Memory chips always break new barriers at ISSCC, and 2005 is no exception with flash and SRAM both featuring. Perhaps most notable are the two 8Gbit flash devices detailed by Samsung and by Toshiba/Sandisk, which take flash beyond DRAM density. The Toshiba/Sandisk single die integrates two multi-level cell arrays which could each operate as a separate 4Gbit memory. Each cell, ...

Svetlan Josifovska

The man in the street, who these days is as likely as not sporting the white earphones of an Apple iPod, may soon be enjoying entirely lifelike sound customised exactly for him, thanks to work at the universities of York and Sydney. To a listener wearing ordinary headphones the technique of ‘binaural sound synthesis’ creates the illusion of sound arriving ...

Texas Instruments has introduced a fully-differential op-amp for driving fast ADCs up to 100MHz, claiming it to be the lowest noise, lowest distortion amplifier of its type. Built on the firm’s SiGe-on-insulator BiCom-III process, the THS4509TI provides input referred noise of 2.0nV/[root]Hz, second and third-order harmonic distortion at 70MHz of -80dBc and -87dBc respectively (2Vp-p into 200ohm) and a one ...

Amino Communications has reported a profit for the last eleven months, after floating just six months ago on the AIM stock exchange. The firm’s finance director Stuart Darling told Electronics Weekly that Amino has a budget in place to take on about 20 extra staff this year. “We are taking on people. It is not an explosion but we are 75 staff ...

The system-level design methodology is driving software design tools into a new era, and technology in the field is stronger in Europe than in the US, according to the chair of this year’s Design, Automation and Test in Europe (DATE) conference. “If we look to the actual microelectronic development we see a decrease in the traditional Asic business,” Norbert Wehn, ...

The targets have changed again for the UK’s remaining PCB industry, according to Mark Beesley, managing director at Circatex. There are now niche sectors where UK manufacturers have an advantage over lower-labour rivals based in the Far East. Instead, UK manufacturers are having to focus on the provision of quick turnaround services. “China’s strength is in mass production but they ...

Using the floating body effect of silicon-on-insulator wafers, a Swiss firm has produced memory with twice the density of DRAM. Innovative Silicon said its Z-RAM is smaller because there is no capacitor with the memory transistor. “Because the body of the transistor is insulated from the substrate, you build up charge on the body, either positive or negative,” explained Mark-Eric ...

STMicroelectronics is nurturing a product which could double the size of the company, according to an industry analyst. The product, unveiled last October, is GOSPL (generalised open source programming logic) which provides a reconfigurable silicon fabric to be used in ASSPs, Asics, or SoCs, along with a million lines of source code, a complete EDA toolset, and synthesis, placement, routing ...

The Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC), a group of satellites built by Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL), is in use to aid Tsunami victims. Five charities including Oxfam are using the data, provided through the European Space Agency funded Respond organisation. DMC satellites, of which there are currently four, scan a swath of ground 600km wide with a resolution of 32m at ...