News & Analysis

STMicroelectronics has announced a compact and highly-integrated hard disk-drive motor controller intended for the 1.8-inch and sub-1.8-inch drives used in portable consumer electronics products such as MP3 and video players. The new L7208 HDD Motor Controller integrates all of the circuits needed to control and drive the HDD spindle motor and voice coil actuator – including all the necessary power-FET devices – and is designed to save spac...

Strategic Test Corporation has announced a new Windows XP Pro 64-bit driver for its range of Digitizer, AWG, fast Digital I/O and Digital Pattern Generator cards. The driver is compatible with all of the 150 different PCI/PCI-X, PXI and CompactPCI products in the UltraFast range.

Based on the Xilinx Virtex4 range, the SMT348 from Sundance features 16MB of fast QDRII memory; ensuring ample capacity to develop today’s demanding applications. With 8MB of ZBTRAM, the lower cost SMT368 is also more than capable of reducing prototype development times.

ADLINK Technology Inc has announced the release of the PCI-7442 ─ a high-pin count, opto-isolated DIO card featuring 64 digital input and 64 digital output channels. Designed for applications requiring scores of I/O controls and superior digital output driving capability, the PCI-7442 is ideal for compact machine controllers, large-scale test and measurement devices, relay control, and automation systems.

Silicon Laboratories Inc has announced a highly integrated FM transmitter family offering superior audio performance in a very small 3 x 3 x 0.55 20-pin QFN package. By reducing the bill of materials and power consumption of existing solutions, the Si471x FM transmitter family allows customers to cost effectively add wireless FM audio playback capability to any portable media device including cell phones, MP3/digital media players, navigation/GP...

Avago Technologies has announced the availability of its single-mode fiber optic transceivers targeted at 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel storage networking applications such as inter-switch links, storage replication, and other long reach applications. Leveraging Avago's expertise in fiber optics, the small-form-pluggable modules are RoHS-compliant and deliver superior electromagnetic interference benefits and device performance resulting in increased port...

Adaptsys announces the availability of Helix desktop automated programmer which offers a tray input and output handling system in addition to support for devices in tubes. Automating device programming increases reliability and decreases production costs, but until now, the cost of this equipment was difficult to economically justify.

A new very low profile flat voice coil motor from Geeplus Europe is designed in such a way that it offers good clearance in assembly and has latitude for tilting on one axis. It is ideally suited for use in multiple axis applications, such as moving optical filters.

ip.access ltd, a developer of in-building wireless picocell solutions today announced that they are using a custom version of picoChip’s multi-core DSP hardware and modem software in their femto3G Access Points for residential fixed-mobile convergence (FMC).

AWS Electronics Group has announced its acquisition of Jantec Electronic Services Ltd, a contract service and repairs business based in Bedfordshire. Jantec’s expertise in product design, development, prototyping, low volume manufacture, diagnostic testing and repairs compliments the longstanding services that AWS already offer their clients.