Electronic devices have hugely influenced the development of many aspects of modern society, such as telecommunications, entertainment, education, health care, industry, and security. The main driving force behind the advancement of electronics is the semiconductor industry, which in response to global demand continually produces ever-more sophisticated electronic devices and circuits. The semiconductor industry is one of the largest and most profitable sectors in the global economy, with annual revenues exceeding $481 billion in 2018. The electronics industry also encompasses other sectors that rely on electronic devices and systems, such as e-commerce, which generated over $29 trillion in online sales in 2017. (Full article...)
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Sinclair Scientific calculator photographed c. 1974
The Sinclair Scientificcalculator was a 12-function, pocket-sized scientific calculator introduced in 1974, dramatically undercutting in price other calculators available at the time. The Sinclair Scientific Programmable, released a year later, was advertised as the first budget programmable calculator.
Significant modifications to the algorithms used meant that a chipset intended for a four-function calculator was able to process scientific functions, but at the cost of reduced speed and accuracy. Compared to contemporary scientific calculators, some functions were slow to execute, and others had limited accuracy or gave the wrong answer, but the cost of the Sinclair was a fraction of the cost of competing calculators. (Full article...)
Waffle-iron filters are particularly suitable where both a wide passband, and a wide stopband free of spurious transmission modes, are required. They also have a high power-handling capability. Applications include suppressing the harmonic output of transmitters and the design of wide-band diplexers. They are also used in industrial microwave manufacturing processes to prevent the escape of microwave radiation from the microwave chamber. Filters with an analogous design are now appearing in photonics, but, due to the higher frequency, at a much smaller scale. This small size allows them to be incorporated into integrated circuits. (Full article...)
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The ZenFone 6 is a 2019 Android-based smartphone that was manufactured, released, and marketed by Asus. It is the only release in Asus' sixth-generation ZenFone lineup and directly succeeds the ZenFone 5Z. Asus chairman Jonney Shih unveiled the ZenFone 6 on 16 May 2019 in Valencia, Spain, and was released in Spain the following day.
The ZenFone 6 has a larger 6.4-inch (160 mm) display, a faster processor, and upgraded cameras than the ZenFone 5Z. The ZenFone 6's flip-up camera module doubles as a front-facing camera. It is the first mobile device Asus released after restructuring its smartphone division in late 2018. The ZenFone 6 was released in the Indian market as the "Asus 6Z". (Full article...)
The iPhone 5s maintained almost the same external design as its predecessor, the iPhone 5, although the 5s received a new white/gold color scheme in addition to white/silver and space gray/black. The 5s has vastly upgraded internal hardware, however. It introduced the A7 64-bit dual-core system-on-chip, the first 64-bit processor to be used on a smartphone, accompanied by the M7 "motion co-processor". A redesigned home button with Touch ID, a fingerprint recognition system which can be used to unlock the phone and authenticate App Store and iTunes Store purchases, was also introduced. The camera was also updated with a larger aperture and a dual-LED flash optimized for different color temperatures. Earphones known as EarPods were included with the 5s, and Apple released accessories including a case and a dock. It had a 4-inch display, similar to the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5c. (Full article...)
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Air stripline is a form of electrical planar transmission line whereby a conductor in the form of a thin metal strip is suspended between two ground planes. The idea is to make the dielectric essentially air. Mechanical support of the line may be a thin substrate, periodical insulated supports, or the device connectors and other electrical items.
Air stripline is most commonly used at microwave frequencies, especially in the C band. Its advantage over standard stripline and other planar technologies is that its air dielectric avoids dielectric loss. Many useful circuits can be constructed with air stripline and it is also easier to achieve strong coupling between components in this technology than with other planar formats. It was invented by Robert M. Barrett in the 1950s. (Full article...)
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m-derived filters or m-type filters are a type of electronic filter designed using the image method. They were invented by Otto Zobel in the early 1920s. This filter type was originally intended for use with telephone multiplexing and was an improvement on the existing constant k type filter. The main problem being addressed was the need to achieve a better match of the filter into the terminating impedances. In general, all filters designed by the image method fail to give an exact match, but the m-type filter is a big improvement with suitable choice of the parameter m. The m-type filter section has a further advantage in that there is a rapid transition from the cut-off frequency of the passband to a pole of attenuation just inside the stopband. Despite these advantages, there is a drawback with m-type filters; at frequencies past the pole of attenuation, the response starts to rise again, and m-types have poor stopband rejection. For this reason, filters designed using m-type sections are often designed as composite filters with a mixture of k-type and m-type sections and different values of m at different points to get the optimum performance from both types. (Full article...)
The image method of filter design determines the properties of filter sections by calculating the properties they would have in an infinite chain of identical sections. In this, the analysis parallels transmission line theory on which it is based. Filters designed by this method are called image parameter filters, or just image filters. An important parameter of image filters is their image impedance, the impedance of an infinite chain of identical sections. (Full article...)
Filters are required to operate at many different frequencies, impedances and bandwidths. The utility of a prototype filter comes from the property that all these other filters can be derived from it by applying a scaling factor to the components of the prototype. The filter design need thus only be carried out once in full, with other filters being obtained by simply applying a scaling factor. (Full article...)
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NAD 3020 integrated amplifier
The NAD 3020 is a stereo integrated amplifier by NAD Electronics, considered to be one of the most important components in the history of high fidelity audio. Launched in 1978, this highly affordable product delivered a good quality sound, which acquired a reputation as an audiophile amplifier of exceptional value. By 1998, the NAD 3020 had become the most well known and best-selling audio amplifier in history. (Full article...)
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Row hammer (also written as rowhammer) is a computer security exploit that takes advantage of an unintended and undesirable side effect in dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) in which memory cells interact electrically between themselves by leaking their charges, possibly changing the contents of nearby memory rows that were not addressed in the original memory access. This circumvention of the isolation between DRAM memory cells results from the high cell density in modern DRAM, and can be triggered by specially crafted memory access patterns that rapidly activate the same memory rows numerous times.
Staggered tuning is a technique used in the design of multi-stage tuned amplifiers whereby each stage is tuned to a slightly different frequency. In comparison to synchronous tuning (where each stage is tuned identically) it produces a wider bandwidth at the expense of reduced gain. It also produces a sharper transition from the passband to the stopband. Both staggered tuning and synchronous tuning circuits are easier to tune and manufacture than many other filter types.
The function of stagger-tuned circuits can be expressed as a rational function and hence they can be designed to any of the major filter responses such as Butterworth and Chebyshev. The poles of the circuit are easy to manipulate to achieve the desired response because of the amplifier buffering between stages. (Full article...)
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The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are smartphones that were designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. They are the eighth generation of the iPhone, succeeding the iPhone 5, iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s, and were announced on September 9, 2014, and released on September 19, 2014. The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus jointly were themselves replaced as the flagship devices of the iPhone series by the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus on September 9, 2015. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus include larger 4.7 and 5.5 inches (120 and 140 mm) displays, a faster processor, upgraded cameras, improved LTE and Wi-Fi connectivity and support for a near-field communications-based mobile payments offering.
The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus received positive reviews, with critics regarding their redesign, specifications, camera, and battery life as being improvements over previous iPhone models. However, aspects of the design of iPhone 6 were also criticized, including plastic strips on the rear of the device for its antenna that disrupted the otherwise metal exterior, and the screen resolution of the standard-sized iPhone 6 being lower than other devices in its class. The iPhone 6 sold extremely well, making it the best-selling iPhone model and the most successful smartphone to date. (Full article...)
This approach is especially useful in the design of mechanical filters—these use mechanical devices to implement an electrical function. However, the technique can be used to solve purely mechanical problems, and can also be extended into other, unrelated, energy domains. Nowadays, analysis by analogy is a standard design tool wherever more than one energy domain is involved. It has the major advantage that the entire system can be represented in a unified, coherent way. Electrical analogies are particularly used by transducer designers, by their nature they cross energy domains, and in control systems, whose sensors and actuators will typically be domain-crossing transducers. A given system being represented by an electrical analogy may conceivably have no electrical parts at all. For this reason domain-neutral terminology is preferred when developing network diagrams for control systems. (Full article...)
HDMI implements the ANSI/CTA-861 standard, which defines video formats and waveforms, transport of compressed and uncompressed LPCM audio, auxiliary data, and implementations of the VESA EDID. CEA-861 signals carried by HDMI are electrically compatible with the CEA-861 signals used by the Digital Visual Interface (DVI). No signal conversion is necessary, nor is there a loss of video quality when a DVI-to-HDMI adapter is used. The Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) capability allows HDMI devices to control each other when necessary and allows the user to operate multiple devices with one handheld remote control device. (Full article...)
There is a critical value of transformer coupling coefficient at which the frequency response of the amplifier is maximally flat in the passband and the gain is maximum at the resonant frequency. Designs frequently use a coupling greater than this (over-coupling) in order to achieve an even wider bandwidth at the expense of a small loss of gain in the centre of the passband. (Full article...)
Guglielmo Marchese Marconi, GCVO (25 April 1874-20 July 1937) was an Italian inventor, best known for his development of a practical radiotelegraph system, which served as the foundation for the establishment of numerous affiliated companies worldwide. He shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun, "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy". While growing up, Marconi had an intense early interest in science, and was especially fascinated by electricity.
The term electrical engineering may or may not encompass electronic engineering. Where a distinction is made, electrical engineering is considered to deal with the problems associated with large-scale electrical systems such as power transmission and motor control, whereas electronic engineering deals with the study of small-scale electronic systems including computers and integrated circuits.
