I often work with embedded, mixed signal systems and while in the past that might have included parallel data with numerous data and address lines, nowadays you are more likely to be working with serial interfaces. To keep chip sizes small, with a reduced numbers of pins and less wiring/tracking involved, there are now quite […]
Spread Spectrum Clocks
Digital clocks are everywhere. In fact there are too many clocks around. If you do a quick sweep with a spectrum analyzer, then as well as the frequencies you might expect to see – local TV and radio stations, cellphones and WiFi signals – you will find all sorts of other spurious signals from the […]
PIC Microcontrollers for Safety Critical Applications
by Chris Francis Microchip recently announced some microcontrollers for “safety critical applications”. I was interested to see what the difference was and how they might compare with other manufacturers’ microcontrollers aimed at similar applications. The first thing I found out was that there don’t seem to be many microcontrollers aimed at safety critical applications. The […]
Comparison of the Cypress PSoC 1, 3, 4 and 5LP
By Chris Francis The first generation Cypress PSoC “Programmable System-on-Chip” – PSoC 1 – was the first programmable analog system that was general purpose, flexible and with usable performance in my opinion. Various other companies attempts at programmable analog prior to that were either too restricted, slow or relied solely on switched capacitor analog blocks. […]
Microchip PIC Microcontroller Configurable Logic Cells (CLC)
By Chris Francis Some of the newer Microchip PIC microcontrollers feature “configurable logic cells” or CLC. What are they and how useful are they? They appear in a small selection of the PIC devices and are a programmable combination of gates and latches that can be combined to produce an output. Rather than being a […]
Clock Startup in Low Power Microcontroller Design
Using a low power microcontroller and making it “sleep” as much as possible is a common power reduction technique as they can be woken by either an internal or external clock, or by an internal or external event. Taking the PIC 8 bit XLP devices as an example (the so called nanoWatt devices), they have […]
