RF amplifier series gains 300-W model
The latest addition to the R&S BBA300 family of RF amplifiers delivers output power of 300 W P1dB or software-adjustable saturation power up to 450 W. Operating at up to 6 GHz, the broadband amplifier can generate the high field strengths…
Board set kickstarts wireless charging design
A pair of 50-W Qi-compatible development boards from ST enables rapid wireless charging using the company’s ST Super Charge (STSC) protocol. The STEVAL-WBC2TX50 transmitter and STEVAL-WLC98RX receiver boards accelerate the development of wireless…
Thin electrolytic capacitor achieves low ESR
Joining Murata’s ECAS series of polymer aluminum electrolytic capacitors is a device that boasts low equivalent series resistance (ESR) of 4.5 mΩ. This tiny capacitor, designated the ECASD40E477M4R5KA0, is housed in a 7.3×4.3-mm surface-mount…
Contactless electric bell on a gradient relay
The operation of a contactless electric bell is based on a change in the electrical resistance of a temperature-sensitive element (thermistor) when a finger approaches the bell button or upon contact with it. To exclude the possibility of continuous…
Has Malaysia’s ‘semiconductor moment’ finally arrived
Malaysia and Taiwan were among the early semiconductor outposts during the late 1960s when U.S. companies like Intel began to outsource their assembly and test operations to Asia. Over half a century, while Taiwan has reached the design and…
Microsoft’s Build 2024: Silicon and associated systems come to the fore
Microsoft’s yearly Build developer conference took place last Tuesday-Thursday, March 21-23 (as I write these words on Memorial Day), and was rife with AI-themed announcements spanning mobile-to-enterprise software and services.
Curiously,…
What’s a “thermal jumper” do, anyway?
I’ve always been interested in simple-looking components which solve well-defined, clear, bounded problems. One carpentry example I encountered and used many years ago is formally known as a hanger bolt, Figure 1.
Figure 1 (left) The schematic…
Resurrecting a diminutive, elementary Arm-based PC
I’ll admit upfront that there’s more than a bit of irony in the topic I’m about to cover today. As I write these words on Saturday, April 20, Qualcomm is rumored to next week be giving the next public update on the Snapdragon X family,…
Samsung’s memory chip business: Trouble in paradise?
The week of 20 May 2024 has been quite eventful for Samsung’s semiconductor unit, the world’s largest producer of memory chips like DRAMs, SRAMs, NAND flash, and NOR flash. Early this week, an unexpected change of guard at Samsung’s semiconductor…
Single event upset and recovery
The effects of cosmic rays were once discussed in “Doubled-up MOSFETs“.
The idea was that component redundancy, paired MOSFETs in that case, would allow one MOSFET to still function even if its partner in a switched mode power supply were…
Why HBM memory and AI processors are happy together
High bandwidth memory (HBM) chips have become a game changer in artificial intelligence (AI) applications by efficiently handling complex algorithms with high memory requirements. They became a major building block in AI applications by addressing…
Demo board provides dual-motor control
ST’s demonstration board controls two three-phase brushless motors using an onboard STSPIN32G4 controller with an embedded MCU. The controller’s integrated MCU is based on a 32-bit Arm Cortex-M4 core, which delivers the processing power…
