e-Ismosys edition 2

e-Ismosys: The newsletter for users and partners of Ismosys.com

Welcome to the second edition of e-Ismosys, the newsletter of the web-based user and partner portal that provides "Engineering Solutions for the Global Electronics Industry".   

Ismosys.com features...

• Outsourced Design and Manufacturing
• Easy access to current and emerging technology products
• News, features, releases, articles
• Engineering services and service providers
• Significant silicon vendor endorsement

 

Ismosys.com - Get Ahead and Stay Ahead

The Spectrum Electronics Group is recognised as much for its business-model innovation as for the value it has always striven to deliver throughout the electronic components supply chain. The decision last year to create a web-based user & partner portal for the electronics engineering community is the most recent example: Ismosys.com brings together products, services, expertise and resources to help users and partners to improve engineering efficiency, speed-up product development cycles and reduce the costs and risks associated with time to market challenges.

Ismosys.com has received a glowing endorsement from the global electronic engineering community. Our monitoring software shows that engineers are making repeat visits to Ismosys, most often to take advantage of our unique library of Application Notes and the access we provide to almost every available electronic component datasheet. Engineers are also making repeat visits to use our Cross Reference and Product Availability tools and our CAD Footprint Libraries and tools and seemingly, are also finding our Export Control and RoHS & WEEE compliance advice useful.

Software engineers have also been receptive to the Ismosys.com concept. They’re taking advantage of our Rapid Download service for standard function software and have been very complimentary about the our unique brokerage service, which finds the particular enabling IP they need and/or helps them to ‘recycle’ their own. It seems that our ASIC/FPGA core and CAD software libraries have been less frequently visited, but it’s early days yet.

Designed to appeal as much to Production and Project Managers as to the engineering community, Ismosys.com also provides an extensive range of Design & Manufacturing services through a growing network of recommended service partners. Ismosys.com enables ‘one-stop’ access to wide ranging third-party experience and expertise through which Project Managers are able to outsource critical aspects of their design or if required, the entire project from concept to delivery.

But are we finished? Absolutely not! Ismosys.com is still very much work in progress and at this stage we recognize that we might not be able to meet all of your requirements. But if you book-mark Ismosys.com and call back at regular intervals we promise that you'll always find something new - something that might be just what you're looking for. Ismosys.com. Endorsed and actively supported by major semiconductor vendors.

For more information http://www.ismosys.com/

 

To achieve 1080p and 'deep-colour' in High Definition Multimedia (HDMI) 1.3 applications , manufacturers have continued to decrease ASIC feature size, resulting in higher speed devices which are more susceptible to breakdown damage at lower energy levels. In this Engineering Note abstraced from his article published on the Video/Imaging Design Line website, Jeffrey Dunnihoo a Senior Applications Engineer with California Micro Devices outlines the problem and proposes methods to mitigate it.

An ASICs will almost always include some on-chip ESD protection for security during manufacturing, but a standard 8kV IEC 61000-4-2 ESD pulse can deliver enough energy to permanently destroy the relatively small input clamps in the deep sub-micron HDMI chip (figure 1). To survive this, larger external ESD clamps must be used to divert this energy back to ground without damaging the HDMI ASIC.

ESD System Interaction

ESD strikes are wide-bandwidth events with very fast rise times and large peak energy pulses. Once this energy enters the HDMI cable or connector, the ESD protector and ASIC must divide the resultant current.

Figure 1: System ESD Example

When the ESD protector begins to clamp, it shunts current to ground. At the same time, the ASIC has seen some of this rising edge and it may begin to conduct as well. This ‘sharing’ of the current is the critical element of system-level ESD design which cannot be specified on a single component datasheet alone.

To understand where (and when) energy is being dissipated, it's interesting to view the instantaneous clamp voltage, as well as the ‘Residual Current’ (figure 1) from the ESD pulse that ends up flowing into the protected ASIC , the Device Under Protection, (DUP.)

Consider two different boards using the same ESD protector component (DUTs) and two different ASIC DUPs. (Figure 2)

	System A		System B
DUT (ESD Clamp)	8kV IEC Diode	1W RDYN	8kV IEC Diode	1W RDYN
DUP (HDMI Chip)	ASIC A 500V HBM	100MW RDYN	ASIC B 2kV IEC	10W RDYN

Figure 2: Same ESD Clamp, Two Different ASIC

Testing reveals that System A passes 8kV without damage, but System B actually fails at 3kV.

This is counterintuitive, because a cursory examination of the datasheets leads one to conclude that the system with the highest individual ESD ratings would make for the most rugged system overall. In fact, this is not always the case because the ‘current sharing’ of the two devices cannot be predicted simply.

Another tradeoff to increase advertised ESD Rating voltage is to increase the DUT's dynamic resistance, therby limiting the amount of current that the ESD protector must sustain at a given strike voltage (figure 1). Of course the energy has to go somewhere, and that means the ASIC DUP must either dissipate that additional power - or fail earlier! In this case, System X with an "8kV" ESD protector might have a lower system ESD performance than System Y with a much lower dynamic clamping resistance (figure 3).

	System X		System Y
DUT (ESD Clamp)	8kV IEC Varistor	100W RDYN	6kV IEC Diode	1W RDYN
DUP (HDMI Chip)	ASIC 2kV HBM	10W RDYN	ASIC 2kV HBM	10W RDYN

Figure 3: Higher component ESD ratings might be due to clamping less energy!

The best way forward.

The key thing to remember is that system ESD performance is not always a product of choosing the highest number for each component. Datasheet comparisons are always difficult to begin with due to inconsistent representation of tested bias points, frequency ranges, and dissimilar or undefined pulse measurement conditions. Datasheets can only represent "out-of-circuit" performance parameters, and the system layout and interaction issues cannot be fully defined from the perspective of the ESD protection component only The best way forward is to evaluate and compare devices in-system early in the development cycle. Ask your ASIC vendor for an evaluation board or a production board example that incorporates all the components that you plan to use. If this is impractical, the best alternative is to compare two components side-by-side on the bench! Your ESD protection component supplier should help you to select the product and layout that provides best overall system performance based on your chosen HDMI ASIC. CMD for instance, offers a broad selection of ESD protection devices http://www.cmd.com/products/overview.php and is always prepared to assist engineers to make the right choice for their application..

Finally, never assume that the next HDMI ASIC version from Vendor Y will have the same ESD protection performance in your system as its predecessor. The cost reduction or performance improvement they provide may still meet their chip's basic ESD protection handling specification, and yet your net system-level ESD protection performance may falter.

 

Marking the successful completion of recent licensing negotiations with Avago Technologies, the former semiconductor division of Hewlett Packard, eSilicon Corporation is now offering Avago Technologies’ proven, high performance, multi-rate, SerDes transceivers core IP via Ismosys.com. Fully complementing eSilicon's proven concept, design and manufacturing services, Avago Technologies’ SerDes cores reduce design risks and overall system development costs in the production of custom chips for applications serving the growing storage, communications and high-performance computing markets.

According to eSilicon’s senior director of marketing Kalar Rajendiran, commercial pressures are continually pushing System OEMs to upgrade their offerings by building higher speed interfaces on their ASICs while maintaining the same form-factor and power specification. Fabless semiconductor companies (FSCs) face similar pressures with their high-speed interface capabilities in their struggle to stay competitive and still maintain strong product differentiation: "eSilicon’s extensive ASIC design and manufacturing experience has proven that a high speed SerDes core is the must-have product differentiator", Rajendiran said. "The explosive growth of broadband data and video services among consumers has exponentially increased the processing and bandwidth requirements on the underlying networking, storage and computing infrastructure. In these applications the SerDes function can be relied upon to provide most of the interface heavy lifting".

SerDes silicon-proven, high performance, multi-rate transceiver cores also enable users to:

• Achieve world-class reliability with very low BER (10e-17) for 10-Gigabit Ethernet, chip-to-chip or backplane applications
• Lower their product costs and achieve higher channel counts with low-power and low-jitter.
• Increase integration and flexibility with support for Fibre Channel (10GFC) and PCI Express Gen2 protocols.

Avago Technologies’ SerDes cores are available in both 90nm and 65nm CMOS processes in TSMC foundry. To date, over 45M channels have been shipped.

For more information on Avago Technologies’ SerDes cores from eSilicon please visit http://www.esilicon.com/offerings/avago.php Full details of eSilicon's unique business model for lowering the risk and cost of getting your next product to market can be found at http://www.esilicon.com/offerings/services.php

 

Recent reductions in NAND flash memory prices has opened the door to the use of Solid State Disc Drives (SSDs) in an ever widening range of products and in particular, in applications that benefit from high storage density, exceptional reliability and data integrity, zero noise emissions and low power consumption.

The decision to migrate from a hard disk drive solution to a SSD is often easy to make but deciding on what type of SSD is most suitable for the design requires some insight into available options: High-end applications, such as video-on-demand (VOD) systems and enterprise servers, require a SSD with high speed, reliability, and capacity. These types of applications are best served by drives equipped with the new serial ATA (SATA) interface, which supports remarkably fast read/write speeds along with hot-swapping capabilities—a feature that is especially important for high-reliability applications such as enterprise servers.

In addition, the embedded systems space which addresses applications for computing across consumer, enterprise, and industrial markets, has long been a strong supporter of SSD. For many embedded applications, drives using the parallel ATA (or PATA) interface are well suited as they address space and cost concerns while still offering the high-reliability and ruggedness offered by a SSD solution.

SMART Modular Technologies offers a broad portfolio of SSD solutions with a wide range of performance, power, and interface choices and has an enviable reputation of working with design engineers throughout the entire design cycle.

 

Slash time-to-market and development costs when developing almost any networked platform with "proven" Element Control Platform software. Ismosys.com has enhanced its portfolio of downloadable embedded software with the introduction of the Element Control Software Platform (ECSP) from partner Proven Software Solutions.

Providing a low-level interface between Network Elements (NE) and the Management Unit (MU), the ECSP code is a real-time, object-oriented C++ framework for managing tasks such as general purpose input/output, protocol handling, event handling and logging services. The ECSP synchronises with the NE hardware and manages events and alarms whilst essentially insulating the engineer from the hardware platform itself, thereby freeing him/her to focus on setting up the required events. Being event or timing driven, the ECSP uses less resource and power than a system that continuously interrogates the NE. And as the ECSP comprises a collection of individual software components, licensees are able to reuse all or part of the ECSP code to create new, element specific control, platforms.

The ECSP has been developed and deployed for use in telecommunications management network (TMN) element systems but can equally well be applied to any device requiring real time supervisory, control or data acquisition facilities in application areas such as industrial (factory automation), security (CCTV), metering (smart meters), retail (POS), consumer (STB, PVRs and games consoles) and residential (hotel TV network management). The ECSP has the potential to significantly reduce cost and time-to-market for anyone developing networked platforms. It is supplied with extensive documentation and support from the ECSP developer and is available for download, along with other software IP from PSS, at the Ismosys online store.

 

 

Microsemi Corporation has announced a new family of standard power modules in the very low profile and compact SP1 package. Comprising no less than thirty-eight products, all the modules in the new family feature a 12mm profile to minimise parasitic inductance, and solderable pins for easy mounting to top-printed circuit board and an integrated base plate that allows the use of thinner DBC substrates.

The new compact power modules fill the size gap between SOT227 and SP3 products by offering the equivalent of two SOT227 packages in a single SP1 device. SP3 modules integrate the equivalent of four SOT227's. The new family includes phase leg, full bridge, buck and boost configurations. Emitter/Source switches on the bottom of the full bridge modules provide separate connections for possible use of current sensors. All the new modules integrate a thermal sensor to monitor case temperature and provide over-temperature protection. The four module configurations provide a variety of transistor options: FREDFET switches for the phase legs and full bridge modules; standard MOSFETs for buck and boost devices, plus CoolMos™ NPT, and TRENCH IGBTs.

All the SP1 MOSFET and FREDFET standard modules use the latest Microsemi MOS8™ Power MOSFET. Current ratings range from 11A to 70A @ Tc= 80 Deg. C for voltages in the range of 500V to 1200V for MOSFET, FREDFET and CoolMOS modules. Current ratings range from 20A to 150A @ Tc= 80 Deg. C

While Microsemi SP1 family members are designed as standard modules for industrial applications such as power factor correction, motor control, UPS, power supplies, solar inverters and welding converters, the modules can be easily upgraded to withstand more demanding environmental conditions: Complete specifications and technical data for the entire new SP1 power modules line are available on the Microsemi web site.

 

Are you being quoted unrealistic tooling pricing for the assembly case or enclosure design for your latest product? Or perhaps the unit cost is simply too high to allow you to compete in the Global market? Perhaps Advent electronics has the answer?

NRE charges are a major capital cost item. The grade and therefore the cost of the selected tooling should be commensurate with the projected volume usage and ‘repeatability’ of the tool over the life-cycle of the product. Are you being charged for tooling that doesn’t really fit your production requirements?

Ismosys partner Advent Electronics offers a solution to these and other common problems faced by electronics OEMs, typically as they make the crucial transition from low-volume to large scale production. Advent is a multi-facetted manufacturing services company and a highly flexible SCM provider of material sourcing, kitting, pcb assembly and finished goods.

Complementing its own extensive experience in the field, Advent is able to leverage its large network of ‘retained’ quality suppliers to deliver metal and plastic cases and enclosures at ultra-competitive prices, and without compromising the look, feel, finish and quality of the final product.

Why not check Advent out? Follow the link to the Our Manufacturing Partners section of Ismosys.com and contact Advent’s European manager, Mike Ballard. He’ll be delighted be discuss your requirements and quote from your drawings.

 

Diodes Incorporated has released the industry's smallest 1 Amp SBR rectifier in a 1.4mm x 1.1mm DFN package. Designed to meet the higher power requirements of today's multi-functional portable electronic devices, the new SBR1U40LP saves space whilst improving efficiency and extending battery life.

The SBR1U40LP features a tiny footprint of 1.54mm2 total area with physical leadless dimensions of 1.1mm x 1.4mm, which is 50% smaller in total dimension area than standard competitive packages like the SOD-323. The SBR1U40LP also offers ultra-low forward voltage to reduce power dissipation with a reverse blocking voltage of 40V.

According to Mark King, Diodes' Senior VP Sales and Marketing, SBR1U40LP has been well received by customers, principally for the contribution it makes to achieving a smaller form factor and lower power consumption: "These are the two key elements required to increase the portability of devices", King said.

Ultra-low profile 20V SBR rectifiers in 1.0mm x 0.6mm DFN package

Targeting similar high efficiency, space constrained applications Diodes Inc, has also released a pair of 0.4mm height 20V SBR rectifiers. Housed in a tiny 1.0mm x 0.6mm DFN package, the new SBR05U20LPS and SBR07U20LPS SBR rectifiers achieve a continuous forward current rating of 0.5A and 0.7A respectively, with an ultra-low forward voltage drop (VF), and a high forward surge capability for high reliability.

 

Catalyst Semiconductor has been granted a patent for its unique step-down switching regulator circuit architecture applicable to step-down regulators for driving high brightness LEDs. Patent number 7,323,828, was developed to simplify the design of high brightness LED lighting in emerging household, commercial and automotive lighting applications.

Embedded in Catalyst’s new family of inductor-based, step-down LED drivers, the new switching regulator circuit architecture bridges the gap between linear regulator, and switching regulator-based LED driver design: Linear regulators are simple-to-use but power-hungry, whilst switching regulators offer lower power dissipation but are more complex and difficult to implement. The new patent enables a simpler, smaller, more cost-effective and far more power-efficient "green" LED driver alternative to linear regulators.

"When using this new step-down switching scheme, the designer simply selects a control resistor and the patented switching regulation scheme provides an inherently stable and accurate LED bias across a wide range of voltage operating environments without the complicated equations or calculations associated with alternative LED switching regulators," stated Anthony Russell, Catalyst's Power Management Director and co-inventor of the patent.

Traditional switching regulators operate in both Continuous Conduction Mode (CCM) and Discontinuous Conduction Mode (DCM), making them intrinsically complex. Catalyst's patented step-down switching regulator architecture operates at the precise intersection between CCM and DCM, the point Catalyst calls Crossover Conduction Mode (XCM), to offer a simpler and more power-efficient solution. Catalyst's XCM architecture enables efficient operation over a wide range of high voltage system supplies, versus linear regulators which operate efficiently over a very small supply voltage range. Additionally, the XCM operation offers unconditional stability and eliminates the need for high-power current sense resistors and associated interface pins, reducing size, complexity and cost.

The first product to incorporate Catalyst's step-down switching regulator architecture is its CAT4201, a high-efficiency 7W buck LED driver optimised for driving high-brightness, 350mA LEDs at up to 94 percent efficiency.

 

SST (Silicon Storage Technology, Inc) has introduced the 34WA Series of 1.8V high-performance flash memory/RAM combination memory products. The latest device in SST’s ComboMemory family, the 34WA Series supports functions and features, including burst-mode operation for faster performance and address/data bus multiplexing for a lower pin count and smaller device footprint.

The products in the 34WA Series use a very small semiconductor package, measuring just 6mm x 8mm x 1mm, making them the smallest address/data bus multiplex combination memory devices available today. Memory Density/Configuration available include 16Mb flash; 32Mb flash; 32Mb flash + 8Mb PSRAM and 32Mb flash + 16Mb PSRAM.

According to Paul Lui, VP Memory and Special Products at SST, entry-level mobile telephone handsets continue to be significant areas of growth, particularly for emerging regions, but customers aren’t being satisfied by entry-level handsets with basic features even in these regions of the mobile phone market: "All OEMs strive to deliver mobile handsets at aggressive price points, yet still provide strong performance, small size and long battery life", Lui said. "The enhanced feature set, low power consumption and small footprint of the new 34WA ComboMemory Series confirms SST’s commitment to handset OEMs and makes a compelling choice for products targeting the emerging market sector".

The 34WA Series supports burst-mode operation, which allows the data in the devices to be read at high speed, thereby increasing overall system performance. The devices also support address and data bus multiplexing to allow the sharing of I/O pins to reduce package pin count and overall device size. The 1.8V operating voltage of the 34WA Series devices leads to lower system power consumption.

 

29V Input, 4A Peak Output Current Buck Regulator in 8-pin SO8 Power 

The latest addition to Exar’s family of high efficiency step-down switching regulators is a 3A (4A peak) non-synchronous buck regulator, the first device in a planned series of reduced footprint, non-synchronous PowerBlox™ parts featuring integrated Type-II compensation. Exar’s PowerBlox™ solution operates from 5, 9,12,18 & 24 volt supplies.

The PowerBlox™ SP7656 provides features such as adjustable over current protection, adjustable soft start, under voltage lockout, and 1% set point accuracy. A highly versatile dc/dc regulator, the SP7656 combines operation over a wide input range (4.5V to 29V) with extended low output voltage capability (0.6V), making it suitable as both a 5V, 12V or 24V intermediate supply generator and as a low voltage point-of-load power supply. Input feed forward control provides excellent transient response.

Delivering enhanced output accuracy when compared to other currently available monolithic non-synchronous buck regulators, the SP7656 increases efficiency, extends input voltage range and provides lower output voltage capability. Exar has achieved the small package size by integrating loop compensation components and a high speed 600kHz switching frequency, typically 2x that of comparable devices.

The SP7656 is ideal for low duty cycle conversion in industrial systems powered from a loosely regulated secondary voltage tapped off the isolated supply, as well as from the intermediate bus voltages used in telecom systems. Target applications include set top box (PVR/DVR), xDSL CPE equipment, modern digital televisions, or any related systems-applying power architectures that would benefit significantly from single stage conversions up to 4A peak current. The low output voltage capability also makes the SP7656 an ideal choice for a highly accurate sub-1V core supply voltage for modern submicron ASIC, DSP and FPGA devices, typically utilising a 5V or 3.3V system bus as the point-of-load regulation input bus.

Additional info, samples and support hardware

The SP7656 is available in 8-pin SOIC RoHS compliant, lead-free package compatible with JEDEC reflow cycle specifications for lead-free process.

 

Rep/Stockist operation Silicon Design appointed to represent Cswitch Corporation - developer of the Innovative Configurable Switch Array - throughout Europe.

February 7th 2008: The Spectrum Electronics Group has concluded a pan-European Representative agreement with Santa Clara, California based Cswitch™ Corporation, the specialist developer of next-generation configurable solutions for high performance, power efficient platforms.

Cswitch will be represented throughout Europe by Spectrum's pan-European rep/stockist operation, Silicon Design. The company will focus on developing 'institutional relationships' on behalf of Cswitch in key European OEM/CDM accounts. Uniquely, Silicon Design will also provide efficient and cost-effective methods for customers to source prototype and production quantities of Cswitch products.

Announcing the deal with Silicon Design Ed McKernan, co-founder of Cswitch and VP of Business Development, remarked on Spectrum’s extensive European infrastructure, which provides Silicon Design with access to eleven regional offices throughout Europe, and Tier 1 customers in twenty-five countries:

"Since its foundation in the UK in 1994, Spectrum has grown into Europe's leading independent, international sales, marketing and operations (ISMO) company in the field of advanced technology electronic components. I'm confident that Silicon Design has both the ability and the energy to fulfill Cswitch's ambitious growth targets in Europe", McKernan said.

Welcoming the Cswitch/Silicon Design agreement, Spectrum MD Nigel Watts, said that Cswitch has successfully narrowed the performance and density gap between FPGAs and ASICs: "Cswitch worked very closely with many of the world’s leading system manufacturers to develop its Configurable Switch Array architecture. The device combines ASIC performance - bandwidths of up to 100 Gbits/second - with the development cost and time-to-market advantages of an FPGA, truly the best of both worlds", Watts said.