January 2004 Embedded News Digest
 

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Dear Reader,

welcome to the January 2004 edition of  MicroController Pros Corporation's Embedded News Digest, your source for microcontroller and embedded system news.

 


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This month's issue:

ARM Acquires Triscend

Holtek: Three New OTPs with LCD controller

Infineon: Let Us Embed Your Cloth and Your Carpet Too

NetSilicon: ARM9 based Micro for Color Laser & Multi-Function Printers

Oxford: ARM7 FireWire Audio Controller for High Quality Sound Systems
Philips Reduces Embedded EEPROM Cell Size by Factor 4

Renesas: H8/38086F 16-Bit Micro with High-Precision Delta Sigma A/D Converter

TI Ships 1GHz DSP

Zilog: Reference Designs for Universal Remote Control


ARM Acquires Triscend

ARM announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Triscend Corporation, a company specializing in configurable system-on-chip (CSoC) devices and customizable microcontrollers (MCUs).  The completion of the acquisition is subject to the fulfillment of certain conditions including approval by the shareholders of Triscend.

Founded in 1997, Triscend is a 41-person, privately-held, venture capital-funded company based in Mountain View, Calif. The acquisition will bring ARM customer-proven MCU platform designs and supporting tools, enabling the company to deliver 32-bit microcontroller solutions to satisfy increasing demand as engineers move to higher performance designs.


Holtek: Three New OTPs with LCD controller

Holtek released three new microcontrollers, namely the HT46R62, HT46R64 and HT46R65, which each contain 2K, 4K and 8K of internal OTP memory and 88, 192 and 384 bytes of internal RAM memory respectively. All 3  devices feature an internal LCD driver for 19 x 4 (HT46R62), 32 x 4 (HT46R64) and 40 x 4 (HT46R65 ) segments, respectively.

Internal features include a Real Time Clock, power down function with wake-up options on all pins of Port A and a programmable Frequency Divider function. A Buzzer Driver Output is also included which is able to directly drive a piezo or similar type buzzer audio device. The Low Voltage Reset and Low Voltage Detector internal functions provide additional protection features in situations where low power supply voltages may occur. A 9- or 10- bit resolution internal A/D converter and a PWM timer are additional features the 3 devices have in common.

The HT46R62 is available in a 56-pin SSOP package type, while the HT46R64 and HT46R65 devices are available in both 56-pin SSOP and 100-pin QFP package types.


Infineon: Let Us Embed Your Cloth and Your Carpet Too

O’Neill Europe - a leading provider of high-quality sportswear and sports gear - unveiled the result of a joint product development project with Infineon: their first ‘wearable electronics’-product. Based on O’Neill’s specifications, Infineon has developed a chip module suitable for integration into a pioneering snowboard jacket. Adapted to withstand rough snowboarding environments, functions such as “mobile telephony by Bluetooth” and “MP3 player” are integrated into the sportswear. The outstanding innovation from O’Neill’s 2004/05 winter collection for the technologically clued-in snowboarder is named “THE HUB”.

Woven into THE HUB snowboard jacket are electrically conductive fabric tracks which connect the chip module to a fabric keyboard and built-in speakers in the helmet. The chip module contains a full-featured MP3 player and a Bluetooth module via which the snowboarder can control a mobile phone. If the snowboarder wants to make a phone call, the stereo system acts as the headset. The microphone is integrated in the collar of the jacket.

Recent studies by the Venture Development Corporation predict worldwide sales worth over 1 billion Euros for the “intelligent textile materials” market by 2007. Since presenting its technology Infineon has discussed firm projects with more than 200 companies from the textile industry. In cooperation with the Vorwerk Teppichwerke carpet plant in Hameln, Germany, Infineon is currently working on an initial prototype of a “smart carpet”.

Unfortunately, the Infineon press release did not go into details by when we can expect the next generation after the smart carpet, which would be the "flying carpet". (Our apologies to Infineon, we simply couldn't resist on that one) ;-)


NetSilicon: ARM9 based Micro for Color Laser & Multi-Function Printers

The NS9775 was architected specifically to address the most cost sensitive portion of the color laser printer market and contains a complete set of the major functional components necessary to develop color printer or MFP controllers. The core is a 32-bit ARM926EJ-S microprocessor operating at speeds up to 200MHz. Featuring tandem, multi pass and monochrome video interfaces, the NS9775 is the first processor to feature four independent JBIG decoders, greatly increasing throughput performance for tandem and dual beam multi-pass laser printers.

To help customers reduce the cost of controllers, the NS9775 also includes a broad array of industry standard interfaces such as 10/100BaseT Ethernet, USB (host or device), IEEE 1284, PCI, serial ports, and a color LCD controller. Featuring DSP instructions, a Java byte code accelerator and a memory management unit (MMU)

The NetStream 2 Tandem Printer Controller reference design kit provides a platform to develop printer and MFP controllers using the NS9775 and dramatically reduces time to market for OEMs. The NetStream 2 reference design kit includes the controller board, a 16/16PPM tandem color print engine, a sample printer driver for Windows supplied by Software 2000, the NET+Works development system for the NS9775, an optimized RTOS and controller firmware library, a high-performance networking library, a detailed BOM, schematics, documentation and support.


Oxford: ARM7 FireWire Audio Controller for High Quality Sound Systems

Oxford launched a dedicated FireWire audio controller IC based on an ARM7TDMI core. Compatible with FireWire 400 (IEEE1394A) and FireWire 800 (IEEE1394B) connections, the OXFW970 chip provides eight digital audio output channels. The OXFW970 uses the bandwidth and quality of service attributes of FireWire to overcome the limitations of alternative USB multi-channel audio solutions, thus enabling the creation of high quality surround sound systems.

The FireWire audio controller can receive and process 32-bit audio data sampled at up to 48 kHz at a streaming speed of up to 100 MB/s. FireWire's power carrying capability also means that the speaker configuration does not require the use of external power supplies.

A highly integrated device in a 100-pin TQFP package, the FireWire audio controller IC uses a combination of its on-board ARM7TDMI processor and high performance buffer manager to implement the 1394 transaction layer. Its link controller complies with IEEE1394-1995, 1394a and 1394b specifications. The OXFW970 supports remote programming of 512 Kb of on-board flash memory over the FireWire bus using firmware and flash programming utilities supplied by Oxford Semiconductor. Integral UART and JTAG ports facilitate debugging. The chip offers eight programmable GPIO pins for the addition of application specific functionality.


Philips Reduces Embedded EEPROM Cell Size by Factor 4

Compared to conventional 0.18 μm EEPROM technology which today achieves a typical cell size of 5 μm2, the cell size of Philips’ new embedded EEPROM cell is only 1.2 μm2 – four times smaller than the conventional EEPROM technology used in the industry.

Philips’ new byte-alterable EEPROM technology provides both  high density and low power consumption, while at the same time being fully compatible with the company’s existing embedded Flash memory technology to allow mixed Flash/EEPROM systems. Philips’ new CMOS18 EEPROM memory option is available for design in now and is supported by all the company’s CMOS18 design tools, including the provision of memory test facilities through a standard JTAG interface.


Renesas: H8/38086F 16-Bit Micro with High-Precision Delta Sigma A/D Converter

The H8/38086F is the first Renesas  microcontroller to incorporate a 2 channel delta sigma type 14-bit A/D converter. At ±274 µV (typ.), the nonlinear characteristic error with a 3.0 V full-scale range has been improved in this A/D converter by a factor of approximately 30 compared with the ±7.3 mV (typ.) of a conventional successive approximation type A/D converter with 10-bit resolution. The delta sigma A/D converter features an operating voltage range of 2.2 V to 3.6 V and a conversion time of 64.1 to 1282 µs. Peripheral functions such as a programmable gain amplifier and reference voltage band-gap reference circuit are also provided, enabling highly accurate A/D conversion to be achieved easily using only an H8/38086F.

Eight versatile power-down modes are also provided, enabling low power consumption by selecting the mode best suited to device operation. Power consumption is a low 900 µA (typ.) at 1.8 V/1 MHz operation, and ultra-low current dissipation of 0.5 µA (typ.) can be achieved in watch mode, in which only the watch function is active.

Other on-chip peripheral functions include 48 Kbytes Flash memory, 2 Kbytes RAM, 2x USARTs, 16-bit output compare timer, 16-bit timer pulse unit, 3 channel 10-bit successive approximation A/D,  an LCD controller/driver with a built-in 3 V constant-voltage circuit for display use, a real-time clock, and an I2C bus.

Three packages are available - an 80-pin QFP, 80-pin TQFP, and 85-pin P-TFLGA.


TI Ships 1GHz DSP

Texas Instruments (TI) announced it is now shipping the world's first 1 GHz digital signal processor (DSP), leveraging the 90 nanometer (nm) process node.  The new 90 nm process has also been applied to the existing TMS320C64xTM 720 MHz parts, enabling customers to save more than half the price on these devices.

The TMS320C6414T, C6415T and C6416T DSPs at 1 GHz offer outstanding performance, providing eight GigaMACs on 8-bit data for video and imaging applications or four GigaMACs on the 16-bit data common to speech and audio applications. For example, a single 1 GHz device can process eight channels of MPEG-2 video transrating, real-time D1 (720x480) resolution or 55 channels of GSM Adaptive Multi Rate (AMR) speech coding in a wireless infrastructure application. 

The 1 GHz C6414T, 6415T and 6416T DSPs are sampling today.  All three devices have 1 MB of on-chip memory, and are differentiated by their various integrated peripherals.  Production pricing starts at $189 for the 1 GHz C6414T in 10k unit quantities, which will be available in 4Q04.  The 720 MHz versions of these devices will also be available with up to a 50% price reduction, including the 90 nm C6415T starting at $115 in 10k unit production quantities. For information on ordering samples, please go to www.ti.com/1ghzsamplingp.  The 1 GHz devices will be demonstrated at the TI Developer Conference in Houston on February 18-20, 2004; for more information, please go to www.ti.com/tidc04mr.


Zilog: Reference Designs for Universal Remote Control

Available in six models, including learning and non-learning versions, the Crimzon RC Bullet Reference Design Kit for Universal Remote Control (URC) applications provides a turnkey reference design URC vendors can use to manufacture branded universal remote controls.

The Crimzon(TM) RC Bullet Reference Design Kits feature both learning and non-learning models with both three-in-one (Cable/Satellite, DVD/VCR, and TV) and six-in-one feature sets (Cable, Satellite, Audio, TV, DVD, VCR) for the North American and European marketplaces.

The reference design supports up to 600 IR codesets, providing the ability for URC manufacturers to offer support for most manufacturers' consumer entertainment equipment.

The new reference design superset includes complete documentation and detailed schematics. URC vendors can take the reference design direct to board layout, packaging, and manufacturing. The kit supports ZiLOG's new Crimzon ZLx16300 and ZLx32300 OTP microcontroller product lines.


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