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Thursday, 18 January 2007 |
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Integrated circuits are electrical circuits that arrange transistors, resistors, capacitors, and other components on a single semiconductor die or substrate. The electronic circuits may be arranged into blocks associated with a particular function. A typical integrated circuit design includes a design cycle that comprises various steps which can include physical design and simulation, layout generation, and layout verification. The process of converting specifications of an integrated circuit into a layout is called the physical design which may be performed with computer aided design (CAD) tools or electronic design automation (EDA) systems. Circuit verification may be achieved by simulation and analysis. Static signal integrity analysis is typically used during the design verification stages. |
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Saturday, 13 January 2007 |
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Integrated circuits have widespread applications in electronic systems. Application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and programmable logic devices (PLDs) represent two distinct types of integrated circuits that perform specific logic operations. An application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) is a integrated circuit chip that is custom designed for a specific application, rather than a general-purpose chip such as a microcontroller or microprocessor. Application specific integrated circuits provide users the ability to manufacture products having a proprietary design without having to begin the design at the device level. Application specific integrated circuits ypically include gate arrays and standard cells. ASICs are used extensively throughout digital computers and other types of electronic circuits. |
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Saturday, 06 January 2007 |
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Integrated circuits are used in a wide variety of electronic equipment. Advances in semiconductor manufacturing semiconductor technologies, such as VLSI techniques, have lead to a considerable reduction in the size of electronic products. This has made possible the development of system-on-chip (SOC) products. An SOC integrates a plurality of cores into a single silicon device. An SOC includes a computer processor, various signal processors, a large amount of memory, various clocks, power down circuits, interface, programmable logics, and necessary system controllers all integrated on a single piece of silicon. System on chip technology provides the advantages of cutting development cycle time, while increasing product functionality, performance and quality. |
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Tuesday, 19 December 2006 |
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A phase-locked loop (PLL) is an electronic circuit that controls an oscillator in order to lock the phase of an output signal to the phase of a reference signal. Phase-locked loop systems typically include a phase frequency detector, charge pump and voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) connected in a feedback configuration. The PLL circuit receives an input reference frequency from a signal and outputs a signal having a frequency that is a multiple of the input reference frequency. Phase-locked loops are often used as clock regenerators or frequency synthesizers in digital systems. The PLL circuit locks the output frequency to be in phase with the input frequency. Phase-locked loops are commonly used in mobile communications equipment, modem signal generators, and ADSL applications. |
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Wednesday, 13 December 2006 |
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A field programmable gate array (FPGA) is a general purpose programmable logic device that is customizable by an end user. FPGA circuits are a particular class of general purpose integrated circuits (ICs) that can be configured to perform a wide range of tasks. The basic device architecture of an FPGA consists of an array of configurable logic blocks (CLB) embedded in a configurable interconnect structure and surrounded by configurable I/O blocks (IOB). CLBs typically contain blocks of programmable logic, called look up tables (LUTs), which can be programmed to implement a combinational logic function. FPGAs are capable of implementing large highly complex logic functions, that need not be converted to two-level sum-of-products form to be programmed into these devices. |
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Thursday, 07 December 2006 |
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Digital electronic products, such as digital camera, MP3 player, cellular phone, video camcorder, etc., are required with larger capacity of storage media to satisfy the demand of digital images and music with higher qualities. The removable memory cards allow users to capture and store data on such devices, and easily transport the data between these various devices and a desktop or laptop computer. A memory card using an electrically erasable and writable non-volatile memory and a memory controller which performs an access control for the memory and an external interface control. Flash memory cards of different sizes and specifications have been developed, such as SM (smart media card), MMC (multimedia card), SD (secure digital card), XD (xD piture card), and MS (memory stick). |
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Wednesday, 22 November 2006 |
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PCMCIA cards, also known as PC cards, are a memory card standard set by the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association. PC cards are a common way to connect devices to a personal computer. The PCMCIA cards contain attribute memories which are written to or read from host software for control and monitoring of the card's capability. Many of today's laptop, notebook, desktop computers, and computer peripherals are designed to receive removable devices conforming to the PCMCIA standard. The PCMCIA interface defines a physical size and electrical interconnection for computer peripherals. The size of each PCMCIA device is approximately that of a credit card, and each device connects mechanically and electrically through a standard connector to a host computer. |
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Wednesday, 15 November 2006 |
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A graphics card is a specialized graphics processing unit for a computer system. Graphics processing units (GPU) are commonly used in graphics systems to generate three-dimensional 3D graphics images in response to instructions from a central processing unit. A graphics processor receives primitives and textures, and from them determines the color intensity of individual pixels on the monitor. Graphics primitives may include lines, characters, areas such as triangles and ellipses, and solid or patterned shapes such as polygons, spheres, and cylinders. The typical GPU is a highly complex integrated circuit device optimized to perform graphics computations and write the results to the graphics memory. Modern computers produce graphical output using a sequence of tasks known as a graphics pipeline. |
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Friday, 10 November 2006 |
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Network processors are specialized processor chips designed to process networking applications in real time. Networks are used to distribute information among computer systems. In digital communication systems, data is routinely transmitted over processing devices in a network. In packet-based networks, for example, data is transmitted in discrete quantities known as packets. A packet destined for a remote computer is typically transmitted through multiple intermediate network devices (e.g., routers, switches, or bridges) before reaching its final destination. etwork processors offer real-time processing of multiple data streams, providing enhanced security and IP packet handling and forwarding capabilities. A network processor controls the flow of packets between a physical transmission medium. |
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Wednesday, 25 October 2006 |
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A sound card is an audio processing circuitry mounted on a printed circuit board that plugs into the computer. A personal computer is principally composed of a motherboard provided with at least a central processing unit (CPU), a plurality of memory modules, interface cards, and peripherals. The interface cards that compose the conventional personal computer generally are the sound card, display card, network card, and small computer system interface card. Sound cards may produce a sound representing a prompt or other sound from an ordinary computer program, sounds for video games played on the computer, and downloadable music or sounds. Most sound cards include microphone and line level ports for input of analog audio signals and process audio data for output to external speakers. |
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Wednesday, 18 October 2006 |
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A flexible printed circuit (FPC) is made of a flexible film of resin such as polyimide on which a circuit pattern of copper foil or the like is formed, and is characterized in its flexibility. Printed circuit boards in electronic devices are used for mounting electronic components and connecting circuits, comprising the electronic components, by means of circuit patterns. A flexible printed circuit board is generally used as a printed circuit board for miniaturized electronic devices. A variety of flexible printed circuits are widely used in electronic devices, such as notebook computers, mobile phones and digital cameras. Various electrical connectors are adapted for connecting corresponding flexible printed circuits. A flexible printed circuit generally has a laminate structure comprising a plastic film and a conducting layer. |
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Saturday, 07 October 2006 |
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A microcontroller is a highly integrated chip which performs controlling functions. The microcontroller is essentially a microprocessor adapted for control type applications. They are compact in size and yet retain the computational power of traditional microprocessors, allowing them to be used in a multitude of applications. A typical microcontroller might have a core microprocessor, a memory controller, an interrupt controller, and both asynchronous and synchronous serial interfaces. Within a microcontroller a central processing unit (CPU) having an arithmetic logic unit and a load and store unit or a combination of both is located. Microcontrollers are found in all market segments such as consumer, commercial, PC peripherals, telecommunications, automotive and industrial. |
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Wednesday, 20 September 2006 |
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Microprocessors may implement the technique of overlapping a fetching stage, a decoding stage, an execution stage and possibly a write back stage. A typical microprocessor includes a memory storing a program and various data, a processor core executing the program stored in memory, an external bus interface serving as an interface portion with respect to external bus, a processor bus for interconnecting processor core, memory and external bus interface, and an external event request signal input terminal connected to test circuit. Cache memories can be used to reduce memory access time in response to a speed difference between microprocessors and memories. Pipelined processors are developed to improve or increase the instruction flow through a microprocessor. |
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Tuesday, 12 September 2006 |
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Printed circuit boards are used to electrically connect one or more electronic components. Printed circuit boards are used in many types of electronic systems because they provide an efficient means to mount electrical components and to route signals between the components. A printed circuit board (PCB) typically contains a number of components such as memory chips, processors, I/O chips, resistors, and capacitors. Capacitors are typically embedded in panels that are stacked and connected by interconnection circuitry. The basic portion of a flexible printed circuit board is a film, which is used to support circuits composed of copper pieces. Printed circuit boards are flat boards that electrically connect different components of a circuit through copper tracks called traces. |
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Saturday, 02 September 2006 |
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An integrated circuit (IC) is a collection of electronic components fabricated within a semiconductor device or chip. Integrated circuits are widely used in consumer, commercial and industrial applications. An integrated circuit is a complete electronic circuit, containing transistors, diodes, resistors, and capacitors, along with their interconnecting electrical conductors, contained entirely within a single chip of silicon. Generally, an integrated circuit comprises a substrate upon which a variety of circuit components are formed wherein each of the circuit components are electrically isolated from each other. An integrated circuit includes multiple layers of wiring that interconnect its electronic and circuit components. A semiconductor integrated circuit is generally composed of a plurality of functional blocks. |
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Tuesday, 29 August 2006 |
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Digital signal processors are designed to process digital signals in real time using built in computational units. Digital signal processors are designed to process digital signals in real time using built in computational units. A digital signal processor (DSP) performs computations which generally require large numbers of arithmetic operations to be performed rapidly. Digital signal processing can be performed more rapidly than analog signal processing using techniques such as high-precision and stability processing, pipeline control, and parallel processing. Digital signal processors (DSPs) are becoming prevalent in the electronics industry. Digital signal processors can be found in communications devices, image processors, video processors, and pattern recognition processors. |
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Friday, 18 August 2006 |
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Data processors are utilized for data processing in various devices such as personal computers and portable electronics. Data processors have significantly developed over the last two decades and are now widely used in every facet of digital signal processing (DSP). Microprocessors can be grouped into two general classes, general purpose microprocessors and special purpose microprocessors. A data processing system generally comprises a central processing unit, a program RAM (random access memory) which stores programs and a data RAM which stores data to be processed, and an input-output unit. In a data processor, pipeline processing is frequently employed for improving the performance. Data processing systems typically incorporate memory caches to improve system performance. |
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Circuits and Processors
