Unlike RoHS, WEEE and REACH, the ELV directive is specific to automotive engineering. However, with ASIC and VLSI designs being integral to modern automotive engineering, it has an impact on many electronic and component engineering firms, both in the EU and globally. Like the directive, ELV compliance has been adopted across the world, with most countries on the global manufacturing platform having their own versions in place.

The GADSL (Global Automotive Declarable Substance List) is intrinsically linked to both the ELV directive and the IMDS (International Material Data System), which was established in response to the directives being put in place. The was established by OEMs in order to establish a global tracking and logging system for materials being used in automotive parts and accessories. It requires that all parts and components used in automotive assemblies and sub-assemblies list the chemicals used in their manufacture. The lynchpin of this is the GADSL, which is a list of all prohibited and declarable substances used in automotive applications, together with threshold limits.

If you engineer mechanical or electronic components for the automotive industry, these rules affect you. We at ¿Û¿Û´«Ã½ Technologies offer environmental compliance solutions for all engineering sectors, with particular expertise in the area of GADSL and ELV compliance.

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Conflict minerals have nothing to do with WEEE and RoHS directives, but with the humanitarian crisis in Africa, and the passing of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, signed by President Obama in July 2010. At the time seemingly of little relevance to PCB design materials, it represented the biggest financial shake-up in the US since the Depression. But a number of statutes regarding overseas trading were introduced, including that concerning conflict minerals.

Conflict minerals are certain ores which have been mined in the DRC Zone, an area of conflict which encompasses the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the adjoining countries of Angola, Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Sudan, Uganda, Zambia, and the Central African Republic. This is an area of extreme and ongoing violence, involving civilian atrocities on an unimaginable scale. An estimated seven million people – many of them women and children – have died since hostilities began.

The list of conflict minerals includes Tantalum, Wolframite and Cassiterite – all of which are used in electronic circuitry and VHDL design. By law, any engineering company listed with the US stock exchange, who uses these products, must declare if they originated from the DRC Zone.

No engineering company in the US wants to fund the DRC hostilities, but it’s often hard to gauge where products originate. We at ¿Û¿Û´«Ã½ Technologies offer a wide range of environmental and are one of the few companies covering conflict minerals legislation.

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To the layman, DSP programming is associated with the entertainment industry. However, DSP has many uses, processing vocal, audio, video, temperature, pressure, light, positioning and other signals so the information can be analyzed, displayed or converted in some way.

DSP programming works in combination with conventional analog hardware, which is required to receive the signal in its original state. An Analog-to-Digital converter then transforms this data into mathematical binary code (a series of ones and zeros). The DSP processes this information, before sending an output which can be understood by the user. This may be done as a digital signal, or in analog form following Digital-to-Analog conversion.

Digital Media Recorders (e.g. MP3 players and the Apple iPod) are a masterpiece of VLSI design, and a good example of DSP programming in practice. During recording, the analog audio signal is input through a receiver. Following analog-to-digital conversion, the signal is sent as binary code to the digital signal processor. The DSP encodes the MP3 track, saving the file to memory. During playback, the file is downloaded, decoded by the DSP, converted back to analog and output through the earphones or speakers. has enabled highly complex models to evolve, with equalization, user interface etc.

We at ¿Û¿Û´«Ã½ Technologies offer a full range of solutions for DSP and FPGA designers, including and CAD services.

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The capabilities of printed circuit boards – memory capacity, processing speed, etc, are linked to this, and similarly are increasing exponentially. Moore’s Law is the scientific explanation of what many refer to as the technology explosion; it defines the history of technological change.

When you pack thousands of transistors onto a single chip, the array is described as a Very Large Scale Integrated, or . One example is the microprocessor – except that today we speak in terms of billions, rather than thousands of transistors. And this has come at some cost. VLSI designs are in danger of becoming the victim of their own success.

Microprocessor circuits are now more complex, more tightly packed than ever before. But with this comes higher power consumption, and with it the problem of heat dissipation. Threshold voltages and CPU power dissipation (PD) – the way in which microprocessors consume and dissipate energy, some of which is lost as heat – have not kept pace with advancing technology. Scaling designs down is no good unless logic complexity is maintained. This has been achieved – but only by increasing CPU PD.

Nonetheless, VLSI designs are being improved, mainly through the use of thermal analysis and CFD software. We at ¿Û¿Û´«Ã½ Technologies offer state-of-the-art VLSI design solutions to help maintain your edge in the competitive, fast-moving world of digital technology.

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