Anaheim, Calif. - With fingers crossed that a market turnaround is right around the corner, close to 700 vendors will come to Wescon this week to show off their latest components and subsystems to the design community. Among the themes will be how the industry is meeting the needs of the engineering community at a time of tighter budgets, increased competition and ever-shorter design cycles.
Vendors of interconnect, passive, optoelectronic and power components will be here in force when Wescon North America opens its doors tomorrow morning at the Anaheim Convention Center for its annual three-day stand. There will also be lots to see in test gear and some of the latest production equipment.
Designers will get a peek at a wide variety of interconnection offerings from companies such as Advanced Interconnections, Caton Connectors, Emulation Technology, Ironwood Electronics, National Wire and Cable, Omnetics, Phoenix Contact and Samtec.
An established name in high-speed, signal-integrity interconnect systems, Samtec Inc. is about to enter the flexible-circuitry business and will be pitching both its custom- and standard-product offerings. Advanced Interconnections Corp. will show system designers its Flip-Top BGA Sockets, claiming they can dramatically reduce pc-board space for BGA and LGA device socketing in development, test and production applications.
Also on show will be new optoelectronic devices from such companies as Bivar Inc. and American Bright.
Attendees concerned with tackling the challenging power problems in their next-generation systems will see lots of new products on the exhibit floor and will hear potential solutions at Wescon's technical-conference sessions. Vendors such as American Power Conversion, Ericsson, International Rectifier, Kepco and Tyco will be displaying their latest power-related products.
The hot brick-module arena is one that will generate lots of news throughout the show. Ericsson's Power Modules operation, for example, will launch the PKB4000 series of eighth-brick dc/dc converters, designed for on-board distributed-power architectures in wireless basestations, internetworking and other telecom applications. And di/dt Inc. will show potential customers what it's calling its Semi half-brick, claimed as 70 percent smaller than a standard half-brick module but with the same pin count. One converter in the new line delivers 30 amps and the other, 40 A.
International Rectifier will make a splash by launching its IRF7335D1 Dual FETKY device, which co-packages two n-channel MOSFETs and a Schottky diode in a single SO-14 package.
The device is said to have the highest current-carrying capability of dual MOSFET-Schottky co-packaged offerings today, and to deliver 40 percent more current than the company's previously released IRF7901D1 device.
For its part, American Power Conversion will show its Smart-UPS 5kVA XL, an enhanced, rack-optimized version of the company's Smart line of uninterruptible power supplies. The product's features include scalable, extended run-time, full network-monitoring capabilities and 4-kilowatt output.
Test and measurement
Designers interested in test and measurement will find lots of new offerings from such companies as Cincinnati Sub-Zero, Extech Instruments, Fluke, National Instruments and Tektronix.
Tektronix Inc. will show off its TDS5000 family of digital phosphor oscilloscopes, which consists of three models. The 1-GHz, four-channel TDS5104 leads the family and is billed as a valuable asset for accurate viewing of fast clock signals and pulse edges. The 500-MHz, two-channel TDS5052 and the 500-MHz, four-channel TDS5054 round out the series.
Available record lengths for the TDS5000 series extend to 8 Mbytes as an option. Each model has a maximum real-time sample rate of 5 Gsamples/second and a waveform capture rate up to 100,000 waveforms/s.
The company's digital oscilloscopes are priced from $10,500 to $15,990.
For details on Wescon products, turn to pages 92 to 96.
The show floor will dedicate areas to specific industries, with independent pavilions devoted to power components, test-and-measurement products, production and packaging technologies, and interconnect products. Areas are being set aside for design and component technology exhibits and for the Soho/Engineering Resource Center, an engineering small-office, home-office event. Wescon's "show-within-a-show" concept recognizes the growing specialization focus among electronics OEMs. Indeed, niche shows within broad-based shows are the wave of the future, said Donna Call, Wescon's chief executive officer.
Keynote sessions this year will be future- and solutions-oriented, exploring critical issues in power technology, components, connectors/interconnects, and test, measurement and inspection.
At the EE Times-sponsored technology roundtable on power, panelists will discuss the critical technical and marketing issues related to the implementation of the now very popular dc/dc converter products (see related story below). The test, measurement and inspection session will attempt to discern what Microsoft's .Net strategy means for test-and-measurement software.
Special sessions
A component-technologies session will zero in on displays and display electronics, exploring the current and future state of electronic displays, while a connector/interconnect roundtable session will delve into new technologies and market trends.
A keynote session devoted to hardware and software solutions for personal, domestic and global security is also on the agenda, as is a special session on what lies ahead for the electronics industry.
See www.wescon.com or call (800) 877 2668 for full conference information.
