eeProductCenter Ultimate Products 5.2

Analog Boards / Buses DSP Electromechanical Embedded Tools Interconnects Microprocessors Memory Logic and Interfaces Passives / Sensors PLDs / FPGAs Power Components Power Sources RF / Microwave Test / Measurement

Product Shopper New Product Info

(1)
INTEL
Intel's latest SSD for Netbooks, Nettops hits the market
eeProductCenter's Ismini Scouras says: "Intel NAND Products Group is introducing its latest solid-state drive product with the Intel Z-P230 PATA Solid-State Drive (SSD), a storage solution for value mobile and desktop systems. According to Intel, the Z-P230 PATA SSD is a cost-effective storage solution designed to replace traditional hard disk drives in netbook and nettop systems, yet is four times smaller and lighter than a standard 1.8-inch hard disk drive with the same industry-standard PATA (IDE) connector."

Readers say:
"Good step, but densities are still too small, and they are too expensive for consumer/embedded devices."

"The cost will have to be closer to traditional hard drives."

"Although most recent machines come with SATA, I am sure I am not alone in wanting to retrofit older machines with SSD's."

"SSDs are not new, this is simply another one. The only significance is its price and form-factor which, while they can provide a "cool" factor, aren't particularly technically exciting."

"Cost prohibitive. Flash must support many more write / erase cycles."

"It needs to be much faster and have a much higher storage capacity before I would use it heavily. Currently, comparing a Maxtor Laptop HDD the only two advantages are the weight (1/10th that of a laptop HDD) and the power consumption in a read condition (about 1/5th that of a laptop HDD)."

"Appears to be rather small amount of memory to replace a traditional hard disk in light of current usage patterns."

"A must!"

"Relatively small capacity will keep it relegated to the small netbook market."

"While this is a great development the price is still too high to be a selling point in low cost netbook devices. Once the price comes down closer to match currently available flash memory this could be a major feature for netbook type devices."

"Surprised that there are not larger versions offered."

"Great for a Linux appliance"

"While it's a great start, larger "drives" are needed. This is the info age. I use more capacity on my iPOD."

"Needs to be a SATA design."

"Cost, speed and storage size will determine the survival of the SSD."

"Needs to be larger capacity for less money."

"3 year life is too short. Should be twice that. Also capacity is lacking."

"These devices could have been candidates for a system that we are now shipping, but for the fact that we chose to go with a SATA interface."

"Excellent advancement. Hopefully will speed all PC operations."

"Reliability is a main concern. Also, it only has a 3 years useful life, which is not very appealing."

"Price is still bit high compare to traditional HDD. Hopefully Intel will come down on price."

"Price/Bit still makes it a niche. Speed? Life? All Important too"

"Useful for extending battery life and long-term reliability, but needs much higher storage capacity to be truly valuable."

"Typically SSD lags physical discs in capacity. When was the last time you wanted a 16GB drive in your laptop. My current drive is 140 GB. Show me that in a SSD."

"Nice Drive, just clients want more space, which is why laptops have 120-250GB Disks in them now."

USABILITY RANK: 1

(2)
TI
TI MCUs bring breakthroughs in performance
eeProductCenter's Ismini Scouras says: "Texas Instruments Inc. announced a new generation of ultra-low power MSP430 microcontrollers (MCU), offering what it claims is the industry's lowest power consumption for devices that can provide up to 25-MHz peak performance, increased flash and RAM memory and integrated peripherals such as RF, USB, encryption and LCD interfaces."

Readers say:
"Like the integration/features but increasingly it comes down to how much existing IP for a product exists and what kind of tools are available."
"Great for incorporating more computing power into small portable low-power devices."

USABILITY RANK: 2

(3)
XILINX
Xilinx introduce highest-performance, largest-capacity FPGAs for space applications
eeProductCenter's Clive Maxfield says: "I don't know why, but until recently I didn't really think of Xilinx FPGAs in the context of high-radiation environments such as space applications . Thus, it came as something of a surprise to learn that they claim over a 50 percent market segment share when it comes to Aerospace and Defense (A&D) applications."

Readers say:
"GTP power through the roof."
"Very nice, provides an alternative to the OTP Actel devices I've used for previous space applications"

USABILITY RANK: 4

(4)
ATMEL
ARM9-based embedded MCU consumes 80-mW in active mode
eeProductCenter's Ismini Scouras says: "Atmel Corp. said its 400-MHz AT91SAM9G20 ARM926EJ-S-based embedded microcontroller draws only 80 mW in full-power mode with all peripherals turned on. The AT91SAM9G20, pin-compatible with the 200 MHz AT91SAM9260, offers four times the cache and on-chip SRAM memory and features improved error correction for external NAND flash as well as an enlarged Ethernet FIFO that improves latency."

USABILITY RANK: 3

(5)
STMICRO
ST achieves highest memory density for ARM9 MCUs
eeProductCenter's Ismini Scouras says: "STMicroelectronics has increased the on-chip flash capacity of its STR91xFA ARM966E-S based MCU family by introducing 1.1-Mbyte and 2.1-Mbyte variants, delivering what it claims is higher memory density than any other ARM9, or ARM7-TDMI, based standard MCU currently available."

USABILITY RANK: 6

(6)
SANDISK
SanDisk aims flash drives at ultra-low-cost PCs
eeProductCenter's Gina Roos says: "SanDisk Corp. has introduced a line of flash memory-based solid-state drives (SSDs) that are designed for ultra-low-cost PCs (ULCPCs) or "netbooks" that give users an enhanced experience while surfing the Internet using wireless communication. The SanDisk Parallel ATA solid-state drive (pSSD) eliminates the need for a hard disk drive and can store both the operating system and application data for these new devices."

Readers say:
"These drives could be a fit for our application, but for the fact that we chose to go with a SATA interface."

"Price still high compared to traditional HDD especially when product lifetime is considered. Also transfer speed is still modest."

"Nice to see faster better cheaper memory"

USABILITY RANK: 5

(7)
NVIDIA
Nvidia takes on Intel's Atom
eeProductCenter's Rick Merritt says: " Nvidia Corp. will go head-to-head with the Intel Corp. Atom processor in a battle for design wins in mobile media and Internet devices. The graphics company is launching the Tegra processors which it claims provide more processing power in less space and with lower power consumption than Intel's latest mobile x86 chip."

Readers say:
"For mobile, this looks like a better chip."

"Unless it ends up in an eeePC, will not have time to work with it."

USABILITY RANK: 7

(8)
AMD
AMD stream processor breaks 1-teraflop barrier
eeProductCenter's Ismini Scouras says: "At the International Supercomputing Conference, AMD introduced its next-generation stream processor, the AMD FireStream 9250, specifically designed to accelerate critical algorithms in high-performance computing (HPC), mainstream and consumer applications. AMD FireStream 9250 breaks the one teraflop barrier for single precision performance. It occupies a single PCI slot, and with power consumption of less than 150 watts, FireStream 9250 delivers a high rate of performance per watt efficiency with up to eight gigaflops per watt."

USABILITY RANK: 8

(9)
SIGMA DESIGNS
IPTV media processor SoC touts 50% performance improvement
eeProductCenter's Gina Roos says: "Sigma Designs Inc. has begun sampling its SMP8654 media processor system-on-chip (SoC) designed for next-generation Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) set-top boxes. The SMP8654 is said to provide a 50% improvement in performance along with lower overall system costs."

USABILITY RANK: 9

(10)
RMI
Multi-threaded processor accelerates packet-oriented applications
eeProductCenter's Ismini Scouras says: "RMI Corp. has released a 1-GHz dual-core multi-threaded device that accelerates packet-oriented and control plane applications, as well as a development board and software development kit for the Small Medium Enterprise (SMB) market."

USABILITY RANK: 10

In case you were wondering, here's how Ultimate Products works: Our editors select up to 10 of the most significant products posted at www.eeProductCenter.com during the calendar quarter. Then, using an electronic balloting process, we submit the products with the accompanying editorial reviews to selected, qualified readers. Those readers score the products by technical significance and
USABILITY on a scale of 1 through 5, with 5 being the highest score. The product ranked No. 1 in each category was judged as most technically significant for that category. Relative
USABILITY rankings and selected reader comments are also reported. More than 1,000 of you helped to choose these products. As always, we are grateful for your enthusiastic participation.

Patrick Mannion
Editor-in-Chief, Techonline Network and eeProductcenter.com
pmannion@cmp.com