Nuvation CURRENT | eNewsletter

Summer 2005

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Engineering Services
FPGA·CPLD·ASIC
Board Design
Analog Design
MCU·DSP·NPU
Device Drivers
Signal Integrity
IP Cores

In This Issue

Zigbee vs. Bluetooth
What When How?

Did You Know?
Lead(Pb) Free!

FPGA to Structured ASIC Design Flow

Device Spotlight:
LatticeXP

Hike For a Cure
Around the Corner!

Previous Issues

Wireless USB:
What When How?

IP Cores: Speeding to Market

ATCA: The NexGen Telecom Standard

Video Processing in FPGA vs. DSP

H.264: The New Video Standard

Ethernet over Sonet Solutions

PCI Express Lane

CycloneBot Design Revealed

Designing High-Speed Traces:
·Part 1
·Part 2
·Part 3

Device Spotlight:
·TI DM642 DSP
·ADI TigerSharc
·Altera's Nios II
·Airgo Wireless

Win a
Free Moose!

We're giving away this cute, plush, beanie Nuvation Moose for your feedback and comments on this newsletter. Tell us!

Lead(Pb)-Free Compliancy
Are you affected by the RoHS regulation of toxic substances?

Electronics need to go Lead(Pb)-Free by July 2006! Take this quiz to see if your products are subject to RoHS Compliancy Regulations.

The Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS) is a European Union Legislature that strictly regulates toxic substances such as lead, mercury, hexavalent chromium, cadmium, PBB and PBDE in electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) by July 1, 2006.

This means that certain electrical and electronic equipment, outlined in the RoHS legislative, need to be RoHS compliant if manufactured starting July 1, 2006.

Does this apply to you? If you answer yes to all of the following questions, your EEE will be required to become RoHS compliant. Take the test and find out:

Do you manufacture or distribute electrical or electronic equipment (EEE), subassemblies or components?
Does the equipment you manufacture or distribute operate under 1000V AC or 1500V DC?
Are electrical or electronic components required to fulfill the Products primary function? Can the product work without electronic components, or are the electronics an integral part of the product?
Is the electronic product or equipment destined for any of the counties in the European Union?
Do your products fall within the eight broad categories which form the basis of the scope of the RoHS Directive?

Large household appliances
Small household appliances
IT & telecommunications equipment
Consumer equipment
Lighting equipment
Electrical & electronic tools
Toys, leisure and sports equipment
Automatic dispensers
Electric light bulbs & household luminaries

Exemptions
If any of the following apply, your EEE can be exempt from the RoHS directive.

Your products, subassemblies or components are specifically for military or national security purposes, and no other applications.
Your equipment is part of a fixed installation. A "fixed installation" may be a combination of several pieces of equipment, systems, products and/or components (parts) assembled and/or erected by a professional assembler or installer at a given place to operate together in an expected environment and to perform a specific task. For example, elements of a larger permanent system that do not have a direct function (in isolation) away from the installation may be considered excluded from the scope of the Regulations.
RoHS compliancy is just not technically feasible in your application. If so, all scientific evidence needs to be provided to prove your case.
Your EEE falls into one of the other RoHS exemption categories listed here

Penalties
The RoHS legislative discusses penalties for failure to comply, including removal of manufacturers' products from the market place, imprisonment and/or a fine.

Avoid the "Y2K" Rush
Nuvation provides a free lead-free consultation session to determine if your electrical and electronic equipment is subject to RoHS compliancy. Contact rohs@nuvation.com to setup a consultation.

Nuvation RoHS Compliancy Service
In response to the engineering demand this new legislation is creating, Nuvation is now offering a special design service to convert your existing electronics to a RoHS-compliant design. Don't distract your new product development teams, contact rohs@nuvation.com for more info or to get started.
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