The Internet of Everything is coming. The Internet is expanding into enterprise assets and consumer items such as cars and televisions. Very many electronics devices needs to be designed for this in mind. The Internet of Things (IoT) will evolve into the Web of Things, increasing the coordination between things in the real world and their counterparts on the Web. Gartner suggests that the “the smart machine era will be the most disruptive in the history of IT.” Intelligent systems and assistive devices will advance smart healthcare.
Software-defined anything (SDx) is coming more into use. It means that many proprietary systems are being replaced with commonly available standard computer hardware and software running in them.
PC market: ABANDON HOPE all ye who enter here. Vendor consolidation ‘inevitable’. Even Intel had to finally admit this that the Wintel grip which has served it and Microsoft so well over the past decades is waning, with Android and iOS coming to the fore through smartphones and tabs. The market conversion to tablets means that consumers and businesses are sweating existing PC assets longer. Tablets to Make Up Half of 2014 PC Market.
The Rise, Fall, and Rise of Electronics Kits article mentions that many older engineers first became interested in electronics through hobbies in their youth—assembling kits, participating in amateur radio, or engaging in other experiments. The 1970s and 1980s were great times for electronics hobbyists. But whenever it seems that there’s nothing left for the hobbyist, a new motif arises. The Raspberry Pi has become a best seller, as has a similar experimental board, the Arduino microcontroller. A great number of sensors, actuators, cameras, and the like have quickly become available for both. Innovative applications abound in such domains as home automation and robotics. So it seems that now there is much greater capacity for creativity in hobby electronics then there ever was.
E-Waste: Lack of Info Plagues Efforts to Reduce E-Waste article tells that creation of trade codes is necessary to track used electronics products according to a recent study concerning the waste from growing quantities of used electronics devices—including TVs, mobile phones and computers. High levels of electronic waste are being sent to Africa and Asia under false pretenses.” StEP estimates worldwide e-waste to increase by 33 percent from 50 million tons in 2012 to 65 million tons by 2017. China and the U.S. lead the world as top producers of e-waste. America produces about 65 pounds of e-waste per person every year. There will be aims to reduce the waste, for example project like standardizing mobile phone chargers and laptop power supplies.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Sensor Fusion Goes Open-Source
Group to provide common algorithms
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324503&
Analog Devices, Freescale, PNI Sensor Corp., and the MEMS Industry Group formed the Accelerated Innovation Community, a group dedicated to providing open-source algorithms for sensors. AIC also plans to announce an I/O standard for sensors in collaboration with the MIPI Alliance.
Engineers shouldn’t have “to reinvent the wheel on common algorithms every time they want to add or change functionality in their product,” said Karen Lightman, executive director of the MEMS Industry Group (MIG). “Access to an open-source library of introductory algorithms fundamentally changes the development paradigm.”
Freescale was an early catalyst of AIC and has added open-source algorithms such as a C source library for 3-, 6- and 9-axis sensor fusion. Sensor fusion is a basic building block for sensor data analytics and for motion tracking, said Freescale’s Ian Chen.
Tomi Engdahl says:
TI to Open 300mm Wafer Bumping Facility in Chengdu
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324514&
Texas Instruments Inc. announced Thursday (Nov. 6) that the company will open a 300mm wafer bumping facility in Chengdu, China. TI described the move as the third leg of a “long-term China strategy,” unveiled in 2010, to establish production facilities in China.
According Gartner, TI grabbed a 21.4 percent share in 2013 of a $19.4 billion total analog market. The market research firm estimates $21.154 billion in revenue in 2014.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Globalfoundries Wins Design Partner
Two firms merge, hire small IBM team
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324505&
Globalfoundries has snagged a new partner providing intellectual property cores and design services exclusively for its fabs. The company hopes the partnership will give it a nudge forward in the race to the 14nm FinFET node. The partner is Invecas, a company formed by the merger of two small firms and a team of 15 former IBMers, all with experience mainly in planar processes.
Invecas will provide a soup-to-nuts service, licensing cores, designing and verifying IP, and developing software such as drivers for them. It was formed when SoCtronics bought Kool Chip Inc. Both design and IP firms had offices in India and Silicon Valley. Invecas hired a team of memory experts with some experience in FinFET design who had left IBM’s operations in Burlington, Vt.
The company has more than 600 employees and a portfolio of IP, typically for 28nm and older process nodes. It includes 16 Gbit/s SerDes and controllers for PCI Express Gen 2, USB 2.0, DDR, LCDs, and flash memories. The former IBMers bring expertise in memory compilers and TCAMs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
MediaTek Aims for Fast Entry Into China’s LTE Market
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324520&
MediaTek, Taiwan’s largest chip designer, said it will launch 4G LTE products in China more quickly than the company did in the 3G business to capture strong demand in the world’s largest handset market.
“China’s LTE market growth has been strong,” MediaTek President Ching-Jiang Hsieh said during an announcement of the company’s third-quarter earnings for this year. MediaTek will be “faster with LTE than with 3G” in market entry, he said.
The chip designer aims to pare Qualcomm’s lead in China’s 4G smartphone market with the launch of a new octa-core processor in the first quarter of 2015. MediaTek earlier this year started sampling its MT6795, a new 64-bit LTE True Octa-core SoC, part of a product lineup of LTE chips aimed next year at matching Qualcomm’s existing range of high, medium and low-end products.
MediaTek said it is on track with its expectations to ship more than 350 million smartphone chips this year, among which more than 30 million will be LTE products.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Only 11 Real Audio Designers in the World? Do You Really Need a DSP?
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1324522&
Is it true that there are only 11 real audio designers in the world? Are today’s low-cost, high-performance general-purpose microcontrollers pretenders to the DSP throne?
The following graphic provides a visual explanation of why Paul estimates there are only 11 real audio designers in the world:
Audio engineers tend to originate from one of three disciplines — sound engineering, embedded software development, and DSP engineering. As we see in the Venn diagram that Paul constructed, the end result is the magic number of 11.
I’ve seen this kind of data before in a survey undertaken by EETimes. That survey showed that engineers have to work in as many as five disciplines at any point in time, yet they only study one in college.
So, if we accept that it’s incredibly hard to find people skilled in multiple disciplines, what are design teams to do? Paul’s solution was to build a software tool called Audio Weaver for very fast audio prototyping and design. This tool is based on MATLAB and is based on drag-and-drop components.
Audio Weaver looks like with an STM32 Discovery
It really is astonishingly easy to use Audio Weaver — which you can obtain from DSP Concepts — and it’s free to use (with a royalty for production).
Paul’s other heretical question shown in the title to this column was whether you really need a dedicated DSP to do good-quality audio design. The simple answer is “Probably not.
Paul told me that 80% of his consulting work is no longer focused on the use of DSPs, but on ARM-based devices like the STM32F407. This is really good news for designers, because now you can design audio products with lower cost parts that consume less power, all with tools that allow you to prototype in a day.
Audio Weaver™- the Only Cross-Platform Audio Design Platform
http://www.dspconcepts.com/products/audio-weaver
Tomi Engdahl says:
Swiss u-blox has introduced a GPS, Glonass, QZSS Beidou- and systems of the satellite signal receiving positioning module, which it boasts of the lowest in the world. EVA-8M8 module is suitable for the circuit board only 7 x 7 millimeter mode.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2037:maailman-pienin-moduuli-paikannukseen&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sensor Fusion Goes Open-Source
Group to provide common algorithms
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324503&
Analog Devices, Freescale, PNI Sensor Corp., and the MEMS Industry Group formed the Accelerated Innovation Community, a group dedicated to providing open-source algorithms for sensors. AIC also plans to announce an I/O standard for sensors in collaboration with the MIPI Alliance.
. “Access to an open-source library of introductory algorithms fundamentally changes the development paradigm.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smart Battery Charges Up for IoT
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324532&
After several years chasing WiFi sockets in consumer gadgets, Roel Peeters got another idea. Sell a $35 smart, networked battery that consumers can plug into millions of existing smoke alarms.
The concept is simple. The battery lets any existing smoke alarm connect to a home WiFi network so it can alert the owner’s smartphone if the alarm goes off. Its smart power management will also eliminate 3am wake up calls from an alarm with a dying battery.
If consumers snap up the batteries, Peeters aims to parley their support into a round of venture capital to build out the startup. He already snagged $1 million in seed funds from the group that owns China’s Lenovo and DCM, a Silicon Valley VC firm.
Roost will source a custom rechargeable lithium ion battery with a five-year life. It will be strategically smaller than today’s 10-year versions that come in the form factor of a 9V alkaline battery and cost about $8. With the extra space Roost will pack in one or more merchant chips to provide WiFi, MCU, and sensor functions.
Tomi Engdahl says:
MediaTek Aims for Fast Entry Into China’s LTE Market
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324520&
MediaTek, Taiwan’s largest chip designer, said it will launch 4G LTE products in China more quickly than the company did in the 3G business to capture strong demand in the world’s largest handset market.
“China’s LTE market growth has been strong,” MediaTek President Ching-Jiang Hsieh said during an announcement of the company’s third-quarter earnings for this year. MediaTek will be “faster with LTE than with 3G” in market entry, he said.
The chip designer aims to pare Qualcomm’s lead in China’s 4G smartphone market with the launch of a new octa-core processor in the first quarter of 2015. MediaTek earlier this year started sampling its MT6795, a new 64-bit LTE True Octa-core SoC, part of a product lineup of LTE chips aimed next year at matching Qualcomm’s existing range of high, medium and low-end products.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Qualcomm: More Trouble Ahead
EU, FTC begin antitrust probes
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1324547&
If Qualcomm reported a good fourth quarter and cheery guidance for the next quarter and fiscal year, why did its share price plummet?
Qualcomm reported earnings and revenues slightly below Wall Street expectations for its fourth quarter this week, and it gave cheery guidance for its next quarter and next fiscal year. So why did the chip maker’s share price fall immediately after the announcement by 6%?
One reason is clearly because the company said it believes phone makers in China are not reporting hundreds of millions in cellphone unit sales to avoid royalty payments. The news was part of the company’s one sore spot as it reported another quarter of solid growth and upbeat guidance for its coming fiscal year.
The European Commission opened a new front in its investigations concerning its baseband chip business in Europe. The crux of the problem here seems to be that other companies, notably the British baseband chip specialist Icera (acquired more than three years ago by Nvidia Corp.) have complained that Qualcomm may have used patent-related incentives and exclusionary pricing of baseband chips to discourage potential customers from doing business with Icera.
Hardly surprisingly, a bevy of rivals, including Broadcom, Nokia, Texas Instruments, NEC, and Panasonic, welcomed the continuing investigation into anticompetitive practices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Brown-Out Reset – an Update
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=182&doc_id=1323016&
When using brown-out reset circuits, the bottom line is that on many MCUs you can’t use the A/D to monitor Vdd during flash writes unless there’s some way to simulate the expected load. As always, do a careful, worst-case engineering analysis.
Recently, I recommended against using the brown-out reset (BOR) circuit found on many MCUs. My argument was that BORs often have a wide tolerance range, which means one could give up nearly all of a coin cell’s capacity. For instance, some are rated as triggering a reset at some nominal voltage, but the tolerance bands are 2.05 to 2.35 volts. Worst-case design means assuming it will fire at 2.35, which, with a decent load on the battery, means it may initiate a reset when there’s 90% or more of the battery’s capacity left.
Further, some BOR circuits use quite a bit of juice, in some cases too much to support years of (mostly sleeping) operation off a coin cell. I suggested, instead, waking up once in a while and reading Vdd with an A/D, and wrote that the load during this measurement must reflect the real, expected load while awake. I still think this is good advice. However, in some situations this solution might be impossible to implement.
Why not use the A/D to check Vdd during the flash write? Well, on some MCUs that’s quite impossible, since all instruction execution is suspended during the write.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Electronics components online wholesalers want so serve designers better. Increasingly, they provide a free or very low cost design tools.
Digi-Key has now partnered with Mentor Graphics. The companies, together with the available in the printed circuit board design tools, which cost a minimum of less than $ 200. Tools are Designer Schematic and Layout Designer, and are available for download only from Digi-Key customers.
Designer Schematic, which initially sold for $ 199, is a circuit diagram of a tool whose use is made easy with the start-designer. Mentor and Digi-Key idea is that the idea to the circuit diagram should not be too difficult. And not expensive.
Designer Schematic, which initially sold for $ 199, is a circuit diagram of a tool whose use is made easy with the start-designer. Mentor and Digi-Key idea is that the idea to the circuit diagram should not be too difficult. And not expensive.
Distributor Mouser Electronics began last month to share free tools for designers, that can design the circuit diagram simulation, placement and routing on the circuit board, as well as material cost calculations istributor Mouser Electronics began last month to share free tools for designers, that can design the circuit diagram simulation, placement and routing on the circuit board, as well.
All the various Windows platforms based tool is called MultiSIM BLUE. It is based on the popular National Instruments Multisim tool with more than 10 000 professional users. In addition, Multisim to use more than one hundred thousand students around the world.
Mouser version of Multisim is slightly scaled-down version. The component library can be found as soon as one hundred thousand circuit simulation models, but the free MultiSIM BLUE planning their number is limited to 50. It is sufficient, for example, of course, many Arduino-realization, but there is nothing to prevent more design integration manually.
To speed up the design of Mouser now offers comprehensive support site, where you can find a variety of MultiSIM BLUE resources.
Sources:
http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2040:digi-key-haluaa-tavoittaa-suunnittelijat&catid=13&Itemid=101
http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2039:mouser-tukee-multisim-suunnittelijoita&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
What Is the MicroTCA.4 Open Standard Architecture?
http://electronicdesign.com/engineering-essentials/what-microtca4-open-standard-architecture
The MicroTCA (MTCA) open-standard architecture has been around for more than eight years, and it has seen a resurgence of design wins in a wide range of applications. The specification provides a dense, high-speed, managed technology with built-in high-availability options.
MicroTCA.4 is a newer sub-specification that was ratified in 2011. Originally designed for the high-energy physics (HEPP) community, it adds functionality in the provision of micro-rear-transition modules (µRTMs) for signal conditioning and I/O.
A µTCA.4 chassis platform can utilize the elements of existing MicroTCA systems, including a choice of dozens of standard Advanced Mezzanine Cards or (AdvancedMCs or AMCs), power modules, and MicroTCA Carrier Hubs (MCHs). The types of AMCs include analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and digital-to-analog converters (DACs), data processing modules, Intel-based processors, FPGA Mezzanine Card (FMC) carriers, and up- and down-frequency converters.
The key functional difference between µTCA.0 (the core specification of MicroTCA) and µTCA.4 is the addition of RTM provisions, including a rear connector on the double modules. The front module is standard and fully compatible with µTCA.0. A connector on the rear connects with the RTM (Fig. 1). The RTMs are application-specific and need pinouts that are compatible with the front board they are plugged into.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sensors for Wearables Market to Double in 2015
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324363&
Market analysis and forecast organization IHS thinks that Apple’s Watch, will stimulate and set a standard for fitness and health monitoring features on wearable electronics devices.
As a result the market sensors in wearable electronics is set to double in 2015, in terms of units shipped. This will likely benefit STMicroelectronics NV (Geneva, Switzerland), the market leader in sensors for wearables, IHS said.
The strength of user demand for wearable gadgets is such that shipments of sensors used in wearable electronics will rise by a factor of seven from 2013 to 2019, IHS added. So that’s 67 million units shipped in 2013 followed by about 85 million units in 2014. And next year the market will double to 175 million units before continuing its rise to 466 million units shipped in the year 2019, as presented in the figure below.
Tomi Engdahl says:
China Owes Us, Qualcomm Says
OEMs failed to report 100M+ in sales, it claims
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324510&
The world’s largest maker of cellphone chips and the China government appear to be eyeball-to-eyeball in a patent dispute, waiting for someone to blink.
Qualcomm turned up the heat in its quarterly financial report today, saying it believes phone makers in China are not reporting hundreds of millions in cellphone unit sales to avoid royalty payments. The news was part of the company’s one sore spot as it reported another quarter of solid growth and upbeat guidance for its coming fiscal year.
Qualcomm believes 1.3 billion handsets were sold using its intellectual property this year and 1.5 billion will be sold next year. But handset makers are on track only to report sales of 1.04 to 1.13 billion devices this year, leaving a gap of 170 to 260 million devices unreported, the company claims.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is ASE No Longer a ‘Serial Polluter’?
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324554&
TAIPEI — The promise by Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc., the world’s largest assembly and test company, to adhere to environmental protection standards is at odds with its recent history.
The company, which counts the world’s largest chipmakers as its customers, says it has been consistently committed to environmental protection.
ASE is among a number of other companies located along the river that are engaged in petrochemical and electroplating businesses. The penalty for ASE was light because it was difficult for court prosecutors to link ASE directly to pollution of the river, Tsai says.
World’s largest backend industry
Taiwan’s chip backend industry is the world’s largest, with 16 publicly listed companies that together have annual revenues in excess of $8 billion. The backend segment is a key part of the island’s semiconductor ecosystem, serving local chipmakers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC), and overseas companies such as Intel and Qualcomm.
ASE has resumed operations at K7 after an October 1, 2013, check of water in Kaohsiung’s Houjing River downstream from the plant found high levels of nickel and copper and excessive acidity.
“Following the recent incident, ASE has made a big improvement in our waste water treatment, personnel training, and detection equipment,” ASE’s Tung told us. “In addition to keeping in contact with the environmental protection authorities, we are implementing round-the-clock detection.”
ASE, whose operations in China account for about 12 percent of the company’s sales revenue, says it doesn’t aim to shift more of its business to China if the Taiwan government fails to improve its regulatory system, according to Tung.
Tomi Engdahl says:
TIDA-00069
http://www.eeweb.com/project/design_library/tida-00069
This reference design and the associated example Verilog code can be used as a starting point for interfacing Altera FPGAs to Texas Instruments’ high-speed LVDS-interface analog-to-digital converters (ADC) and digital-to-analog converters (DAC). The firmware implementation is explained and the required timing constraints are discussed.
Tomi Engdahl says:
From Analog to Digital to Analog: Security Is the Binder
EE Times Europe’s guides electronica show guide
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1324561&
EE Times Europe’s show guide has the buzz on this week’s Electronica show in Germany.
Fifty years of Electronica will have been necessary to come full circle in the electronics industry, shifting its focus from analog signal to the digital domain, with chips operating at breakneck speeds, and to the analog domain again as sensor nodes spread around like wildfire in the Internet of Things (IoT) catch-all application space.
For a first proof of concept, you may just consider one of the hundreds of development kits and open-source boards that more and more distributors elaborate around their partners’ products as new sales channels. But more than for products whose specs you may inspect and filter out over the web, we come to Electronica for the people, the real drivers behind an industry that never fails to surprise us.
Sooner or later, you may want to ramp up production and talk volume manufacturing with some of the electronic manufacturing services (EMS) providers, lined up side by side with pick-and-place and soldering machine vendors. Across all sectors of activity, one recurring theme and often a key product differentiator is authentication and security, whether it is for part traceability and anti-counterfeiting or for certified software execution, data protection, and secure communications. The latter closes the loop in the manufacturing industry with the former, when information and communications technology (ICT) comes at the service of the very production tools that make it widespread and affordable — industry 4.0 as it is known here in Germany.
Tomi Engdahl says:
FPGAs said to be industry’s most secure
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4437045/FPGAs-said-to-be-industry-most-secure
Microsemi’s ultra secure SmartFusion2 SoC FPGAs and IGLOO2 FPGAs are claimed to have more advanced security features at the device, design and system levels than any other leading FPGA.
The new data security features are now part of Microsemi’s mainstream SmartFusion2 SoC FPGAs and IGLOO2 FPGA. In the emerging era of connected devices, Microsemi says, machines need not only to be secure, but they need to be secure at the device, design and system levels. For example, even a machine or system that meets Advance Encryption Standard (AES) could be vulnerable to side channel attacks. Microsemi’s differential power analysis (DPA) countermeasure solution increases overall system security by protecting the keys that are stored in the system, protecting it against such attacks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tabula FPGA provides 100% observability
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4437048/Tabula-FPGA-provides-100–observability
It’s not often an industry is presented with a game changer, but that’s just happened in the FPGA domain. Tabula has announced its DesignInsight technology, which provides 100% observability into 3PLDs (Tabula’s name for its unique FPGA architecture) running at-speed in both prototype and production designs.
The traditional approach to design and verification is to create one’s FPGA design in RTL and perform some high-level functional verification using software simulation. This pre-silicon verification provides excellent visibility into the design, and it’s easy to make changes at this stage. However, software simulation is extremely slow when used for today’s humongous designs. Only a handful of clock cycles can be simulated this way, and this will result in poor functional coverage.
The real verification and debug comes when the RTL design is synthesized (compiled) and the resulting gate-level equivalent is loaded into the FPGA. The design is now running at full hardware speed, which means we get great functional coverage. The problem is lack of visibility into what’s happening inside the device, coupled with the difficulty in making changes.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to choose analog integrated circuits, Part 1
http://www.edn.com/design/analog/4436892/How-to-choose-analog-integrated-circuits–Part-1
Tomi Engdahl says:
AC/DC power supply performance and international efficiency standards
http://www.edn.com/design/power-management/4436816/AC-DC-power-supply-performance-and-international-efficiency-standards
With the increasing restrictiveness of international power supply efficiency standards, power supply controllers are being pushed to their cost-performance limits. Meeting these new standards while keeping performance high and cost low, has forced the market to move to disruptive new technologies. New design techniques now enable AC/DC converters to achieve the stringent DC efficiency requirements without sacrificing AC performance, in particular, load transient response. This article will discuss the implications of these new efficiency standards on the power supply controller, how they affect the output voltage integrity and the latest design techniques used to improve performance without adding unnecessary cost or complexity.
The US Department of Energy’s AC/DC external power supply efficiency standards enacted in 2007 established a strict combination of no-load power consumption and average efficiency at loads from 25% to 100% of rated load current. The European Union also has enacted similar standards, as have other countries throughout the world, although the DoE’s standards are the strictest mandatory standards. The DoE released an updated external power supply standard in February 2014, further restricting efficiency and no-load power consumption in off-line power supplies.
Tomi Engdahl says:
News & Analysis
Chip Industry’s IoT Facelift Comes With Security Wrinkle
Hardware security is the opportunity
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324587&
MUNICH — Brimming with excitement, and with Europe already ahead of the pack, a maturing semiconductor industry looks expectantly to the Internet of Things (IoT) for yet another facelift, while also recognizing that the IoT security wrinkle may itself provide an opportunity via hardware-based security as the backbone of the connected world. But this will require semiconductor companies to move into software to address data, cloud, and usability management issues, so concluded a panel of four presidents and CEOs plucked from the upper echelons of the industry.
Predictions of connectivity applications were wide and varied, ranging from smart cars, smart factories and smart cities to smart lives, but Gregg Lowe, president and CEO of Freescale Semiconductor summed up the possibilities. “In 2016 we will have cars that can’t crash, can preorder a parking spot at your restaurant, and communicate with your car if you have a heart attack at the table.”
It sounds good, but on the path to IoT, the issue of data and device security looms large. For Reinhard Ploss, CEO of Infineon Technologies AG, this is actually a plus. “The semiconductor industry opportunity is hardwired security to provide a backbone to which all applications can be attached.” For this to happen, however, semiconductor companies must also move into software and data security. “We need the Cloud for ubiquitous usage,” he said, a point not lost on Carlo Bozotti, president and CEO of STMicroelectronics Application Gmbh, who responded, “The opportunity [for semiconductor companies] is in the cloud.”
Europe is already ahead of the US and most of the world in building out the infrastructure for the cloud and connectivity, according to Ploss, thanks to the infrastructure it has in place from its leadership in smartphones.
Still, said Clemmer, usability is a key issue for IoT devices
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pre-made platforms or development packages has become a key part of the eletroniikan design. Farnell element 1 4-Community A study shows that four out of five, or 79 per cent of the designer as a platform to make use of all elements of the production of the exported final product.
77 percent of the developers always considers whether assessed in a component in its own development platform.
44 per cent of the designers says further that could meet the design tasks without a ready-made platforms. 89 percent of developers use the platform to test new technologies.
47 per cent of the developers mentioned the connectivity to the most important of your criteria when choosing a development platform
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2049:alustat-erittain-tarkeita-suunnittelijoille&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Super capacitor to replace the batteries more and more
Supercapacitors have long been used, for example, a memory protection or internal battery reserve power, but in recent years the area of application has expanded significantly, for example, hybrid vehicles, smart phones and collect energy. New technologies are visible in supercapacitors promise to raise the challenge in earnest in rechargeable batteries.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2052:superkondensaattori-korvaa-akut-yha-useammin&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Poses New Challenges to Test Service Providers
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324569&
Many sensors, including MEMS devices, require thorough calibration and test before being assembled into the end node device.
Sensor test typically includes providing a defined stimulus signal. In the case of MEMS sensors, this is frequently a mechanical signal, such as acceleration or turn. In more general terms, such a stimulus could also be a magnetic field, moisture, sound, gas, or many other physical values. Motion and acceleration sensors in some cases require an acceleration as high as 100g to 10 times higher than what electronics even in a fighter jet are typically exposed to.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Highly Integrated Switcher ICs
http://www.eeweb.com/company-news/power_integrations/highly-integrated-switcher-ics/
Power Integrations introduced the launching of its new class of power-supply ICs. The InnoSwitch™ family of highly integrated switcher ICs incorporates primary, secondary and feedback circuits into a single, worldwide safety-rated, surface-mount package. Using InnoSwitch ICs, designers can easily exceed all global regulatory standards for efficiency and no-load consumption, while minimizing component count and providing highly accurate constant voltage and constant current up to 25 W.
http://ac-dc.power.com/design-support/product-documents/data-sheets/innoswitch-ch-data-sheet?Adsource=Aden_EEW%3futm_source=EEWeb&utm_medium=TechCommunity&utm_term=2014&utm_content=Content&utm_campaign=PowerIntegrations
Tomi Engdahl says:
TI Industrial Control MCUs Debut at Electronica
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324602&
Texas Instruments is highlighting its focus on industrial control at Electronica, having introduced a range of microcontrollers and radio products in the past week that specifically target industrial applications. The new product lines include low-cost MCUs with integrated smart analog, communications and conversion devices with reinforced isolation, and combination Bluetooth/WiFi modules for industrial connectivity.
The newest of these product lines is the ISO7842 family of digital isolators. They have an isolation rating of 5,700 Vrms, according to standard UL 1577, with a 40-year working breakdown voltage of 1,500 V and an ability to withstand 8,000 V transients with a surge voltage protection rating of 12,800 V peak. The devices can handle more than 100 Mbit/s data rates with precision timing and low jitter, with common mode transient immunity of 100 kV/microsecond.
The AMC1304 family of sigma-delta modulators likewise offers reinforced isolation of 7,000 V peak, surge voltage of 10,000 V, and working voltages of 1,000 Vrms and 1,500 Vdc.
can operate with inputs in a +/-50 mV range.
In the microcontroller space, TI announced the MSP430 i-series MCUs for a variety of cost-sensitive industrial segments. Devices in the family cost less than $2 and contain integrated smart analog, including up to four integrated 24-bit sigma-delta analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) offering 1% accuracy over a full range of -40°C to +105°C.
The new wireless devices from TI, the WiLink 8 combo connectivity modules, also handle industrial temperatures, rated for operation between -40°C and +85°C. Pin-compatible modules are available with varying combinations of 2.4 and 5GHz WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, and MRC (maximal ratio combining) and MIMO (multiple-input and multiple-output) technology to support coexistence among WiFi, Bluetooth, and ZigBee systems operating in the same area.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Making the Grade in Industrial Design
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1324571&
Commercial, industrial, and military-grade designs are about more than paper specs. They’re about human nature.
As every developer knows, there are the paper specifications for a product design, and then there are the real requirements. The paper specs are dry, bland, and rigidly numeric, making them great as metrics but a poor guide to creating a design that will function properly in real-world conditions. Only experience can show you the real requirements a design must meet.
Take the specification categories to which we assign electronics parts and systems: commercial, industrial, and military grade. On paper, these relate to metrics such as shock and vibration tolerance, operating environment temperature, and voltage isolation capacity. In reality, such metrics represent only a small part of what a design must endure. Of far greater significance are the characteristics of the equipment’s human operator.
Beyond the typical MIL-SPEC requirements of wide operating temperature ranges and substantial shock and vibration resistance, the designs had to tolerate military (in particular, US Navy) personnel.
Most of the designs were not for mission- or life-critical systems, so they needed to tolerate rapid setup and breakdown, insufficient (or no) time spent reading operational manuals, and an attitude toward the equipment that often ranged from indifference (at best) to outright resentment. It’s easy to understand why; my equipment mostly represented an additional burden on already overworked users in potentially life-threatening situations.
I learned to do things like making sure no two external connectors were identical (to avoid misconnected cables) and making sure that the housing could double as a stepstool. My project managers further trained me in the “two dumb thing” rule: My designs couldn’t fail unless the user made two simultaneous dumb mistakes
Of course, it’s impossible to imagine all the possible contingencies, much less design for them.
“Doesn’t float,” he observed. “Not sailor-proof.”
Consumer-grade design is a lot more tolerant. For the most part, consumers figure that, if they break something while doing anything much beyond normal use of the equipment, it’s their fault and thus their loss. There are exceptions, of course. The recent buzz about the iPhone 6 bending
Tomi Engdahl says:
Disciplined Test Capacity Investment
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1324567&
The drive toward more disciplined test capacity investments started after the dot-com bubble.
As these chronicles traverse the turn of the century (see related posts below), I’m reminded how the deflation of the dot-com bubble through most of 2000 and 2001 had a significant impact on the semiconductor industry. Specifically for semiconductor test, the large installed base of test equipment largely put in place in the previous few years were then idle. VLSI Research reported that worldwide test utilization reached a local low point of 63% near August 2001 after peaking at 97% just 14 months earlier. For reference, the same source reported another local low of 57% in February 2009 during the recession.
Over the next several years at Teradyne, working mostly with fabless and OSAT customers, I gained a deeper insight into the extent of the strategic changes resulting from the dot-com bubble. As expected from the aforementioned quotes from OSAT leadership, I saw some large OSAT companies pushing to take more control of the “specification” of their test capacity by promoting select ATE platforms and configurations over others, some even to the point of turning down business with small customers needing unique configurations. Small OSAT companies focused on niche markets requiring a smaller set of configurations in attempts to maintain profitability, knowingly giving up the potential for large-scale growth.
Test equipment suppliers helped the OSAT companies and captive test providers by reducing the number of platforms on the market, but they have more recently added another layer of configuration management complexity with flexible feature licensing schemes. The bottom line is that tightly managing and planning test capacity at high utilization levels remains a difficult and complex task. Tools in the market seem to surround this problem, but they don’t quite attack it directly.
Tomi Engdahl says:
TSMC Predicts Next Big Thing
Take CMOS, MEMS, and supply chain and stir.
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324545&
The framework for “the next big thing” is being cast at advanced foundries that offer one-stop shopping for fabless innovators who want to integrate micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) sensors and actuators alongside complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) circuitry on the same system-on-chip (SoC). Or so envisions Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd. (TSMC), a vendor positioning itself to be that “one shop.”
Besides offering faster turnaround and more reliable sourcing from a single well-oiled supply chain, these advanced foundries will eventually offer dirt-cheap prices at cents per chip, according to George Liu, director of Corporate Development at TSMC at the MEMS Executive Congress 2014 (Nov. 5-7, Scottsdale, Ariz.)
“The next big thing will not just be one idea, but all the next big things will come from a framework of sensors integrated on CMOS chips,” said Liu.
“The only way forward is by collaboration to insure profitability,” said Lui. “We need to move toward the notion of not-invented-here to encourage the practice of sensors driving processor design.”
Mind the gap
According to Liu, the foundries will produce the next big things by filling in the SoC gap by integrating MEMS and CMOS, by filling in the packaging gap by offering sub-micron interconnects, by filling in the capacity gap by manufacturing in the millions or even billions, by filling in the price gap by underpricing all other solutions, by narrowing the R&D gap by offering their own process design kits, by filling in the supply-chain gap with dependable delivery schedules, and by narrowing the return-on-investment (ROI) gap by offering all the types of MEMS and CMOS subsystems needed to build any smart wearable, smart-home device, smart-car device, or smart-city device with cheap integrated smart sensors
Tomi Engdahl says:
Trillion-Sensor Vision, Results Shared
UCSD researchers show latest efforts
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324603&
Saving the planet one sensor at a time, the backers of the Trillion Sensor Summit here shared their visions and some research working toward a fully instrumented world.
“I believe in a world with abundance — a world without hunger, with medical care for all, with clean energy for all, no pollution,” said Janusz Bryzek, chairmen and CEO of the event. “One of the components creating this world is a sensor at the bottom of the pyramid for mobile health, the Internet of Things, and wearable applications. In order to get there, we need to completely transform the economy.”
Abundance will require another 45 trillion sensors, many of which haven’t been developed, Bryzek said. Wearable medical sensors pose enormous potential, speakers said.
Proof-of-concepts from UCSD’s Center for Wearable Sensors included small, inexpensive sensors for a variety of medical uses.
“The biggest challenges are the amount of data, processing this [data], and supporting infrastructure,” Bryzek said. Global health monitoring will require the cost of sensors to drop to less than 50 cents each.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home> Consumer Design Center > How To Article
Silicon platform optimization: A top-down methodology
http://www.edn.com/design/consumer/4437281/Silicon-platform-optimization–A-top-down-methodology?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_consumerelectronics_20141112&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_consumerelectronics_20141112&elq=3a9510a0135e45d1a810f10701467556&elqCampaignId=20155
Recently there has been an explosion of short-range wireless applications. Some well-known examples include NFC payment systems and wireless charging etc. These applications require an interaction of electromagnetic, electrical, and mechanical domains. Unfortunately there is no tool that can solve the complete system efficiently for rapid silicon and system specification. The net effect is that either the silicon is not properly specified or the system needs to be redesigned.
Traditional electrical simulators such as SPICE are effective in solving lumped element equations. However, such tools cannot model EM fields present in sensors, especially when they are embedded in the vicinity of other components and metallic chassis. Other products can solve Maxwell’s equations using the FEM (Finite Element Method) but are woefully inefficient in importing transistor parameters. We will present a unified methodology that takes into account the best of both tools to create a tops-down view of the complete system. A representative system is shown but this methodology can be extended to other interdisciplinary optimization problems.
One application could involve sending PCIe clock over a contactless system. Traditional PCIe clocks propagate from SoC over FR4 traces to a PCIe card. There is a wealth of literature using signal integrity tools to model this effect. However in our scenario a docking connector for a hermetically sealed tablet is considered where PCIe signals are to be transmitted over a short wireless link. This scheme allows for more rugged tablets with no exposed contacts. Pads on the tablet capacitively couple to corresponding pads on the docking connector and allow for PCIe signal and clock to be transmitted across the wireless link.
The question to answer is how to model the contactless system and specify the silicon parameters to still meet the PCIe specifications.
A 3D EM solver (CST) was used to create a network model for the system (sans the driver, which is in silicon).
The continuing advance in both silicon modeling, circuit simulators and 3D EM simulators has meant that increasingly a design team has access to tools that allow for a robust co-design of silicon, PCB and system design.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Internet of Things is not open to all
The Internet of Things is now a term with virtually every semiconductor company’s new product introduction. The hope seems to be that the future growth and Gloria part of sticking to your own business. But the views of the IoT through are still scattered. All it does not automatically good.
A good example of such a fragmentation of Cypress Semiconductor, which was presented at the fair new versions of programmable PSoC. The chips themselves are fine, but the mere addition of the radio circuits does not make them automatically IoT products. Cypress introduced a target for the use of, for example, the touch-controlled älylukon, which can now be ble connection due to pair the smartphone. Such an application is a great idea, but it does not yet have anything that designate the product as part of the Internet of Things.
IoT is all about massive data collection devices, where it would have been possible in the past, but there have been a variety of reasons in practice nonsense. It is necessary even after the data analytics in order to collected sensor data is obtained in a reasonable and useful way exploit.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2067:esineiden-internet-ei-aukea-kaikille&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Technical support can not always be replaced by Internet
Electronica, Munich – the Internet is in many places replaced the component suppliers and distributors to provide technical support nature. More and more offers support for online only. In analog design technical support virtualization does not work, says Linear Technology President and CEO Lothar Maier.
- It is true that the digital designer is often only one person in twenty designer team, but the analog circuits the situation is different. Our application engineers are always involved in the planning process from the beginning, Maier points out.
In this sense, the analog design is still a little bit of art. Or black magic, such as English, often they say. This is also reflected in the way the Linear educate yourself on your own designer.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2064:teknista-tukea-ei-voi-aina-korvata&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
USB 3.0 chips released at Electronica
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/catching-waves/4437294/USB-3-0-chips-released-at-Electronica-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20141113&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20141113&elq=419b68d3c39040ed9ce05e02f676a43d&elqCampaignId=20162
Global Industry Analytics projects that global sales of USB 3.0 enabled devices will reach 3 billion units by 2018. The major market driver is expected to be the need to increase transmission speeds between peripheral devices and computers. At Electronica 2014, FTDI Chip announced its first generation USB 3.0 products. The FT600Q and FT601Q are designed for use in FIFO bridges, featuring support for data bursting rates of up to 3.2 Gbps.
The chips have two interfacing modes. The 245 FIFO mode has a simpler protocol, and the multi-channel FIFO mode supports up to 4 logical FIFO channels and data structures optimized for higher throughputs. (The FIFO is provided with a 16kByte configurable buffer.)
The endpoints are linked to a configurable endpoint buffers of 16kByte length for IN and 16kByte for OUT.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home> Community > Blogs > Product Launches and Approvals
Global certifications for makers and hardware startups
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/product-launches-and-approvals/4437238/Global-certifications-for-makers-and-hardware-startups?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20141113&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20141113&elq=44190ff3b9804c41bf4e6804e48ad538&elqCampaignId=20178
Could your product be exempt from EMC testing?
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/product-launches-and-approvals/4432483/Could-your-product-be-exempt-from-EMC-testing-
Tomi Engdahl says:
Analysts: TSMC’s FinFET Shows ‘Company Ahead of Schedule’
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324617&
TAIPEI — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) announced Wednesday that it has entered risk production for its 16-nanometer FinFET Plus (16FF+) process.
It is yet another sign that the world’s largest chip foundry is ahead of schedule with its first 3D chips that will be at the core of a new generation of smaller, more powerful mobile devices, according to analysts who cover the company.
“They only took about three-and-a-half quarters to migrate to this new geometry from 20 nanometers in the first quarter of 2014,” said Carlos Peng, an analyst with Fubon Securities. “That’s a little bit faster than the industry average.”
TSMC is conducting small-volume shipments of 16FF+ this quarter, according to Peng. The company’s announcement of the “milestone” included endorsements of the process technology by customers such as Avago Technologies, Freescale, LG Electronics, MediaTek, Nvidia, Renesas, and Xilinx.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Power Week: First Distributed Power Standards Unveiled by AMP Consortium
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324618&
The recently formed Architects of Modern Power (AMP) consortium announced its first digital power standards at Electronica. The consortium, whose goal is to establish “common mechanical and electrical specifications for the development of advanced power conversion technology for distributed power systems” unveiled two sets of initial standards at the conference:
The microAMP and megaAMP digital point-of-load (POL) specifications define requirements for supplies rated at 20-25 A and 40-50 A, respectively, in vertical and horizontal configurations.
The ABC-ebAMP and ABC-qbAMP bus converter standards detail mechanical footprints, features, and configuration files for 58.42 x 22.66mm, 264-300W advanced bus bricks and 58.42 x 36.83mm, 420-468W quarter-bricks, respectively.
Products meeting these standards are available from consortium members, including CUI, Ericsson, and Murata.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tiny Tattoos Sense Health
Printable sensors detect explosives
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324619&
Research into nanosensors is bearing fruit at the University of California San Diego. Researchers at the University’s Center for Wearable Sensors have prototypes for several tiny, inexpensive sensors fit for the skin that target a variety of medical uses.
“The skin is an important sensory function,” Wang said at TSensors Summit. “The skin is not only our own body, but it could be the body of any host like a building, a tree, or a moving car.”
Research began with printable textile-based sensors sewn into the elastic waist of underwear to measure performance.
Students in UCSD’s Bioengineering department showed proof-of-concepts, including a point-of-care system for glucose monitoring. The portable glucose molecule detection platform can be plugged into any smartphone and, eventually, more basic handsets. The goal is to bring the price of the glucose monitor below the current $23 average and enable data to be instantly sent to doctors.
Long-term, uninterrupted monitoring of an ECG also necessitates a wearable sensor.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wireless Pressure Sensor Using Radio Waves Has Many Biomedical Applications
http://video.techbriefs.com/video/Wireless-Pressure-Sensor-Using
Stanford University engineers have invented a wireless pressure sensor that has already been used to measure brain pressure in lab mice with brain injuries. The underlying technology has such broad potential that it could one day be used to create skin-like materials that can sense pressure, leading to prosthetic devices with the electronic equivalent of a sense of touch. The wireless sensor is made of a thin layer of rubber between two strips of copper. The copper strips act like radio antennas and the rubber serves as an insulator. The technology involves beaming radio waves at this simple antenna-and-rubber sandwich. When the device comes under pressure, the copper antennas squeeze the rubber insulator and move infinitesimally closer together. That tiny change in proximity alters the electrical characteristics of the device. Radio waves reflected by these antennas slow down in terms of frequency.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Optical Microscope Technique Valuable for Manufacturing Next-Generation Computer Chips
http://video.techbriefs.com/video/Optical-Microscope-Technique-Va
Research engineer Ravi Attota of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has shown that a technique developed several years ago at NIST can enable optical microscopes to measure the 3D shape of objects at nanometer-scale resolution — far below the normal resolution limit for optical microscopy. The technique could be a useful quality control tool in the manufacture of nanoscale devices such as next-generation computer chips. Attota’s experiments show that Through-focus Scanning Optical Microscopy (TSOM) is able to detect tiny differences in 3D shapes, revealing variations of less than one nanometer in size among objects less than 50 nm across.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Portable, Low-Cost Optical Imaging Tool Useful in Concussion Evaluation
http://video.techbriefs.com/video/Portable-Low-Cost-Optical-Imagi
Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences have conducted optical-imaging research, employing functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), and their findings provide preliminary support for the tool as a low-cost, portable device for imaging sports and military concussions. The fNIRS unit works like a pulse oximeter for the brain. It measures blood flow to the brain by sending light signals from sensors mounted in a three-pound headcap, then producing images of blood oxygen changes – representing brain activity – by recording the absorption of light at different colors.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Inside PCB Production
http://video.techbriefs.com/video/Imagineering;search%3AInside%20PCB%20Production
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pre-digital computer ‘cranks out’ Fourier Transforms
Boffins get a handle on pre-digital computer, restore it to working order
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/17/predigital_computer_cranks_out_fourier_transforms/
Video A group of American engineers have rescued and returned to operation a Fourier-Transform-calculating machine designed in the 19th century.
The machinery is an impressive reminder not only of what could be achieved in the pre-digital era, but also of the genius of its designer Albert Michaelson, a name less-known to the general public than contemporaries like Albert Einstein.
The machine they used is held by the University of Illinois’ Department of Mathematics, and was built by William Gaertner & Company. While the authors can’t be certain of the age of the machine, they believe it was manufactured between 1901 and 1909.
Tomi Engdahl says:
An antenna and RF amplifier in one
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/electronic-product-reviews/other/4437146/An-antenna-and-RF-amplifier-in-one?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20141117&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20141117&elq=6ab89663a14f4f608f886cb7f3d963c7&elqCampaignId=20219
Radiated immunity testing for compliance requires that you generate RF energy a field strength specified for a required distance from antenna to equipment under test. Typically, that’s 10 V/m at 3 m distance. To generate that field, you need a power amplifier and an antenna. Most test setups have am RF power amplifier outside the test chamber with a cable carrying the test signal to the antenna inside. Because of the power involved, significant losses can occur in the cables and connectors. The EMField Generator from ETS-Lindgren integrates the amplifier and antenna into one unit. That eliminates cables and their associated signal losses resulting in a smaller power RF power amplifier.
The EMField Generator produces a field of 10 V/m at 3 m distance (80% amplitude modulation), at frequencies from 1 GHz to 6 GHz, letting you run precompliance and compliance tests. That frequency span covers the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands popular in today’s wireless devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Analog Devices’ integrated transceiver for next-generation software defined radio (SDR)
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/electronic-product-reviews/other/4424048/Analog-Devices–integrated-transceiver-for-next-generation-software-defined-radio–SDR-
Analog Devices, Inc. introduced a next-gen solution for software defined radio (SDR) applications. Designed to enable programmable radio applications that operate over a wide range of modulation schemes and network specifications such as defense electronics, instrumentation equipment and communications infrastructure, the new AD9361 RF Agile Transceiver achieves, what ADI claims is, best-in-class performance, high integration, wideband operation and flexibility. The IC is supported by a wide range of design resources to expedite time to market including a software design kit and FPGA mezzanine card (FMC) to rapidly develop software defined radio solutions.
Analog Devices combined the AD9361, with a Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA, USB 3.0 interface and comprehensive software support, to create one of the industry’s easiest-to-use and most flexible software-defined radio solutions.
The AD-FMCOMMS2-EBZ-FMC board provides designers with a rapid prototyping environment that supports multiple communications protocols, including most licensed and unlicensed bands.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Breathalyzer Detects Diseases
Breath contains clues to glucose, liver function — even sleep
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324640&
What if, with one big breath, you could determine your liver function or glucose levels? Researchers at the State University of New York, Stony Brook have developed a diagnostic breathalyzer that will make connotations with blood alcohol content a thing of the past.
“There are over 1,000 chemical compounds [in our breath] that are in very, very low concentrations. We capture breath, detect a specific gas biomarker, then quantify its concentration,” said Perena Gouma, professor and director of Stony Brook’s Materials Science and Engineering department. “We developed a sensor chip coated with tiny nanowires that detect minute amounts of chemical compounds in the breath,” she said.
“If this is successful, it will guide the way toward diabetes monitoring. There is a better correlation between acetone and insulin levels than glucose and insulin levels,” she said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ISSCC Tips Hot Circuit Designs
Chips advance video, medical, communications
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324643&
Chip designs that enable everything from a 6 Gbit/s smartphone interface to the world’s smallest SRAM cell will be described at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in February.
Intel will describe a Xeon processor packing 5.56 billion transistors, and AMD will disclose an integrated processor sporting a new x86 core, according to a just-released preview of the event.
The annual ISSCC covers the waterfront of chip designs that enable faster speeds, longer battery life, more performance, more memory, and interesting new capabilities. The dozens of papers at this year’s event include a handful describing the first designs made in 16 and 14 nm FinFET processes at IBM, Samsung, and TSMC.
NHK Science & Technology Research Laboratories and Forza Silicon will show a 12 bit, 133 Mpixel image sensor that delivers 8K video at 60 frames/second. At the other end of the imaging spectrum, Samsung will present a 640×480 pixel image sensor that consumes just 45.5 microwatts at 15 frames/s so it can be used in an always-on mode.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Will New SoCs Keep Marvell at No. 2 in China’s LTE Market?
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324645&
Marvell announced Monday (Nov. 17) two new 64-bit mobile processors targeting the fast growing global LTE market: a new mobile SoC based on octa-cores for high performance smartphones and tablets and another that uses quad-cores for economy models.
Marvell hopes to leverage the company’s “mature LTE modem” in the new additions to its Armada mobile product family. While Qualcomm remains the dominant player in the global LTE market, able to dwarf its competitors’ incremental gains, Marvell’s quiet success with its LTE baseband business in China has gotten little notice.
Setting the record straight, Lu Chang, senior director of mobile business unit at Marvell, told EE Times that Marvell today has a 30% market share in China’s LTE market. Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts, observed, “Marvell has very credible world-class smartphone chip technology. Now with a 64-bit application processor on the same die with their LTE/TD-SCDMA modem, it puts them ahead of MediaTek.” MediaTek’s current solution employs a separate LTE modem chip, not on the same die with the application processor, Strauss explained.