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Designing usable software involves more than user, it requires many astute perspectives to attain a balanced view. Electronic Performance Support Systems share something in common with User-Centered Design, in that […]

LOS ALAMOS National Laboratory has taken another step forward in the race to develop high-performance computing systems with the launch this week of a compact supercomputer. On hand for the […]

Multiprocessor system design gets more complex as new technologies like InfiniBand and HyperTransport come online. System designers have a number of choices when it comes to multiprocessor system architectures. Many […]

In terminating high-speed parallel data buses, designers face several challenges. Signals with fast edge rates demand terminations with very low parasitics. Currently, active bus devices produce edge rates as low […]

Better grounding schemes, surface-mount attachment, and careful board design push components into the gigahertz range. With signal speeds on the rise in a wide range of applications, maintaining signal integrity […]

We have heard of the importance of intellectual property (IP) reuse to the future of electronic design. With reuse hailed as a panacea for competitive design flows, design languages that […]

Jim Hartmann, Silent Knight LLC, Maple Grove, MN Conventional shift registers, such as the 74HC595, require data-, clock-, and strobe-logic signals. The circuit in Figure 1 needs only two logic [...]

AFTER MORE THAN 20 years of big beige desktop boxes, computer design is at last enjoying an evolutionary spurt. Pretty and powerful all-in-one PCs like the Apple iMac, Future Power […]

Shrinking passive components may aid designs in cramped spaces, but engineers working with ultra high frequencies really want to deep-six passives altogether. Efforts to bury capacitors and resistors into ceramic […]

Assembling a mainframe server will soon be like building a Lego model, says Jack Schofield Having de-skilled the personal computer industry, Intel plans to de-skill the minicomputer and mainframe industries, […]

I love having a lightweight laptop because I can write anywhere. But to do anything useful with my PC, I need to connect to my network. When I'm on the […]

DURING OUR BROWSING WE CAME across dozens of impressive modifications. A couple stick in our minds--particularly the 'Alien' case at The Best Case Scenario (www. thebestcasescenario.com), which qualifies more as […]

New Orleans Building wireless data links to customers or employers has usually meant piecing together various products from many different vendors as a do-it-yourself project. But now powerhouse computer vendors […]

While the demand among computer users is for more flexibility, in designing systems, many still require batch-oriented processing. AT & T Communications has acquired IBM's Joint Application Design, which provides a methodology that supports interaction between the user and system developer. The system has four steps: selecting the project, becoming familiar with the application, preparation of materials, and JAD workshops. AT & T made modifications in four areas of the methodology to provide an administrative structure, place emphasis on the business function, train workshop leaders, and provide a guide for participants. All participants agreed that JAD was of assistance in defining the system requirements.

The PC market has been spinning its wheels like an adolescent driving a car for the first time. Faster processors, more memory, bigger disks and no real progress (unless you're […]