COOLING
By: dl

Advanced Thermal Solutions Inc. is conducting a free thermal management webinar on Thursday, June 24, between 2:00  – 3:00 pm East Coast time on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tools, which “have become simulation workhorses” and enable design engineers “to tackle electronics cooling challenges on-the-fly.”  Sign up and attend at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/924038858. 

heatsinks.wordpress.com/

By: dl

An in-depth paper from Data Translation dubbed “Advances In ULTRA-Accurate Temperature Measurement Design” describes how to achieve ultra-accurate temperature management by using advanced analog techniques. It discusses some of the common difficulties in achieving accuracy and ways to overcome them to leverage “the dramatic increase in performance of silicon based devices such as 24-bit Delta-Sigma A/D converters.”

www.datatranslation.com/docs/whitepapers/TEMPpoint_Advances.pdf

This 5-part tutorial from Excalibur Systems Inc. provides an excellent introduction to MIL-STD-1553 in an easily absorbed format: a PowerPoint presentation with voice overlay. The entire course takes about 45 minutes to complete.

www.mil-1553.com/Excalibur08/Templates/showpage.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=84&FID=434

By: dl

Title: The ATCA Market: Now and Next
Author: Brian Carr (Emerson Network Power)

This 7-page white paper gives a brief history and description of PICMG’s Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture, how it became “the open standard technology of choice for telecom applications” and why. The market outlook for ATCA is considered, along with its opportunities for expanding beyond telecom central office applications to such areas as oil and gas exploration, MIL/aerospace, healthcare and telematics.

mototracker.atomicserver.co.uk/files/The%20ATCA%20Market%20-%20Now%20and%20Next.pdf

By: dl

Title: VITA 48 (aka VPX-REDI)
Author: Curtiss-Wright Controls Inc./Embedded Computing

This undated, 21-page PowerPoint presentation introduces VPX-REDI, aka VITA 48, the Mechanical Specification using Ruggedized Enhanced Design Implementation. It covers mechanical issues for various versions of VITA 48, including 48.1 (air cooled), 48.2 (conduction cooled) and 48.3 (liquid cooled), covering the choices of board pitch and thickness, and the specifics of keep-out areas and wedgelock locations.Two-level maintenance issues are also discussed. To take a look, hit the VPX-REDI Overview hot button in the url below.

www.cwcembedded.com/3/203/242.html

By: dl

A Tutorials page on Ballard Technology’s web site quickly identifies and gives a short description of a number of Mil/Aero standards and protocols, including MIL-Std-1553, Macair and AFDX. If you just can’t seem to keep ARINC 429, 573 and 717 straight or need a quick refresher, this is a handy piece of reference material.

www.ballardtech.com/support.aspx/Tutorials/#top

By: tc & dl

Title: Intel Industrial Control Reference
Author: Intel
Source: Industrial Embedded Systems (July, 2009)

This 4-page Intel document describes a reference design that helps industrial control designers “migrate to a flexible modular architecture instead of constantly respinning ASICs and ASSPs every time products are upgraded.” The design, a collaborative effort of Intel, Altera, MSC Vertriebs and 3S-Smart Software Solutions, is based on a Q7-US from MSC, which is a low-power, 70 x 70-mm COM (computer-on -module) running Linux and dissipating just 15W. Altera’s contribution to the reference design is an Arria GX FPGA, which interfaces to ”multiple fieldbus technologies and supports a wide assortment of I/O.” The authors claim a fourfold advantage in using modular hardware and firmware, as in the reference design described: reduced time to market, scalability, versatility and flexibility.

www.industrial-embedded.com/articles/id/?4094

By: dl

Two brief tutorial documents from the StackableUSB™ trade group address a pair of the issues involved in adapting the Universal Serial Bus (USB), originally a peripheral interface bus, for use as a multi-board system interface.

The group currently has a membership of ten, consisting of board/system house Micro/sys, which originated the specification, plus two chip makers, one connector company, one magazine, one industry conference, one RTOS maker, a sensor association, one memory module manufacturer and a maker of GPS modules.

StackableUSB Extended Power (www.stackableusb.org/white_paper_stackableusb_extended_power.asp) explains how to get around the driver and OS problems that result from the fact that USB 2.0 allows devices to draw no more than 500 mA at +5V, while in a StackableUSB system, a CPU board is required to provide 937.5 mA at +5V and 937.5 mA at +3.3V to devices.

In turn, Interrupts and USB (www.stackableusb.org/white_paper_interrupts_and_usb.asp) deals with possible difficulties in interrupt transfer latency that can occur because of “OS design, driver design, application software, CPU speed, and bus bandwidth” issues.

www.stackableusb.org