3. “Stuff” We’re Going to Cover
Analog (A), Digital (D), A-to-D and D-to-A...
Atoms, Molecules, and Crystals
Conductors, Insulators, Resistors, Capacitors...
Semiconductors (Diodes, Transistors...)
Different types of IC (ASIC, SoC, FPGA...)
Different types of memory
... and so much more....
39. ohm (Ω) - German physicist Georg Simon Ohm
(1789–1854)
volt (V) - Italian physicist Count Alessandro
Giuseppe Antonio Anastastio Volta 1745–1827)
amp (A) - French mathematician and physicist
André-Marie Ampère (1775–1836)
hertz (Hz) - German physicist Heinrich Hertz
(1857–1894)
Single-Letter Qualifier (no space)
Five volts
Half an amp
Multi-Letter Qualifier (space)
Half a volt
One million hertz
...but ... 28nm and 64MB ...
5V
0.5A
500 mV
45. The Americans may have need of the telephone, but
we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.
- Sir William Preece, 1876
Chief engineer of the British Post Office
162. Elements in a Human (first 5)
Source: H. A. Harper, V. W. Rodwell, P. A. Mayes, Review of Physiological
Chemistry, 16th ed., Lange Medical Publications, Los Altos, California 1977.
163. Human Elements (next 5)
Source: H. A. Harper, V. W. Rodwell, P. A. Mayes, Review of Physiological
Chemistry, 16th ed., Lange Medical Publications, Los Altos, California 1977.
164. Human Elements (traces)
Source: H. A. Harper, V. W. Rodwell, P. A. Mayes, Review of Physiological
Chemistry, 16th ed., Lange Medical Publications, Los Altos, California 1977.
165. Human Elements (minimal traces)
Source: H. A. Harper, V. W. Rodwell, P. A. Mayes, Review of Physiological
Chemistry, 16th ed., Lange Medical Publications, Los Altos, California 1977.
166. IC Elements (before the 1990s)
Source: "Research Directions for Nano-Scale Science and Technology",
Tze-Chiang (T.C.) Chen, IBM Fellow, VP Science & Technology, Research Division
167. IC Elements (since the 1990s)
Source: "Research Directions for Nano-Scale Science and Technology",
Tze-Chiang (T.C.) Chen, IBM Fellow, VP Science & Technology, Research Division
168. IC Elements (after 2006)
Source: "Research Directions for Nano-Scale Science and Technology",
Tze-Chiang (T.C.) Chen, IBM Fellow, VP Science & Technology, Research Division
178. FRAM (Ferroelectric RAM)
Strengths
Fast reads and writes
Very low power
Bit-alterable
No process limit
Current Applications
Power meters, RAID Journals, Automotive, Industrial,
Medical
Weaknesses
Challenging process
Wear-out issues
Large cell size
179. MRAM (Magnetic RAM)
Strengths
Fast reads and writes
Very low power
Bit-alterable
No process limit
Current Applications
Spacecraft, RAID Journals, Communications,
Transportation, Industrial Automation, Gaming
Weaknesses
Challenging process
Difficulties arise as
process shrinks
180. PCM (Phase Change Memory)
Strengths
Very low power
Bit-alterable
No process limit
Current Applications
High density event/data logging (telecom, industrial printers,
smart meters); Consolidating E2
PROM and Flash (consumer
electronics); High-performance, reliable storage (RAID
controllers, non-volatile cache in RAID controllers)
Weaknesses
Wear-out issues
Low write speeds
Temperature sensitivity
(>85°C)
181.
182.
183.
184.
185.
186.
187.
188.
189.
190.
191.
192.
193.
194.
195.
196.
197.
198.
199.
200.
201.
202.
203.
204.
205.
206.
207. Who Are all the FPGA Players?
Well-known
Actel
Altera
Lattice
Xilinx
Not-so-well-known
Achronix
Silicon Blue
QuickLogic (CSSPs)
Cypress (PSoC)
New and/or unique
Element CXI
Tabula
Tier Logic (no more)
208. Forthcoming Stratix V FPGA at the 28nm node (Q1 2011):
-- Up to 1.1 million logic elements (LEs)
-- 53-Mbits embedded memory
-- 3,680 18x18 multipliers (variable precision),
-- Integrated transceivers each operating up to 28 Gbps.
211. If it’s green or wriggles, it’s biology.
If it stinks, it’s chemistry.
If it doesn’t work, it’s physics.
It it’s useful, it’s engineering.
- Anonymous
Editor's Notes
Although precursors to this table exist, its invention is generally credited to Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869, who intended the table to illustrate recurring ("periodic") trends in the properties of the elements. The layout of the table has been refined and extended over time, as new elements have been discovered, and new theoretical models have been developed to explain chemical behavior.
Voltage = Electrical Potential = Height of water
Current = Flow
Flow affected by resistance
Note direction of current shown here is “classical” rather than “actual”
Note volt = lowercase but V = upper case
The term ohm is named after the German physicist Georg Simon Ohm (1789–1854), who defined the relationship between voltage, current, and resistance in 1827 (we now call this Ohm's Law).
The term volt is named after the Italian physicist Count Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastastio Volta 1745–1827), who invented the electric battery in 1800. (Having said this, some people believe that an ancient copper-lined jar found in an Egyptian pyramid was in fact a primitive battery... but, there again, some people will believe anything. Who knows for sure?)
The terms amp and ampere are named after the French mathematician and physicist André-Marie Ampère 1775–1836), who formulated one of the basic laws of electromagnetism in 1820. An amp corresponds to approximately 6,250,000,000,000,000,000 electrons per second flowing past a given point in an electrical circuit.
The amount of power consumed by an electronic circuit is measures in watts, where the term watt is named after the Scottish inventor and engineer James Watt (1736–1819), whose improvements to the steam engine were fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution.
The term farad is named after the British scientist Michael Faraday (1791–1867), who constructed the first electric motor in 1821.
The term henry is named after the American inventor Joseph Henry (1797–1878), who discovered inductance in 1832.
The term hertz is a unit of frequency. One hertz equals one cycle – or one oscillation – per second. The hertz is named after the German physicist Heinrich Hertz (1857–1894), who made important scientific contributions to electromagnetism.
Electricity essentially consists of huge herds of untold billions of electrons migrating from one place to another through a conducting medium (like a copper wire). Electronics is the art of controlling these electrons – telling them when to start moving, when to stop, where to go, and what to do when they get there. In order to do this, electronics engineers need components that can be used to control the flow of electricity …
Of course the simplest control mechanism is a switch, such as the knife switch Igor might employ in a Frankenstein-type movie.
In 1823, William Sturgeon created the first electromagnet in England. This consisted of a rod of ferromagnetic material wrapped with a coil of insulated wire. When a current was passed through the wire, it caused the rod to act like a powerful magnet.
This led to the electromagnetic relay, in which Sturgeon’s electromagnet was used to activate (close) a mechanical switch. When the magnet was deactivated, a small spring was used to return the switch to its inactive (open) position.
Relays found many uses, such as the Morse Telegraph which was developed by the American inventor Samuel Morse in 1837.
Later, the telephone was invented in 1876 by the Scottish-American inventor Alexander Graham Bell. Early telephones relied on exchanges with human operators who connected the various calls. One early adopter of the telephone was the American undertaker Almon B. Strowger, who thought that having a phone would increase his business. However, Strowger was surprised to find that his business actually went down. It turned out that the operator who serviced Strowger’s phone was the wife of a rival undertaker, so she “accidentally” misdirected calls intended for Strowger to her husband. When he discovered this, Strowger determined to get her out of the loop. Thus, in 1888, he invented the first practical automatic (relay-based) telephone switching exchange.
(As an additional nugget of trivia, it wasn’t until 1971 that it became possible to direct dial Europe from the U.S.)
Relays continue to find uses to this day – for example to act as a buffer between delicate electronics and large voltages and currents.
Perhaps the most ambitious use of relays was in the construction of big electromechanical computers, such as the first large-scale automatic digital relay-based computer – the Harvard Mark 1. Constructed between 1939 and 1944, this beast was the brainchild of Howard Aiken. The result was 50 feet long, 8 feet tall, and used over 750,000 individual components!
The problem with relays (especially the types that were around in those days) is that they can only switch a limited number of times a second, which severely limits the performance of a relay-based computer. Engineers really needed something that could go faster …..
In 1879, the American inventor Thomas Alva Edison demonstrated his first incandescent light bulb. (We should note that this wasn’t the world’s first incandescent bulb -- Sir Joseph Wilson Swan demonstrated his version a year before in England, and there were other contenders before Swan).
In 1883, one of Edison’s engineers, William Hammer, discovered that by mounting a metal plate on the inside of the glass bulb he could measure a current flowing between the glowing coil and the plate – this became known as the Edison effect.
Unfortunately, Edison didn’t pursue this phenomena, and it wasn’t until the Edison Effect’s 21st birthday in 1904 that the English electrical engineer John Ambrose Flemming used this effect to invent the first vacuum tube diode (a component that only conducts electricity in one direction).
In 1907, the American inventor Lee de Forest introduced a third electrode called the “grid.” The resulting triode could now be used as an amplifier and a switch.
It is possible to do some extremely clever things purely in the analog domain. For example, way back in the mists of time when I was a student at university, we had analog computers that could be used to create sophisticated models of real-world systems (no, that’s NOT me in this picture).
ASP Analog Signal Processing
... in reality, there are a bewildering variety of sensor types available ... the ones shown provide just a few representative examples...
But wait, there’s more, because many modern applications demand the use of high-speed serial interconnect. In turn, this requires the FPGA to contain corresponding serialize/de-serialize (SERDES) blocks and associated PHY interfaces.
