved rule definition providing a closer focus on dangerous constructs while avoiding unnecessary and irksome restrictions.

• Expanded examples and more extensive explanation of the rationale behind particular rules.

• Better explanation of why a user might want to deviate from (not comply with) a particular rule.

MISRA C is the most widely used set of coding guidelines for development in the C language.

Although originally developed for automotive applications it is now broadly adopted across many different industry sectors.

PRQA | PROGRAMMING RESEARCH www.programmingresearch.com

EMBEDDED WORLD 2013 Microchip’s BodyCom™ technology is world’s first to use the human body as a secure, low-power communication channel Microchip announces, from the Embedded World conference in Germany, its BodyCom™ technology, which provides designers with the world’s first framework for using the human body as a secure communication channel. Compared to existing wireless methods, BodyCom technology provides lower energy consumption, whilst further increasing security via bidirectional authentication. Because no RF antennas are required, BodyCom technology simplifies circuitlevel design and lowers the bill of materials (BOM).

Watch a short video: www.microchip.com/get/9TMM All of this is enabled by the BodyCom Development V1.0 Framework, which is supplied through free software libraries that work on all of Microchip’s 8-, 16and 32-bit PIC® microcontrollers, of which there are more than 900.

BodyCom technology is activated by capacitively coupling to the human body.

The system then begins communicating bidirectionally between a centralised controller and one or more wireless units.

There are many applications where secure wireless communication is essential, and there is no more secure channel than the human body. This is especially true when bidirectional authentication is added to support advanced encryption, such as KeeLoq® technology and AES. For example, BodyCom technology helps to prevent the “Relay Attack” problem that is typical in automotive passive-keyless-entry security systems.

Most secure, short-range communication designs are

battery powered and highly cost constrained. BodyCom technology significantly increases battery life by eliminating the need for a wireless transceiver or high-power inductive fields. It also simplifies development and lowers BOM costs by making antenna design unnecessary and by using a low-frequency framework with a common microcontroller and standard AFE frequencies (125kHz and 8MHz), with no need for external crystals.

BodyCom technology also eliminates the cost and complexity of certification because it complies with FCC Part 15-B for radiated emissions.

Example applications include Access Control such as security systems, home/industrial door locks, pet doors; Personal Safety & Security including equipment access / disable, power tools, firearms and computer systems; Medical equipment for patient monitoring, hospital-room access or equipment tracking; and Consumer electronics such as profile management for gaming consoles and exercise equipment.

To further enable development and speed time to market, Microchip is also announcing the BodyCom Development Kit (DM160213) priced at $149, which includes a central controller unit and two wireless mobile units.

The free BodyCom Development V1.0 Framework is also available today and includes a communication library, application code examples and a development GUI for use on personal computers.

Application note AN1391 offers an introduction to BodyCom technology.

MICROCHIP TECHNOLOGY www.microchip.com/get/GA5E

www.epd-ee.eu | March, 2013 | EP&Dee

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INDUSTRY NEWS

EMBEDDED WORLD 2013

Freescale and AirHop collaborate on selforganizing network software support for QorIQ Qonverge base station-on-chip portfolio Wireless infrastructure technology leaders Freescale Semiconductor and AirHop Communications are establishing solutions that integrate Freescale’s high-performance QorIQ Qonverge processors with AirHop's eSON™ advanced selforganizing network (SON) software to speed deployment of heterogeneous networks (HetNets) around the world.

While adding small cell base stations to the world’s networks increases capacity and complements traditional macrocell base stations, it challenges service providers to coordinate and manage interaction between growing numbers of network cells. AirHop eSON™ software support for QorIQ Qonverge processors is designed to facilitate the coordination of macrocell base stations and small cells, optimizing mobile traffic via dynamic load balancing and inter-cell interference management. This allows QorIQ Qonverge customers to accelerate 4G system deployment and optimize broadband coverage of HetNets. The QorIQ Qonverge portfolio is comprised of integrated base station-on-chip devices

built on advanced heterogeneous multicore technology. The broad family of products addresses multistandard requirements scaling from residential femto to macro cells with a common architecture.

AirHop’s advanced RAN Intelligence solutions manage interference and optimize system capacity in multi-cell and multi-layer network configurations. AirHop’s eSON™ software suite provides real-time optimization of available radio resources via multi-cell coordination to effectively provide coverage, capacity and quality of service (QoS) for each cell and individual user. This is especially critical in HetNet deployments where a large number of supplemental small cells can exist within a macrocell coverage area.

AirHop’s eSON™ software enables carriers to deploy small cells on an as-needed basis, leading to significant opex savings. It also improves network capacity by utilizing realtime, multi-cell coordination and optimization.

FREESCALE SEMICONDUCTOR www.freescale.com

Kontron introduces first 3U CompactPCI® Serial processor board for modular, high-speed applications As part of its 'High-Speed CompactPCI® Initiative', Kontron is showcasing its first 3U CompactPCI® Serial (CPCI-S.0) processor board at the Embedded World 2013 trade show in Nuremberg. The Kontron CPS3003-SA comes equipped with latest 3rd generation Intel® Core™ i7 processors and, for the first time, offers PCI Express Gen 3.0, USB 3.0, SATA 6G and Gigabit Ethernet over backplane. This paves the way for completely new application scenarios and can greatly boost performance in comparison to classic CompactPCI® installations.

Significant interest in CompactPCI® Serial has been identified in numerous market segments including industrial automation, test and measurement equipment as well as transport and traffic systems and also include medical and defense technology. At the same time, the new Kontron CompactPCI® Serial class processor board is very flexi-

ble. For OEMs, who still rely on classic CompactPCI® boards, Kontron offers the CPS3003-SA as an option in combination with a CPCI extension module. This means that both CompactPCI® Serial boards as well as classic CompactPCI® boards can operate together in a hybrid system. This

enables OEMs to easily continue using existing boards without any re-design or requirement to replace their existing Compact PCI® boards. Not only are OEMs provided with a clear migration path to a high speed point-topoint connection of CompactPCI® Serial, but they can also optimize their applications' time-to-market and product lifecycle to minimize their total cost of ownership.

KONTRON www.kontron.com

Renesas Electronics announces development of Flash Memory Technology that achieves High-Speed Read Operation and High Rewrite Cycle Counts for 40 nm On-Chip Flash Memory MCUs for Automotive Applications Renesas Electronics, a premier provider of advanced semiconductor solutions, has developed a new split gate (SG) flash memory circuit technology for on-chip flash memory microcontrollers (MCUs) that adopts the industry's leading-edge 40 nanometer (nm) process technology achieve high reliability, low power consumption and the industry’s fastest random access operation speeds.

In addition to higher level control, equipment that requires high reliability, e.g., automotive, is also now requiring even higher functionality and diversity of functions, such as support for functional safety, security, and networking.

Along with such market demands, since even larger capacities are required in the flash memory that stores the MCU's software and data, it is seen as desirable to increase the integration density of both the flash memory and peripheral functions included on a single chip by the use of even finer features in the fabrication process.

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To support these needs, Renesas continues to develop leading-edge solutions based on advanced process technologies, and starts sample shipments from 2Q CY2013 of automotive flash MCUs that adopt both the industry's leading-edge 40nm process for flash MCUs and the SG-MONOS structure flash memory, which has a proven track record in terms of high reliability, high speed, and low power consumption.

Key Features of the Newly-Developed SG-MONOS Flash Memory Technology: • Circuit technologies achieve even faster readout • Circuit technologies achieve high rewrite durability Using these new technologies, Renesas has prototyped both 4 MB program storage flash memory and a 64 KB data storage flash memory fabricated in a 40nm generation process, and has achieved operation at over 160 MHz

and high readout speed of 5.1 GB per second – the industry's highest speed for program storage flash memory. Previously, Renesas verified operation at up to 120 MHz in its 40nm generation process products. Leveraging these new technologies, Renesas has now verified a 33% characteristics improvement. Also, in data storage flash memory, this technology achieved 10 million rewrite cycles, a critical issue in automotive MCUs, even under the high-temperature conditions of Tj = 170°C. This indicates that Renesas 40nm automotive flash memory has great potential in terms of rewrite cycle counts.

Renesas is hopeful that using this flash memory circuit technology can contribute significantly to creating automotive flash memory that provides even higher performance and reliability.

RENESAS ELECTRONICS EUROPE www.renesas.eu

INDUSTRY NEWS

Kontron launches 'High-Speed CompactPCI® Initiative' Kontron now supports PICMG® CompactPCI® specifications CPCI-S.0 and serial mesh based on PICMG® 2.20 At the Embedded World 2013 trade show, Kontron (hall 1, stand 460) has announced the launch of its 'High-Speed CompactPCI® Initiative'. As of today, Kontron will extend its support to include two CompactPCI® standards, CompactPCI® Serial (CPCI-S.0) for 3U form factors with PCIe, GbE, USB and SATA over backplane, as well as CompactPCI® Serial Mesh (based on PICMG® 2.20) for 6U form factors with 10GbE over backplane.

This initiative gives the CompactPCI® bus architecture a next generation product enhancement providing CompactPCI® applications with an enormous performance boost, and extending the investment security of CompactPCI® technology for another decade.

The scope of applications using 3U CompactPCI® Serial (CPCI-S.0) is extremely broad and varied. It ranges from multi-processor systems for the computation of complex imaging processes to high-performance video or radar data recording through flexible SATA/RAID architectures, and from high bandwidth wireless communication with parallel working radio modules WLAN, UMTS, LTE right up to powerful multi-monitor systems in control rooms.

“CompactPCI® Serial is a logical enhancement to the very successful and worldwide-accepted CompactPCI® specifications. It enables a new generation of highperformance installations requiring massive bandwidth, and also provides a way to boost the performance of any existing CompactPCI® deployments in a wide range of industries,” explains Norbert Hauser, Executive Vice President Marketing at Kontron. “CompactPCI® Serial allows data transmission at a rate of several gigabytes per second. By way of comparison, the highest possible data throughput via a parallel 32bit/66 MHz PCI interface in CompactPCI® is 0.264 GB/s. That means that with CompactPCI® Serial, completely new system configurations become possible, and with 6U CompactPCI® Serial Mesh, 10 Gigabit Ethernet means a huge performance increase too.”

For further information, please visit the CompactPCI® Serial (CPCI-S.0) product page KONTRON www.kontron.com

EMBEDDED WORLD 2013 Kontron's systems expertise expanded with the launch of a family of pre-integrated CompactPCI® Serial building blocks As part of its 'High-Speed CompactPCI® Initiative', at the Embedded World 2013 trade show in Nuremberg, Kontron is presenting a 3U CompactPCI® Serial (CPCI-S.0) compliant chassis platform as well as peripheral boards for 10 Gigabit and Gigabit Ethernet, XMC-based I/O and SATA hard disks. These building blocks are already aligned to the new Kontron CPS3003-SA processor board featuring the Intel® Core™ i7 processor, so that pre-integrated modular CompactPCI® Serial system configurations with PCIe, GbE, USB and SATA over backplane are also available to OEMs. Customers will also benefit from a rapid time-to-market and minimal integration efforts, which Kontron can also provide as part of its accompanying service program. The Kontron chassis family CPS-ASM4 is a range of 19” (84HP) or 42HP rack/wall-mount or tabletop enclosures, pre-integrated and EMI tested including backplane, power supply and fan tray options for 3U CompactPCI® Serial installa-

tions. 5-slot and 9-slot variants are available.

A 19” hybrid solution includes 5 Compact PCI® serial slots and the assembly option for up to four additional classic CompactPCI® extension boards. With these platform solutions Kontron supports both the all-new high-speed system configurations and also provides a simple migration path from the classic CompactPCI® to CompactPCI® Serial.

Thus, users can transfer their systems into the serial world comparatively easily without having to take existing CompactPCI® peripheral cards out of service.

KONTRON www.kontron.com

Kinetis microcontrollers from Freescale now included in mbed tool for rapid prototyping Easy-to-use, web-based mbed development tools are now freely available for the Kinetis L series of microcontrollers from Freescale Semiconductor.

The FRDM-KL25Z Freescale Freedom development platform is now included in the mbed hardware lineup, supported by the well-established mbed online development community.

The FRDM-KL25Z Freescale Freedom development platform is a low-cost hardware tool used to evaluate and develop with Kinetis L series MCUs, the industry’s first microcontrollers built on the ARM® Cortex™-M0+ core. FRDM-KL25Z is ideal for rapid prototyping of MCU-based applications and has proven to be an effective solution for developers, with more than 10,000 users adopting the platform within one month of its release.

With the addition of FRDM-KL25Z to the mbed hardware lineup, FRDM-KL25Z customers can now utilize mbed.org at no charge. Users will have full access to the mbed online environment, which includes a

software development kit (SDK), powerful online tools, an active community of developers and a large selection of reusable code. The mbed online compiler provides a quick and easy way to get started and experiment with the FRDM-KL25Z without having to download, install and license any tools. The mbed.org user forums provide an interactive community of professional developers working with a common mbed SDK and tools, sharing best practices and helping designers be more productive.

FREESCALE SEMICONDUCTOR www.freescale.com www.epd-ee.eu | March, 2013 | EP&Dee

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INDUSTRY NEWS

EMBEDDED WORLD 2013

Freescale’s QorIQ Qonverge macrocell base station-on-chip wins 2013 LTE Visionary Award

Kontron is launching the world’s first 6U CompactPCI® Serial Mesh 10 Gigabit Ethernet processor board

Mobility Tech Zone has named Freescale Semiconductor’s QorIQ Qonverge B4860 macrocell system-on-chip as a recipient of the 2013 LTE Visionary Award. The prize recognizes products that have advanced the state of LTE technology during the previous year. Mobility Tech Zone is the leading website dedicated to the mobile broadband industry and is sponsored by TMC, a global integrated media company, and Crossfire Media, an integrated marketing company with a core focus on technology. “Freescale’s achievements in advancing 4G through LTE development are impressive and, as such, the company was selected as a recipient of the Mobility Tech Zone LTE Visionary Award,” said Carl Ford, co-founder and community developer, Crossfire Media. “Freescale is a true innovator and one to watch for the next evolution of solutions.”

Introduced last year, the QorIQ Qonverge B4860 macrocell system-on-chip is engineered to help mobile operators accommodate rapid adoption of 4G data-centric wireless devices, while reducing costs associated with 3G deployments. The B4860 delivers optimal performance for macrocell base

As part of its 'High-Speed CompactPCI® Initiative', Kontron is launching the world’s first 6U CompactPCI® Serial Mesh 10 Gigabit Ethernet processor board together with a compliant chassis at the Embedded World 2013 trade show (hall 1, stand 460). For the first time, a CompactPCI® system supports 10 Gigabit Ethernet and PCIe over backplane in addition to the common interfaces such as PICMG® 2.16, SATA and HDMI. The Kontron CompactPCI® processor board CP6004X-SA is based on the latest generation Quad-Core Intel® Core™ processor and offers high computing power and performance-per-watt, which really comes into its own in the CPRAPID3 chassis with full-mesh fabric configuration.

Some applications for the new modular CompactPCI® Serial Mesh (based on PCIMG® 2.20) systems are in high availability telecommunications and datacommunications systems for carri-

station applications, utilizing Freescale’s intelligent integration capabilities and advanced 28 nm process technology to deliver a significant leap forward in computational capacity.

“The Mobility Tech Zone LTE Visionary Award reinforces Freescale’s role as a proven and committed innovator in the wireless infrastructure market,” said Tareq Bustami, vice president of product management for Freescale’s Digital Networking business. “Freescale is honored to receive this prestigious recognition and looks forward to even more LTE milestones in 2013.”

The B4860 macrocell SoC integrates four dual-thread, 64-bit e6500 Power Architecture® cores with AltiVec SIMD engines running at up to 1.8 GHz. The e6500 core is ideal for Layer 2, control and transport processing, and incorporates an enhanced version of the proven, high-performance and widely adopted AltiVec vector processing unit, which boosts performance for Layer 2 scheduling algorithms.

FREESCALE SEMICONDUCTOR www.freescale.com

ers and also with government and security companies. Applications include secure wireless systems, radar and sonar applications, and complex computational algorithms such as imaging processing.

Now, even with smaller space requirements, existing system installations are provided with a

significant increase in data throughput when new long-term generation systems are being developed which, in the future, could be scaled up to 40 GbE. Multiprocessor board configurations have already been fully tested in the chassis so that pre-integrated modular CompactPCI® system configurations with 10 Gigabit Ethernet and PCIe over backplane can be supplied to OEMs immediately.

KONTRON www.kontron.com

Atmel Announces Ultra-low Power Transceiver to Support Phase-Difference Technology Complementing IEEE 802.15.4 Standards Atmel® Corporation announced its recently launched AT86RF233 2.4GHz IEEE 802.15.4 radio transceiver supports distance measurement between two radios, also known as ranging.

This novel technology uses the measurement of phase differences between radio signals and enables items to be tracked within a wireless network for industrial and consumer applications. Phase measurement is a less complex technology than current distance measurement technologies available on the market today, with similar measurement accuracy and lower overall system cost.

Many of today’s applications for wireless networks come with the inherent need to determine the location of the individual nodes within a network to keep installation and maintenance costs low. The capability to determine the distance between any two nodes within a wireless sensor network is the reason for implementing

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positioning and localization solutions. While GPS is very successful outdoor, it cannot support indoor applications efficiently.

“We have been evaluating several different technologies including RSSI, Chirp and UWB methods for radio-based distance measurements over the last years,” said Andreas Werner, Managing Director of Agilion GmbH. “We’ve seen all these technologies only suitable for niche applications, either compromising performance or significantly complex which ultimately drive the cost-per-node much higher. The new Atmel technology establishes a unique value proposition by combining wireless sensor networks with realtime location (RTLS) capabilities even for mass market applications.”

“In this era of the Internet of Things, we are seeing an increase of smart, connected devices within the wireless networks,” said Oyvind Strom, Sr. Director of Wireless Solutions, Atmel Corporation. “With this increase, many of our

customers are demanding solutions that efficiently support the installation and maintenance of their systems. This new phase-difference technology can be used to determine the position of nodes within a network to help address these demanding requirements.”

To accelerate a designer’s project, software evaluation kits utilizing the REB233SMA-EK are available now. To purchase a kit, contact your local sales representative today. Atmel AT86RF233 transceivers, introduced in April 2012, are available in mass production today.

ATMEL www.atmel.com

INDUSTRY NEWS

Freescale and ARM Extend Relationship with Cortex-A50 Processor License for Future i.MX and QorIQ Products Freescale Semiconductor is licensing the ARM® Cortex™-A50 series of microprocessors (MPUs) for future versions of its i.MX applications processor and QorIQ communications processor product lines. This agreement is part of a new multiyear subscription license with ARM that demonstrates Freescale’s commitment to the ARM architecture and its intent to further expand its ARM Powered® portfolio – one of the industry’s broadest range of solutions built on ARM technology.

ARM recently announced the Cortex-A50 series which is based on the ARMv8 architecture and is capable of 64- and 32-bit execution. The series initially includes the CortexA57 and Cortex-A53 processors. The CortexA57 processor is ARM’s most advanced highperformance processor, while the Cortex-A53 processor is the most power-efficient ARM applications processor, as well as the world’s smallest 64-bit processor.

The Cortex-A53 and Cortex-A57 processors can operate independently or be combined into an ARM big.LITTLE™ processor configuration, combining high performance with power efficiency. In big.LITTLE processing, a systemon-chip (SoC) leverages two different, but compatible, processing engines within the same device, allowing the power management software to seamlessly select the right processor for the task.

The Cortex-A53 processor provides an optimized balance of power consumption and performance, making it an excellent fit for feature-rich applications, such as auto infotainment systems, medical equipment, eReaders, and the next generation of Internet of Things running i.MX apps processors. The CortexA53 processor also delivers hardware virtualization and enhanced security features in half the size of previous cores.

The Cortex-A57 is designed to further extend the capabilities of future mobile and enterprise computing applications, including compute-intensive 64-bit applications. The Cortex-A57 processor is ideal for markets Freescale will target with its forthcoming QorIQ communications processors based on the core-agnostic Layerscape architecture, including the enterprise, data center and wired/wireless communications equipment spaces. By leveraging the processing power of the Cortex-A57 processor, future generations of QorIQ products can continue to deliver industry-leading performance/power ratios.

FREESCALE SEMICONDUCTOR www.freescale.com

EMBEDDED WORLD 2013 Kontron's fanless data concentrator for SCADA and control room systems impresses with its high electromagnetic immunity Kontron presents the new Kontron Passau II, a fanless, intelligent data concentrator for SCADA and control room systems. The 2U rackmount server, which can be extended on a modular basis, is designed to meet the highest requirements in electromagnetic immunity. It furthermore excels with its scalable number of protected GbE LAN, CAN and galvanically isolated serial interfaces for surge protection. These features enable its deployment in heavy current environments while also allowing for the direct control of devices with live current. The server is also equipped to protect all surrounding IT equipment against potential voltage surges on its test and control interfaces. Typical applications areas are, for example, in substations and SCADA systems in the fields of power generation and distribution as well as in the process industry and in utility management. Further application scenarios are to be found in technical facility

management or in passgenger information systems at train stations as well as on trains.

With its fanless chassis, the robust and longterm available Kontron Passau II is not only protected against dust and moisture infiltration, it is particulary low on maintenance. By using PCI (short) and PCI104 extension components, it can furthermore be very flexibly configured to meet individual application

needs. Kontron's new fanless intelligent data concentrator Passau II delivers reliable 24/7 performance in a working temperature range of 0 to 50 °C over an operating period of 10 years which deems it particularly suitable for applications with long-term service life.

KONTRON www.kontron.com

Freescale introduces Kinetis KL02, world’s smallest ARM Powered® microcontroller As the Internet of Things (IoT) expands to include greater numbers of small, intelligent, battery-operated devices, the MCUs that enable these devices must deliver performance, energy efficiency and connectivity in progressively smaller footprints. Freescale Semiconductor is addressing the miniaturization trend with its new Kinetis KL02 MCU–the world’s smallest ARM Powered® MCU. The KL02 holds great potential for ultra-small-form-factor products in applications such as portable consumer devices, remote sensing nodes, wearable devices and ingestible healthcare sensing.

Measuring just 1.9 × 2.0 mm, the Kinetis KL02 MCU is 25 percent smaller than the industry’s next-smallest ARM® MCU. Within this miniscule device, Freescale has included the latest 32-bit ARM Cortex™-M0+

processor, cutting-edge low-power functionality and a range of analog and communication peripherals. This enables system designers to dramatically reduce the size of their boards and products while retaining the all-important performance, feature integration and power consumption characteristics of their end devices.

In addition, space-constrained applications that previously couldn’t incorporate an MCU now can be upgraded to become smart applications, adding a new tier of devices to the IoT ecosystem.

FREESCALE SEMICONDUCTOR www.freescale.com www.epd-ee.eu | March, 2013 | EP&Dee

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DESIGN

FPGA

From Visual Studio to FPGA Hardware A snapshot on the current state-of-the-art in FPGA software to hardware compilation.

by Brian Durwood, Co-founder, Impulse Accelerated Technologies Nicola Granny, President, MNB Technologies Accelerating software by moving it to massively parallel hardware continues to develop as an attractive methodology. The merit of hardware acceleration is significant, but there are hurdles that should be budgeted for.

To start, it’s important to understand that with hardware acceleration there are three primary forms of parallelism: 1) blocks of code that execute in parallel by splitting the data set into multiple parts; 2) pipelined (bucket brigade) blocks of code that operate on streaming data; and 3) hybrid parallelism that combines both forms.

On the merit side, each unrolling of a critical path loop into an independently streaming process can double wall-clock performance.

Modern FPGAs, with several million usable (in contrast to advertised) gates can host a dozen or more independent streams. Accordingly, we are seeing solid 10× acceleration in “parallelizable” designs in application domains such as image processing, encryption and network filtering. The process is not trivial. While we have student groups from Rochester Institute of Technology to the University of Naples delivering remarkable speed ups, adoption by industry is concentrated among a few thousand classic early adopters.

This article covers the current state of the art on software to hardware compilation, provides some realistic tips, and suggests a vision of how to make it more usable by the next wave of developers.

FPGAs explained for the non-hardware folk Most software developers write code for microcontrollers or microprocessors. C remains the dominant language for design starts. CPUs and microcontrollers typically feature single or low number multiple-cores.

They achieve throughput via increasing clock speeds but are constrained by having to share limited cores and common memory. Think of it as driving ever faster through a single or dual toll booth on a bridge.

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FPGAs run at lower clock speeds than microprocessors. They achieve throughput by having very flexible input and output, so nonsequential tasks can be designed into parallel processes. While a conventional processor only does one operation at a time, a properly engineered FPGA design will concurrently perform hundreds or thousands of operations.

Most designs for FPGAs are developed using an HDL (hardware description language) like VHDL or Verilog. They are not particularly difficult languages but are sufficiently arcane that C programmers do not generally take to them.

We have seen more cross-over from HDL engineers learning C than the other way around.

Gate count can be deceptive. Microprocessors use the available silicon with high efficiency.

Figure 1: The software to hardware stack generates necessary hardware interfaces post-optimization.

FPGAs can use a significant fraction of their gates for routing. And, you may not be certain of resource availability. FPGAs have great “blocks” of special purpose gates such as DSP, but they are limited. When you’re out of special blocks, you’re out, and the routing software will use less efficient gates, reducing performance and space efficiency.

Historically FPGAs are descendants of PALs, GALs and PLDs. These precursor devices were much smaller. The earliest ones were small enough to program in Assembly. The devices grew and the early HDLs emerged and improved. Design shifted to HDLs like Data I/O’s ABEL, MMI’s PALASM and others. Jump to today and the same shift is occurring. HDLs like VHDL and Verilog are more time consuming but offer better control over resources. C to HDL to RTL (Register-transfer level: the gate level machine code that characterizes the FPGA) tools like Impulse C, ROCC, C2H, Vivado and others offer a higher level of abstraction but may not have the same QoR (Quality of results) initially. More about this later when we talk about the design flow.

Design flow High Level Language, or HLL programming typically refers to C. System C, C#, C++ are all great languages with ardent users. But for this article we’re sticking with ANSI C, as most IP is created in this version of C. Design code is entered into a C development tool like GCC or Visual Studio. Ideally the system architect identifies a portion of the particular design to try in hardware, so one can maintain comparable C code files to compile both to FPGA and to microprocessor. This maintains equivalence and lets the designer “break one thing at a time”. The microprocessor-oriented C can be crudely “wrapped” and imported into the C to FPGA environment – where it will underperform until refactoring. Refactoring into individual streaming processes enables the compiler to better parallelize the code.

DESIGN Identifying the critical path to focus on starts with the basics. You are hunting for key blocks of code, largely free of serial data dependencies, which are heavily used by the system (and they eat up a lot of clock cycles) and which have opportunities for parallelism (traditional parallelism or pipelining), as shown in Figure 1.

While open source profiling tools are not fully realized, they can be useful. Commercial profiling tools are available with improved visibility and reporting to make run-time analysis easier and more accurate. It is not rocket science; the point is to chase clock cycle reduction. Typical design modules that are amenable to parallelism include encryption, image processes, FIR,

FPGA resources. Post machine compile, the HDL output can be directed to an industry standard HDL simulator to provide cycle accurate verification (Figure 2).

Now comes some leaps that can go wrong. To compile all the way to FPGA gates, the optimizing compiler hands off synthesizable HDL files to a place and route tool. This can be one provided by the FPGA manufacturer or one provided by another EDA firm. This can entail one heck of a coffee break. Place and route times for several million gates, taking into account all the special resources involved, can take hours. This is probably the biggest contrast in the experience compiling software to

Figure 2: Desktop simulation output.

FFT and any process that wants to sit on a bus and look at data streaming by.

The point here is to generally offload the microprocessor and bypass limitations introduced by the von Neumann architecture.

Some FPGA-enabled boards make this particularly easy by including PCIe connections to host so you can rapidly experiment with partitioning… moving code between FPGA resources and the system processor with single lines of instruction. In addition to partitioning, you are refactoring. Again, refactoring here means breaking C algorithms into coarsegrained logic: single processes that can be machine parallelized into multiple streaming processes. The C to FPGA compilers will unroll as much as they can but you’ve got to refactor into logic that makes it easier to do so. All while retaining behavioral equivalency. A great feature of FPGAs is the ability to simplify algorithms by creating a behavioral model that provides the functionality of the original microprocessor code, but eliminates the overhead generally associated with generic library routines from BLAS, LAPACK, and so on.

Verification occurs at every stage. Visual Studio verifies functional operation and equivalency to the microprocessor stack. Later in the tool flow you verify that the design will operate in the target FPGA, and what clock cycle reduction is possible given the available FPGA

technique remains to be fully field tested.

In the software to hardware process, another option is to run software on an embedded core inside the FPGA. The cores come in softand hard-core versions. Soft cores are programmed into general purpose gates. While FPGA-hosted processors are slower than those of the host machine, they are typically Harvard architecture with physically separate storage and signal pathways for instructions and data.

This gives them a memory access advantage and direct communication with the FPGA logic, bypassing host to hardware overhead.

Sometimes this can be a less efficient use of silicon, but multiple cores can be added as the design may need. Cores can be proprietary, provided by the FPGA vendor and useful if not familiar. Increasingly FPGA suppliers are standardizing on ARM cores. This trend is expected to continue. The use of cores in FPGAs as SoC (system on chip) solutions is an intrinsic benefit. The on-board core can consolidate microcontroller or light micro processing tasks on one chip.

Development environments such as Impulse CoDeveloper also interoperate with full-featured heavily used tools such as Microsoft™ Visual Studio. A practical example is provided in Impulse App Note 112 by Michael Kreeger “IATAPP-112”.

For example, while installing Impulse C and CoDeveloper the Visual Studio plug in is automatically installed and just has to be selected during setup. When Visual Studio is thereafter

Figure 3: Building HDL: complex and not very speedy, compared to compiling for a microprocessor.

FPGA hardware vs. compiling it to microprocessor (Figure 3). There are newer FPGAs that enable partial reconfiguration, so if your particular process of focus is constrained to an area that can be isolated, the iterative times can be significantly reduced. Quartus, Vivado and Impulse all support partial reconfiguration. However, the practical usability of this

launched, the top pull down-down menu can be used to select “File->New Project…” which creates a sub directory for the new project. If beginning from existing code, those source files are copied into the solution directory. Header and source files are added to the Visual Studio Project and then to the source files folder in the solution explorer directory. www.epd-ee.eu | March, 2013 | EP&Dee

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DESIGN

FPGA

To verify before hardware generation a “debug” software project is built, which makes it possible to test the application from desktop simulation. Next, select the hardware environment from the configuration manager to build the HDL for the target FPGA. This enables the synthesizable HDL to be exported to the appropriate place and route tool to generate RTL for the target FPGA. The whole process may take an hour or so.

As a new methodology this tends to be minimally disruptive. The pragmas and additions are pretty common sense. Glitches may arise from “plumbing” (a whole different topic), such as getting things lined up with PCIe drivers, DMA, DDR and all the devilish details. Our two cents is that the growing body of known good examples and reference designs makes this process less risky. On the tool side we’d like to see shorter place and route times, better back annotation and more useful profiling.

Overall as the FPGAs and FPGA based acceleration cards mature, and the body of available IP expands, this technique becomes more mainstream. n

About the authors:

This article was originally published in the 2013 Engineers’ Guide to FPGA and PLD. To view additional FPGA technical articles, news, opinions, product information, market trends and industry research visit www.eecatalog.com/fpga. Subscribe to the FPGA and PLD Quarterly Report at www.eecatalog.com/subscribe

Brian Durwood co-founded Impulse Accelerated Technologies in 2002 with David Pellerin, a co-worker from the ABEL® days at Data I/O. Impulse has grown to be the most widely used C to FGPA tool, with customers from NASA to Detroit to Wall Street.

Mr. Durwood was previously a VP at Tektronix, a VP at Virtual Vision and an Analyst at NBC. Mr. Durwood is a graduate of Brown and Wharton. Impulse now offers tools, IP and design/integration services.

Nick Granny is a scientist, engineer, and entrepreneur who has been supporting the EDA and high-performance computing communities for more than 25 years. Currently Nick is co-founder and CEO of MNB Technologies, a small company that develops artificial intelligence-based EDA tools and provides technical services to the Impulse C user community. Prior to MNB, Nick was the lead staff scientist in Mentor Graphics research into FPGA-accelerated computing and was also a key member of the development and launch team for the IKOS/Mentor VirtuaLogic emulation system. Earlier in his career, Nick was an embedded systems engineering consultant to regional electric power utilities and the top-tier critical care medical apparatus manufacturers. Nick is a medically retired US Naval Officer and further serves his community as an adjunct computer sciences instructor and course development consultant to Indiana’s state-wide community college system.

Microsemi Delivers U.S. Defense Logistics Agency Qualified Diodes for High Density Power Aerospace and Defense Applications High-reliability Thinkey Schottky Diodes Feature Low Thermal Resistance Microsemi Corporation, a leading provider of semiconductor solutions differentiated by power, security, reliability and performance, today unveiled a new family of U.S. Defense Logistics Agency (DLA)-qualified Schottky diodes for aerospace and defense applications requiring high density power and excellent heat dissipation (typically 0.2-0.85 degrees C per watt (C/W). The new diodes are offered in Microsemi's patented ThinkeyTM package, which features a rugged ceramic and metal construction with no wire bonds to improve reliability.

many innovations we have developed specifically to meet the stringent requirements of customers in these segments. We will continue to expand our Thinkey Schottky diode product portfolio to include additional

"Microsemi has decades of experience designing and delivering high-reliability solutions to the aerospace and defense communities," said Dr. Simon Wainwright, vice president and general manager of Microsemi's Hi-Rel group. "Our unique Thinkey package is one of the

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DLA-qualified devices."

The new diodes support highsurge capabilities and enable double-side cooling. Since soft solder is not used in construction of the devices, it prevents solder seal from mixing with mounting

solders and eliminates solder creep and re-crystallization during power cycling and high-temperature storage.

Product Specifications: • Product series 1N6910UTK2 thru 1N6912UTK2 and 1N6940UTK3 thru 1N6942UTK3, anode to strap (AS), cathode to strap (CS) per MIL-PRF-19500/723/726 • Voltage: 15V, 30V and 45V • Current: 25A (for 1N6910UTK2 thru 1N6912UTK2) and 150A (for 1N6940UTK3 thru 1N6492UTK3) • Available in JAN, TX and TXV DLA qualification levels • 9X lighter than TO254 package For more information, visit http://www.microsemi.com/en/de sign-support/product-brochures MICROSEMI www.microsemi.com

COVER STORY

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

Bridging the skills gap in embedded consumer design

by Martin Hill Microchip Technology Inc.

The effective use of COTS solutions and manufacturer development kits reduces the learning curve for implementing new technologies and enables embedded products to get to market faster, explains Martin Hill of Microchip Technology The latest generation of microcontrollers (MCUs) offers designers higher integration and a wider range of peripherals and functions which demand a wider range of design skills for successful implementation. The good news, however, is that MCU manufacturers, such as Microchip Technology, are investing in resources which enable engineers to quickly gain the necessary embedded design skills, or significantly reduce the learning curve for implementing new technologies.

Microcontrollers are blurring the boundaries which once separated the design disciplines of software engineering and hardware engineering: traditionally, software engineers designed application software for microprocessors; whilst hardware engineers created microprocessor-based systems by combining an MCU and external components. The introduction of the first high-integration MCUs changed this. They replaced the significant engineering effort required to develop a design from an MCU, external memory, peripheral, interface and discrete circuits, with the need for hardware engineers to write firmware for low-level driver-type applications.

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Microcontrollers and more This means that embedded engineers need to add proficiency in C and Assembly language as well as debugging to their existing skills of hardware circuit design, microcontroller interfacing, PCB layout, design for manufacture and a detailed knowledge of EMC/EMI and other regulatory standards and product approvals.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that embedded engineers are increasingly looking to gain a competitive edge and get products to market faster. That is why the availability of software libraries, sub-systems and advanced development tools has become an essential part of the MCU selection process.

This article discusses a number of scenarios and suggests application-based strategies for choosing the right microcontroller and using the

manufacturers’ tools and resources to simplify implementation and reduce time to market.

Blurring the boundaries of MCU performance Microcontrollers provide an extremely wide spectrum of computing power and peripheral integration and the choice is widened still further with high-performance cores, such as the PIC32MX1 and MX2 MCUs, being offered in reduced pin-count packages. Developments such as this mean that high-performance MCUs are moving into applications which would once have been the domain of the more established cores.

Higher levels of integration also present designers with complex trade-offs: performance enhancements such as faster or improved cores

Figure 1: Code examples: http://www.microchip.com/codeexamples

COVER STORY can deliver plenty of MIPs, but very high levels of analogue functionality can reduce real-time performance.

Of course, device fit, form and function is only part of the selection process. There are other factors and decisions which can have a significant impact, such as design strategy, time to market, vendor support and cost. The questions which must be asked are: “Could COTS solutions help to shorten time to market?”, and “Which design strategy will provide the fastest design cycle?”.

The foundations of embedded designs Typically, embedded systems need a user interface, display and some form of connectivity and these fundamentals have not changed over the years. Their complexity, however, has increased, whilst the cost has reduced. This means that a colour graphics LCD, touch interface and wireless connectivity are now considered essential if a product is to be competitive. There are, of course, still valid reasons for selecting more traditional segmented LCDs, mechanical type switches for the user interface and wired connectivity, however, fashion sells and customers can be fickle which makes these design decisions crucial to the financial success of the design for a consumer electronic product.

Bridging the skills gap In a fast-paced market, new and improved technologies can come along just as the designer has mastered the skills introduced by the previous technology breakthrough.

Fortunately, commercial off the shelf (COTS) solutions can support rapid product development by bridging the skills gap. COTS solutions can take many forms. These can include source code and configuration tools for implementing a communication protocol stack, through to a full software development framework including a RTOS, peripheral driver support libraries, system timing analysis, optimised for a specific application, such as automotive. It is becoming increasingly impractical to being a new design by writing all of the required code and starting hardware development from scratch. Some industries, such as automotive, actively discourage this ‘blank canvas’ design strategy by specifying the software development tools which must be used during development.

Silicon vendors and third-party development tools are also moving designers away from an ‘all-my-own-work’ approach by supplying, for example, a free GUI to ease debugging and tuning of a specific application such as motor control or a touch interface.

Another way to achieve higher integration and a faster time to market is to link new microcontroller peripherals to other peripherals to form sub-systems. Touch-screen applications can, for example, be implemented with a Charge Time Management Unit (CTMU), or

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS using the Capacitive Voltage Divider (CVD) technique, and both could be linked with an analogue MUX to form a sampling sub-system for multiple touch buttons or linear and rotary sliders. Another example would be to use a Parallel Master Port (PMP) to drive a Low Cost Controller-less (LCC) graphics panel or using an integrated graphics controller.

New general-purpose peripherals, such as the Configurable Logic Cell (CLC) can also be

Similarly, code examples address specific problems ranging from initialising peripherals to implementing algorithms. All of these resources can be found on the Microchip website.

Implementing a touch interface The design strategy, and the tools which will be most helpful in reducing time to market, will depend on the specific challenges presented by each design.

Figure 2: Upgrading a kitchen-top appliance by adding a touch interface.

used to reduce the external component count.

Designed to link with a range of other internal peripherals, CLCs are a useful addition to the embedded engineer’s tool-kit. Integrated high-speed comparators and op amps are also particularly useful real-time system components for power-supply and motor-control applications.

Resources to reduce time-to-market Application notes, as well as other COTS solutions and tools, support new applications and peripherals and help to speed time to market by reducing the need for embedded designers to re-invent the wheel. Microchip, for example, offers one of the widest ranges of support resources including development boards and applications libraries focussed on specific applications and product families.

Take for example, the challenge of implementing a new touch-screen interface to replace the mechanical push-buttons on an existing kitchen-top appliance design using a PIC16 to drive a motor and a segmented LCD. Clearly, the first goal would be to re-use as much of the existing design as possible: if the existing code is written in Assembly language, the aim should be to find a developed touch solution in a higher-level language. This would deliver a fast design process and overcome any in-house skills gap.

Typically, the strategy for this design would be as follows: • Select a microcontroller from the same general product family which provides the basis for compatibility, or partition the design using two microcontrollers; www.epd-ee.eu | March, 2013 | EP&Dee

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COVER STORY • Select a microcontroller with the peripherals required to provide the new functionality and memory, as well as analogue support to reduce component count; • Look for a COTS solution which uses C code for the touch interface; • Re-use and mix the existing Assembler code and C code for the new functionality, but partition the design into separate files. Alternatively, partition the design using separate microcontrollers with communications support for interfacing between them; • After porting the code, run the application without the additional functionality and test the behaviour; • Design and debug the touch interface using support tools; • Environmentally test the touch interface and then integrate with the complete application and re-test.

A potential real-world solution to this design would be to: • Contact Microchip for advice on specific application requirements; • Visit the Touch Design Centre at http://www.microchip.com/mtouch • Evaluate different touch-screen options using a touch-screen development board; • Use the free Microchip Advanced Parts Selector (MAPS) to identify suitable parts for the design migration; • Follow the design guidelines for designing a touch interface using Microchip application note AN1102 and other online resources. Request additional support from Microchip if required; • Use the free Microchip CVD Framework COTS software package which is part of the Microchip Applications Libraries (MAL) to design and debug the touch interface. At this stage, also select a suitable debugging tool; • Use the XC8 Microchip C Compiler and MPLABX IDE to construct and debug the combined application firmware; • Environmentally test the design. Microchip maybe able to assist with some qualitative EMC testing and further design guidance if required.

Interfacing to smart phones or tablets Designing a new accessory for a smartphone or tablet computer presents different challenges, such as the need to connect to Android® or Apple® phones or tablets, in addition to charging, control and other functions. Given the fastpaced nature of this market, a rapid design cycle is imperative.

The overall design strategy would be to: • Research support for the Apple and Android platforms; • Determine the overall application memory and resource requirements; • Look for a COTS solution for the phone/ tablet interface;

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EMBEDDED SYSTEMS • Consider contracting-out the interface design if the skills are not available in-house; • Select a microcontroller which supports the appropriate COTS software framework; • Develop the accessory and the interface.

Again, using online resources and development tools can help to take time out of this design cycle: • Visit the pages: www.microchip.com/apple and www.microchip.com/android • Contact Microchip for advice on specific application requirements; • Obtain any applicable license(s) directly from Apple®. A license is not required for Android®; • Choose a development board with relevant demos;

nication protocol stacks and support libraries/ tools; • Adopt a modular approach to the hardware design; • Provide a clear roadmap for the design to become the basis for additional products.

To take reduce the time to market for a smart meter, the approach could be to: • Contact Microchip for advice on specific application requirements; • Visit http://www.microchip.com/rtos for guidance on RTOS support and selection; • Evaluate the microcontroller and multi-media options with a PIC32, PIC24 or dsPIC33E Starter Kit with a multi-media expansion development board;

Figure 3: Accessories design has different challenges.

• Decide whether to download the free, standard or professional version of the XC16 or XC32 C Compiler; • For Android, download the free Android Framework COTS software package which is part of the Microchip Applications Libraries (MAL). Use the appropriate COTS software package, XC C Compiler and MPLAB X IDE to develop and debug the accessory interface; • Request additional support from Microchip if required.

The brief for a new design for a smart meter would probably include a QVGA colour graphics display, an over-laid resistive touch display panel, radio link to a remote sensor and WiFi connection to the internet.

Minimising software development time would be critical as the design would also need a RTOS to perform task scheduling and resource management.

The typical design strategy would be to: • Use high-level language; • Make extensive use of COTS RTOS, commu-

• Follow the strategy outlined in the application note AN1264 ‘Integrating Microchip Libraries with a Real-Time Operating System’; • Use the multiple stacks available in the Microchip Applications Library or request additional support from Microchip; • Develop and debug the combined application firmware using the XC16 or XC32 Microchip C Compiler and MPLAB X IDE. Summary Embedded systems are becoming more complex but, for many designs, COTS solutions from Microchip enable a fast time to market, and can even minimise the need for designers to undertake the steep learning curve introduced with each new technology. These design resources, such as online design centres, code examples, application notes, development boards and more, have become an essential part of the tool-kit for innovative embedded design and a critical factor in microcontroller selection. n www.microchip.com

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MCUs

Microcontrollers for human/machine interfaces

Please touch!

Today, touch functionality is absolutely indispensable for a modern humanmachine-interface. All leading micro-controller manufacturers offer sophisticated solutions here. This means that developers are spoilt for choice.

ST Microelectronics has developed two integrated micro-controller solutions, especially for human-machine-interface solutions. The STM8T controller family thus supports both capacitive approximation and touch key technology. The latest addition to the family is the STM8T143, which is based on capacitive technology with charge transfer. It uses a channel to measure the capacitance of the human body in the vicinity of an electrode located behind a dielectric material such as glass or acrylic. The 8-pin micro-controller has a really low power consumption of around 10ÎźA.

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Integrated sampling resistors and a voltage regulator optimize the sensitivity of the device and increase the noise immunity of the system in loud environments. Thanks to its electrode parasitic capacitance compensation (EPCC), the STM8T143 has a detection range of up to 25 cm. One interesting feature for use in mobile phones is on-ear proximity detection, which detects when the user is holding the phone to his or her ear whilst making a call. At this point, all touch-screen functions are deactivated to prevent them from being accidentally triggered during the call.

The STM8T143 also reduces radio frequency strength if the device is in the vicinity of the user. As a result, it meets FCC SAR (specific absorption rate) requirements and can also be used in tablets. The ST micro-controller is also suitable for use for on/off switches, proximity control for the backlighting of user interfaces, alarm and control functions, and energy-saving peripheral modules for portable devices.

For the development of high-end user interfaces, ST offers a touch sensing software library with a completely free source code solution for capacitive touch key controllers.

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Different touch principles • Capacitive: When you touch the surface with one of your fingers, the capacitance of the capacitor changes. The micro-controller uses this change to determine the place which was touched. Capacitive touch screens are now extremely popular, since they are easy and inexpensive to realize and enable an easy-to-clean, enclosed user interface. Capacitive touch sensors allow controls such as knobs, slides, and wheels to be simulated. You operate them with your fingers or with a special stylus. One disadvantage is the relatively large effect of temperature, air humidity, and water on the efficiency of the detection function.

Appropriate hardware and tailored software can reduce the consequences of these influences. When designing capacitive touch sensors, it is particularly important to pay attention to the EMC conformity of the circuit.

It allows keys, wheels, and controllers to be linked with traditional peripheral applications of micro-controllers such as communication, LED, and LCD indicators and beepers. The library is part of the application firmware; evaluation boards are also available.

In the first quarter of 2013, ST Microelectronics will launch a new STM32 Cortex M4 core micro-controller with floating point unit (FPU) calculation. This will be specially designed for HMI applications. The IC has an integrated TFT LCD controller, USB OTG support, Ethernet, and generously sized SRAM and flash memories. The implemented slide and touch functionality is based on the capacitive method and is executed via GPIOs with the help of the ST software library.

The new micro-controller builds upon the second generation of the familiar STM32F4 series.

In order to reduce the development time for prototypes for various applications, Infineon has developed a modular, extendable application kit - the Hexagon Kit System - for its XMC4000 micro-controller family. Various satellite boards oriented towards different applications can be docked onto the central board with the XMC4500 micro-controller.

The HMI satellite (HMI_OLED-V1) is available for HMI applications. It comprises an OLED display as well as audio, touch, and SD/MMC functions. In conjunction with the COM (communication) satellite, it can be enhanced by Ethernet, CAN, and RS485 functions.

The manufacturer recently launched the FM3touch library for applications based on the FM3 ARM® CortexTM M3 MCU family

by Fujitsu. It enables the realization of a modern, capacitive touch screen with extensive functions and an aesthetic design.

For example, the FM3touch library allows the design of buttons, slides, and touch pads with a minimum of additional hardware and software. Thanks to flexible sensor grouping, there are numerous layout options here. In addition to a simple on/off status indication, the signal strength of each touch sensor can also be read. It is also possible for a notification function to be triggered when a button is pushed or a slide is moved.

The 12-bit analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) in all FM3 micro-controllers ensures fast data capture, high sensitivity, and a low system load. One or two more ADC converters ensure the required level of flexibility and resource availability. The configurable drift calibration guarantees stable operations.

Touch-sensitive metal Microchip offers a whole range of touch solutions with the name mTouch. A technology which even enables the realization of metal surfaces with touch functions is particularly noteworthy: The Metal Over Cap touch system. This involves placing a conductive surface which acts as a second capacitor plate over the capacitive sensor.

If this surface is touched, the distance between the surface and the sensor decreases. The capacitance changes and the micro-controller computes the touch.

The conductive surface can be a thin piece of metal or a piece of plastic with a metal coating. This allows the power-saving properties of the capacitive touch technology to be exploited for touch applications with metal or plastic surfaces.

The user interface can be flexibly designed to carry Braille writing, for example. It works if the operator is wearing gloves and even under water. n www.rutronik.com

• Resistive: The pressure resulting from the surface being touched can be determined by means of the measurement of two resistances of the touch point.

The measurement takes place using an analogue-todigital converter and is thus supported by a large number of micro-controllers. The resistive principle also reacts regardless of what or who triggered the actuation. Resistive touch screens enable a higher resolution at low cost in comparison with capacitive variants. They are therefore particularly widespread in cost-sensitive applications. Unlike other touch technologies, this technology scores particularly well with regard to its high EMC conformity. Resistive touch sensors frequently take the form of screen overlays, but buttons, slides, and wheels are also possible. A disadvantage of this technology is that the film wears each time it is touched; however, this disadvantage has become much less significant during recent years.

• Inductive: In the case of inductive sensors, a minimal mechanical movement of inductive components acts upon a resonant circuit. The sensitivity can be extremely accurate - in the single- or double-digit micrometre range. The effects of environmental influences on inductive touch sensors are significantly less than for capacitive touch sensors. They react to being touched by a finger, gloved finger, or stylus. They are primarily used in industrial applications because of their robustness. Here, the fact that the reversible mechanical deformation of the touch surface allows tactile feedback (a click) is also useful, since it makes it practically impossible to trigger something without being aware of it. On the negative side, the inductive principle has a higher power consumption and does not enable slides or wheels.

• The multi-touch procedure enables the detection and evaluation of multiple touch points at the same time, thus opening up further scope for controls.

This procedure is realized with different overlays: Resistive types are used as single-touch variants and as multi-touch variants with multi-finger control. Optical overlays are available for total reflection. www.epd-ee.eu | March, 2013 | EP&Dee

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It's easy to over-specify your AC/DC supply

but you shouldn't

by Don Knowles VP Engineering N2Power

You can buy more supply than you need, yet less is actually often better, says Don Knowles, VP Engineering at N2Power.

Just as it is important to properly size and specify your AC/DC supply, it's also important for designers not to over-specify this vital component. It may seem counterintuitive, but "too much" of a good thing can have negative consequences in efficiency, cooling, overall product size, and even available vendors, besides the obvious downside of higher cost.

The first and largest factor to consider is matching the supply output capability to the load it must support. For example, if the maximum load (DC voltage Ă— current) is 500W, then a 1000W supply provides much more designmargin insurance than you actually need.

extra heat, and this is where the engineer's nightmare of both obvious and unintended consequences starts. The obvious effect is that you are wasting more AC-mains power, so your system costs more to operate, and that cost is straightforward to quantify. The larger supply is also more expensive to buy, and it’s easy to put a cost number on that, as well.

more complex design and budget issues related to convection cooling (which may no longer be possible), fans, airflow layout, and heat sinks.

These alternatives add direct cost, materials, unreliability, and constraints on packaging and layout to the design, and even limit your degrees of freedom as you need to squeeze

What are the consequences of a supply that has so much headroom? The good news is that, obviously, you'll have plenty of amps at the nominal voltage-rail values you need.

Simple enough, end of story - but not quite.

There are significant drawbacks to having all this extra, unused power available.

The biggest one has to do with inefficiency and its many consequences. Every supply has an efficiency vs. load graph, such as the one in Figure 1. For a well-designed switching supply, this efficiency is usually at its highest in the range of 80-95% of maximum rated load. [This general guideline does not apply to linear regulators and supplies, but those are unusual above fairly low power levels of a few watts.]

When operating at low loads, which may be most of the time in an application like a data center, the power supply can generate a lot of

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Figure 1: The efficiency of a supply varies with load, and most peak in the zone of 80-95% of their maximum rated capacity; this chart shows the N2Power XL280-48 curve.

But beyond those easily assessable factors are ones that are much harder to grasp.

As a consequence of the additional heat, which you must get rid of, you are now dealing with

more into the product box, or make the box bigger. In addition, the larger-capacity supply has a larger footprint, with clear negative consequences.

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Further, as you select larger supply sizes, you'll likely find fewer vendors to choose among, and fewer direct alternatives or second sources to your primary or preferred source.

This may not bother you, but your purchasing department or contract assembly source may be uncomfortable and even push back.

Figure 2a For these reasons, most AC/DC supply vendors offer a broad family with many similar units, except for capacity, so you can match the supply size to the load with little excess capacity. For example, members of the XL series of AC/DC supplies from N2Power are available with closely spaced 125, 160, 275, and 375W ratings.

Note that adjacent-rated units from some vendors often differ only in their power rating, but have the same physical size and connector, so you can “interchange” painlessly if it turns out your actual power needs are different than you anticipated, as the N2Power XL125 and XL160 photos show (Figures 2a and 2b); both have the identical 3" × 5" inch (7.5cm × 12.5cm) footprint.

Of course, it's easy to say “just design to use less overall power, and then size the supply to the maximum load.” The problem is that for many designs, the ratio between the maximum (peak) load and the typical load is large; 2:1 or even 3:1 ratios are common. So you must size your supply for the peak load, but most of the time it is running at far less, and is in the inefficient zone.

There are ways to circumvent this problem, such as by using an auxiliary booster for peak loads, a supercapacitor, or other techniques.

However, each of these brings new design problems of switching them to the load, and the overall response to load transients.

Therefore, to avoid over-specifying, try to get the maximum load of the system down to as close as possible to the typical load value.

Figure 2b

Beyond efficiency, what else?

Other factors to consider are operating temperature range, operation voltage range, line/load regulation, various types of protection, redundancy, and I/O. Given your ambient operating environment and the cooling scheme you'll be using, what operating temperature do you need on the supply? Certainly, a supply which is specified to operate at higher temperatures costs more but perhaps that allows you to “get away” with reduced cooling requirements, so that's a tradeoff to consider. Don’t forget low-temperature operation, as well, if your application is one of those where your supply has to survive or even just start up below freezing. page 23

Figure 2: a) The XL125 125W AC/DC supply and b) the XL160 160W supply from N2Power differ primarily in their power rating; their footprint, physical size, connector, and many other specifications are otherwise identical. www.epd-ee.eu | March, 2013 | EP&Dee

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Agilent E363xA Series Programmable DC Power Supplies

by Marcin Zając

One of the product groups offered by TME consists of so-called programmable DC power supplies. Besides fulfilling an obvious function for a power supply, that is delivering defined, pre-set and expected voltage and current, these devices also allow, by means of special commands and buttons, programming and readout of many parameters through front panel or dedicated interface.

Good representative of this group is a family of E364xA power supplies by AGILENT TECHNOLOGIES. Excellent technical parameters and good functional features characterise the devices. What is most important is that they have a feature, which is crucial for many users, i.e. communication with PCs through dedicated interfaces RS232 and GPIB. On the front panel of power supplies, besides readable display, necessary regulation components are located, including buttons to set the voltage values and protection thresholds, or call up to 5 earlier pre-set and memorised values of power supply parameters from non-volatile memory. Maximum resolution for setting up voltage and current is 10mv/1mA respectively.

Additionally, comfortable “analogous” knob allows rough and quick setup of voltages and currents.

When it comes to electric parameters, the power supplies offer output power from 30W

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to 100W at voltages up to 60V and currents up to 8A. Excellent electric parameters were reached thanks to the application of specific regulation solutions. (see Figure 1) Above all, it is not only linear transistor that has been applied for regulating voltage and current, but also so called phase-controlled pre-regulator. Thus a wide range of output voltage reg-

ulation has been achieved at significantly reduced power dissipation at series regulation element (transistor).

On the other hand connection of series linear regulation, characterised by high precision and speed with monitoring actual output parameters (voltage feedback control) ensures very high stability of output voltage regardless of

Figure 1

DESIGN changes in power supply load. Such solution also has a very favourable impact on time characteristics of the power supply response.

Short-term pulse changes of load that can affect voltage stability are compensated very quickly. Declared response of the circuit is below 50us.

Also, voltage protections have been applied that prevent damage to connected devices and protect against excessive voltage rise.

Please note that protection is carried out through short-circuiting the power supply output. Should there be another power source in supplied device, it may lead to significant rise of current that flows through the power supply.

Control by means of GPIB or RS-232 connector substantially expands power supply functionality transforming it into multifunctional workshop device.

Communication through the interface runs in two directions: readout of voltage and current and setting of these parameters is possible.

This can be done by means of easy to use SCPI standard (Standard Commands for Programmable Instruments), allowing quick and effective control.

Possible applications of the interface: • quick, earlier predefined, setting of values of power supply parameters depending on requirements of connected devices; • measuring current and voltage characteristics (without additional measuring devices) of semi-conductor components (by means of additional software); • studying reactions of circuits to changes in power supply with pre-programmed scenario of voltage changes when designing and starting up circuit prototypes.

These are only a few examples of possible applications. In the case of using additional VXI controllers there is an option of integration of the power supplies with other, more complex, software like LabVIEW or LabWindows by National Instruments.

It opens up the possibility to create already very complex systems dealing with control, measurements or testing newly designed equipment.

Power supplies of E364xA family are solid, state-of-the-art power supplies with excellent electric parameters, both static and dynamic, offering stable output voltages at low values of ripple and noise. Connected devices are protected against excessive voltage rise, while GPIB and RS232 interfaces allow reading and setting up power supply parameters through PC. Described components are offered by TME at attractive prices.

We kindly invite you to have a look at our offer available on the website http://www.tme.eu where you can make purchases. n www.tme.eu

POWER page 21

It's easy to over-specify your AC/DC supply but you shouldn't

What is the nominal value of your AC line (mains)? Do you need a supply for only 115VAC, only 230VAC, or a wide-range supply that handles both ranges?

As usual, there's a tradeoff: in general, a supply for both AC values is slightly more expensive, but the extra cost may be worthwhile because you'll be able to buy more of the single unit, and your stocking, inventory, and support costs will be lower.

More complicated is the tolerance you need around the nominal AC line. Does your supply have to work with a fairly modest ±5% swing, a mid-range ±10% span, or a wider variation of ±20% around nominal? Supplies which can work with more-poorly behaved AC mains, yet still maintain regulation within specification, are more costly, and you'll have fewer suitable vendors. If you need to tolerate a wide mains tolerance, it may be less costly to get a separate pre-regulator to keep the AC line in a tighter range and then use less-costly supplies.

What level of output absolute accuracy, stability, and regulation does your system require? Most supplies have a factory adjustment for nominal output value, so the supply should be fairly close to specified output. But keep in mind that while stability and regulation vary from vendor to vendor, and tighter specs cost more, you may not need that performance.

The reason is that many AC-to-final DCrail supply paths now consist of multiple stages, where the first-stage AC/DC converter feeds an intermediate bus converter (IBC) or point of load (POL) converter, not the final rail itself. These DC/DC converters provide the actual voltages the system uses, and they may be able to tolerate modest variations coming from the AC/DC supply to their DC inputs.

Nearly all credible vendors offer features such as overvoltage protection, short-circuit protection, and output crowbar.

Some offer extra protection against extreme line transients, including lightning-induced spikes and surges. If you don’t expect these upset events, or prefer to protect the supply with external, discrete components, you can use a supply that meets basic industry-wide transient specifications, rather than one with greater protection.

Some supplies offer N+1 capability, where you can set up an array of supplies with automatic switchover in case one fails. If you don’t need this level of reliability, or prefer to use a single AC/DC supply, this feature is unneeded.

There's also a trend, especially in larger systems, to have the supply report many of its operating conditions (especially various internal temperatures) back to a system monitor, and even change operating parameters under direction of a system controller. For applications that don’t require this level of supply/system interaction, don't spend for the I/O port (I2C, PMBus, SPI) and related circuitry within the supply.

Whether you over-specify your supply due to lack of understanding of your system needs, supply parameters, or just to sleep better at night, there's really no need to do so. As with most engineering decisions, you'll be able to specify what you need and not more, once you understand the priorities of your project and its market, as well as the tradeoffs your choices bring to the design. n www.n2power.com

About the author:

Don Knowles joined N2Power as VP Engineering 12 years ago after more than two decades’ experience in power electronics design and manufacturing spanning industrial, ICT and medical electronics sectors.

Prior to joining N2Power, he ran his own power electronics business for 20 years, designing power supplies and high-power AC and DC loads, and working with contract manufacturers. Don holds a degree in Electronics from American River College, Sacramento, California, USA. www.epd-ee.eu | March, 2013 | EP&Dee

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Driver Assistance Systems

with the Power of FPGAs

by Paul Zoratti Xilinx

FPGAs can be leveraged to quickly bring new driver assistance innovations to market.

In recent years, the automotive industry has made remarkable advances in driver assistance (DA) systems that truly enrich the driving experience and provide drivers with new forms of information about the roadway around them. This article looks at how FPGAs can be leveraged to quickly bring new driver assistance innovations to market. [Editor’s note: driver assistance systems are sometimes referred to as ADAS: Advanced Driver Alert Systems.]

Driver Assistance Introduction Since the early 1990s, developers of advanced DA systems have envisioned a safer, more convenient driving experience. Over the past two decades, DA features such as ultrasonic park assist, adaptive cruise control and lane-departure warning systems in high-end vehicles have been deployed. Recently, automotive manufacturers have added rear-view cameras, blind-spot detection and surround-vision systems as options. Except for ultrasonic park assist, deployment volumes for DA systems have been limited. However, the research firm Strategy Analytics forecasts that DA system deployment will rise dramatically over the next decade, including growth from $170 billion in 2011 to $266 billion by 2016 – a compound average annual growth rate of 9.3%.

In addition to government legislation and strong consumer interest in safety features, innovations in remote sensors and associated processing algorithms that extract and interpret critical information are fueling an increase

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in DA system deployment. Over time, these DA systems will become more sophisticated and move from high-end to mainstream vehicles, with FPGA-based processing playing a major role.

algorithms using PC-based tools and are transitioning them to embedded platforms.

While ultrasonic sensing technology has led the market, IMS Research (Figure 1) shows camera sensors dominating in the coming years.

Driver Assistance Sensing Technology Trends Sensor research and development activities have leveraged adjacent markets, such as cell phone cameras, to produce devices that not only perform in the automotive environment, but also meet strict cost targets. Similarly, developers have refined complex processing

A unique attribute of camera sensors is the value of both the raw and processed outputs.

Raw video from a camera can be directly displayed for a driver to identify and assess hazardous conditions, something not possible with other types of remote sensors (for example, radar). Alternatively (or even simultaneously), the video output can be processed using

Figure 1: Driver Assistance Sensors Market.

DESIGN image analytics to extract key information, such as the location and motion of pedestrians.

Developers can further expand this “dual-use” concept of camera sensor data by bundling

AUTOMOTIVE addition, object-detection and motion-estimation algorithms generate an audible warning if an object is entering the projected vehicle path from the side.

Figure 3 illustrates how the camera signal is split between the video- and image-processing functions. The raw processing power needed to perform these functions can quickly exceed what is available in a serial digital signal processor (DSP).

Parallel processing along with hardware acceleration is a viable solution.

FPGAs offer highly flexible architectures to address various processing strategies. Within the FPGA logic, it is a simple matter to split the camera signal to feed independent video- and image-processing intellectual property (IP) blocks. Unlike serial processor implementations, which must time-multiplex resources across functions, the FPGA can execute and clock processing blocks independently.

Additionally, if it becomes necessary to make a change in the processing architecture, the ability of the FPGA to reprogram hardware blocks surpasses solutions based on specialized application-specific standard products (ASSPs) and application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), giving FPGA implementations a significant advantage when anticipating the future evolution of advanced algorithms.

Another benefit of FPGA implementation is device scalability. As OEMs look to bundle more features, processing needs will rise. For example, the rear-view camera might need to host a monocular ranging algorithm to provide drivers with information on object distance.

Figure 2: Bundling Multiple Automotive Features. multiple consumer features based on a single set of cameras, as illustrated in Figure 2.

From such applications, it is possible to draw a number of conclusions regarding the requirements of suitable processing platforms for camera-based DA systems: •They must support both video processing and image processing. In this case, video processing refers to proper handling of raw camera data for display to the driver, and image processing refers to the application of analytics to extract information (for example, motion) from a video stream.

•They must provide parallel data paths for algorithms associated with features that will run concurrently.

•Given that many new features require megapixel image resolution, connectivity and memory bandwidth are just as critical as raw processing power.

Meeting DA Processing Platform Requirements FPGAs are well suited to meet DA processing platform requirements. For example, in a widefield-of-view, single-camera system that incorporates a rear cross-path warning feature, the system’s intent is to provide a distortion-corrected image of the area behind the vehicle. In

Figure 3: Video and Image Processing Functions. www.epd-ee.eu | March, 2013 | EP&Dee

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DESIGN The added functionality requires yet another parallel-processing path. Implementing this in a specialized ASIC or ASSP could be problematic, if not impossible, unless the designers made provisions for such expansion ahead of time.

Attempting to add this functionality to a serial DSP could require a complete re-architecture of the software design, even after moving to a more powerful device in the family (if it is plausible at all). By contrast, an FPGA-based implementation allows the new functional block to be added, utilizing previously unused FPGA logic and leaving existing blocks virtually intact. Even if the new function requires more resources than are available in the original device, part/package combinations frequently support moving to a denser device (that is, one with more processing resources) without the need to redesign the circuit board or existing IP blocks.

Finally, the reprogrammable nature of FPGAs offers “silicon reuse” for mutually exclusive DA functions. In the rear-looking camera example, the features described are useful while a vehicle is backing up, but an FPGA-based system could leverage the same sensor and processing electronics while the vehicle is moving forward, with a feature such as blind-spot detection. In this application, the system analyzes the camera image to determine the location and relative motion of detected objects. Since this feature and its associated processing functions are not required at the same time as the backup feature, the system can reconfigure the FPGA logic within several hundred milliseconds based on the vehicle state. This allows the complete reuse of the FPGA to provide totally different functionality at very little cost.

Meeting DA External Memory Bandwidth Requirements In addition to raw processing performance, camera-based DA applications require significant external memory access bandwidth. The most stringent requirements come from multicamera systems with centralized processing, for example, a four-camera surround-view system. Assuming 4 megapixel imagers (1,280 × 960), 24-bit color processing, and performance of 30 frames per second (FPS), just storing the imagers in external buffers requires 3.6 Gb/s of memory access. If the images need to be simultaneously read and written, the requirement doubles to 7.2 Gb/s. With an 80 percent read/write burst efficiency, the requirement increases to 8.5 Gb/s. This estimate does not include other interim image storage or code access needs. With these requirements, it is clear that camera-based DA applications are memory bandwidth-intensive.

These systems also commonly require memory controllers; however, adding one in a costeffective manner requires efficient system-level

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AUTOMOTIVE design. Again, developers can leverage the flexibility of the FPGA to meet this need. To summarize, FPGA memory controllers provide customized external memory interface design options to meet DA bandwidth needs and optimize all aspects of the cost equation (memory device type, number of PCB layers, etc.).

DA Image Processing Need for On-Chip Memory Resources In addition to external memory needs, camera-based DA processing can benefit from onchip memory that serves as line buffers for processing streaming video or analyzing blocks of image data. Bayer transform, lens distortion correction and optical-flow motionanalysis are examples of functions that require video line buffering. For a brief quantitative analysis, a Bayer transform function using 12bit-pixel Bayer pattern intensity information to produce 24-bit color data is examined.

Implemented as a raw streaming process, a bicubic interpolation process requires buffering four lines of image data. Packing the 12-bitintensity data into 16-bit locations requires approximately 20.5 kb of storage per line, or 82 kb for four lines of data.

As part of their suite of on-chip resources, today’s FPGAs offer localized memory called Block RAM. The BRAM supports line buffer storage of image data in close proximity to fabric-based image processing cores.

As FPGAs now target vision applications, the relative amount of BRAM resources has increased with each product family.

A Single All-Programmable Platform In addition to external memory bandwidth requirements and image processing needs, having a single, all-programmable system on a chip (SoC)-based platform for DA applications offers automotive manufacturers the unique ability to address both the technical challenges and business goals in their DA designs. This type of all-programmable platform offers designers an integrated, flexible, power optimized solution with high computational performance that automotive manufacturers and

their electronics suppliers can combine with their own hardware and software, available IP and design frameworks to reduce development time, bill of material (BOM) costs and risk for next-generation DA solutions.

Currently, this type of platform has only been offered as a multi-chip solution, which can require additional processing that keeps BOM costs high, and reduces flexibility options to scale between vehicle platforms. Yet automotive designers can now take advantage of the industry’s first SoC family that incorporates an ARM dual-core Cortex-A9 MPCore processing system with tightly coupled programmable logic on a single die. This combination dramatically increases performance, which is critical for processing-intensive real-time DA applications, and enables greater system integration, allowing the bundling of multiple DA application, while simultaneously reducing BOM costs by minimizing device cost and the cost of additional hardware platforms.

Automakers are eager to offer car buyers increasingly advanced DA applications, which have already proven to be quite popular in manufacturers’ high-end vehicles. By presenting new DA applications and being able to offer multiple DA applications per vehicle using an all programmable, customized solution, automakers are now given the opportunity to differentiate their vehicles from those of their competitors in a hotly contested market.

Conclusion System designers working on DA processing platforms must consider architectural flexibility, platform scalability, external memory bandwidth, on-chip memory resources, high-speed serial interfaces, and parallel/serial process partitioning. The challenge is to strike an appropriate balance between meeting these needs and maintaining a competitive product cost structure. In this quest, FPGA technology is a viable alternative to standard ASSP and ASIC approaches. n www.xilinx.com

About the author:

Paul Zoratti is a member of the Xilinx Automotive Team. As a senior system architect and manager of driver assistance platforms, his primary responsibility is the global application of Xilinx technology to automotive driver assistance systems. Zoratti holds master’s degrees in both electrical engineering and business administration, both from the University of Michigan.

He also has a specialized graduate certification in intelligent transportation systems, also from the University of Michigan. Zoratti has been awarded 16 United States patents associated with vehicle safety technology.

This article was originally published in the 2013 Engineers’ Guide to FPGA and PLD. To view additional FPGA technical articles, news, opinions, product information, market trends and industry research visit www.eecatalog.com/fpga.

Subscribe to the FPGA and PLD Quarterly Report at www.eecatalog.com/subscribe

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AUTOMOTIVE

Measuring energy flows in cross-border rail traction operations

by Hartmut Gräffert

New standards impose accuracy requirements for energy metering that represent a massive step-change relative to prior industry practice.

As high-speed rail networks expand and journey times shrink, international rail travel is once again in vogue.

For the traveler, at least within the European Union, national borders have all but ceased to exist, but the same is not entirely true for the trains themselves. However, the traction unit pulling the train still makes a transition as it crosses from one country to another. The power drawn from the overhead line will still be supplied, in most cases, by a national rail

Figure 1: Concept of prEN 50463.

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service, and will be discontinuous at the border: it may – or may not – be of similar voltage and frequency each side of the transition.

This presents the designers of rail traction systems with a number of problems. Firstly, and most obvious, the traction set must be “multistandard” – it must be able to operate from any power supply it will encounter across the network, which with today’s schedules can mean multiple countries in a single journey.

On-board power measurement A somewhat less obvious requirement is the need for accurate monitoring of the power drawn by the traction motors, at all times. Each authority supplying power on the network needs to be paid for the energy that an international train uses while it is within its national boundaries. Monitoring power supplied to each train from the supply side is impractical, so the only feasible way of producing accurate billing information is to measure and log power

DESIGN at frequent intervals throughout the journey.

Each entry in that record must also carry information on where the train was at each measurement point; the ubiquitous GPS can readily provide this part of the data. A further complication is that modern traction systems employ regenerative braking, running their motors as generators and returning power to the network as they slow. For full fiscal accuracy, therefore, the energy measurement system has to be bidirectional.

To harmonise operation of international services, a European standard has been drawn up that specifies exactly how the energy measurement function (EMF) is to be carried out (Figure 1); still at the provisional stage, and therefore carrying the prefix “pr”, the document is prEN50463. It specifies a record that includes parameters such as data and time, train identification, network frequency – which can be 16.7Hz, 50Hz, 60Hz or DC - locations, and, central to the core function, the load profile.

The record must include absolute energy values for both “real” and reactive power, embodying information on power factor the train presents to the line at each instant.

New levels of measurement accuracy Where EN50463 sets new challenges is in the accuracy it demands, specified in terms of “class R” (rail) figures. The overall requirement is for measurement of energy to an accuracy of ±1.5% for AC and ±2% for DC. There are three

AUTOMOTIVE main elements in the measurement and recording of energy; transducers to measure instantaneous current and voltage, and a meter that takes those readings, computes and stores the energy values. For AC readings, it must take account of the phase angle difference between voltage and current waveforms to derive both real and reactive power figures.

Each of those elements contributes some uncertainty to the process, and those errors add in a root-mean-square manner (that is, the total error is the square root of the sum of the squares of the individual error figures).

Therefore, transducers and the energy meter must individually perform to considerably tighter tolerances than the overall error figures suggest. To enable traction system designers to meet the requirements of EN50463, LEM has assembled a matched offering of transducers with enhanced accuracy, together with the new EM4T II energy meter.

High-accuracy current, voltage transducers Measuring current to the levels of accuracy specified in the new standard is challenging; it is even more difficult in the rail traction environment, where transducers may be exposed to large variations in ambient temperature, to large external magnetic fields, and high levels of electrical noise. The current to be measured also contains very high peak values and large transients: all of which constrains the choice of

an appropriate measurement technology.

Direct measurement by a resistive shunt is possible, and LEM can meet the required specifications with transducers from its DI series when this method is specified. However, an inline resistance of sufficiently low value to keep losses acceptable at the upper end of the current range is challenged to yield the required accuracy at low current values, and self-heating effects make achieving linearity across the current range very difficult. Also, that approach does not provide galvanic isolation.

Therefore, in many cases an indirect current measurement is preferred. Several technologies exist to make indirect measurements based on the magnetic field generated by the current in the conductor feeding the tractions set. In their physical form, they appear superficially similar, a toroidal sensor with the primary conductor passing through the centre of the ring. Measurement of the magnetic flux induced in the toroid by the primary current relates directly to the value of that current.

One form of this sensor uses the Hall effect to translate magnetic flux to a measurement value.

However, Hall Effect sensors have difficulty in maintaining linearity over a large dynamic range, such as that specified in EN50463: and may also exhibit limited accuracy at high and low extremes of their measurement range, due to saturation and residual magnetisation effects in the magnetic material.

Figure 2: Block diagram of EM4T II. www.epd-ee.eu | March, 2013 | EP&Dee

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DESIGN

AUTOMOTIVE

LEM has chosen to address the problem with a Fluxgate sensor, that will carry certification to Class 0.5R (±0.5% accuracy); the company has many years’ experience in sensors using Fluxgate technology. The Fluxgate sensor uses a nulling principle; it generates a magnetic flux in the toroidal core to exactly balance that induced by the primary current, and from the drive level needed to do so, infers the value of the current. In operation, the sensor drives the magnetic core with a high-frequency AC signal that constantly reverses the magnetisation of the core, driving it around the characteristic known as its B-H curve. The additional magnetic field that arises due to the primary current modulates this behaviour; using this approach the sensor can detect the null condition with extreme sensitivity. At all values of measured current the magnetic material is driven to saturation in both directions, removing any direct dependency between measurement linearity and the magnetic core’s characteristics. The result is a sensor that can offer very high accuracy and linearity over a wide dynamic range.

Nominally rated at 4000A, the ITC 4000 will measure ±6000A, consuming less than 80mA (at zero primary current) to under ±340mA (at 4000A primary current) from a supply voltage of ±24V to its measurement (secondary) circuit.

As noted previously, Fluxgate technology is

capable of extremely high levels of both accuracy and linearity; the ITC 4000’s linearity error is under 0.05%. The device’s offset current is less than ±10μA and it also exhibits extremely very low temperature drift. The ITC 4000 operates over –40 to +85°C, and meets or exceeds all relevant standards for safety and operating environment.

Voltage measurement is provided by a transducer from LEM’s DV series, that will be available with 1% or 0.75% full-range accuracy (Class 1R or Class 0.75R certified accuracy, as expressed in the rail traction standards). The series meets or exceeds all of the performance and safety demands of rail traction systems, both those in use today and planned for the future. It offers insulated voltage measurements from 1200 to 4200V, in a package significantly smaller than any other product in the market. (Figure 2) Metering to fiscal standards Completing the offering is a new, enhanced, version of LEM’s EM4T energy meter, EM4T II, also rated and certified to Class 0.5R accuracy.

The compact unit is a single-phase energy meter that meets all current and proposed standards for on-board rail-traction energy monitoring and, specifically, complies with all of the requirements of the new EN 50463 draft. The EM4T offers four input channels to

accept measurements from any existing AC or DC traction supply network. From voltage and current measurements, it calculates active and reactive power, compiles a load profile, and stores the values in internal flash memory; data points are recorded at selectable intervals ranging from 1 to 60 minutes. Data points in the record are stamped with information such as time and date, train identification, and the precise location of the train at every interval: location is derived from a dedicated GPS input to the EM4T II. Recording at 15-minute intervals, the EM4T II has sufficient internal memory for over 300 days’ data. Real-time data interfaces also support exchange of data with other train systems, including a driver display.

The EM4T II features excellent immunity to the high levels of electrical noise that are typical of the traction environment. It supports bidirectional monitoring of energy flows and can correctly record energy returned to the supply network during regenerative braking.

While the EM4T II offers complete interfacing flexibility, and can connect to any suitablyrated transducer, the combination of the energy meter with LEM’s optimised current and voltage transducers offers the industry’s only route to full compliance with prEN 50463, with certified class accuracy. n www.lem.com

400 W quarter brick DC-DC converter from Murata designed for telecom applications

150 W DC-DC converter suits micro cell transmitter and power amplifier applications

Murata announced the availability of the RBQ series of isolated 12Vout, 400 Watt DC-DC converters from Murata Power Solutions. The RBQ-12/33-D48 model provides what are believed to be the industry’s highest efficiencies of up to 96% from a standard DOSAcompliant quarterbrick package. The RBQ-12/33-D48 is designed to operate in most applications with convection cooling.

The RBQ-12/33D48 can operate from a standard telephone network voltage (TNV) network supply of 36 to 75 VDC around a nominal 48 VDC. The RBQ series is ideal for use in a host of telecommunications, enterprise IT and wireless networking infrastructures that use a distributed power or regulated intermediate bus architecture. The RBQ-

Murata announced availability of the Murata Power Solutions PAQ series of 150 Watt isolated DCDC converters. Packaged as an industry standard open-frame quarter brick module with through-hole mounting, the converter has a 2:1 input range of 36 – 75 VDC around a nominal 48 VDC input. The single 29.8 VDC nominal output can be trimmed from 23.83 (-20%) to 32.78 (+10%)VDC in order to accommodate an application’s specific voltage requirements.

This highly efficient DC-DC converter, typically 92.5%, can deliver up to 5 Amps output current from the fully regulated output.

An optional base plate is available for use in conduction-cooled designs such as sealed box RF power amplifiers that are often mounted on radio masts. For

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12/33-D48 will reliably deliver 33A/400W @ 60°C with 200LFM airflow.

Optional features include a load sharing option for higher power or N+1 applications, conformal coating for harsh environments,

Positive & Negative on/off control logic and optional pin lengths to accommodate various application board thicknesses.

Protection features include output over voltage, over current protection, input under voltage and over temperature shutdown.

MURATA EUROPE www.murata.eu

EP&Dee | March, 2013 | www.epd-ee.eu

these applications the converter and base plate are fixed directly to the host equipment chassis. In this way the operation of endequipment is efficiently maintained despite being situated in a

potentially demanding physical environment. The high efficiency of the PAQ converter greatly assists in reducing operating costs due to less waste power being generated and helps maintain the unit’s reliability. Input / Output isolation is provided by 2,250 VDC Basic insulation.

MURATA EUROPE www.murata.eu

PRODUCT NEWS

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

Mouser First to Stock NXP LPC800 Series Cortex™-M0+ MCUs

IAR Systems further strengthens product portfolio for power analysis

Mouser Electronics, Inc. is now stocking the new Cortex™-M0+ microcontrollers from NXP Semiconductors. LPC800 MCUs offer easy-to-use peripherals, 32-bit capabilities, and exceptional power efficiency.

Based on an ultra-low-power 30MHz ARM Cortex-M0+ processor, LPC800 is fully compatible with the Cortex-M architecture and instruction set and offers superior code density to 8- / 16bit architectures. The Cortex-M0+ features a two-stage pipeline that reduces power consumption while improving performance.

LPC800 MCUs also take advantage of the Cortex-M0+ peripheral bus, allowing single-cycle access to the GPIOs. These features enable NXP LPC800 MCUs to offer deterministic, real-time performance – a key requirement for 8-bit developers. LPC800 includes game-changing features, such as a switch matrix that enables designers to assign onchip peripherals to any pin with a single line of code or a single click in the configuration tool. With its

IAR Systems® announces further enhancements to its innovative Power Debugging technology.

At Embedded World in Germany, the company demonstrates new functionality in its world-leading development tool suite IAR Embedded Workbench® for ARM®. This functionality includes detailed in-circuit power measurements made possible by IAR Systems’ new Iscope™ probe.

Power Debugging provides developers with information about how the software implementation of an embedded system affects the system’s power consumption. This technology is available using the C-SPY® Debugger included in IAR Embedded Workbench together with IAR Systems’ incircuit debugging probe I-jet™.

By adding I-scope, developers can gain knowledge of the power consumed by individual modules, detect if design flaws in the code are causing unnecessary power consumption and possibly extend battery lifetime.

At any designated point on the

broad product line and unsurpassed customer service, Mouser caters to design engineers and buyers by delivering What’s Next in advanced technologies.

Mouser offers customers 19 global support locations and stocks the world’s widest selection of the latest semiconductors

and electronic components for the newest design projects.

Mouser Electronics’ website is updated daily and searches more than 10 million products to locate over 3 million orderable part numbers available for easy online purchase.

MOUSER ELECTRONICS www.mouser.com NXP SEMICONDUCTORS www.nxp.com

Launch of SymTA/S 3.3 features significant new timing analysis and design capabilities Symtavision has launched SymTA/S 3.3, a major new version of its award-winning system-level tool suite for planning, optimizing and verifying embedded realtime systems. SymTA/S 3.3 features significant new timing analyses including support for FlexRay System Distribution, the new CAN-FD standard, Buffer Fill Level analysis for COM and Gateways, as well as enhanced Gantt chart customization. Major improvements to the design features of SymTA/S 3.3 include a new Customizable Wizard Framework and improved dragand-drop functionality providing resolution of dependencies. At the same time, Symtavision has announced TraceAnalyzer 3.3, a new version of its powerful solu-

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tion for visualizing and analyzing timing data from both measurements and simulations which seamlessly integrates with SymTA/S. With the launch of SymTA/S 3.3, the SymTA/S System Distribution analysis framework is

extended with support for FlexRay covering both Static and Dynamic Segments, with the latter supporting cycle multiplexing for FlexRay 2.x frames.

SYMTAVISION www.symtavision.com

EP&Dee | March, 2013 | www.epd-ee.eu

target board, I-scope can measure current and voltage with 12bit resolution at a sampling rate of up to 200 kHz. The information is transferred to I-jet, which synchronizes the data with the running program counter, enabling it to be graphed in real

time and analyzed using the CSPY Debugger. The analysis can be used to reveal the power consumption of individual functions and peripherals, which I/O activity causes current spikes, and how much power is consumed in various sleep modes.

I-scope is designed to be used as an extension to I-jet and will be available for delivery in Q2 2013. IAR Embedded Workbench is a complete development tool suite with support for all ARM cores.

IAR SYSTEMS www.iar.com

AndroidTM Meets Embedded Systems MAZeT GmbH, a leading provider of Electronic Design and Manufacturing Services of optoelectronic and embedded computing solutions, present their new Android based solutions for embedded systems. Modern requirements for embedded systems are that defined tasks need to be solved at maximum efficiency. This is at limited usage of operating systems and at minimal hard- and software effort. Price performance-radio, reliability and flexible data rates are high in demand. Embedded systems often use modified versions of operating system, such as Embedded Windows, Linux or Android. For systems with high

requirements on performance and reliability it is also recommended to use customized FPGAs or ASICs. In relation to the Embedded World 2013 in Nuremberg the newest system solutions and applications for the mobile sector will be presented.

MAZeT for example, demonstrates the wireless communication via Bluetooth with a compact pre-engineered Android system. The unit addresses a lighting system with feedback control loop, which uses specially developed color sensor technology to control and optimize the color value output and longterm stability of LEDs. Android implementation and

PRODUCT NEWS

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

STMicroelectronics STM32 F4 Discovery Expansion Boards Now Available at Mouser Mouser Electronics, Inc. announces the availability of STMicroelectronics STM32 F4 Expansion Boards that help discover the features of the STM32 F4 HighPerformance Cortex™-M4 microcontrollers. The STMicroelectronics Expansion Boards aim to expand the functionality of the STM32 F4 Discovery board, built around the STM32F4 processor and featuring 32-bit ARM Cortex-M4 architecture. The newly available accessories include an LCD module (a 3.5 inch LCD and driver board) and a camera module (contains an OV9655, which is a 1.3 megapixel CMOS SXGA image sensor), both of which connect to the third accessory, a hardware extension base board that provides Ethernet connectivity by plugging directly into the Discovery Board. The base board helps to extend out and conveniently offer all the interfaces on the STM32F4 Discovery board. The new hardware accessories are custom designed for the Discovery Board STM32 F4 and come with the necessary software drivers, making them easy for engineers to use to quickly extend the functionality of their STM32F4 design.

With its broad product line and unsurpassed customer service, Mouser caters to design engineers and buyers by delivering What’s Next in advanced tech-

nologies. Mouser offers customers 19 global support locations and stocks the world’s widest selection of the latest semiconductors and electronic components for the newest design projects.

Mouser Electronics’ website is updated daily and searches more than 10 million

system customization can be a challenging task - especially with non-standardized hardware. Embedded Android systems are capable of modular upgrading so that own applications can be integrat-

ed via common interfaces. All known ARM processors from Freescale to Texas Instruments are supported throughout the implementation process. Energy management, safety protocols and performance are regarded as key aspects.

As a system and design company and with more than 20 years of experience in the field of embedded computing solutions - MAZeT GmbH offers design and manufacturing of system solutions from a single source. MAZeT is specialized in porting operating systems to specific processor platforms, developing drivers for customer-specific interfaces, as well as designing application software and developing firmware for various hardware solutions. The company develops specific drivers and application software for Windows, Linux and Android.

MAZeT www.mazet.de

Android is a trademark of Google Inc.

products to locate over 3 million orderable part numbers available for easy online purchase.

Mouser.com also houses an industry-first interactive catalog, data sheets, supplierspecific reference designs, application notes, technical design information, and engineering tools.

MOUSER ELECTRONICS www.mouser.com

Highest Accuracy Battery Fuel Gauge from Maxim Integrated Maximizes Battery Capacity and Boosts User Confidence Maxim Integrated Products, Inc. announced that it is sampling the MAX17050, the industry’s highest accuracy battery fuel gauge. It uses the company’s patented ModelGauge™ m3 algorithm, which improves upon the traditional coulomb counting approach by combining it with the patented voltage-based ModelGauge approach. The MAX17050 provides the best possible accuracy, uses 4x less power, and shrinks solutions by 3× compared to competitive devices. The device is ideal for portable applications where battery capacity and state-of-charge accuracy is critical, including smartphones, tablets, mobile radios, battery backup, and portable medical/fitness equipment.

Battery fuel gauge designs often depend on coulombcounting technology. Although coulomb counting is highly accurate for a short period of time, it tends to drift over time. The MAX17050 uniquely integrates the short-term accuracy and linearity of a coulomb counter with the excellent long-term stability of a ModelGauge fuel gauge. The ModelGauge m3 technology makes continuous microcorrections and eliminates sudden jumps in a battery’s state of charge (SOC). Users can trust the resulting battery capacity and state information, including the health and maximum battery usage.

The MAX17050 functionality is also integrated into the company's TINI® Power System-on-Chip (SoC) to make it easier to upgrade designs to more complex systems.

Key Advantages • Best possible accuracy: integrated coulomb counting and ModelGauge technology automatically compensate for aging, temperature, and discharge rate; provides accurate SOC and time-to-empty over a wide range of operating conditions, as well as battery health information.

• Extends battery capacity: sophisticated SOC, voltage, and temperature alerts allow the system microprocessor to remain in sleep mode for a longer period of time.

• Upgrade path to full power management: The MAX17050 functionality is available in a Power SoC with identical IP to facilitate a complete power-management solution in a shortened time to market.

MAXIM INTEGRATED www.maximintegrated.com www.epd-ee.eu | March, 2013 | EP&Dee

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PRODUCT NEWS

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

IPETRONIK offers high-performance data loggers with twelve CAN-Bus-measuring inputs for automobile tests With IPElog, the IPETRONIKbusiness unit IPEmeasure offers a data logger for particularly high measuring requirements in the mobile data acquisition area.

IPElog adds to the successful M/S-LOG- and FLEETlog-family for consistent further development based on the more than 15 years of experience of IPETRONIK in the field of stand-alone data logger equipment. The new data logger is distinguished by enhanced features and higher performance for data logging. These include, twelve ISO 11898-2-compliant CAN-Bus-measuring inputs, Quick start with No Message Lost-Function, as well as, a removable 1.8-inch-Solid-State-Disk for the storage of large amounts of data. GPRS/UMTS/ 3G/WiFiHardware and a GPS-receiver are integrated for the wireless datatransmission and global positioning. For CAN-protocols there are optional CCP, XCPonCAN, XCPonETH, KWPonCAN and UDS available.

IPElog based on a 1.33 GHz fast Atom-processor, has 1 GByte RAM and uses the real-time operating system RTOS-32 with the field proven data acquisition software TESTdrive. Other features are two optional 100Base-

TX-Ethernet-measuring inputs, a USB-2.0 port, four digital inputs and four digital outputs as well as intelligent power management features including Wake-On-CAN for all CAN-inputs and multiple trigger-functions. The transfer of online-measurement data to IPEmotion, ETAS INCA, and Vector CANape is done by CAN or XCPonETH. All settings of the measuring configuration can be done easily using the WindowsSoftware IPEmotion.

IPETRONIK www.ipetronik.com

DSM Computer at the embedded world: Flat embedded system of the third generation DSM Computer presented at the embedded world for the first time the NanoServer® NN-QM67 embedded system that offers maximum power in the tightest space. The 58 mm flat industrial computer is based on Intel® Core™ processors of the third generation and on the energysaving Intel® QM67 mobile chipset. With the compact, slot-less NN-QM67, DSM augments its NanoServer® family whose models differ in the number of slots and in the performance class. A sophisticated ventilation concept ensures a low internal temperature of the extremely compact housing and so increases significantly the service life of the system despite its high performance. DSM Computer has

36

specified the maximum full-load temperature of the high-performance NanoServer® NNQM67 not just 45 °C, but 50 °C. As standard, the NanoServer® NN-QM67 is equipped with the Intel® Core™ processor of the

third generation i5-3610ME with two cores (2.7 GHz, 3 MB).

For high-end applications, a model with quad-core Intel® Core™ i7-3610QE (2.3 GHz) can be delivered as an option.

DSM COMPUTER www.dsm-computer.com

EP&Dee | March, 2013 | www.epd-ee.eu

New Ericsson Advanced Bus Converter Ideal for Network-Attached-Storage Applications Ericsson has launched the industry’s first digitally controlled Advanced Bus Converter specifically aimed at powering Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) and Network Attached Storage (NAS) hard-disk applications that operate with high capacitive loads up to 15 millifarads (mF).

Based on the Ericsson 3E* FRIDA II platform, the BMR456 ‘HighCap’ series (BMR4560004/018) guarantees stable and accurate 12V bus voltage over the full input-voltage range.

RAID and NAS applications developed for datacenters are designed for high performance and reliability and require very stable and smooth bus voltages without disturbances, such as voltage glitches or delays that result from power sources operating with current-mode limitations. Designers will commonly use large arrays of capacitors, often resulting in an average value of 12 to 15 mF, to secure that the bus voltages delivered to hard disks and other subassemblies are exempt from noise. Developing these types of

products can be a significant challenge, but the BMR456 ‘High-Cap’ converter makes full use of the flexibility offered by digital control in addition to its Ericsson Energy and Performance Optimizer firmware, and embeds a voltagemode-control algorithm that maintains a tight output voltage between 11.88V and 12.12V and accurately controls the 20 millisecond ramp-up time.

Designed for 12V bus applications that might only require 6V in standby mode, controlled via PMBus commands, the output voltage of the BMR4560004/018 can also be adjusted to as little as 4V, even powering 5V boardlevel subsystems in idle mode, delivering significant headroom to board designers.

ERICSSON POWER MODULES www.ericsson.com/powermodules

Maxim Integrated Collaborates with Freescale to Showca Maxim Integrated Products, Inc. and Freescale Semiconductor® have collaborated to showcase a comprehensive LTE/3G picocell base station at the 2013 Mobile World Congress. This innovative small cell base station platform design is field deployable by mobile operators and also serves as a production-ready reference design to accelerate time to market for equipment manufacturers.

Ideal for outdoor public access or enterprise small cell applications, the LTE/3G picocell brings together a Freescale BSC9132 base station SoC card, a Maxim MAX2580* RF transceiver card, RF power amplifiers, and network management cards - all in a

passively cooled enclosure and weighing in at 6.8 kg. The BSC9132 features two Power Architecture e500 cores and two StarCore® DSP cores, along with Freescale’s high-performance MAPLE-B2P baseband accelerator platform. The MAX2580 is an RF to Bits®, high-dynamic-performance LTE/3G radio transceiver. The BSC9132 and MAX2580 work seamlessly to deliver a complete multi-band, multi-standard small cell solution.

Key Advantages • MAX2580: Operates in all LTE bands from Band 1 to Band 41 with selectable channel bandwidths from 1.4 MHz to 20 MHz; supports FDD-LTE, TD-LTE, and

PRODUCT NEWS

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

Atollic TrueSTUDIO C/C++ IDE adds Cortex-R support and extends coverage of Cortex-A application processors Atollic® announced the next release of their award-winning embedded integrated development environment TrueSTUDIO® v4.0. Providing professional embedded developers with a comprehensive integrated suite of tools, this latest version of TrueSTUDIO adds support for many new ARM®-based devices in addition to tool chain improvements.

Suiting high volume, deeply embedded automotive and consumer applications, the Cortex™R4, Cortex-R5 and Cortex-R7 real-time processors are now supported within TrueSTUDIO v4.0. The Cortex-R series of device cores offer highly performance and real-time response characteristics as required by demanding system-on-chip (SoC) applications.

Also in this release, the support for generic ARM Cortex-A-based series of application processors has been extended from the Cortex-A5 core to include the Cortex-A7, Cortex-A8, Cortex-A9 and Cortex-A15 processor cores. The Cortex-A series of cores are aimed at very high volume and low cost applications that are likely to be using a feature-rich real-time operating system.

Atollic TrueSTUDIO v4.0 now supports a total of over 1300 ARM devices from leading semiconductor manufacturers.

This support now covers devices using ARM7™, ARM9™, Cortex-

M0/M0+/M1/M3/M4, Cortex-R4/R5/R7 and Cortex-A5/A7/A8/A9/A15 cores.

Complementing the addition of target core support, a number of specific devices and evaluation boards have also been added to the list of support targets. These include the Infineon XMC1000 family of Cortex-M0 devices and the NXP LPC4xxx family of Cortex-

M0/M4 dual core microcontrollers. With the LPC4xxx targets TrueSTUDIO v4.0 can debug both cores simultaneously using only one GUI debugger instance, vastly simplifying dual-core development. Additional IDE improvements include the upgrading of the Eclipse platform and the GNU compiler tool chain. The compiler now has better code size optimizations in addition to a smaller runtime library.

ATOLLIC www.atollic.com

ase a Comprehensive Outdoor LTE Picocell at Mobile World Congress WCDMA modes; JESD207 data interface provides a seamless radio interconnect between the MAX2580 and BSC9132.

• BSC9132: Supports multimode operation that enables it to process LTEFDD/TDD and HSPA+ users simultaneously. It is engineered to address the performance and cost requirements of up to 20MHz single sector LTEFDD/TDD. The BSC9132 can process 64 simultaneous users and handles 150 Mbps downlink with 75 Mbps uplink rates in 20 MHz LTE-FDD/TDD mode, and 42 Mbps downlink with 11.5 Mbps uplink rates in 5 MHz HSPA+ mode.

MAXIM INTEGRATED www.maximintegrated.com

Maxim Integrated to Demonstrated a More Integrated World at Mobile World Congress At the 2013 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Maxim Integrated Products, Inc. presented its unique and highly integrated portable equipment and communications solutions for mobile platforms. Maxim will host nine interactive demo kiosks with solutions for consumer and RF/communications applications. All Maxim mobility products feature high integration for better performance and substantial savings in space, cost, and design time. Some of the products demonstrated at Hall 6, Stand 6G100 include:

Consumer Applications • The MAXQ614, a low-power MAXQ® 16-bit microcontroller with infrared (IR) module, is designed for very small applications such as smartphones and tablets. Available in a tiny 2mm × 2mm × 0.65mm, 25ball wafer-level package (WLP), it shrinks solution size by 70% compared to previous solutions. The MAXQ614 includes 80KB of flash memory and 2KB of data SRAM for applications flexibility. It provides the industry’s best low-power battery-operated performance with an ultra-low-power stop mode (0.2 μA typ).

• The MAX98096 is a highly integrated, high-performance, smart audio hub. It integrates Maxim’s FlexSound® processor, which supports a plug-in-capable audio framework. With low power consumption and advanced audio signal processing, this single-chip audio solution supports wideband voice, including noise cancellation and echo suppression, in a wide range of portable applications.

• Maxim addresses another key piece of the mobile system with its new MEMS motion sensor, the MAX21000. The device is an ultra-accurate, 3-axis, digital-output gyroscope that delivers unprecedented sensitivity over temperature and time. It offers low noise, high bandwidth, and a high-speed interface and is suitable for both user interface (UI) and optical image stabilization (OIS) applications.

RF/Communications Applications • The MAX2580* is a highly integrated LTE/3G small cell RF transceiver that supports all major cellular bands. (*Future product - contact factory for availability.)

MAXIM INTEGRATED www.maximintegrated.com www.epd-ee.eu | March, 2013 | EP&Dee

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PRODUCT NEWS

ACTIVE COMPONENTS

PCB Mounted RFID TAG Solution from Murata and Cogiscan wins NPI award

RDR-347 combines industry-leading efficiency, low component count and great dimming

Murata’s innovative RFID tag MAGICSTRAP® - integrated with Cogiscan’s TTC Middleware solution has won the 2013 New Product Introduction (NPI) Award from Circuits Assembly in the labelling equipment category. Murata’s MAGICSTRAP® series is the latest in UHF RFID tag technology designed to be placed directly on the printed circuit board. Seamlessly combined with Cogiscan’s middleware technology, it offers a complete RFID track, trace and control solution for the PCB market.

Designing MAGICSTRAP® on the PCB is made easy by selecting one of the recommended reference antenna designs based on the users’ read range requirements. This eliminates the need for UHF antenna design knowledge, greatly simplifying and accelerating integration.

The Murata-Cogiscan solution enhances PCB tracking functionality by using UHF RFID technology to provide a read-writable data repository on the PCB and enables faster, more reliable identification and communica-

Power Integrations announced RDR-347, an LED-downlight reference design. The new circuit demonstrates the capabilities of the recently launched LYTSwitch™ IC family, which offers the industry’s best highend dimming performance from a single-stage LED driver– together with all the associated efficiency, space and cost benefits that the singlestage approach brings.

The RDR-347 12 W reference design, based on the LYT4313E, delivers a power factor greater than 0.95 and reduces total harmonic distortion (THD) to less than 10% - easily meeting EN61000-3-2C requirements.

Efficiency is greater than 86% at 120 VAC – industry-leading performance for an isolated solution capable of operating with a wide range of dimmers. This performance is possible because LYTSwitch ICs use one combined PFC and CC power conversion stage which minimizes losses and cuts component count, which in turn increases

tion while overcoming the challenges posed by traditional optical track and trace systems. It also enables tracking of the finished goods throughout the supply chain, for customer service

and field support.

With what is believed to be the smallest UHF RFID module in the industry, MAGICSTRAP® turns the standard PCB into a “Smart” PCB that truly provides a complete “cradle to grave” solution.

For more information on MAGICSTRAP® visit http://www.murata.com/products/rfid/index.html, for “cradle to grave” RFID solutions visit www.rfid-valuecreators.com MURATA www.murata.eu COGISCAN www.cogiscan.com

CUI Launch EN50155 Compliant Dc-Dc Converters for Railway Applications CUI Inc has introduced a new family of board mount dc-dc converters developed for railway applications. The modules are designed to comply with the EN50155 standard, which specifies input, EMC, mechanical, and environmental requirements. The internally potted and encapsulated design provides increased system reliability through added protection from environmental factors such as dust, moisture, and shock and vibration. Offered in industry standard quarter brick and half brick footprints respectively, the 100 W VQB100R series and the 150 W VHB150R series are highly efficient, reaching levels up to 92.5%.

Though the modules are designed primarily for railway

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applications, the VQB100R and VHB100R series also target designs that may experience high transients, including telecom systems and battery-powered equipment. The dc-dc converters provide a 3:1 input range of 66~160 Vdc and output voltage

options of 5, 12, or 24 Vdc. They are designed to deliver a case operating temperature range of 40°C to 100°C and provide 2250 Vdc I/O isolation.

CUI www.cui.com

EP&Dee | March, 2013 | www.epd-ee.eu

reliability and decreases cost.

TRIAC dimming is challenging, especially deep-dimming where TRIAC asymmetry between halfcycles can have a significant effect. RDR-347 shows that Power Integrations’ LYTSwitch driver IC works excellently, even at very low output currents,

without any shimmer or flicker.

The design also demonstrates system start-up without noticeable hysteresis (so-called “popon effect”), even in deep-dimming. The IC features a very fast start-up time (under 500 ms) even when dimmed to 10% output current, achieving the ‘instant-on” condition that many customers want, but that many designs in the market cannot provide.

POWER INTEGRATIONS www.powerint.com

Silicon Labs Unveils Latest Low-Power Development Tools Silicon Labs. unveiled Precision32™ software and hardware development tools that enable engineers to maximize the power efficiency of their 32bit embedded designs.

A leading supplier of mixed-signal microcontrollers (MCUs), Silicon Labs offers a diverse portfolio of Precision32 MCUs based on the ARM® Cortex™M3 processor. This portfolio is supported by a rich set of development tools that enables designers to optimize their designs for the lowest power consumption without compromising performance. Silicon Labs’ new low-power tools on display at Embedded World

include the following: Power-Aware software tools: Silicon Labs’ complimentary Eclipse-based IDE and AppBuilder software for Precision32 MCUs include firstof-a-kind tools that enable developers to estimate power consumption and receive configuration guidance to minimize system power. The Power Estimator tool gives developers a top-level graphical view of how a Precision32 MCU uses power in active and sleep mode.

Low-Power 32-bit humidity sensing demonstration: This demonstration highlights the functionality of Silicon Labs’ new Si7005 relative humidity (RH)

PRODUCT NEWS

ACTIVE COMPONENTS

CUI’s Baseplate-Cooled Ac-Dc Power Supplies Deliver 355 W at 93.5% Efficiency CUI Inc announces a family of compact ac-dc power supplies featuring baseplate-cooling. The VBM-360 series offers exceptionally high power density of 14.8W/in3, providing 355W in an industry standard footprint.

The space-saving power supplies are housed in two optional case styles: a compact open frame version measuring 5 × 3 × 1.6 inches (127.00 × 76.00 × 40.60mm) and an enclosed version.

Featuring typical efficiency above 93%, the power supplies are designed for applications where forced-air cooling is not preferred due to audible noise or space limitations.

The VBM series is also ideally suited for sealed-box applications where heat must be conducted through the chassis, a common requirement in commercial and industrial equipment that’s designed for outdoor and harsh environments.

CUI’s VBM-360 power supplies have a universal 90~264Vac input for global operation and are available with single outputs of 12, 24 and 48Vdc. Utilizing conduction-cooling via an integrated baseplate, open frame models are rated for operation at 80% from -20°C to 40°C

ambient, derating to 40% load at 70°C, while enclosed versions are rated for operation at 100% load from -20°C to 40°C, also derating to 40% load at 70°C. For applications that can incorporate air flow of 10 CFM, the open frame units will operate at 100% load from -20°C to 50°C, while enclosed versions will operate at 100% load from -20°C to 60°C. The VBM-360 series features include active power factor correction (PFC) and protections for over voltage, over current, short circuit, and over temperature.

Connections for remote on/off control, remote sense, 5V standby, and a 12V fan

output are also included. All models carry UL/cUL and TUV 60950-1 safety certifications for ITE, commercial and industrial equipment, and are compliant with the EN 55022 Class B EMI standard.

CUI www.cui.com

s at Embedded World 2013 and temperature sensor in a SiM3L1xx MCU evaluation board environment.

The standalone, battery-powered demonstration board includes an LCD panel that shows changes in temperature and humidity readings from the Si7005 sensor. The demo includes example code that can be used to speed devel-

opment of applications requiring both an ultra-low-power 32-bit MCU and humidity and temperature sensors such as smart thermostats and in-home energy monitoring systems.

Low-Power SiM3L1xx development board: Roughly the same size as an ID badge, this compact development board showcases the power efficiency of SiM3L1xx MCUs. The board contains an ultra-low-power SiM3L1xx MCU, segmented LCD, supercapacitor, LED and photodiode sensor, debug interface and USB port. The board can display information continuously on the LCD for up to three days after a quick 90-second charge of the supercapacitor through a USB cable.

SILICON LABS www.silabs.com

High-current, high-voltage and high-performance applications benefit from Microchip’s new LDO voltage-regulator family Key Facts: • LDOs provide industry’s best combination of performance, size and price • High output current of 300 mA, high input voltage of 16V and high noise rejection of 70 dB • Ideal for designs with 9V and 12V power-supply rails which require very clean supply voltages • Suited to a wide range of applications including medical, mobile devices and LED lighting controllers

Microchip announces the MCP1755 and MCP1755S high-performance, high-input-voltage and high-output-current family of CMOS Low-Dropout (LDO) voltage regulators. These LDOs can accept a wide input voltage range of 3.6-16V and deliver an output current of 300mA at output voltages of 1.8-5.5V, while consuming only 68μA of quiescent current (typical).

Additionally, the MCP1755/1755S LDOs have a shutdown pin, enabling them to consume less than 0.1μA (typical) during shutdown mode, which extends battery lifetimes. To conserve space, the LDOs are offered in SOT and 2 × 3mm DFN packages. These features provide designers with a high degree of flexibility for an extremely broad range of applications, such as medical, mobile devices and LED lighting controllers.

Many of today’s electronic designs need to operate in environments that contain high levels of electrical and magnetic noise. Noise is generated when switching transients and RF signals get coupled onto powersupply lines. Applications such as ground- and arcfault circuit interrupter (GFCI/ AFCI) circuit breakers, wireless devices, automotive-aftermarket electronics, and medical devices are sensitive to this power-supply noise. The MCP1755 and MCP1755S LDOs have a high Power Supply Rejection Ratio (PSRR) of 70dB @ 1kHz, which filters input noise and provides significantly cleaner output voltages, making them well suited to noise-sensitive applications.

Both of the new LDOs are available today for sampling and volume production. The MCP1755S is offered in 3-pin SOT223 and 8-pin, 2x3 mm DFN packages; whilst the MCP1755 is available in 5-pin SOT223 and SOT23 packages, as well as the 8-pin, 2 × 3 mm DFN. MICROCHIP TECHNOLOGY www.microchip.com/get/LMUT www.epd-ee.eu | March, 2013 | EP&Dee

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PRODUCT NEWS

DISPLAY

Evaluation Kit Provides Simple Pathway to Display Development

Low power consumption 5.7-inch displays with QVGA or VGA resolution and at least five years availability

With its rich feature set, the EA eDIPTFT57-A intelligent display from Electronic Assembly is the ideal choice for implementation of interactive control in mechanical engineering and industrial electronics applications.

The high-contrast color screen, which measures 5.7" in the diagonal, has LED background illumination and a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels. Its most important feature, however, is the built-in intelligence which greatly facilitates integration of the display modules into the application. The Evaluation Kit, which is tailored specifically to this display, makes development work even easier. Electronic Assembly supplies the kit to speed up the commissioning process and facilitate familiarization with the world of intelligent displays. It includes everything needed to get started including an evaluation/programmer board, EA eDIPTFT57-ATP

Gleichmann Electronics presents new 5.7-inch (14 cm) industrial displays, G057AGE-T01 with QVGA and G057VGE-T01 with VGA resolution, from Innolux.

Innolux guarantees a minimum of five years availability for both displays.

The displays, which are equipped with a TTL interface, feature unusually wide viewing angles for TN displays of 160° horizontal and 140° vertical, and a low power consumption of just 3.35 W. The lifetime of the LED backlight is specified at 50000 hours minimum. 500 cd/m2 brightness with QVGA and 450 cd/m2 brightness with VGA resolution, a contrast ratio of 800:1 and a wide

color display, USB cable, touch panel, plug-top power supply (with international adapters) and a mini DVD containing software, documentation and sample macros. The evaluation board has

a USB port for communication with the PC. Interface boards with RS-232, RS-485, I²C and SPI interfaces for communication with the host are optional features but they are nevertheless included with the kit. An array of LEDs provides information about data traffic and the status of the digital outputs of the display.

ELECTRONIC ASSEMBLY www.mediaberatung.de

Multi-touch projected capacitive touch (PCT) technology for displays with up to 55-inch (139.7 cm) screen diagonal Gleichmann Electronics presented the innovative multi-touch projected capacitive touch (PCT) technology from Zytronic on its Booth 2-219 in Hall 2 at embedded world 2013, February 26 28, 2013 in Nuremberg, Germany. This technology has the capability to support up to 10 simultaneous touch points on displays with up to 55-inch (139.7 cm) screen diagonal.

The multi-touch solution, which was developed by Zytronic for large display formats used in information and self-service terminals as well as industrial applications, is based on its ZXY200 touch controller and a ruggedized, scalable touch sensor. In addition to offering 15 inch (38.1 cm), 22-inch (55.9 cm), 32-inch

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(81.3 cm), 46-inch (116.8 cm) and 55-inch (139.7 cm) sensors, customer-specific sizes in low volumes are also available.

Like all of Zytronic’s PCT touch

sensors, the multi-touch sensor solution uses a matrix of 10 micron diameter copper electrodes embedded within a 4 mm thick, durable glass laminate which is both impact and scratch resistant. The sensor also works with gloved hands, thus considerably increasing the application areas for this solution.

GLEICHMANN & CO. ELECTRONICS www.msc-ge.com

EP&Dee | March, 2013 | www.epd-ee.eu

operating temperature range from -30°C to +85°C allows for use of the displays outdoors.

Both displays have identical form factors and are 100% pin-compatible. Furthermore, as with all

Innolux’s "Industrial Line" of displays, a reverse scan function is provided.

Detailed information can be requested by sending an email to display-innolux@msc-ge.com GLEICHMANN & CO. ELECTRONICS www.msc-ge.com

Flat widescreen panel PC and industrial monitor with multitouch DSM Computer has augmented its new ultra-slim panel PC family with the PN18-A2 widescreen model that provides a 47 cm (18.5 inch) TFT display with PCT multitouch screen and LED backlight. The PCT technology offers the familiar ease-of-use known with smartphones, also for industrial display systems, while also satisfying the high requirements that industry places on robustness and longevity.

The PN18-A2 panel PC ideal for the harsh industrial environment is characterized with its wear-free and scratch-resistant dual-touch screen (two-finger operation) that has a flat surface without any dirt-accumulating edges. On request, a multitouch for operation with more than two fingers

can be deployed. The maximum resolution is 1366 x 768 pixels with luminance of 300 cd/m². The contrast is specified as 1000:1.

As an alternative to the widescreen panel PC, DSM Computer also offers the D18

with integrated A/D converter as pure multitouch display. The front display part is identical with the panel PC. The monitor can be controlled with DVI, VGA and SVideo; the multitouch can be connected via USB to an external computer.

DSM COMPUTER www.dsm-computer.com

PRODUCT NEWS

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Circular connectors M8; M12; M23 Cable and Connectors for Sensors Valve Connectors Distribution Blocks

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AUTOMATION Honeywell Expands its Relialign™ Door Interlock Switch Portfolio with a Version for Commercial Applications Honeywell announced it has expanded its portfolio of Relialign™ door interlock switches with a version designed specifically for commercial applications, the Commercial Door Interlock Switch, CDI Series. This new device is Honeywell’s alternative to large, installation-intensive interlocks and OEM custom-made products. Potential applications for the CDI Series include commercial swingdoor elevators, dumbwaiters, and platform/vertical lifts.

Honeywell’s Relialign™ Commercial Door Interlock Switches are designed to hold the swing door in place and prevent it from being opened when not desired, such as when the platform

lift is not present at the door. A number of design features, including a doorclosure retention cam, contribute to the CDI Series’ enhanced safety, reduction of nuisance stoppages, simplified wiring, and ease of installation. Reliable and smooth operation is enhanced by the use of a metal key that is less susceptible than plastic to bending and breakage. The lack of open or exposed contacts minimizes the possibility of owners making manual adjustments.

Featuring a custom internal solenoid control, Relialign™ Commercial Door Interlock Switches can reduce complexity of the host controller, trim power consumption, extend solenoid life, and

reduce solenoid “time outs,” reducing customer aggravation. The CDI Series includes a manual override for easy actuation without user hazard that reduces the potential for callbacks. To meet customer and industry requirements, the Relialign™ Series is compliant with ASME A17.1 & 18.1, and cULus. Honeywell’s Relialign™ Commercial Door Interlock Switches join an established product line that features two residential versions: a metal housing version (RDI Series) and a plasticmolded housing version (RDI2 Series).

HONEYWELL www.honeywell.com www.epd-ee.eu | March, 2013 | EP&Dee

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