Welcome to the Fall edition of Nuvation’s CURRENT!  It was an amazing summer and Nuvation is having another record growth year.  Recent expansions have taken place in all three of our design centers.  Our Shanghai Design Center relocated to Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park in the New Pudong Area of Shanghai.  The new facility is centrally located in Shanghai's premier technology zone, and will allow us significant capacity expansion within the building.

We are extremely gratified with your feedback in our customer satisfaction and loyalty surveys.  Our monthly CS&L poll results have exceeded our highest expectations, yet we are not losing sight of our areas for continuous improvement.  Your feedback has been invaluable to our executive and quality teams, and is shared in aggregate across our entire organization.  We are very pleased to have earned your business and trust, and will continue to work hard on behalf of all valued customers.

Some of the leading product designs we are involved with include several high-end broadcast video designs, a unique display technology, a number of video security encoder and network camera products, a high-end telecom design, a novel medical device, a solar farm control system, an ATSC modulator, digital upcoverter design, continued developments on the air hockey bot, and many other interesting projects.   In our spare evenings and weekends we also continue advancing our competition combat robots. 

We competed this summer at RoboGames in San Francisco, which is the world’s largest open robot competition with over 500 robots from 19 countries.  Ziggy, our Freescale-sponsored super-heavy-weight (340 pounds of titanium with 14,000 lbs of pneumatic flipping power) went undefeated for its third consecutive gold medal.  Texas Heat, our TI-sponsored middle-weight (60 lbs of titanium with a MSP430 controlled 2 meter flame thrower) is currently ranked #2 globally for its weight class.  For you robot fans, check out the YouTube videos by searching for “Ziggy BattleBots” or “Texas Heat BattleBots”  Our bots will be in Austin, TX on October 18-19 for the Combots competition, part of Maker Faire (http://combots.net/). 

Nuvation recently participated at the BIOMEDevice show in San Jose, showcasing our engineering expertise with medical and scientific equipment including medical imaging systems, motor control, handheld electronics, electro-optical, mass-spec, drug discovery, and other life sciences designs.  We also published an article in the August issue of Portable Design magazine, titled “Choosing the Right Central Logic Device for Your Product Design”, which is also available online.

CES, NAB, ISCW, and other major trade shows are coming up.  If you are planning to demo and or launch a new product, please contact us immediately to get the project started to ensure your prototype will be ready to shine.  It really helps us to understand your business and technical goals so we can best serve you, even if your project starts are several months away.  If you find yourself in an emergency crunch, please don’t hesitate to call. 

In this issue, we feature a technical contribution from our very own John Bartas. John discusses IPv6, the new version of IP, from the protocol basics and benefits, to the challenges of designing products.  Nuvation sheds light on the Altera Stratix IV for this issues’ device spotlight.  Plus, we are pleased to share with you a partner contributed article from Mike Silverman at Ops A La Carte discussing Reliability Engineering; what it is, how it is implemented, and today’s practices for your projects.   

I am also excited to announce our eighth-annual Hike-for-a-Cure, coming up this Sunday, September 28 at Half Dome in Yosemite National Park.   It was a huge success last year, with a turnout of more than 250 hikers raising more than a quarter of a million dollars for the Histiocytosis Association of America.  To make a donation, or to learn more about the hike and cause, visit http://www.hikeforacure.com/ . 

For all of your support and best wishes, we thank you and wish you a successful finish to 2008.

Warm regards,

Michael Worry
Nuvation CEO