News Articles
News Articles
PRICING POWER - In a Tech Backwater, A Profit Fortress Rises
Maker of Arcane Chips Earns Better Margins Than Google, Microsoft
...Linear's Mr. Swanson asserts that his company's sprawling product line, without a single blockbuster, makes it a tough target for competitors. In the digital-chip world, a single winning design bought by a few big customers, such as Intel Corp.'s Pentium, can yield huge profits at its peak. But that market is fraught with huge capital costs, rapid obsolescence and brutal competition. Linear has 17,000 customers, none of which represents more than 3% of its sales. "We built this business one brick at a time," the company chairman says. "Anyone who wants to take us on will have to do it one brick at a time, too"...
Video Design Idea: Build your own laboratory precision voltage reference
Mark Thoren, mixed-signal application engineering manager with Linear Technology, demonstrates an amplifier-based circuit design for a relatively inexpensive precision voltage source.
Designers working on analog circuits in the lab often need accurate voltage sources to test the operation of op amps and other components. A lab power supply isn't a very good choice for such work because most such supplies aren't stable over temperature and time. Of course you could use a 7-decade Kelvin-Varley precision voltage reference although such instruments are relatively expensive and perhaps overkill for the task at hand. Or you can build your own relatively inexpensive 5-decade reference and power it with batteries to ensure that no line noise corrupts the precise output.
Video Design Idea: Measure nanoamps to ensure accurate computer clocks
In this EDN Video Design Idea, Jim Williams, staff scientist with Linear Technology, explains why PC clocks are invariably wrong, and how engineers can surmount the extreme measurement challenge involved in solving the problem.
The extremely low-power quartz crystals that are prevalent in products from cell phones to PCs today work with currents that max out at 1 µA. With such a small full-scale current range, a seemingly tiny error in the current a circuit sends through the crystal can result in terribly inaccurate clocks. Designers can address that problem by accurately measuring the current through a crystal and tuning their circuit design for precision. But as Jim Williams explains, measuring current in the sub-µA range is difficult, and the measuring circuit can induce no more than 1 pF of capacitance.
High-Linearity Mixers, Modulators, And Demodulators Improve Basestation Performance
The most critical circuits in any radio design are the mixers and IQ modulators/demodulators as they establish the basic specifications for the entire product. Linear Technology's LT5557 down-converting mixer, LT5571 quadrature modulator, and LT5575 I/Q demodulator step up to tackle these challenges.....
Single-Port PSEs Put Power in More Places
A highly integrated single-port controller simpli fies PSE design and enables novel implementations such as a wall-plug-powered PSE or a "power forwarder" that powers more than one device off a single port.
In many applications, a single port or just a few ports with PoE capability are required. For these applications, one of the multichannel controllers is typically used, and unused channels are left floating. However, Linear Technology’s LTC4263, an autonomous single-channel PSE controller, permits an alternative approach in such applications. The LTC4263 provides fully compliant IEEE 802.3af PD detection, classification, port turn on, fault monitoring, and ac or dc disconnect sensing. In addition, an efficient LED driver provides the user with port status, indicating port on or faults through a single LED....
Some new trends in battery-powered portable devices
The options designers have to ensure that battery life is optimized for their particular configuration
The year 2006 turned out to be stellar for the shipment of battery-powered portable electronic devices. Last year, consumers bought over 950 million cell phones, 220 million notebooks, 140 million MP3 players, 90 million DSCs, and 10 million GPS systems. Still other products are hybrid versions of two or even three of these product functions, such as portable media players (PMPs) or digital media broadcast products. The advantage of PMPs is that they can play both MP3 and MP4 formats. Therefore, a single device can be used to listen to music or watch a movie from a DVD-CD, or from a downloaded file from a Web site.....
Signal conditioning for high-impedance sensors
Maintaining accuracy in circuits that process signals from high-impedance sensors presents unique challenges. First, you need to identify when to use special design techniques. Then, you must choose devices that buffer and protect the sensors and circuits without destroying their accuracy.
If you had the option, you probably wouldn't use high-Z (high-impedance) sensors. Their sensitivity to external noise, solder-flux residue, particle tracking, bias currents, and distant charges can make repeatable measurements difficult. High-Z sensors have an upside, though: They don't self-load, and they inherently use little power. For certain variables, such as pH, light, acceleration, and humidity, the most practical sensors are high-Z devices. Because nature offers them, expediency urges their use. Careful attention to design can minimize the devices' tendency to receive adverse effects from the world around them. As an interesting note, with the advent of practical superconduction, impedance values have achieved an infinite range.....
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