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National Semiconductor's WEBENCH Sensor Designer Wins Electronic Products Magazine Product of the Year Award

Posted on: Tuesday, 27 January 2009, 07:00 CST

Online Sensor Design Tool Enables Engineers to Move from Concept to Simulation to Prototype in a Few Keystrokes

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Jan. 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- National Semiconductor Corp. (NYSE: NSM) today announced that its WEBENCH Sensor Designer tool received the prestigious "2008 Product of the Year" Award from Electronic Products Magazine. Each year, the Electronic Products editorial board selects a few outstanding new products from the thousands introduced. These products represent significant advances in technology, an innovation in design or substantial gain in price performance.

"The WEBENCH Sensor Designer tool stood out among its peers for its promise to reduce design time and cost by configuring sensor signal path solutions with just a few strokes of a mouse," said Christina Nickolas, editor for Electronic Products Magazine.

"Until now, designers have had to consume valuable development time matching sensor characteristics and performance with an op amp's DC performance and an A/D converter's resolution and accuracy, and then additional time for circuit evaluation and prototyping," said Phil Gibson, vice president of technical sales and Web tools at National Semiconductor. "National's WEBENCH Sensor Designer makes sensor signal path design easy, allowing designers to focus on other parts of the system. Winning this award confirms the tremendous reception system designers have given our newest WEBENCH tool."

About WEBENCH Sensor Designer

WEBENCH Sensor Designer is the industry's first online sensor design tool that enables engineers to quickly move from concept to simulation to prototyping of common sensor solutions used in medical, industrial and high-end consumer products. The tool supports a range of sensor types, including bridge sensors, pressure, load cells, photodiode, thermocouple and IC temperature sensors. With approximately 150 advanced sensors available from leading suppliers like Advanced Photonix, AllSensors, GE Sensing and Inspection Technologies, Measurement Specialties, Tempco and UniSense, highly accurate designs can be delivered very quickly.

WEBENCH Sensor Designer provides a complete sensor-to-digital serial output solution that includes the sensor interface, excitation source, precision amplifier and filter, 8-bit through 16-bit ADCs, and a serialized output to connect to various back-end systems. The tool automatically generates a design schematic, bill of materials (BOM) and performance summary, with detailed error analysis, and presents this information on-screen in a matter of seconds.

WEBENCH Sensor Designer also allows engineers to modify signal path performance parameters to get the performance they require. The tool then provides a link to "Build-It" boards -- specific evaluation kits with products the designer selected -- that designers can assemble to quickly move into the prototype stage. To begin a design with the WEBENCH Sensor Designer tool, go to www.national.com/sensors.

About National's WEBENCH Design Environment

National's WEBENCH environment eliminates the need for a design engineer to perform tedious hand calculations and includes extensive online tutorials in analog design. The tools offer instant access to the latest SPICE models, parametric data and package information, enabling designers to simultaneously compare the performance of multiple devices in multiple circuit requirements. National's products in the WEBENCH environment ship within 24 hours worldwide.

About National Semiconductor

National Semiconductor creates energy-efficient analog and mixed-signal semiconductors. Its PowerWise(R) products enable systems that consume less power, extend battery life and generate less heat. Headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., National reported sales of $1.89 billion for fiscal 2008 which ended May 25, 2008. Additional company and product information is available at www.national.com.

WEBENCH and PowerWise a registered trademarks of National Semiconductor Corporation.

SOURCE National Semiconductor Corp.

Source: PR Newswire

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