EEtimes 060611

TOUCH
AND
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18
EETimes
THE NEWS
SOURCE FOR THE
CREATORS OF
TECHNOLOGY
ISSUE 1603 MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2011 WWW.EETIMES.COM
Tablet wars (aka Computex 2011) 12
June 6, 2011 Electronic Engineering Times 3
CONTENTS JUNE 6, 2011
OPINION
4 Commentary
Is a media tablet a PC?
50 Last Word
Space exploration is a
marathon, not a sprint
NEWS OF THE TIMES
7 Renesas Mobile CEO
banking on LTE for market
share growth
10 Intel Ultrabooks
attack tablet market
12 The tablet wars
(aka Computex 2011)
GLOBAL WATCH
16 ST keeps faith in wireless
big chips in the middle
COVER STORY
18 Touch mania
swipes across markets
INTELLIGENCE
26 Algae yields hydrogen fuel
28 HP discovers memristor
mechanism
DESIGN + PRODUCTS
Global Features
31 3-D IC design: New
possibilities for wireless
33 Creating stereoscopic 3-D
for mobile devices
37 Under the Hood: Wide
Bluetooth, Wi-Fi adoption
seen in handsets
41 Planet Analog: Are you
violating your op amps
input common-mode range?
EE LIFE
47 Pop Culture: Engineering for
kindergarteners
48 Investigations: Knee-deep
in exploding mice
26
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4 Electronic Engineering Times June 6, 2011
COMMENTARY
Some analysts categorize media
tablets separately and are projecting
that the tabs will undercut PC sales in
2011. Market research firm IHS iSup-
pli, for example, recently reported that
first-quarter PC sales slipped a bit from
last years first-quarter numbers, in
part because of rising interest in
media tablets.
Clearly, the media tablet
is a phenomenon that is
making a big impact on
the PC market. Whether
its lifting or hurting that
market, however, depends
on your perspective.
So is a media tablet a PC
or not? This being 2011, it
might be useful to turn to
Wikipedia, the default
reservoir of knowledge on
all topics, which defines
the personal computer as
any general-purpose com-
puter whose size, capabili-
ties and original sales
price make it useful for
individuals, and which is
intended to be operated
directly by an end user
with no intervening computer opera-
tor. It continues:
PCs include any type of computer that is
used in a personal manner. This is in
contrast to the batch processing or time-
sharing models, which allowed large,
expensive mainframe systems to be
used by many people, usually at the
same time, or large data processing sys-
tems, which required a full-time staff to
operate efficiently.
By that definition, a tablet would
appear to qualify. But so would a lot of
other things that arent mainframes
(does anyone use main-
frames anymore?). An
iPod might make the cut.
The Wikipedia defini-
tion goes on to say:
A personal computer may
be a desktop computer or
[a] mobile type, for exam-
ple a laptop, tablet PC or
handheld PC (also called
a palmtop) that is smaller
than a laptop.
Palmtop? Was this writ-
ten in 1996? Someone
really ought to take
advantage of the collabo-
rative nature of
Wikipedia and update its
PC definition in language
recognizable by todays reader.
The Wikipedia entry includes a sub-
section for tablet PCs:
A tablet PC is a notebook or slate-shaped
mobile computer. Its touchscreen or
graphics tablet/screen hybrid technology
allows the user to operate the computer
with a stylus or digital pen, or a finger-
tip, instead of a keyboard or mouse. The
form factor offers a more mobile way to
interact with a computer. Tablet PCs
are often used where normal notebooks
are impractical or unwieldy, or do not
provide the needed functionality.
Aha! Right? Well, not exactly.
For one thing, the photo used to illus-
trate the tablet PC is an HP Compaq
tablet PC with a rotating/removable
keyboard. The photo was taken in 2006.
And many people tend to differentiate
between a tablet PC (read, runs Win-
dows) and a media tablet, such as the
iPad or Android-based tabs.
With the rapid evolution of technolo-
gy and rising prominence of mobility,
the lines between product categories
are blurring beyond recognition. Good
luck, these days, drawing distinctions
among notebook PCs, netbooks, tablets
and even, in some cases, e-readers.
Does it really matter? Yes and no.
Yes, because while the PC markets
usual suspectsAcer, Dell, HP and the
likeare all scrambling to put out com-
pelling tablets, so are a lot of other com-
panies. They include handset vendors
like Research in Motion and Motorola,
electronics giants like Samsung, and
evendepending on your definition of
a tabletbooksellers like Amazon and
Barnes and Noble. (Apple is obviously
far and away the leader in tablets, but
while Apples roots are in personal com-
puting, today its a consumer electronics
vendor that happens to sell personal
computers [dont let Apple hear you call
its computers PCs].)
In another sense, though, it doesnt
really matter whether a tablet is a PC.
To IC Insights point, tablets, like tradi-
tional PCs, consume a lot of chips.
Whether you consider them PCs or you
dont, their popularity is a good thing
for the chip market.
How good a thing? Again, it depends
on your perspective, since the tablet,
unlike the traditional, Wintel PC, has
opened the game to a whole host of
ARM-based processors. And all of them,
at this very moment, are fighting hard
for market share.
p
By Dylan McGrath (dylan.mcgrath@
ubm.com), editor of EETimes.com.
A new report published by market research
firm IC Insights Inc. postulates that PC sales
will grow by 13 percent in 2011, thanks in part
to strong projected growth of Apple Inc.s iPad
and other media tablets. The report calls to
the forefront the question of whether tablets
belong in the PC category or are something
else entirely.
Is a media tablet a PC?
Does it matter?
Good luck,
these days,
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HIGHEST SYSTEM PERFORMANCE BEST PRICE / PERFORMANCE LOWEST SYSTEM COST
2011 WINNER
OF THE TIMES
Qualcomm
23%
Other
10%
TI
14%
Infineon
8%
ST-Ericsson
7%
MediaTek
7%
Broadcom
6%
Samsung
4%
Maxim
3%
Renesas
3%
RFMD 3%
STMicro 2%
Skyworks 2%
Omnivision 2%
Marvell 2%
Aptina 2%
Freescale 2%
National
1%
Synaptics
1%
Avago
1%
Cypress
1%
CSR
1%
Toshiba
1%
Spreadtrum
1%
Sony
1% Triquint
2%
Top-tier cellular chip vendor rank by 2010 revenue
SOURCE: Forward Concepts
News
Renesas Mobile CEO banking on
LTE for market share growth
By Junko Yoshida
TOKYO Ikuyo Kawasaki, CEO of
mobile chip vendor Renesas Mobile
Corp., doesnt just contradict the stereo-
type of the reticent, retiring and
inscrutable Japanese executive. He
knocks it clean off the shelf and then
kicks it around the office.
Renesas Mobile is only six months
old but is already making noisemuch
of it generated by Kawasaki. The chief
executive is outspoken in his ambition
to turn the company into a credible
competitor against Qualcomm, with a
20 to 30 percent share of the global
handset market within the next few
years (up from a negligible share today).
The catalyst for that growth, Kawasa-
ki says, will be LTE. With his company
wielding a proven and trusted LTE pro-
tocol stack obtained from Nokia, the
CEO likes his odds.
Renesas Mobile, created through
Renesas Electronics acquisition of
Nokias modem business, already has
1,900 employees, of whom only 550 are
Japanese nationals. While no market
analyst would put Renesas Mobile in
the same class with Qualcomm today,
none would underestimate Kawasaki,
the architect behind the Renesas-Nokia
modem business merger. That deal sur-
prised everyone and put Kawasaki on
the industrys radar.
But his company has a long way to
go. In a ranking of top-tier cellular chip
vendors by 2010 revenue released last
week, Will Strauss, president of For-
ward Concepts, estimated Renesas
Mobiles share at 3 percent.
Theres no question that Qualcomm
is No. 1 in modems for 3G, HSPA+ (and
CDMA); TI is No. 2 in 3G and HSPA
(thanks to Nokia); and Renesas should
take over much of that after 2012, but
not much before then, Strauss stated.
Samsung currently leads the field
in LTE, ahead of Qualcomm and LG
Electronics, Strauss added, but the LTE
landscape continues to shift. While 19
vendors have announced LTE baseband
INTERVIEW
NEWS OF THETIMES
chips, Strauss noted, only a few are
actually shipping. And a single big
order (like HTCs Thunderbolt) can
change the LTE ranking.
The 2010 cell phone chip market
totaled $55 billion; the figure includes
results for the second-tier companies
that make chips for Bluetooth, GPS,
power management and the like.
By choosing Nokias modem business
as its acquisition target, Renesas tipped
its hand, according to a Japanese chip
company executive who asked not to be
identified. Renesas in essence told the
whole world that NTT Docomo, while
still the most important client/partner
in the Japanese mobile world, is no
longer a partner Renesas can depend on
to advance and execute its own global
strategy, the exec said.
Kawasaki, 53young, by Japanese
standards, for a top executiveappar-
ently isnt cowed by the common wis-
dom. An EE with degrees from Tokyo
University and Washington State Uni-
versity, Kawasaki joined Hitachi in 1982
as a microcontroller designer. He led
several microprocessor development
projects, including the TRON, SH and
SH-Mobile efforts. After a brief stint at
NTT Docomo to lead the overseas hand-
set business team in 2008, Kawasaki
transferred back to Renesas Electronics
and became a corporate executive.
EE Times sat down with Kawasaki at
Renesas Mobile headquarters here last
week for an exclusive interview, during
which the CEO answered our questions
with a forthrightness not usually asso-
ciated with a Japanese senior executive.
Even when he disagrees, Kawasaki
doesnt quibble.
EE Times: With all due respect, today
there are many commercially available
licensable cores and protocol stacks for
LTE. How is yours different?
Ikuyo Kawasaki: Developing a new
modem technology is no trivial task.
Barriers to entry still remain high.
Typically, you start developing a new
modem technology in academia, work-
ing your way through a collaborative
forum like 3GPP [the 3rd Generation
Partnership Project] to develop a stan-
dard. Those who participate in the
3GPPour staff originally from Nokia
are also active membersforesee where
the new standard will land, perhaps five
years out.
Then, you work in partnerships with
network infrastructure vendors like
Ericsson, Nokia-Siemens, etc., to match
up the specs. They see the technology
on the market three years out.
Then, you begin working with opera-
tors and build the network together.
Again, some of our Nokia veterans
have established key interfaces with
operators throughout the world.
By the time you sit down with your
mobile handset clients to do business,
much of the future directionand
the fate of design winshas been pre-
determined.
EE Times: At Mobile World Congress
earlier this year, Renesas Mobile
announced a mobile application proces-
sor using a dual-core implementation of
the ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore and Imagi-
nation Technologies multicore Pow-
erVR series 5XT MP graphics
technology. That sounds a lot like many
application processors were going to
see on the market in the coming
months. Wheres your edge?
Kawasaki: Before talking about the
application processor itself, let me talk
about the cloud era we are entering.
The LTE network, at 100 Mbits/second,
will essentially connect to cloud servic-
es not just smartphones and media
tablets, but automobiles, game consoles,
digital cameras. Youll soon see every
client devicewell beyond the
phonewith an LTE modem.
Just as Qualcomm understands the
telephone business, we believe that
Renesas Electronics understands sys-
tems businesses. Our application
processor will be designed into a num-
ber of platforms, including cars, cam-
eras, game consoles and other digital
consumer devices across the board.
EE Times: When do you expect to see
an LTE modem designed into devices
other than telephones?
Kawasaki: In 2013 and beyond.
EE Times: Many in the semiconduc-
tor industry have talked about a plat-
form business as a concept for many
years. But ST-Ericsson CEO Gilles
Delfassy recently said that many OEMs
have begun changing their behavior
from buying components [from several
suppliers] to [using] pre-integrated plat-
form chips from a single source. This
trend has become increasingly clear
only in the last year or so, according to
Delfassy. Do you agree?
Kawasaki: Yes, absolutely. Our cus-
tomers are no longer interested in hand-
picking individual components. They
tell us to bring the entire platform solu-
tion, including everything from modem
to application processor and connectivi-
ty chips, all thoroughly tested to work
well as a smartphone platform.
EE Times: I dont see Renesas SH
core in your application processor.
Whatever happened to that?
Kawasaki: Its invisible to people,
but its still there. SH functions as a
multimedia controller, controlling
graphics and displays.
The operating system, however, runs
on ARM. As long as our customers use
the SH core, we will leave it in there,
but once it becomes unnecessary well
take it out.
EE Times: Where are you manufac-
turing your modem and application
Youll soon see
every client device
well beyond the
phonewith an LTE
modem
Ikuyo Kawasaki
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NEWS OF THETIMES
processor chips, and which geometry
are you using?
Kawasaki: Our current modem chip
and application processor both use a
45-nm CMOS process and are manufac-
tured in two places: TSMC and Renesas
Naka fab. [The Naka fab was damaged
by the recent earthquake.]
Our new single-chip modem/applica-
tion processor will be mass-produced in
2012 at TSMC using a 28-nm process
technology.
EE Times: What do you see as Rene-
sas Mobiles challenge in the medium
term?
Kawasaki: Right now, were getting a
lot of traction for our mobile SoCs.
Were bombarded with requests. We
also laid out our road map to 2013 to
our customers.
Our challenge is all about execu-
tionmaking sure to develop products
according to specs and on time.
EE Times: What about your long-
term plans?
Kawasaki: Once our chips begin pene-
trating the mobile handset market for
LTE, we would like to contribute to the
industry by helping to establish a mar-
ket where LTE chips get designed into a
variety of devices other than phones, all
connected to cloud services. Whether
with machine-to-machine or client
devices for cloud services, we would like
to take a leadership role in the new era.
EE Times: Over the last six months,
what have you learned from your Nokia
colleagues?
Kawasaki: Nokia has brought us a
culture and infrastructure that are truly
global. Now at Renesas Mobile, you
could have a boss in Helsinki. And
when you need help for your team, you
dont have to think twice about getting
someone from Bangalore.
They work together as a team
remarkably well over such a diverse
geography and so many time zones.
We have teams in Finland, Denmark,
the U.K., France, Germany, China, India,
Taiwan and the United States, in addi-
tion to Japan.
And obviously, most of our employ-
ees now need to be able to communi-
cate in English.
p
Intel Ultrabooks attack tablet market
By Rick Merritt
PLATFORMS
STILL LACKING a design win in a top-
tier tablet, Intel Corp. is taking another
approach: pushing down the power and
size of notebook computers. Meet the
Ultrabook, a slim, low-power laptop
Intel described last week at the Compu-
tex trade show in Taiwan.
The Ultrabook is a work in progress.
Early versions will arrive in cases just
20 mm thick and price points under
$1,000 using versions of Intels 32-nm
Sandy Bridge processor. Asustek will be
among the companies to ship the sys-
tems, with its UX21 debuting before the
end of the year.
We are very much aligned with
Intels vision of the Ultrabook, Asustek
chairman Jonney Shih said in scripted
comments at an Intel keynote at Compu-
tex. Transforming the PC into an ultra-
thin, ultraresponsive device will change
the way people interact with their PC.
The Sandy Bridge chips, shipping lat-
er this year, will be Intels first to put an
X86 and graphics core on the same die,
sharing cache memory over a ring bus.
Archrival Advanced Micro Devices is
sampling similar parts.
Ultrathin, low-power laptops run-
ning integrated processors have been
around for years. Intel aims to push the
envelope on the concept with new
processors dedicated to such systems.
The move comes at a time when lead-
ing tablets such as the Apple iPad,
Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab
and RIM PlayBook all have adopted
ARM-based chips. Intel launched a net-
book and tablet division last year, but to
date it has only garnered a handful of
second-tier tablet design wins.
The Ultrabook concept both shows
Intels frustration at falling behind mar-
ket trends and gives a gutsy bring it
on call to leading tablet makers.
Recently, Intel refocused its road map
toward mobile systems for both its Core
and Atom chips in an effort to catch up.
Ultrabook road map
In 2012, Intel will ship versions of its
next-generation Ivy Bridge processors
for notebooks using its recently
announced 22-nm process technology
with trigate transistors. The 3-D transis-
tors will provide gains in Mips/watt and
support new chip- or system-level fea-
tures that Intel has not yet disclosed.
By the end of 2012, as many as 40 per-
cent of shipping consumer portable PCs
will be Ultrabooks, Intel predicts.
A third step toward Ultrabooks will
come in 2013, when Intel ships Haswell,
a second generation of 22-nm chips
using a new microarchitecture. With
Haswell, Intel will shift its notebook
design point from the current, 30- to 40-
W operating target range down to
about 10 to 20 W.
Ultrabooks are designed for
Microsoft Windows and Apples
MacOS. Well look at Android if our
customers ask for it, said Erik Reid,
general manager of mobile client plat-
forms at Intel.
We believe the changes Intel is mak-
ing to its road maps, together with
strong industry collaboration, will
bring about an exciting change in per-
sonal computing over the next few
years, said Sean Maloney, Intels new
general manager for China. Maloney
made the case that USB 3.0 and Thun-
derbolt, both emerging in PCs now, are
complementary I/O technologies.
Also at Computex, Intel showed
smartphone and tablet reference
designs for its 32-nm Medfield, an
Atom-based system-on-chip. The smart-
phone will run the Gingerbread version
of Android; the tablet will run Honey-
comb, still being ported to the X86.
Intel also showed tablet designs
using Oak Trail (Z670), a two-chip Atom
platform based on 45-nm technology.
And it talked about Cedar Trail, its next
Atom-based platform for netbooks.
p
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NEWS OF THETIMES
The tablet wars (aka Computex 2011)
By Robert Hollingsworth
IMAGE
GALLERY
THE CURRENT ROSE in Taipei, Taiwan, last week on the 31st
edition of Computex, the second largest computer show in the
world. The show attracted more than 2,000 exhibitors and an
estimated 120,000 visitors to this tiny island. While no one can
deny that this years crop of products is playing catch-up to the
wildly successful Apple iPad, it is clear that creative minds are
not relying entirely on duplication of the Apple formula to win
consumer dollars.
Acer, Samsung
First, lets start with a very good pair of tabletsthe Acer Iconia
and Samsung Galaxy Tabthat stand up well to form, fit, and
function comparisons with the market leader in this category.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab seemed to be a better solution for
high-resolution activities like gaming, but since we couldnt
perform side-by-side comparisons, well call this one a draw.
Both solutions fit the basic definition of a tablet these days, and
clearly both have been designed as high-quality products.
Asus
The Asus Eee Pad Transformer appears to be an alternative
designed for those of us who just cannot surrender the trusty
keyboard in favor of touchscreen typing. At first glance, the
Transformer looks like a typical netbook or notebook, but the
base/keyboard is really a docking station for the screen, which
can be detached and then used as a tablet. When the screen is
attached, not only can you type as if the device were a notebook,
but the dock charges the tablet and offers USB ports so you can
also attach additional standard peripherals.
More Asus
But the Asus guys were not finished. They also developed a
platform, called the Padfone, that combines a tablet with a
phone. The phone can be used conventionally for calling and
texting, but when you want to explore the Internet or use a
full-size tablet device for any application, you can install the
phone in its customized slot, and the tablet taps the phone for
connectivity. A single SIM card in the phone serves both the
phone and the tablet.
The Acer Iconia tablet.
The Samsung Galaxy tablet.
A diagram of the Asus Eee Pad Transformer.
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NEWS OF THETIMES
Fujitsu
The Fujitsu tablet PC solutionthe only one of these devices
that can truly be called a tablet PC, since it is an Intel CPU
machine running Windowsaccomplishes the trick of
appearing to be a tablet by using a clever hinged mechanism
that lets the screen be used as a traditional notebook or, when
reversed, as a true tablet PC. Its heavier than the other
alternatives, but it shows how a PC can still provide legacy
functionality while offering a touchscreen interface.
Viewsonic
Viewsonics demo of its Viewpad solution emphasized
connectivity between the tablet and existing high-resolution
monitors. Many of the other tablets shown at Computex
support the same HDMI interface, enabling monitors and TVs
to be connected to the tabs, but Viewsonic seemed to be the
only vendor showing off such connectivity as a standard part
of its story. Viewsonics mascot Gouldian finches also stood
out as they wandered the Nangang Convention Center, trying
to attract traffic to its booth. Other vendors relied on the
more traditional trade show technique, dressing attractive
young women in plastic clothing, to achieve the same result.
Robert Hollingsworth is senior vice president of SMSC, a
semiconductor company based in Hauppauge, N.Y.
The Asus Eee Pad Transformer.
The Asus Padfone.
Fujitsus
hinged
tablet.
Viewsonics Viewpad.
Global
WATCH
BUSINESS
ST keeps faith in wireless
big chips in the middle
By Junko Yoshida
As its rivals
scramble to strike
M&A deals and
integrate acquired
IP, ST-Ericsson has
been there, done
that, notes CEO
Gilles Delfassy
growth is in wireless.
ST-Ericsson, built on a strong foun-
dation, has made a transition to the
best-in-class modems and application
processors, Bozotti said. He was refer-
ring to the new Nova ARM-based app
processors and Thor modems, in addi-
tion to NovaThor, which combines a
modem and app processor on one chip.
Delfassy described the customer
response to the various products as
very strong.
Components to platform chips
South Korean giant Samsung was the
first customer for ST-Ericssons Thor
modem chip, having designed it into the
Galaxy 4Gthe first HSPA+ 4G smart-
phone capable of theoretical peak down-
load speeds of up to 21 Mbits/second.
There are more customers for the
Thor chip, Delfassy said, though he
would not identify them.
Meanwhile, ST-Ericsson has signed up
five customers, including Nokia, for the
NovaThor dual-core U8500 single-chip
modem/app processor, scheduled for
launch in the second half, Delfassy said.
ST-Ericsson calls Thor the industrys
most advanced multimode modem
solution (LTE, FDD/TDD, HSPA+, TD,
3G, 2G) available for handsets. The
design leverages modem-related intel-
lectual property amassed from the com-
panys joint venture partners.
In 2009, ST-Ericsson had six differ-
ent flavors of legacy modems (includ-
ing one from NXP, another acquired
from Nokia and three from the former
Ericsson Mobile Platform), Delfassy
said. It has taken ST-Ericsson almost
two years to sort out its embarrassment
of riches, settle on its preferences and
improve its operational efficiency.
Delfassy said Ericssons engineering
team had taken a leadership role in the
process and had complemented its own
modem technology with NXPs Vector
processor, whose architecture the team
assessed as very clean.
While the so-called platform strategy
has long been a mantra among mobile
chip suppliers, only in the last year have
many OEMs begun changing their
behavior from buying components
NEW YORK As fellow European
chip maker NXP Semiconductors stakes
its turnaround on what one of its senior
executives calls a no big chip in the
middle strategy, STMicroelectronics is
betting its future on a much broader
product portfolio. STs plans include
such big chips in the middle as digital
TV SoCs and ST-Ericssons multimode
modem/application processor.
ST CEO Carlo Bozotti, six years into
his tenure as successor to the legendary
Pasquale Pistorio, appears firmly in con-
trol of his companys destiny. Bozotti
looked confident and relaxed as he ban-
tered onstage with members of his man-
agement team at STs recent Investor
and Analyst Day here.
Bozotti has reason to feel upbeat. STs
first-quarter results showed a solid start,
with net revenue of $2.5 billion and a
gross margin of 39.1 percent, helped by
the companys strong growth in analog,
MEMS and microcontroller revenue (a
38 percent increase over the year-ago
figure). But STs wireless revenue
dropped 34 percent as ST-Ericssons
legacy products suffered a bigger-than-
expected decline in the market.
Clearly, Bozottis turnaround plan is
only halfway through to completion.
Gilles Delfassy, president and CEO of
ST-Ericsson (born of the merger of Erics-
son Mobile Platforms and ST-NXP Wire-
less), is aware of the challenges. The
status of the business for which he is
responsible is not at all where it
should be, Delfassy said, adding that
hitting the publicly promised break-
even target in the second quarter of
2012 is not going to be easy.
Nonetheless, Bozotti declared strong
support for ST-Ericsson. While ST has
targeted four growth areas, including
energy, health care, trust (security) and
smart devices, Bozotti said the real
MARKETS
STs ARM-based DTV platform leverages ST-Ericsson IP
By Junko Yoshida
NEW YORK With Taiwanese IC
suppliers like MediaTek and Mstar rack-
ing up design wins among Chinas con-
sumer electronics OEMs and ODMs, the
set-top box and digital TV businesses
hold less revenue potential, and thus
less appeal, for many Western chip
companies. The struggling financials of
Trident Microsystems and Zoran Corp.
in recent quarters are a case in point.
Broadcom, however, remains com-
mitted to the business, and Geneva-
based STMicroelectronics plans to keep
up its competitive position against
Broadcom with an offensive aimed at
digital TV, including Internet-connected
TVs and 3-D TVs.
At STs recent Investor and Analyst
Day event here, CEO Carlo Bozotti cited
DTV as among a handful of product
areas considered central to the the top-
line evolution of the companys auto-
motive, consumer, computer and
communications infrastructure busi-
ness. Other growth drivers, he said,
include STs Power architecture-based
32-bit microcontroller for automobiles;
ST-developed, royalty-free display ports;
and computer peripheral chips.
STs turnaround tactics over the past
few years have included a review of the
product portfolio, a focused approach to
R&D, and the restructuring of manufac-
turing operations, according to Bozotti.
One thing ST has done well is to exe-
cute the genuine digital convergence
of IP cores and SoC blocks developed by
different groups of the company, partic-
ularly ST-Ericssons app processor
development team and STs home enter-
tainment and display (HED) group.
The HED group, headed by ST senior
executive vice president Philippe Lam-
binet, is switching its processing core
from the ST40 (based on the Hitachi-
developed SH4 core) to ARM in its Gen
4 platform, designed for open Internet-
connected TV and scheduled for rollout
in 2012. ST-Ericsson has already ported
the ARM core to its ASIC library; the
team mapped the high-level descrip-
tion, trimmed it and optimized it to a
high-performance low-power process,
thus hardening the core, said Gilles
Delfassy, president and CEO of ST-Erics-
son. We are sharing that with ST, he
said. Meanwhile, ST-Ericsson didnt
have to develop its own digital video or
audio codecs, instead acquiring vetted
cores from STs HED group.
That strategy avoids the duplication
of engineering effort to optimize cores or
develop specific blocks, and thus short-
ens the development cycle. Its a move
straight out of Broadcoms playbook.
And it demonstrates that if a company is
disciplined, a diversified product portfo-
lio neednt dilute the companys market
presence but in fact can strengthen it.
Lambinet said his groups Gen 4
Newman chip reuses a block designed
for an ST-Ericsson chip. Using a dual-
core 1.2-GHz ARM Cortex-A9, ST-Erics-
son developed the core for its own SoC,
which won a design slot in the Samsung
Galaxy S II. Other notable blocks in the
Newman chip include quad-core Mali
graphics engines; motion-corrected
temporal interpolation and deinterlace
blocks that ST gained through its 2007
acquisition of Genesis Microchip; and
3-D video, as well as 2-D to 3-D conver-
sion capabilities.
Set-top box with a big screen
In response to an analyst question, Lam-
binet said theres still money to be
made in TV chips and asserted that STs
deep set-top expertise would strengthen
its Internet-connected TV solutions.
After all, connected TV is a set-top
box with a big screen, he said. Thats
why we think both ST and Broadcom
will do well in the growing Internet-
connected TV market, whereas a com-
pany like Trident, with much less
history in set-tops, will struggle.
Lambinet acknowledged that the cap-
tive TV chip market remains strong but
predicted that the sector will open up to
merchant vendors over time. Some TV
makers hit hard by the March earth-
quake in Japan have turned to ODMs
elsewhere in Asia as they struggle to get
their own plants back online, he noted.
p
[from several suppliers] to [using] pre-
integrated platform chips from a single
source, said Delfassy.
Pointing out that such consolidation
validates ST-Ericssons belief in the wis-
dom of a complete platform approach,
Delfassy said most of its competitors
have been scrambling to accomplish
M&A deals or shopping around for
modem and other IP. The flurry of such
activity in recent months has included
Intels purchase of Infineons modem
business, Nvidias Icera acquisition,
Broadcoms takeover of Beceem and
Qualcomms purchase of Atheros (for the
latters connectivity portfolio).
While the mobile chip market
remains cutthroat, Delfassy said it
would be a challenge for its competi-
tors to integrate newly acquired IP,
whereas ST-Ericsson has already been
through that. He added that seven out
of nine top handset vendors [in value]
are engaged with us despite the compa-
nys fiscal setback.
There are a lot of reasons to believe
in a great recovery soon, he said.
p
Touch mania
swipes across markets
By R. Colin Johnson
TOUCHSCREENS HAVE BEEN available since the days of
cathode-ray tubes, but the technology didnt really catch on
with consumers until mobile phone makers adopted it to
solve the tiny-button problem. Now touchscreen smart-
phones and tablets collectively constitute the fastest-growing
electronics market segment.
According to DisplaySearch (Santa Clara, Calif.), shipments
of touchscreen tablets are forecast to reach 60 million units in
2011 and could top 260 million units by 2016. Add to that the
more than 400 million mobile phone touchscreens predicted
by IHS iSuppli Corp. (El Segundo, Calif.), and the total market
could top $10 billion this year (see sidebar, page 22).
Touchscreens have been around for a long time, but they
were only popular in business and industrial settings, such
as food service, airport kiosks and industrial keypads, said
Rhoda Alexander, director of monitor research at IHS iSuppli.
The real transition for consumers was when Apple moved
into smartphones and then tablets. Before then, consumer
touchscreens didnt work very well, because they had to oper-
ate a standard OS. But with the move to smartphones and
tablets, operating systems like iOS have enabled a very touch-
friendly user interface.
Googles Android OSthe first major competitor to Apples
iOS-did not support multitouch at introduction, but the lat-
est incarnation accommodates a wide array of multitouch ges-
tures. Some of themincluding spin, thrust and sliceare
unique to Android; all will work identically on any Android
smartphone or touchscreen tablet. The BlackBerry Tablet OS
and Windows Phone OS have similarly become touch-enabled.
Handset makers used to give us a long list of obstacles to
adopting touchscreens, but when Apple introduced the
iPhone all those obstacles suddenly seemed surmountable,
said Andrew Hsu, technology strategist at Synaptics Inc.
(Santa Clara, Calif.). Synaptics began as an evangelist for the
benefits of touchpads as a substitute for a PC mouse but has
since reinvented itself as a touchscreen controller supplier for
mobile handsets. It claims a number of major design wins,
including one in Googles Nexus One smartphone.
Just a handful of contrary trends threaten the touchscreen
industry. Foremost are competing technologies that deliver a
similar user experience without the expensive touchscreen
hardware, such as the 3-D gesture recognition made possible
by Microsofts Kinect gaming interface, which uses cameras
and pattern recognition to sidestep the need for the sensors
required by handheld controllers. Kinect-like 3-D gesture
recognition, using infrared rangefinder technology Microsoft
acquired from Canesta, is being downsized for Windows
phones and tablets. Armed with a touch-enabled version of
Windows that works across all device sizesfrom its own 40-
inch Surface to its licensed touchscreen tablets and smart-
phonesMicrosoft could redefine the touchscreen landscape.
Meanwhile, all the LCD makers are retooling their manu-
facturing lines to incorporate touchscreen sensors directly
COVER STORY
Resistive
50%
Projected
capacitive
31%
Other
5%
Combo 2%
Infrared 2%
Digitizer 1%
On-cell 1%
Others 0.1%
In-cell 0.02%
Source: DisplaySearch 2010 touchpanel market analysis
2009 touchscreen technology
market share by revenue
Acoustic
3%
Optical
imaging
5%
Surface
capacitive
5%
Touch sensor layer
One layer of glass or
two layers of plastic,
patterned with a
matrix of overlapping
wires made from a
transparent conducting
material.
Display panel
Utilizes one of
several types of
LCD or OLED
technologies.
Touch controller
One or more ICs
(e.g., Atmels maXTouch
controller) that
connect to the
sensing matrix on
the touch sensor
layer, and
communicate touch
coordinates to the
phone or tablet
processor.
Protective cover
Made of glass
(e.g., Gorilla glass)
or plastic. Does not
usually contain any
electronics or
sensing wires.
Touchscreens consist of a transparent sensor layer attached
directly to the controller chip and sandwiched between a top
glass cover and the display on the bottom.
SOURCE: Atmel
Flexible plastic overlay
ITO X-layer
Flexible insulating dots
ITO Y-layer
Stable base layer
LCD
Glass/film
Glass/film
ITO
ITO
LCD
PSA
Y sensors
X

s
e
n
s
o
r
s
Typical layer stacks for resistive (left) and capacitive (right) screens.
SOURCE: Cypress
Touchscreens are
evolving toward
allowing multiple
finger touches to
manipulate objects
on-screen in much
the same way objects
might be handled on
a real desktop.
COVER STORY
into their displays, a move that would eliminate the need for
todays OEM add-ons. Samsung and Nokia, for instance, have
already integrated touchscreens into organic LED displays for
their respective Galaxy S and N8 smartphones.
Alternative materials for integrated touchscreen sensors
are also on the horizon, including Cambrios Technologies
ClearOhm transparent conductors, using silver nanowires;
C3Nanos carbon nanotube films; 3Ms copper-mesh films;
repurposed polyethylenedioxythiophene conductive poly-
mers; and epitaxial graphene films from a variety of vendors.
All aim to slash the cost of touch sensors over the increasing-
ly rare indium tin oxide (ITO) used for touch sensors today.
Supply chain
Touchscreens runaway market appeal has given rise to a
mature worldwide supply chain in just a few years, encom-
passing the manufacturing plants in Taiwan and Japan where
the transparent sensors are fabricated; the U.S. and European
manufacturers of the controller chips that translate changes in
resistance or capacitance into finger-down locations; and mod-
ule makers and system integrators that add the clear cover,
laminate the transparent films and integrate the electronics.
Legacy, resistive touchscreen technology uses two conduc-
tive polymers on separate layers that can be deformed to
touch each other wherever a finger or stylus touches the top
layer. Resistive controllerswhich are available off the shelf
from Analog Devices, Texas Instruments, STMicroelectronics
and other mixed-signal chip makersare relatively simple
and very accurate, but they do not usually recognize multiple
touches. Divergent architectures have been developed for
resistive touchscreens, using varying numbers of connecting
wires (such as four-wire or eight-wire) to make the task sim-
pler or more accurate for specific applications.
Touchscreen technology is extremely diverse, with many
methods specialized for different applications; but in general
resistive is the legacy technology, while projected capacitive has
recently become the industry leader, said Jenny Colegrove, vice
president for emerging display technologies at DisplaySearch.
Projected capacitive touchscreens rule the roost in high-
end mobile devices. Smart appliances and security keypads
have no real need for capacitive touchscreens, however, and
for some applications even resistive touchscreens are
overkill. Resistive touchscreens are still popular because of
[the technologys] maturity and low price point, whereas pro-
jected capacitive still has some issues with yields and the lam-
ination process for large-scale screens, said IHS iSupplis
Alexander. As long as you have a variety of screen sizes,
application environments, price points and use cases for
these devices, you are still going to need a variety of touch-
screen technologies available.
Projected capacitive technology drives
one plate of a transparent capacitor with
a signal, then measures the results at the
adjacent plate with an analog-to-digital
converter. The capacitive sensors are
usually cast in a diamond pattern, with
one diamond-shaped capacitor plate on
each side of the glass or both on the
same side, using whisker-sized jumpers.
A smartphone uses a couple of hundred
capacitive sensors and tablets up to 10
times as many, making it possible for a
smart controller chip to discern any
number of touches at resolutions fine
enough to detect even the smallest
childs finger. Several controller makers,
including Cypress and Integrated Device
Technology (IDT), are proposing propri-
etary patterns that eliminate the need
for jumpers.
Multitouch gesture capability began
with two fingers to zoom, three to scroll
and four to swipe; its now become a
free-for-all, as multitouch variations pro-
liferate to enable finer manipulation of
on-screen objects. High-quality transparent sensor patterns
support smart gesture recognition, but the smarts originate
in controller algorithms that debounce and condition the sig-
nal from multiple fingers. The touchscreen controller sends
the information to the application processor, which in turn
identifies gestures of varying complexity, such as tap- to-
select, brush-to-scroll and pinch-to-zoom.
Taiwan and Japan today manufacture most of the worlds
high-end projected capacitive touchscreens. Taiwans Wintek
and TPK Touch Systems (both Apple suppliers), along with
faster-growing siblings such as Young Fast and J-Touch (both
also based Taiwan), account for the majority of worldwide
touchscreen shipments. Japanese suppliers Gunze, Suzutora
and DMC (located in Osaka but partnered with Austin-based
Touch International) are quickly ramping up competing
Intensity of signal denotes location of touch
on each row and column
X sensor data intensity
Y

s
e
n
s
o
r

d
a
t
a

i
n
t
e
n
s
i
t
y
In a capacitive touchscreen, the signal intensity levels for the rows and
columns denote the touch location (which changes their capacitance).
SOURCE: Cypress
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The Newest Products For Your Newest Designs

COVER STORY
manufacturing operations, as are three dozen other touch-
screen makers worldwide. Chinese manufacturers are not yet
making high-end capacitive multitouchscreens, which are dif-
ficult to use with a stylus, but have stuck with resistive touch-
screens, which are better at rendering Chinese characters.
Touchscreen controller chips come from such suppliers as
Atmel (San Jose, Calif.), which supplies Motorolas Xoom,
Samsungs Galaxy Tab and many other Android-based tablets
and smartphones; Cypress Semiconductor (San Jose), which
supplies RIMs BlackBerry PlayBook, the Barnes and Noble
Nook and dozens of smartphones, including HTC models;
Synaptics, which supplies the IDEOS S7 Slim tablet as well as
many other Android and Windows phones; Broadcom
(Irvine, Calif.), whose touch controllers are found in many
iOS devices, including the iPad 2; and Texas Instruments (Dal-
las), whose touchscreen controllers are present in all iPhone
models, including the iPhone 4, according to Chipworks.
Atmel takes the design win crown, having landed slots not
only in the Xoom and Galaxy Tab but also in LGs G-Slate,
Acers Iconia, Asus Transformer, Dells Streak and nearly every
other Android-based tablet, plus eight out of 10 of the worlds
top smartphones, from HTCs 4G Evo to Motorolas Droid.
Atmel has the fastest response time by a mile300 com-
pared with 70 samples/secondwhich means gestures are
One out of three mobile phones uses a
touchpanel in 2011, said Jae Shin, mar-
keting director of market research firm
Displaybank. That will increase to one out
of every two phones by 2014, the market
research firm projects.
The touchpanel market this year will
log $10.42 billion in revenues, for 76 per-
cent growth year on year. Panels less than
10 inches will account for 89 percent of
total 2011 revenues. Projected capacitive
touch technology is expected to account
for 73 percent of the total touchpanel
market in 2014.
At the Society for Information Displays
Future of Touch conference last month,
experts looked at what the next phases of
touch technology will bring to various mar-
kets. John F. Jacobs, customer value chain
manager at Cisco Systems, suggested
that developers ask the following ques-
tions when weighing the relative merits of
the various touchscreen approaches and
technologies for their applications:
What are the trade-offs between
multitouch and so-called touch 1.5
(pinch-to-zoom) technologies?
Do you really need true multi-
touch?
Is the feature set clearly defined
early in the development process?
How does the marketing wish list
measure up against the user
requirements?
What are the ideal display size and
resolution for the device?
How will the device be held? One
hand or two? Cradled or gripped?
How will it be operated? With
fingers? Thumbs?
If one does not have ready answers to
those questions, then just providing touch
capability for its own sake in the product
is not a worthy goal, according to Jacobs.
Bob Mackey, principal scientist at
Synaptics, heeded the warning that the
integration of touch and the display hard-
ware is of utmost importance. You cant
just have a great capacitive touch technol-
ogy and not have an integration plan that
takes all elements into account, said
Mackey. Remember, to a systems engi-
neer, everything is part of a system.
Toward that end, Mackey listed the
perceived shortcomings of transparent
conductors for capacitive touch sensing.
While volumes are increasing, pushing
costs down, capacitive touch sensing does
require transparent conductorswhich
often arent so transparent, and not very
conductive, he said.
The required indium tin oxide (ITO) lay-
er used in capacitive touch sensing may
be expensive, but it fits the existing supply
chain and offers invisible patterns when
used with good index matching, said Mack-
ey. No effective volume replacement for
ITO has been found, he added. For the
future, however, Mackey looks to structured
micro- or nanomaterials to offer a better
combination of optical transparency and
electrical conductance than ITO provides.
Vernon Spencer, founder and manag-
ing director of Visual Planet, offered his
own to-do list for moving touch technolo-
gies forward. Because touchpanel
providers are pursuing divergent
approaches, Spencer cited the need for
such basics as educating the developer
community, arriving at common touch
standards, agreeing on definitions for
multitouch and providing software devel-
opment kits. Hardware needs to coexist,
and a high-profile multiuser productivity
tool needs to be developed, said Spencer.
Visual Planet specializes in the manu-
facture of large (30- to 167-inch), flexible
projected capacitive touchscreen foils,
which Spencer said work through any
nonmetallic surface and create a fully
functional touchscreen.
In a SID conference paper, researchers
from FlatFrog Laboratories AB (Lund, Swe-
den) cited drawbacks of projected capaci-
tive systems. For one, the technology is
highly dependent on the availability of
indium, a rare and increasingly scarce ele-
ment that is a key component of the ITO
layer in touchpanels. The supply issues for
indium will continue to inflate the bill of
materials for projected capacitive touch
systems, the researchers predicted. In
addition, the inherent properties of the
ITO layer itself impose size limitations and
pose production yield issues that hinder
development of cost-efficient projected
capacitive multitouch systems at larger
sizes, according to the paper.
The researchers said FlatFrogs planar
scatter detection (PSD) approach main-
tains the advantages of multitouch sys-
tems without imposing the drawbacks
normally associated with projected capaci-
tive or other optical touch systems. PSD
applies frustrated total internal reflection
(FTIR) in combination with proprietary
optical detection and advanced decoding
algorithms. Nicolas Mokhoff
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COVER STORY
detected more accurately, said Sherif Hanna, Atmel product
marketing manager. We also have superfast first-touch laten-
cy of 8 to 12 millisecondstwice as fast as our competitors.
Atmels main competition today comes from Cypress and
Synaptics, but the field is about to get more crowded, since
nearly every other semiconductor maker with mixed-signal
capabilities wants in on the action. Industrial giant STMicro-
electronics added a projected capacitive controller chip to its
S-Touch line last fall and will ship the device this summer.
IDT this year announced its proprietary PureTouch technolo-
gy, promising to lower the cost of capacitive touchscreens by
using a single layer of sensors rather than the two sensor lay-
ers of expensive ITO required today. Cypress, too, is pitching a
single-sensor-layer solution with its TrueTouch technology.
Silicon Labs, which supplies the microcontroller in NextWin-
dows optical touchscreens, is gearing up for projected capaci-
tive touchscreens by creating a microcontroller that leverages
SiLabs know-how in surface capacitive technology for buttons.
Right now our controllers are recognizing surface capaci-
tance on individual buttons by measuring the capacitance of
one plate in relation to earth ground, said Steve Gerber,
director of human interface products at Silicon Labs. For
projected capacitive touchscreens, however, we need to meas-
ure the projected capacitance between two plates, which for
us means designing a specialized A/D converter peripheral,
very similar to the surface capacitive touchpad block we
already have on our 8051-based microcontrollers. The com-
pany is currently sampling an 8051 with an integrated pro-
jected capacitive touchscreen controller.
Freescale also has surface capacitive touchpad blocks on
many of its microcontrollers, including its newest line of
ARM-based Kinetis MCUs, and has resistive touchscreen solu-
tions based on its S08, ColdFire+ and i.MX processors.
Freescale has not made any announcements about projected
capacitive controllers but is likely to begin offering them as
peripheral blocks on its microcontrollers by 2012.
Analog Devices offers a family of controller chips for low-
cost resistive touchscreens, making its touch controllers pop-
ular in applications ranging from point-of-sale terminals to
smartphones. ADI also has expertise in capacitive touch tech-
nology with its high-precision capacitance-to-digital convert-
er (CDC), used for proximity sensing. Like Freescale and
Silicon Labs, ADI has not yet announced entry into the con-
troller market for projected capacitive touchscreens, but its
expertise in noise management and its high-performance
CDC portend a projected capacitive touchscreen controller
announcement, probably in 2012.
Beyond capacitance
For the future, more than a dozen competing touchscreen
technologies-from acoustic wave to near-field imaging
promise to sidestep the quirks of projected capacitive touch-
screens for specialized input needs, such as those of
glove-wearing medical professionals. Among the companies
vowing to provide multiple types of touchscreens to meet the
various vertical market requirements are Elo Touchsystems
(Tyco Electronics) and 3M.
One of the most promising alternatives is optical touch
technology, which uses ultralow-power infrared LEDs and
photodetectors to pinpoint gestures without requiring glass
or ITO. NextWindow, for instance, supplies the touchscreen
capability in the bezel around Hewlett-Packards TouchSmart
PCs. Similarly, TI has partnered with Neonode Inc. (Stock-
holm) to shrink the optical bezel profile to 1 mm high for
mobile device touchscreens.
TI has been in the touchscreen controller business since
acquiring Burr-Brown a decade ago. Recently, TI announced
special models of its ultralow-power MSP-430 microcon-
trollers with built-in support for both resistive touchscreens
and surface capacitive touchpads. Now its collaboration with
Neonode propels it into optical touchscreens. Neonodes
implementation of optical touchscreens is almost a hybrid of
existing resistive and capacitive touchscreen solutions, said
Adrian Valenzuela, team lead for TIs touch portfolio. You get
the form factor and response of capacitiveonly a light
touch is required, and gestures are easy to recognizebut its
a lot more cost-effective, like a resistive display.
Neonodes first major design win for its zForce patented
optical touchscreen came late last year in the Sony Reader.
Kobo (Toronto) last month picked zForce for its eReader.
Our technology is particularly well suited for e-readers,
because zForce only consumes microamps of power in-
between touch events, said Thomas Eriksson, chief executive
officer at Neonode. Finger touches are detected whenever
they break a beam, which uses much less power than either
resistive or capacitive touchscreens. Also, since there are no
overlays on the screen itself, zForce doesnt dim the light
reflected from E-Inks and Qualcomms e-reader displays.
Chinese e-reader maker Hanvon recently announced avail-
ability of its own electromagnetic resonance touchscreen.
Hanvon claims OEMs choosing its proprietary dual-touch ERT
need only integrate antenna sensors on their circuit board to
achieve the accuracy of resistive technology for stylus input of
Chinese characters, while obtaining multitouch capabilities
usually found only on projected capacitive touchscreens.
p
Infrared LEDs feed photodetectors in a bezel around
the screen edges, sending beams of light across the
top of the touchscreen that when interrupted can be
used to detect finger touches.
SOURCE: Neonode
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Intelligence
WITH A LITTLE BOOST from manmade nanopar-
ticle catalysts, algae can produce hydrogen fuel
from water and sunlight, according to engineers at
the U.S. Department of Energys Argonne National
Laboratory. Controlling the photosynthesis mecha-
nisms through which algae harness the energy of
the sun could enable the organisms to produce
abundant fuel to power an emerging hydrogen
economy, they say.
Led by Argonne National Lab chemist Lisa
Utschig, working with colleague David Tiede, the
team at Argonnes Photosynthesis Group recently
demonstrated how platinum nanoparticles can be
linked to key proteins in algae to coax them into
producing hydrogen fuel five times more efficient-
ly than the previous record.
Photosynthesis usually produces natural plant
fuels such as adenosine triphosphate, which can
be stored until it is needed for growth or respira-
tion. By modifying the cycle with nanoparticle cat-
alysts, the Argonne National Lab team hopes to
repurpose algae by allowing them to produce
hydrogen fuel for storage and eventual use in fuel
cells to produce electricity, Utschig said.
Argonnes Photosynthesis Group has been aim-
ing to reverse-engineer photosynthesis for 50
years. Its current efforts are concentrating on the
algae protein plastocyanin, which forms the
foundation of algaes primary photosynthesis
mechanism (photo-system-one, or PS1). When
light strikes PS1, it knocks out an electron, leav-
ing behind a hole that the team sought to use to
split water into hydrogen and oxygen. By adding
the platinum nanoparticle catalysts to the PS1
mechanism, the team succeeded in producing
abundant hydrogen gas.
Next, the Argonne researchers will try less
expensive metals for the nanoparticles to lower
the manufacturing cost, thereby potentially creat-
ing a system cheap enough to produce hydrogen
from water and sunlight on an industrial scale.
p
Algae creates hydrogen fuel
By R. Colin Johnson
ENERGY
Argonne chemist Lisa Utschig tests a
container of photosynthetic proteins
linked with platinum nanoparticles,
which can produce hydrogen from
sunlight. Tiny hydrogen bubbles are
visible in the container at right.
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healthiest decision you make all year.
ENGINEERS HAVE EXPRESSEDskep-
ticism that Hewlett-Packard Co.s mem-
ristors could switch as fast as DRAM
and yet retain their memories millions
of times longer than flash. Those skep-
tics can now rest easy, according to sen-
ior HP fellow Stanley Williams.
What we have discovered is that an
electric field and a current act together
to enable a memory device that can both
be switched very rapidly and hold its
state indefinitely, said Williams, the
devices inventor. Not only does an
applied voltage drive the migration of
oxygen vacancies in the device, but at
the same time there is a current that
heats it up to about 300Cjust enough
to turn the amorphous film into a crys-
talline film.
Memristors are touted as the future
universal memory device because
they are as fast as DRAM, as small as
flash and as durable as read-only-memo-
ries, according to HP. As the fourth fun-
damental passive circuit elementafter
resistors, capacitors and inductors
memristors retain either a high- or low-
resistance state by virtue of introducing
or removing oxygen vacancies in oxide
thin films.
Utilizing its favorite formulation
titanium oxideHP recently used high-
energy synchrotron X-rays to correlate
the devices electrical characteristics
with its atomic structure, chemistry
and temperature in three dimensions.
The unforeseen conclusion was that a
hot spot near the bottom electrode
heats enough during switching to
induce a crystallization of the oxide.
After driving out vacancies (for a 1) or
introducing them (for a 0) in a 1 -to 2-
nanometer-thick region, the film cools
in a process, similar to annealing, that
leaves the film in a fixed crystalline
state; the film should remain in that
state indefinitely.
In testing, we have switched these
devices over 30 billion times and count-
ing, with no degradation in their ability
to retain information, said Williams.
HP is working with Hynix Semicon-
ductor Inc. to create commercial memo-
ries based on memristive technology.
p
HP discovers memristor
mechanism
By R. Colin Johnson
MEMORY
INTELLIGENCE
Synchrotron X-rays probed the memristor in a
100-nanometer region with concentrated oxygen
vacancies (right, shown in blue) where the memristive
switching occurs. Surrounding this region, a newly
developed structural phase (red) was also found to act
like a thermometer, revealing how hot the device
becomes when read or written.
SID
Green displays
low power pays off
By Nicolas Mokhoff
LOS ANGELES Energy efficiency is
improving in flat-panel displays as LED
backlight architectures are tweaked to
enhance performance, speakers report-
ed at the Society for Information Dis-
plays recent DisplayWeek event here.
LED efficiency continues to improve
around 10 to 15 percent per year
through improving internal quantum
efficiency and increasing light extrac-
tion efficiency, said Ross Young, senior
vice president for displays, LEDs and
lighting at IMS Research.
At the Green Technologies confer-
ence, held here in conjunction with the
SID event, the consensus was that low-
er-power displays have an economic
advantage over higher-power displays.
Version 4.0 of the governments Ener-
gy Star compliance specs, introduced in
May 2010, required roughly a 40 per-
cent power reduction. Version 4.0 also
required TVs to use less than 1 W in
standby mode. Energy Star 5.3, slated to
take effect in September, will be partic-
ularly challenging for large-screen dis-
plays; not only are power specs reduced
by roughly an additional 30 percent at
smaller sizes, but power requirements
will no longer scale with screen size
beyond 50 inches, resulting in a 40 per-
cent reduction at 55 inches, according
to Young.
Plasma TVs will have a real problem
meeting 5.3 over 50 inches, Young said.
CCFL LCD TVs will also be challenged
by Energy Star 5.3.
Jun Souk, LCD division senior adviser
at Samsung, sees optical shutters with
MEMS technology providing a short-
term efficiency boost. And Liquavista,
acquired by Samsung earlier this year, is
working on electrowetting displays,
which promise further efficiency
improvements.
p
l MORE Read the full story at
www.eetimes.com/4216263
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TODAYS MOBILE DEVICES are about
having everything in the palm of your
hand, at the touch of a buttonfrom
Internet browsing and e-mail to watch-
ing high-definition TV or using a GPS.
Increasing demand for multimedia fea-
tures translates into complex design
requirements, such as higher perform-
ance with reduced power in an ever-
smaller footprint.
Design teams have two choices:
either shrink the node or innovate
some alternative to address the more
than Moore trend. With development
costs heading toward $100 million for
the 32-nanometer process node, for
example, monolithic mixed-signal SoCs
are increasingly challenging and time-
consuming to develop.
Design teams are looking for alterna-
tives to speed time-to-market and reduce
costs, and some are finding that using
3-D ICs with through-silicon vias (TSVs)
represents the most practical wayor
perhaps the only wayto handle design
complexity and maximize performance
and speed. 3-D ICs promise to meet mar-
ket demand for miniaturization, higher
speed and greater bandwidth, as well as
lower latency and power consumption.
That makes the move from 2-D to
3-D a natural choice.
The question today is not whether
3-D ICs will be designed and built, but
whether design teams (outside of a
handful of large semiconductor compa-
nies) will have the EDA tools and infra-
structure support required to make
3-D-ICs cost-effective.
Not a new concept
Despite the recent buzz in the industry
about 3-D technology, the concept is not
new. Indeed, 3-D packaging has been
around for years, in the form of stacks of
dice with wirebonds, package-in-package
(PiP) design and package-on-package
DESIGN PRODUCTS
+
3-D IC design: New possibilities
for the wireless market
By Samta Bansal, Brad Griffin and Marc Greenberg
GLOBAL FEATURE
Source: Cadence Design Systems
There have been, and will be, multiple steps along the path to true
3-D IC packaging with stacked dice and through-silicon vias.
(PoP) design, to name a few. PoP is a wide-
spread configuration that combines a
stack of memory modules atop an appli-
cation processor or digital baseband.
Open up your Apple iPhone 3 or your
iPad, and PoP technology is already there.
Other 3-D packaging solutionssuch
as embedded dice in laminate, or rebuilt
waferlike fanout wafer-level packag-
ingimprove signal integrity, shorten
interconnects and reduce line/space for
rerouting, thus shrinking the package
footprint. Though all of the above con-
figurations are 3-D at the packaging lev-
el, none of them use TSVs.
Think of a TSV as an additional layer
that helps extend the 3-D packaging to
the IC level. With their short intercon-
nects and better electrical performance,
TSVs could have a huge impact on total
system performance and power. TSVs
can be inserted at the bond pad level (via
last-in wafer-level packaging) or at the
global interconnect level (either via mid-
dle back-end-of-line or via first front-end-
of-line) by foundries.
For a global interconnect TSV, die
stacks are connected not only at the bond
pad level, but also at the IP block or
memory bank level. This type of TSV
enables true heterogeneous integration
of die stacks using the third dimension in
addition to the x-y direction, allowing
optimized interconnections and better
electrical performance. Dice intercon-
nected using this type of TSV are closer to
SoC/IC than system-in package (SiP) and,
hence, are better referenced as 3-D ICs.
TSV technology is actually a conver-
gence of silicon and packaging with the
design, making it possible to conceive
and design new architectures. To bene-
fit fully from 3-D IC TSVs and make this
technology cost-effective, a different
3-D architecture needs to be evaluated
at a very early stage.
TSVs have an unclear technology
road map, however, and methodology
convergence is lacking because of a gap
between the TSV technology process
and TSV system design. Thus, 3-D IC
TSVs represent a new paradigm, for
which designers must modify their
thinking and look beyond the 2-D con-
straints of classical Moores Law design.
Target markets
Major applications that would use 3-D
ICs with TSVs are those that require
speed, bandwidth and power optimiza-
tion. CPUs, GPUs and routers would
adopt this technology for speed and
bandwidth gains. Performance gains
will lead to more competitive end prod-
ucts for which companies can ask high-
er prices, and those premiums might
offset the additional cost that early 3-D
configurations will demand.
Graphics designs that demand very
wide buses and multicore designs that
require high bandwidth to the memory
will also be early adopters of 3-D technol-
ogy, even at the higher initial unit cost.
Set-top boxes, DVRs and HDTVs are
other promising applications for 3-D IC
technology. They constitute a cost-sensi-
tive segment, but in exchange they offer
high volume.
The real drive behind 3-D volume
production will come from the mobile
market, especially smartphones. With
more than 5 billion mobile phones
worldwide, this market represents
attractive volumes, but cost will be the
dominant criterion for TSV acceptance
in the smartphone segment.
Industry requirements
With the advent of truly mobile com-
puting, the mobile industry is searching
for memory technology that can bring
desktop-like computing performance to
mobile devices, including support for
3-D gaming and home-theater standard
1080p, 60-frame/second video. Several
estimates forecast that by 2013, SoC
design starts for mobile devices will
need in excess of 10 Gbytes/s of memory
bandwidthroughly what desktop
machines shipping with DDR3 technol-
ogy require today.
While the mobile industry requires
memory technology that can support
aggressive power and performance goals
in the smallest possible footprint, it
must also shoot for cost-effectiveness.
Using 3-D ICs with TSVs is one of several
possibilities. DRAM stacked with logic
using TSVsa configuration known as
wide I/Opromises 2x to 4x the per-
formance of LPDDR2 technology at half
the power per bit.
Wide I/O could be the technology
that meets the power and performance
goals of the most advanced mobile
devices, if it can be made cost-effective.
The mobile industry needs to look into
a number of elements to resolve the
technical and business challenges that
this technology brings to the table.
One of the biggest questions for any
new memory technology is whether
there is an industry structure to support
it. Jedec efforts are under way to stan-
dardize wide-I/O DRAMs in the areas of
performance, protocol, number of
banks and channels, and number and
arrangement of TSVs. Such standardiza-
tion will create a viable market in
which DRAM manufacturers can sell
their standard dice to multiple cus-
tomers. For their part, customers will
have multiple compatible devices from
which to choose.
Another concern regarding TSVs
application with memory, in particular,
is that DRAM performs poorly at junc-
tion temperatures above 85 C. Keeping
the memory contents refreshed at high-
er temperatures requires more current,
which itself leads to more heating of
the die. There are limits to what can be
standardized, and many of the issues
around assembly, test, and heat dissipa-
tion from the 3-D IC stack will need to
be addressed by each customer.
One way of managing the unknowns
and risks with 3-D IC technology is the
use of silicon interposers. Passive sili-
con interposers allow semiconductor
companies to gain the performance
associated with 3-D IC, while mitigating
risk by avoiding putting TSVs through
active silicon. The silicon interposer
acts as a substrate on which an active
die can be connected with silicon-sized
geometries that are much smaller than
the interconnect on a package or pc
board. TSVs are then used through the
silicon interposer to connect to the
package substrate below.
One of the most public announce-
ments on the use of silicon interposers
came from a large FPGA company.
Rather than use one large die, the com-
pany chose to segment the technology
into four separate, smaller dice to
achieve greater yield. With up to 10,000
interconnect channels on each die and
less than 1-ns delay, the configuration
could enable performance in the silicon
interposer case to be much greater than
would be possible if the dice were con-
nected side by side on a package sub-
strate, or stacked and connected with
bonding wire down to the package sub-
strate. This silicon interposer approach
DESIGN PRODUCTS
+
promises next-generation design densi-
ty using current-generation technology.
As appealing as the silicon interposer
may be, its really just an intermediate
step toward true 3-D ICs. Ultimately,
miniaturization and performance goals
will drive design teams to use a stacked,
rather than side-by-side, approach.
With TSVs, interconnect delay through
the stacked active silicon should be
much less than with the side-by-side
interposer approach. So while the pas-
sive silicon interposer is useful for
introducing the concept of TSVs to the
industry, it will most likely lose ground
to a stacked TSV approach as the cost
and attendant risk decrease and as
demand for smaller packages and high-
er performance increases.
Assembly continues to be a major
concern in the industry. Many of the
processing steps involved in the cre-
ation of TSVs can create mechanical,
thermal or electrical stresses on the die
being processed for TSV, and those
stresses may change the properties of
the device. Manufacturing test is anoth-
er issue. For example, finding a method
to probe TSVs with a diameter of 10 m
each and on a 50-m grid could prove
problematic. Allowing the probe head
to contact more than 2,000 TSVs at a
time without damage is another exam-
ple. As the industry works to resolve
these issues, we will surely see logic
devices with TSV-connected DRAM in
the next few years.
Despite the lingering challenges and
unanswered questions, quite a few brave
souls have embarked on this path and are
working to realize the promise of 3-D-ICs
for improved performance and power
management in smaller footprints.
Although theres been significant
traction in this breakthrough technolo-
gy over the past two years, and
although there are no major showstop-
pers from a design or process point of
view, hurdles remain to be cleared
along the path to wide adoption. Those
challenges include cost, the shift in the
design method paradigm, system co-
design, and the incorporation of new
tools and new architectures. A well-
defined ecosystem including foundries,
IP providers, EDA vendors, and out-
sourced semiconductor assembly and
test vendors must emerge with design
kits and reference flows. Cost-effective,
adoptable technological evolution and
ecosystem collaboration are essential
for bringing 3-D ICs with TSVs into the
mainstream.
p
Samta Bansal is senior product
manager for applied silicon
realization at Cadence Design
Systems Inc. She has a
masters degree in physics and a bachelors
degree in electrical and electronics
engineering from Indias Birla Institute of
Technology and Science, Pilani, as well as
an MBA from Santa Clara University.
Brad Griffin is director of
product management for SiP,
IC packaging and PCB high-
speed solutions, for Cadence
Design Systems Allegro and SiP solutions.
He is a graduate of Arizona State University.
Marc Greenberg is director
of product marketing for the
DRAM Design IP products
at Cadence. He has a
masters degree from the University of
Edinburgh in Scotland.
DESIGN PRODUCTS
+
Creating stereoscopic 3-D for mobile devices
By Veera Manikandan Raju
GLOBAL FEATURE
STEREOSCOPIC 3-Dis quickly emerg-
ing as a prime technology across vari-
ous markets, adding a further
dimension of reality to existing 2-D
videos, games, movies and images. With
3-D TVs having hit store shelves, con-
sumers now are getting acquainted
with large-screen, realistic S3-D effects
in home entertainment. Today, S3-D
experiences are migrating from the
large screen to mobile devices, provid-
ing realisticand glasses-freeperson-
alized viewing experiences on the go.
Overall, S3-D video and imaging use
cases can be categorized in two ways:
S3-D content creation and S3-D viewing.
Each poses a unique set of challenges in
mobile design and development. This
article offers solutions to some of the
challenges and shares perspectives on
how to enable successful S3-D experi-
ences on mobile platforms.
Its important first to understand
how S3-D experiences are created.
S3-D essentially adds an extra dimen-
sion to a viewing scene using left- and
right-image pairs via two cameras. In
games, for example, S3-D rendering
refers to the positioning of virtual cam-
eras, while for S3-D video and images,
content is created using two sensors
that are physically spaced apart.
The human brain is able to differenti-
ate depth perception when both views
(left and right, seen through the eyes)
are rendered together. Farther objects in
a given scene are seen at a distance,
while closer objects are seen as closer in
proximity to the viewer.
With the correct level of depth
adjustments, pairs of stereo images pro-
vide the most realistic and natural user
experience. Farther objects are given
positive disparity, and nearer objects are
given negative disparity. Accurately
providing such disparity requires a ref-
erence object on which to focus; this is
called a convergence plane.
In addition, human eyes see a field of
view (FOV) that is dynamically variable
based on where the eyes are looking,
yielding a very flexible S3-D viewing experience at will
(Figure 1).
Content creation
In order to produce such an S3-D effect, content creation
needs to be done with two different camera sensors, and the
left- and right-image pair needs to be processed at 60 frames/
second (left and right at 30 frames/s independently).
Stereo camera pairs can be positioned in one of two
ways when creating S3-D imageseither in a towing
angle or in a flat angleto achieve the correct FOV.
Based on the sensor characteristics, resolution and
focal length, a designer will be able to decide on the
best recording distance between the stereo pair. Posi-
tioning of the stereo pair is extremely crucial for get-
ting the right convergence plane. The stereo pair can
be positioned at a distance of 65 mm (like human
eyes) to yield a large recording distance. In designing
a smartphone or other device with similar size attrib-
utes, the designer can consider keeping the position-
ing at a distance of 35 mm, to achieve a personalized
recording distance (1-meter to 3-meter range).
Such camera pairs, when placed on the gadgets, do
not necessarily align mechanically perfectly in transla-
tional and rotational directions (Figures 2 and 3).
There can be minor misalignment in the millimeters
while placing the sensor modules on the form factor
device. Such minor variations in physical placements
in translational and rotational directions can create
large misalignment variations in the image plane. This
imposes a huge challenge in terms of calibrating the
misalignments up front and correcting the misalign-
ment on a per-frame basis while the content is created.
Furthermore, a devices mechanical aspectseven
temperature variations and the occasional falling of
the gadgetcan create such misalignment between
the stereo pair of sensors. It therefore becomes vital to
correct such variations in real-time.
Once content is created, it is important to ensure it
is viewable on the target devices. System software
running in the gadget should be capable of doing the
following to provide successful S3-D content viewing
experiences:
Combine the stereo image pair and process using
the image signal processing (ISP) unit for the cor-
rect resolution, distortion corrections, image
quality tuning and more.
Decide the convergence plane at run-time using
efficient algorithms, and create disparity vectors
for the stereo pair at run-time to provide pleasing
viewer experiences.
Correct for the misalignments in translational
and rotational directions at run-time between the
stereo image pair, and apply the corrections off-
sets per frame.
Synchronize the 3A (auto-exposure, auto-white
balance, autofocus) between the sensor modules,
and fine-tune the image tuning parameters.
These operations require very sophisticated hardware
accelerators that can run and process the stereo pair of high-
resolution images. Such accelerators are fundamental to next-
generation application processors.
Through convergence and misalignment corrections,
processed image pairs are passed to the video accelerators of
DESIGN PRODUCTS
+
Figure 1
the application processors to encode data in 3-D formats.
Todays H.264 codec offers an extension to process the S3-D
information using supplementary enhancement information
(SEI), which describes the format and layout of the encoded
S3-D scene.
Emerging standards such as Multi-View Codec (MVC) let
designers encode more than two views for true S3-D effects
using multiple views. MVC codecs correlate the left- and
right-view pair for spatial predictions and motion estima-
tions for effective bit rate savings while encoding. Utilizing
the information between the left and right pair for effective
bandwidth reduction can improve the system data usage dur-
ing an S3-D video conference, for example, since users in such
instances are limited by network bandwidth.
Video encoders and decoders have S3-D awareness based on
the content layout. The left and right images can be formatted
in multiple ways (side by side, top/bottom, interleaved [col-
umn/row] and more). Based on the formatted layout gathered,
information is decoded and provided back to the displays sub-
system for rendering the data in stereoscopic fashion.
Generating S3-D experiences
Stereoscopic viewing experiences can be generated in multi-
ple forms. Two of the most popular ways to view S3-D are
through LCD shutter glasses and on autostereoscopic LCD
panels. Shutter glasses achieve S3-D experiences by rendering
50 percent of the rendered pictures for the left eye and the
other 50 percent for the right eye. A technique called time-
sequential multiplexing then alternately displays the left-
and right-eye images every time the computer refreshes
(draws) the screen.
Turning the shutters on the left and right lenses of the
glasses using the sync signals generated from the TV creates
an S3-D effect for users. It is important to realize that syn-
chronizations need to happen very fast (faster than can be
perceived) to ensure that a user thinks he or she is seeing true
S3-D. That requires immense processing power on the part of
the display subsystem of application processors, especially
when dealing with high-definition video.
For glasses-free 3-D, autostereoscopic LCD panels display
multiple views on the LCD panel. Examples of autostereo-
scopic displays include parallax barrier, lenticular and time-
sequential LCD panels.
The parallax barrier, placed in front of the LCD, consists
of a layer of material with a series of precision slits, allow-
ing each eye to see a different set of pixels and thereby creat-
ing a sense of depth through parallax. The viewing angle of
a parallax barrier LCD is limited, and the resolution of the
pixel count is reduced by half in the horizontal direction;
half the pixel count is seen by the left eye and half by the
right eye.
Lenticular displays use two-dimensional arrays of lenslets
designed so that when the arrays are viewed from slightly dif-
ferent angles, an S3-D effect is created. Time-sequential LCD
panels use an S3-D film (creating an angular view of light
flow through the film) in front of the LCD, controlling the
backlights placed on either side of the LCD at a 120-Hz
refresh rate to create a 3-D viewing experience for the users.
Unlike parallax barrier LCD panels, 3-D film-based time-
sequential panels produce a full-resolution S3-D experience.
Autostereoscopic panels are becoming popular in mobile
devices. The panels need extensive display processing capabil-
ities at the pixel level to format and create an S3-D viewing
experiences in real-time. The display processing has to be
effective at column/row/pixel interleaving for HD-resolution
stereo pairs at 60 frames/s.
S3-D viewing quality poses many challenges, and it varies
with respect to the size of the LCD screen and the angle at
which the user is viewing the content. It is important for the
created S3-D content to address convergence issues and mis-
alignment corrections, and to enable the appropriate level of
disparity in the video. If this is not done effectively, the view-
ing experiences can irritate human eyes.
Research continues with respect to disparity corrections,
depth grading and scene ramping (changing disparity based
on the scene pattern changes) to provide positive viewing
experiences.
The computational power needed to run such content-cre-
ation algorithms and pixel-level display processing subsys-
tems requires that application processors emerge to meet the
needs of S3-D HD systems. Devices with immense processing
power inside can provide pleasing and natural viewing expe-
riences to users, adding the dimension for which S3-D will be
known.
Keep an eye out this year for S3-D-enabled mobile devices.
p
Veera Manikandan Raju is engineering manager for
Texas Instruments Natural User Interface group, which
is part TIs Wireless business unit. He studied at the
Regional Engineering School of Trichirappalli, India.
DESIGN PRODUCTS
+
Figure 3
Figure 2
6,898,700,000
The approximate number of
people on earth.
At Allied Electronics, youre
more than just a number.
We are here to help you get what
you need when you need it.
Call 1.800.433.5700 to
experience Allieds first-class service.
Local sales offices
D
edicated account managers
Personal service
1.800.433.5700
Allied Electronics, Inc 2011. Allied Electronics and the Allied Electronics logo are trademarks of Allied Electronics, Inc. An Electrocomponents Company.
THINK ALLIED
SM
Electronic Engineering Times June 6, 2011 37
DESIGN PRODUCTS
+
A FEW YEARS AGO, when I was
searching for a new phone, I dearly
wanted a Wi-Fi-enabled model. But
none of the cell-phone vendors in my
vicinity carried one in stock. In fact, a
number of them responded to my
inquiries with blank looks, as if Id been
speaking a foreign language.
Fast forward to todays wireless cli-
mate, where the passage of a few years
has yielded some serious technical
innovation.
In light of Qualcomms recent pur-
chase of Atheros Communications,
UBM TechInsights decided to review
the product offerings of both Atheros
and Qualcomm to assess the impact
on the handset market, including sili-
con vendors, in our research for our
study on the WPAN market landscape
(http://tiny.cc/iy6lp).
Atheros is known for its wireless
LAN (Wi-Fi) products, from which it
derives close to 80 percent of its rev-
enue. Over the past six years, however,
the company has been steadily trying to
diversify its offerings with five acquisi-
tions. It now offers Bluetooth, GPS, Eth-
ernet, powerline networking and
passive optical network solutions.
The study undertaken by UBM
TechInsights looked at 220 handsets
with integrated Qualcomm basebands
over a 10-year period. The study also
gauged the technologys adoption rate
as a measure of total systems vs. sys-
tems with Bluetooth and/or Wi-Fi.
Bluetooth, which began to be de-
ployed starting in 2003, had achieved a
100 percent adoption rate in handsets
by 2010.
During this same period, Wi-Fi
deployment significantly lagged that
for Bluetooth, as it had to wait for the
market, as well as the technology, to
converge. From 2008, however, Wi-Fi
deployment began to experience explo-
sive growth, and by 2010 the technolo-
gy had a 92 percent adoption rate. That
conclusion came from a sample set for
2010 that consisted of 26 phones.
Also interesting in terms of the study
was the adoption rate for combination
chips. (A combo chip is a multifunction
chip or integrated package [multichip
module, or MCM] with Bluetooth and
Wi-Fi; in many cases, combo chips
include FM support as well.) Some com-
panies, such as Murata, are now creat-
ing combo MCMs that have a very
small footprints. A select number of sili-
con providers, such as Broadcom and
Mfr. unknown
GPS LNA?
Memsic
#MMC314xMS
3-axis compass
Die #4.1 Memsic, compass processor
Die #4.2 Memsic, magnetic sensor (qty 3)

Bosch Sensortec
#BMA150
3-axis MEMS accelerometer
Die #8.1 Bosch, signal processor
Die #8.2 Bosch, MEMS sensor

Atheros
#AR6003
Single-chip Wi-Fi

Fairchild Semiconductor
#FSA9280AUMX
USB multimedia switch
Murata
#XM2400SN
SP3T switch
Broadcom
#BCM2078
Bluetooth + FM radio
Wide Bluetooth, Wi-Fi adoption
seen in handsets
By Gordon Holstead
UNDER
THE HOOD
Gordon Holstead
(gholstead@ubmtechinsights.com)
is senior analyst at UBM
TechInsights.
Texas Instruments, have created single-
chip Bluetooth/Wi-Fi/FM solutions, and
the module manufacturers are taking
advantage of that availability.
The trend toward adoption of the
single-chip silicon solution was at 62
percent in 2010, compared with 69 per-
cent for the combo module (MCM).
There is an upward trend toward inte-
gration of connectivity functionality
such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and FM; today
most combination products are single-
chip silicon solutions.
An example of a popular and simpli-
fied solution from a module manufactur-
er, such as Murata or Samsung, contains
a single die with an additional set of dis-
crete components, such as the Samsung
module found in the Samsung Galaxy
Spica. This handset uses the Broadcom
BCM4325, a single-pole/double-throw
(SPDT) switch and various discretes. The
module measures 8.25 x 7.75 mm.
Less common in modules are multi-
die, multifunction solutions, like the one
found in the Sony Ericsson X2. In this
case, the module maker, Murata, has inte-
grated an Atheros AR6002 (Wi-Fi) chip
and a single-die Qualcomm Bluetooth
with two switches and other compo-
nents. The package size is 9.70 x 9.17 mm.
Some companies are still choosing to
populate the main circuit board with
multidie and discrete components, as can
be seen in the Samsung GT-I5503 Galaxy
5, which uses the Atheros AR6003 (for
Wi-Fi) together with a Broadcom
BCM2078 (Bluetooth/FM) chip.
With adoption rates of more than 60
percent for single-die multifunction
(Bluetooth/Wi-Fi) solutionsmany of
which are offered by companies like
Atheros, Broadcom and Marvellit
seems Qualcomm had better move fast
to expand its product family to include
single-package (that is, MCM) wireless
connectivity solutions. It could be a few
years however, before we see a single-
package solution from Qualcomm, even
with its acquisition of Atheros.
Broadcom and Texas Instruments
currently command the bulk of design
wins in the combo Bluetooth/Wi-Fi/FM
market, as weve seen in numerous tear-
downs conducted over the past year on
numerous handsets and tablets. On the
integration front, Texas Instruments
released a quad-radio (Bluetooth/Wi-
Fi/FM/GPS) single-die solution, the
WL1283, which was the combo chip of
choice for the RIM BlackBerry Play-
Book. A product announcement from
Broadcom on a quad-radio single-die
solution is still forthcoming; but with
Texas Instruments having successfully
designed a solution, the opportunity for
significant market share and a chance
to displace Broadcom as the leader in
the connectivity market are now in that
companys control.
Even so, Qualcomm remains well
positioned to capture a portion of the
connectivity market, if it can provide
a cost-effective integrated solution that
leverages its new partnership with
Atheros.
p
DESIGN PRODUCTS
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Pre-Conference: June 6, 2011
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DESIGN PRODUCTS
+
YOU WENT THROUGH a process to select an opera-
tional amplifier (op amp) for your circuit based on
the parameters most critical to your application.
Some of the parameters you reviewed may have
included supply voltage, gain bandwidth product,
slew rate and input noise voltage, to name a few.
You also accounted for input common-mode range,
a key parameter for all op-amp applications in your
circuit, right? If your answer is no, you should contin-
ue reading this article. Even if your answer is yes, you
may still find this material useful.
Engineers who have worked with op amps
throughout their careers have likely experienced sit-
uations where an op amp was behaving in an unex-
pected manner. The nice thing about op amps is that
the output often tells the story. In many cases, if
something is not quite right, it shows up in an obvi-
ous way at the output pin. Undesirable output wave-
forms can be caused by limitations at the output
stage. Perhaps an oscillation is observed that is
caused by too much capacitance on the output. Or
maybe clipping occurs before reaching the full rail
voltage because the output stage is limited to voltage
swings less than the supply-rail voltage.
It is also possible for strange behavior to appear at
the op amps output that has nothing to do with the
output stage. Sometimes the undesirable output sig-
nal may result from something wrong at the input
side of the device. One of the most common issues
experienced with op amps is violation of the devices
input common-mode range. But what exactly is input
common-mode range, and what is the impact of vio-
lating or exceeding it?
Defining input common-mode range
When speaking of op-amp inputs, input common-mode volt-
age (V
ICM
) is one of the first terms of which an engineer thinks,
but may lead to some initial confusion. V
ICM
describes a partic-
ular voltage level and is defined as the average voltage at the
inverting and non-inverting input pins (Figure 1). It is com-
monly expressed as: V
ICM
= [V
IN
(+)+V
IN
()]/2.
Another way to think of V
ICM
is that it is the voltage level
common to both non-inverting and inverting inputs, V
IN
(+)
and V
IN
(). As it turns out, in most applications V
IN
(+) is
very close to V
IN
() because closed-loop negative feedback
causes one input pin to closely track the other such that the
difference between V
IN
(+) and V
IN
() is close to zero.
This is true for many common circuits, including voltage
followers, inverting and non-inverting configurations. In
these cases it is commonly assumed that V
IN
(+) = V
IN
() =
V
ICM
, since these voltages are approximately the same.
Another term used to describe op-amp inputs is input com-
mon-mode range (V
ICMR
), or more correctly input common-mode
voltage range. This is the parameter most often used in
datasheets and also the one where circuit designers should be
most concerned. V
ICMR
defines a range of common-mode input
voltages that results in proper operation of the op-amp device,
and describes how close the inputs can get to either supply rail.
Another way to think of V
ICMR
is that it describes a range
defined by V
ICMR_MIN
and V
ICMR_MAX
. As shown in Figure 2,
V
ICMR
is described by:
Are you violating your op amps input
common-mode range?
By Todd Toporski
PLANET ANALOG
Figure 1: Input common-mode voltage for an op amp.
Figure 2: Input common-mode voltage range for op amp.
DESIGN PRODUCTS
+
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V
ICMR
= V
ICMR_MAX
V
ICMR_MIN
Where
V
ICMR_MIN
= limit relative to VCC supply rail
V
ICMR_MAX
= limit relative to VCC+ supply rail
When V
ICMR
is exceeded, the normal linear operation of the op amp is not guar-
anteed. Therefore, it is critical to ensure that the entire range of the input signal is
fully understood and that V
ICMR
is not exceeded.
Another point of confusion may be that V
ICM
and V
ICMR
are not standardized
abbreviations and various datasheets from various IC suppliers often use different
terminology including V
CM
, V
IC
, V
CMR
, etc. Consequently, it is necessary to under-
stand that the specification youre looking for is more than a particular input voltage
it is an input voltage range.
V
ICMR
varies among op amps
The input stage of an op amp is dictated by design specifications and the type of op-
amp process technology used. For example, the input stage of a CMOS op amp is dif-
ferent from that of a bipolar op amp, which is different than that of a JFET op amp,
etc. While the specific details of op-amp input stages and process technologies are
beyond the scope of this article, it is important to note these differences exist among
various op-amp devices.
Table 1 shows several examples of op amps from TI and their V
ICMR
. The Max Sup-
ply Range column describes split-supply and single-supply (in parentheses) limita-
tions. From the table it is clear that the input range, V
ICMR
, is quite different from op
amp to op amp. Depending on the type of device, V
ICMR
may fall within or beyond
the supply rails. Hence, never assume that an op amp can receive a particular input
signal range until it is verified in the datasheet specifications.
Table 1: V
ICMR
examples for several different types of op amps.
Device Technology Max Supply Range (V) V
ICMR_MIN
V
ICMR_MAX
TLE2062A JFET input VCC+/ = +/19 V (38 V) (VCC-) + 3.4 V (VCC+) 1 V
TLC2272 LinCMOS VCC+/ = +/8 V (16 V) (VCC-) 0.3 V (VCC+) - 0.8 V
TL971 BiCMOS VCC+/ = +/7.5 V (15 V) (VCC-) + 1.15 V (VCC+) 1.15 V
OPA333 CMOS/R-R input VCC+/ = +/2.75 V (5.5 V) (VCC-) 0.1 V (VCC+) + 0.1 V
OPA735 CMOS VCC+/ = +/6 V (12 V) (VCC-) 0.1 V (VCC+) 1.5 V
One special case worth mentioning for wide input ranges is the rail-to-rail input op
amp. Although the name implies an op amp whose input can span the entire supply-
rail range, not all rail-to-rail input devices cover the entire supply range as many
might assume. Its true that many rail-to-rail input op amps do span the entire supply
range (such as the OPA333 in Table 1), but there are others that fall a little short and
are misleading in their description. Again, it is critical to review the specified input
range in the datasheet.
Examples of violating V
ICMR
Violating V
ICMR
is commonly seen in single-supply op-amp applications where the
negative rail is often ground, or 0 V, and the positive rail is some positive voltage such
as 3.3 V, 5 V, or higher voltages. In these applications, the input signal range typically
is not very wide, and the input signal and V
ICMR
must be well understood to make
sure proper op-amp operation results.
p
Todd Toporski is a member of Group Technical Staff at Texas Instruments where he special-
izes in analog applications.
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Multicore processors target
Honeycomb tablets
ZiiLabs has announced two new members of
its Zii family of media processors. The ZMS-
20 and ZMS-40, which target Android Honey-
comb-based tablets, feature either dual (-20)
or quad (-40) Cortex-A9 processors and up to
96 Stemcell media processing cores.
Full story: http://bit.ly/ihxS21
www.ziilabs.com
Embedded MPU integrates
2x ARM Cortex A9 cores
STMicroelectronics introduced an embed-
ded microprocessor with advanced multime-
dia capabilities. The latest addition to STs
dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 microprocessor
family, the SPEAr1340 targets a range of
smart connected devices.
Full story: http://bit.ly/mdosgl
www.st.com
VIA Nano X2 E-Series dual-core
processors debut for 64-bit X86 apps
VIA Nano X2 E-Series processors combine
two 64-bit, superscalar VIA Nano cores on
one die, offering enhanced multitasking and
multimedia performance on a low-power
budget. The processors combine a power-
efficient dual-core architecture with
advanced performance for 64-bit X86
embedded system design. Available in two
models, running at speeds of 1.2+ GHz and
1.6+ GHz, the series comes with a compo-
nent longevity guarantee of seven years.
Full story: http://bit.ly/jxAPtV
www.via.com.tw
Media processor SoC
for multimedia display products
Conexant Systems announced a single-chip
media processor for multimedia display
products, including connected Web devices
and interactive video displays, digital sig-
nage, home automation/security and user
interface control. The second-generation
CX92755 SoC solution supports advanced
functionality, including high-definition video
encoding and decoding, video/graphics over-
lay, image processing, and integrated audio
and power supply control.
Full story: http://bit.ly/m3QSVF
www.conexant.com
TI unleashes multicore-capable
TMS320C6671 DSP
Texas Instruments has taken the wraps off
the newest processor in its TMS320C66x
DSP family as well as enhancements to its
TMS320C6670 radio SoC. The single-core
TMS320C6671 is based on TIs KeyStone
multicore architecture, providing developers
with a migration path to multicore designs.
Full story: http://bit.ly/kWogED
www.ti.com
HD audio DSP combines
high performance, low power
Wolfson Microelectronics has announced
the WM0010 standalone audio DSP and
sound enhancement software suite. Incor-
porating a low-power, high-performance Ten-
silica HiFi DSP core, the fully programmable
device is offered as a complete high-defini-
tion audio solution for applications such as
smartphones, tablet PCs and televisions.
Full story: http://bit.ly/lZaVN3
www.wolfsonmicro.com
Tensilica extends BaseBand Engine family
with DSP IP core for LTE Advanced
The ConnX BBE64-128 from Tensilica is a
digital signal processor intellectual property
core for system-on-chip design. It provides
more than 100 gigaMACs of performance in
28-nm high-performance process technolo-
gy. The core was designed to meet the per-
formance requirements for Long-Term
Evolution Advanced, which requires at least
five times more processing power than LTE.
Full story: http://bit.ly/iQWfCW
www.tensilica.com
Intel rolls 10-core Xeon processors
Intel Corp. announced the Xeon E7, a new
family of dual-threaded server processors,
including the companys first 10-core parts.
The 32-nm Xeon E7 supports up to 20
threads, 2 Tbytes of main memory and 30
Mbytes of last-level cache in a 513-mm
2
die.
Full story: http://bit.ly/hFsHMD
www.intel.com
Calxeda gives peek into ARM server SoC
Startup Calxeda has released a few details
about its unannounced ARM-based processor
aimed at low-power servers. Calxedas initial
reference design will be based on a quad-
core Cortex A9 SoC that consumes 5 W,
including associated DRAM. The chip
includes a fabric that acts as an interconnect
to other processors, enabling OEMs to pack
as many as 120 SoCs in a 2U-sized chassis.
Full story: http://bit.ly/fkLNOR
www.calxeda.com
TI simplifies multicore DSP
software development
Texas Instruments has released software
updates for its multicore digital signal
processors, including the new TMS320C66x
DSP generation. The updates include a new
multicore software development kit (MCS-
DK), optimized multicore software libraries,
Linux kernel support for the C66x DSP gen-
eration and support for the OpenMP appli-
cation programming interface.
Full story: http://bit.ly/mwZWla
www.ti.com
Xelerateds HX336 NPU reduces
power consumption by 50 percent
The HX336 from Xelerated is a wire-speed
single-chip network processor with
advanced traffic management and deep
packet buffering for 100GE/OTU4 systems.
The HX336 reduces power consumption by
approximately 50 percent compared with
competing multichip packet processing and
traffic management solutions, according to
the company.
Full story: http://bit.ly/e8pUtN
www.xelerated.com
Dual-core processor
ready for space applications
Aeroflex Gaisler AB (Gothenburg, Sweden)
has developed the GR712RC fault-tolerant
processor, an implementation of a dual-core
LEON3FT Sparc V8 processor using RadSafe
technology. The fault-tolerant design of the
processor, in combination with the radia-
tion-tolerant technology, provides total
immunity to radiation effects. The power-
optimized GR712RC is fully software-com-
patible with previous LEON processors, with
a performance increase of up to 100 per-
cent at the same clock frequency.
Full story: http://bit.ly/jz7hR8
www.aeroflex.com
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EE LIFE
Engineering for kindergarteners
By Brian Fuller
POP CULTURE
WHEN I WAS IN KINDERGARTEN, I
liked recess, finger-painting and the
occasional nap on our little floor mats.
Oh, and lunch, for sure. Tomorrows five-
and six-year-olds might be in for some-
thing a little more sophisticated: engi-
neering projectsthat is, if Sen. Kirsten
Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) can sell her colleagues
and the U.S. public on her view of educa-
tion reform. The idea is not to stop there
but to start there, driving programs from
grade school through high school that
encourage more kids to pursue careers in
science and engineering.
I want to make sure our kids have
the skills they need to get the jobs of
the future, so they can be inventors, so
they can be entrepreneurs, so they can
create those jobs, Gillibrand said.
While part of me thinks this is a great
idea, another part of me thinks kinder-
garten is a not necessarily the right start-
ing point. I dont know what is, of course
(Im no educator), but kids at that age are
just being introduced into social situa-
tions in schools and starting
to develop learning skills.
Pushing specialized learn-
ing topics (outside of read-
ing, writing and rithmetic)
on them maybe isnt the
way to go. Then again,
expectant mothers strap
specialized speakers onto
their bellies to channel
Mozart and TED Talk programming to
their soon-to-be-borns, so why not?
What do you think? What experi-
ences have you had (watching or work-
ing) with kids at early ages of
development? Is this a feasible idea?
THE COMMUNITY RESPONDS
As a kid, I had a Gilbert Erector Set; among
other things, it taught which way to turn the
bolt and nut. I wanted to build a turntable
with an electric motor, so I assembled a
rotating metal shaft through a support
structure. I had the notion that an electric
motor worked something like a waterwheel,
with the wires laid alongside the shaft so
the moving electricity would propel the
shaft as it flowed by. Of course, when I
plugged the stripped wires at
the other end of the cord into
the 220-Vac outlet, there was
an incredible display of sparks.
My point is that kinder-
garten is a great place to
startand the first lessons
should be cautions and warn-
ings on the potential dangers of
scientific research. zeeglen
Theres the thing, Glen. I had a very similar
set when I was about four or five. I discov-
ered that the holes in the wall (old British
round pin sockets) were just the right size to
put the axles into, to put wheels and things
on to spin them aroundexcept that one
time I tried this and ended up on the other
side of the room, feeling very sorry for
myself. I reckon it immunized me to
mains zaps, as Ive had some good ones
over the years, and Im still here.
[But] Id agree with starting them young.
My dad got me books, batteries, light bulbs
and stuff to play with, then later [brought
me] electronics kits and old pc boards from
the techies he worked with I went on to
an evening TV/radio/electronics course while
I was still at school.
Kindergarten is maybe a bit early, but pri-
mary school would be a good place to intro-
duce kids to engineering. David Ashton
Engineering education starts at least as ear-
ly as kindergarten, if not earlier. Stacking
blocks and plastic colored doughnuts leads
to Lego sets, and so on.
I too had an erector set as a child, proba-
bly a few years after kindergarten; this was
certainly my first experience in using a
screwdriver and learning lefty loosey, righty
tighty, and in using batteries and electric
motors to make things move.
While I was still in grammar school, my
parents gave me an interesting electronics
learning kitsomething they probably
picked up on a whim for $20 at a hobby
storewith which I learned to follow the
directions and make Morse Code audio
beeper circuits, an AM crystal radio receiver
EE LIFE
Knee-deep
in exploding mice
By Mike Bergman
ENGINEERING
INVESTIGATIONS
ID BEEN ASKED TO HELP Joe, a
less experienced coworker, with an ESD
problem, my sage advice having been
appropriately sought because I had a
whole five years worth of work experi-
ence under my belt.
The product was only a computer
mouse. But we were selling tons of
them to our best customerone of the
biggest computer makers in the world
at the timeand the units were mal-
functioning in the field.
The production line had
already been down for
about a week when I joined
the effort, so management
washow shall I put it
perturbed.
The mouse had shipped
with little incident for
months during the relative-
ly wet spring. But the drier weather of
summer led to more static events, and
defective mice were coming back faster
than we could ship out replacements.
The mice passed the basic static
zap test, but when we played with
the ground method a bit, lo and
behold: They began blowing up in
the lab, just as theyd been doing in
the field.
The mouse included an ASIC
designed by our customer, the comput-
er maker. Use this, the customer had
told us, implying, if not explicitly
adding, or else. So the mouse was
essentially a build-to-print job for our
factory.
Still, we were responsible for the
design performance because well, our
customer assured us we were responsi-
ble, and Sales agreed.
So there we were, holding daily inter-
nal meetings on our progress, mice
exploding right and left, ankle-deep in
returns, with no answers.
The first clue had come quickly
enough: The ASIC, of course, was fail-
ing, and wed found a failed input pin.
But the chip had passed the version of
MIL-STD-883 that was in use at the
time, and that test was the gold stan-
dard for chip-level ESD robustness. So
the theory was that our board layout
was faulty. At least, that was Sales the-
ory. (Sales was quite help-
ful. Really.)
We (mostly Joe, to be
honest) tried all kinds of
things to reinforce the
board. We knew that
adding filters and caps was
not dealing with the issue
at the sourcebut the ASIC
had passed and repassed the
MIL-STD-883 test, and there was noth-
ing obviously wrong with the schemat-
ic otherwise.
After the initial panic of the first
week, another week went by, followed
by more weeks, then months. I cannot
adequately describe the hell that this
high-priority, hugely expensive issue
became. We pretty much knew there
was something wrong with the ASICs
ESD performance, but we had no proof.
We were having conference calls on a
weekly basis with the ASIC vendor,
with no result.
Then, a savior appeared. Our QC
manager, who was qualified by dint of
previous experience as a dental hygien-
ist (dont ask), hired an outside con-
sulting firm to analyze the ASIC. These
experts decapped the package and took
hi-res photos through a microscope.
Their images showed tiny craters all
over the die, as if the chip had been
and lots of other neat stuff. Taking apart a
telephone to see what made it ringback
when those were owned by the phone com-
pany and not to be tampered withis anoth-
er fond childhood memory; I think I was
grounded for at least a week for that one.
This was all just fun and games at the
time, long before I realized that people actu-
ally made a living messing around with cir-
cuits and that this might actually be a
career choice I should consider.
The point is, kids are never too young to
start learning how things work and why.
Many of us were learning engineering long
before we knew what engineering was, or
that we even wanted to know what it was
or do it for a living. Frank Eory
Humans engineer; its what we do. Some
other animals use tools, but, as far as I can
discover, we are the only critters that actual-
ly design and build tools. Trying to keep
humans from engineering is like trying to
keep a shark from swimming.
That said, getting students to follow
careers in science and engineering isnt an
educational issue, its an employment issue.
There was a government study back in 02
or 03 that actually pointed this out. Obvious-
ly, no one has read it, because everyone still
thinks schools need to address the issue.
The reality is that over the past four to
five decades, science and engineering profes-
sionals have become less and less respected,
our jobs are unstable and our salaries have
not kept up with inflation (by any measure).
Todays students see this, and they are
not dumb; why go to the effort of getting a
degree in a rigorous discipline, when it is
easier to get one in, say, finance, get more
respect and make more moneyand the
position is no less stable?
Bring back a culture where engineers are
well respected and well compensated, and
watch students return to these disciplines.
AlPothoof
As long as the society [undervalues] engi-
neers, we will continue to lose value of
design to other countries that glorify engi-
neering, and it does not matter when you
start the education. It is only a matter of
time before we completely transform from a
country of invention to a country of con-
sumers, unless we take serious steps now.
SeanR9
JOIN THE CONVERSATION
http://bit.ly/mhZusl
sandblasted. Their verdict was that the
ASIC vendor had a process problem.
As the consultants explained this, I
got more and more worried. Their
explanation simply did not ring true.
A major ASIC vendor is shipping prod-
uct with visible scars on the top insulat-
ing layer, and had been doing so for
months? Even after wed complained of
problems, the vendor hadnt found this?
And even if the consultants experts
were correct, how was the die problem
tied to the ESD failures?
Then, the consulting companys chief
engineer pointed dramatically at a scar
near a large structure, and said, You
can see how close this damage is to that
output transistor. Output transistor? It
was an alignment mark! Anyone who
had worked with a die at this level
should have immediately recognized
the marks used to match up the layers
in the semiconductor process.
We were wasting our time with these
consultants. Later I found theyd used a
combination of sulfuric acid and water
to prepare the chip, and the brew had
caused the scarring. (Water on top of
H
2
S0
4
is bad.)
I went back and called a friend, who
had access to similar equipment at his
job. After hours, we decapped the
chipthe right wayand looked at it
under his microscope.
Now the problem became obvious.
Any CMOS gate tied to an input pin
needs an ESD protection structure. The
failing input did have such a structure,
but it was on the wrong side of the
input gate. The order should have been
bond pad and ESD structure, then the
CMOS input. Instead, they had the
bond pad and CMOS input, then the
ESD structure. Under the amazingly
fast rise times of ESD events, the
CMOS input had time to blow before
the event could trigger the ESD struc-
ture downstream. This was the equiva-
lent of putting the airbag behind the
driver, so that the drivers body could
protect the airbag from the crash.
That afternoon, Joe and I called our
engineering contact at the ASIC vendor
to tell him wed found the problem.
His response still makes my knuckles
go white: Oh. That. We have a fix in
fab; samples should be ready in two
weeks. The vendor had known about
the problem for five months by that
time. Theyd known before we started
production. And they known during
every weekly conference call that had
ensued. Excuse me, I have to go hit
something
Anyway, we assembled the evidence
for our customer, who by this time was
furious about the millions of dollars in
costs for the returns. We were able to
show that the ASIC our customer had
designed was defective because of a mis-
take made by its ASIC vendor.
Soof coursewe ended up paying
for the recall.
If youre early in your career, and
this has you shaking your head about
our profession, dont sweat. Joe and
I have done well in our respective
careers; in fact he owns his own
business.
So solve the problem at hand, and
move on; there will always be another
one.
p
Mike Bergman has worked in different
segments of the electronics industry for
longer than he cares to admit. He is with
a large CE company now and is involved
in digital broadcast technologies.
EE LIFE
Yikes, solder blobs!
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LAST WORD
A moon walker and a
historian have offered
differing explanations of
how weve reached a
seeming impasse in
manned spaceflight as
the space shuttle pro-
gram winds down. The
historian, John Logsdon,
argues in a new book,
John Kennedy and the Race
to the Moon, that the
United States essentially
engaged in a tail chase
to the moon during the
1960s because the Soviet
Union had never
expressly declared its
intention to send cosmo-
nauts there. Logsdon and
others also doubt the
Soviets had the means to
mount a manned lunar flight.
But Logsdons most surprising con-
clusion is that Apollo was fundamental-
ly a Cold War program designed to meet
a narrow political objective.
The undeniable outcome of
Kennedys initiative is that the Ameri-
can space program has reached a dead
end; with the end of the shuttle pro-
gram, the nation has no immediate
means of sending humans beyond
Earth orbit. (Its certain the moon race,
if in fact there was one, was over when
Apollo 8 orbited the moon on Christ-
mas Eve in 1968.)
Logsdon and
astronaut Eugene
Cernan recently
reflected on the
meaning of
Kennedys moon
speech in the
shadow of the
relics of the first
Space Age, housed
at the Smithson-
ian Museums
annex near Dulles
International Air-
port. Cernan, the
commander of the
final moon mis-
sion and the last
man to walk on
the moon,
declared again, as
he had on previous space anniversaries,
that the U.S. manned spaceflight pro-
gram is in disarray and that the Oba-
ma administrations space policies put
the nation on a path to nowhere.
Cernan is not a man to be trifled
with. He went to the moon twice. The
second time, in December 1972, aboard
Apollo 17, he and geologist Harrison
Schmitt explored the Taurus Littrow
Valley. I called the moon my home for
three days of my life, Cernan said,
choking up at the memory.
While Cernan has nothing but praise
for JFKs vision, he has only scorn for
President Obama and NASA administra-
tor Charles Bolden. But he also under-
stands that it was timing and luck, as
much as technology, that had placed
him and the other moon walkers on
Gods front porch, from which they
had gazed back at Earth.
Cernans blanket condemnation of
the trajectory of human exploration of
the solar system ignores many of the
scientific advances made since his Apol-
lo flights. Our magnificent machines
have probed the solar system, sending
back invaluable data about its origins.
Then there is the remarkable Hubble
Space Telescope and its celestial images
of the universe.
Researchers today are still analyzing
the orange glass soil brought back from
the moon by Cernans Apollo 17 crew.
Late last month, just one day after Cer-
nans talk, NASA announced that
researchers had measured water in those
samples, in the form of tiny particles of
molten rock, for the first time. The lunar
melt inclusions indicate the water con-
tent of lunar magma is 100 times higher
than previously thought. And where
theres water, theres a chance that
humans could one day survive.
Cernan and Schmitt had stumbled
across the orange soil as they explored a
lunar valley steeper than the Grand
Canyon. Decades later, the sample they
brought home is slowly revealing its
secrets. Its a reminder that the rewards
of explorationwhether of the oceans
and last pristine lands on Earth or of
the vast reaches beyondcome in fits
and starts.
Most of us would love to see an Apol-
lo-like program to send humans to
Mars. But it would take resources and
money, and for now those are in short
supply. And it will take another organ-
izing principle, akin to the Cold War-
driven Apollo program, to push the
frontiers of science.
On one score, however, I heartily
agree with Cernan: Somewhere theres
a child who has an idea that will one
day take us to the stars.
We only need to discard our petty dif-
ferences and think big.
p
By George Leopold (george.leopold@
ubm.com), news director for EE Times and
editor in chief of EE Times Confidential.
May marked the 50th anniversary of President
Kennedys speech to a joint session of Congress
in which he proposed manned missions to the
moon. As on previous anniversaries, the
nations newspapers published op-ed pieces
decrying the deterioration of the American
manned space program since the end of the
Apollo era.
Space exploration is a
marathon, not a sprint
The rewards
of exploration
come in fits
and starts
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CONNECTING PRODUCTS TO POSSIBILITIES.
WERE IN IT.
We live in a world of connections. And for
more than 50 years, no company has helped
connect and protect the ow of power and
data in moreproducts than Tyco Electronics.
Weve changed ourname to better reect
who we are and what we do. Connecting
products topossibilities to help technologybe
smarter, faster and better than ever before.
Learn more at te.com/eet
EVERY CONNECTION COUNTS
CONNEC D TE
2011 Tyco Electronics Corporation, a TE Connectivity Ltd company. All Rights Reserved. TE Connectivity,
TE Connectivity (logo) and Tyco Electronics are trademarks of TE Connectivity Ltd companies.

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