EE Times names DAC3162/DAC3152 "Product of the Week"

Editor's Note

Welcome to this week's EETimes Products Newsletter!

Energy harvesting continues to emerge as a hot new trend in the consumer electronics sector. In fact, IDTechEx research finds that the market for energy harvesting components could reach more than $4 billion in ten years compared to just $79 million in 2009. That includes 250 million sensors powered by an energy harvester (at an average price of $6 per harvester). Applications include numerous consumer electronics devices, including laptops, ebooks and cell phones. The driving force behind the trend is the need to power sensor networks and mobile devices without batteries.

A couple of major chip manufacturers recently introduced new parts to aid in the acceleration of this smart-energy trend. For instance, this week STMicroelectronics introduced a 16-kbit memory that can also harvest enough energy to enable small electronic items using it to become battery-free electronic applications.

Texas Instruments late last month released a harvesting boost charger that features efficiency, low quiescent current, and superior cold-start capability. The bq25504 boost charger manages the extraction of microwatts and milliwatts from solar, thermal, electromagnetic (RF) , and vibration transducers as sources, and manages the storage of the energy in batteries and supercapacitors.

Check them out!

Ismini Scouras
EE Times Products Editor

Product of the Week

TI claims smallest, lowest power, dual, 500-MSPS DACs

The new DACs aim to reduce the cost of wideband transmit systems.

Product News: Editors' Picks

Advanced technology
ADI debuts tactical-grade MEMS
A new tactical-grade inertial-measurement unit (IMU) from Analog Devices Inc. achieves performance rivaling expensive, bulky fiber-optic based units by virtue of micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) chips that are almost eight-times smaller and over 10-times lighter, according to the company.

Analog
In-amp arena gets a new player
Microchip Technology enters instrumentation amplifier market with low-power, self-calibrating MCP6N11

Electromechanical
Miniature snap-action pushbutton switches offer fast switching, longer electric life
Marketed under the brand-name ALCOSWITCH Blue, these miniature switches from TE Connectivity incorporate an innovative snap-action mechanism that ...

Embedded Tools
LDRA tool suite integrates MISRA AC for verification of auto-generated code
LDRA's MISRA AC provides independent verification of the auto-generated code, a critical factor in stringent certification requirements.

FPGAs/PLDs
Latest and greatest Quartus II design software from Altera
In addition to supporting Arria V and Cyclone V FPGAs, the latest version of Altera's Quartus II version 11.1 also offers productivity improvements.

IP/EDA
Apache comes out with an RTL power flow
Power has moved from being a secondary design consideration to a primary one and that requires some new tools and techniques…

Power
Small P-Channel MOSFET raises efficiency, offers smaller package
Diodes Inc. DMP1245UFCL 12V enhancement mode device targets portable products

Processors
ARM announces 8-way graphics core
ARM Holdings plc has announced the next core in its Mali line of graphics processing units, which is intended to start appearing in smartphone system-chips in 2013.

RF/Microwave
Firm releases first handheld software defined radio
Epiq Solutions has announced Matchstiq, which it claims is the world's smallest commercially available software defined radio (SDR) capable of tuning ...

Product How Tos

Hands On: Improve performance in RF transceiver designs
This paper describes ZIF and superheterodyne receiver differential interfaces for the demodulator, IF VGA, mixer, and analog port of the ADC, as well ...

Building a C++ interface for your embedded DBMS
In this Product How-To article, Raima's Jeff Parsons describes the procedures he went through to build a C++ interface for the company's RDM ...

Making capacitive touch sensors water tolerant
In this Product How-To article, Mark Lee of Cypress uses the company's CY8C21434 PSoC to explain the methods by which to integrate water tolerant ...

Get control of ARM system cache coherency with ACE verification
In this Product How-Two article, the Cadence authors describe how to use the company's Verification IP solutions framework to implement ARM's AMBA 4 ...

Making your application code multicore ready
In this product how-to article Vector Fabrics' Paul Stavers describes a more efficient way to parallelize code for embedded multicore designs ...

Fundamentals of Advanced Real-Time Operating Systems

Fundamentals of Measurement

Fundamentals of Solar: Off-Grid

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