April 2015 – Page 2

Switching Power Supplies Revamped

April 7, 2015

A big change is coming to a power supply near you.

At least, that’s what Semitrex is promising with their new TRONIUM family of power supply systems on a chip (PSSoCs). They’re doing some things differently, resulting in lower-power – and, in particular, lower-“vampire”-power – bricks.

The first difference is that they’re going capacitive; there’s no transformer. How do they handle breakdown issues? By using a cascade of … Read More → "Switching Power Supplies Revamped"

Hi Bryon, Your readers should be

by Bryon Moyer

April 3, 2015

Hi Bryon, Your readers should be aware that multiple customers are using Mentor Calibre in the physical verification and extraction portions of their MEMS designs. To that point, there is a white paper authored by Mentor and Freescale on how Freescale uses Calibre in their MEMS designs(http://go.mentor.com/3yxal).

When it comes to DRC, there are some unique aspects of MEMS, not the least of which is the need to accurately handle curves. This is quite different than verification of ICs, which use rectilinear shapes, or so-called Manhattan topology, and can really throw DRC … Read More → "Hi Bryon, Your readers should be"

Requirements Modeling and Simulation

by Kevin Morris

April 2, 2015

So you’re working on a design… Are you sure you’re building what was intended? Yes, you’re building what they asked for… or, at least, what you think they asked for, but is that what they wanted?

Requirements can be dicey; they’re based on natural language, which, as we know all too well, is subject to interpretation. According to Argosim, many companies have institutionalized … Read More → "Requirements Modeling and Simulation"