Tech News
Toshiba Electronics launches ARM Cortex-M3 micros with 1MByte Flash and connectivity options that include CAN, USB and I2C
Toshiba Electronics Europe has further expanded its family of high-performance 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 microcontrollers with four new devices that combine high-capacity Flash memory with a variety of interface options. The TMPM361, TMPM362, TMPM363 and TMPM364 microcontrollers will suit embedded applications such as office equipment and industrial control systems where minimum power consumption and component count and high levels of connectivity are key design criteria.
Renesas Electronics and Green Hills Software collaborate to jointly develop basic software for CPU virtualization technology enabling real-time control
Renesas and Green Hills Software announced collaboration to jointly develop basic software supporting CPU virtualization technology suitable for real-time control applications as well as a software development environment.
Evatronix Enhances its USB Portfolio with High Speed Inter-Chip (HSIC) Compatible PHY IP
Evatronix SA, the leading provider of USB-IF certified solutions for SuperSpeed USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 IP, have announced today the introduction of a High Speed Inter-Chip (HSIC) compatible PHY IP for significant power and area savings in USB 2.0 chip-to-chip connections.
Broadcom' - Bluetooth Chip Family Enables Stereo Headsets With Voice Recognition Capabilities
Broadcom announced a new family of Bluetooth system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions targeting stereo headset products. Combining the ability to enjoy streamed stereo music with traditional Bluetooth hands-free phone call capabilities, the new chip family also provides Broadcom's leading suite of built-in SmartAudio® technology that delivers appealing features for multiple tiers of headsets. The Broadcom® BCM2077x family includes three Bluetooth chips to enable entry-level, mainstream and high-end stereo headsets.
PMC-Sierra introduces Universal Front End 4 (UFE4) silicon to accelerate transition of carrier networks to Ethernet-based mobile backhaul
PMC-Sierra today announced its Universal Front End 4 (UFE4) silicon, that enables OEMs to develop a range of high performance, highly integrated solutions for the growing mobile backhaul market segment. The UFE412 and UFE448 ASSP devices, combined with PMC-Sierra's WinPath3 network processors, offer OEMs a highly integrated platform to deliver end-to-end mobile backhaul solutions, from cell-site backhaul through hub sites and aggregation equipment.
Maxim creates new Power SoC product category to reduce PCB size, extend battery life, and lower total system cost of mobile devices
Maxim announced the creation of highly integrated Power System-on-Chip (Power SoC) devices. These new products integrate power management and mixed-signal functions such as digital audio, a high-speed interface, and a touch-screen controller on a single chip to enable high performance, as well as thinner and smaller form factors in smartphones, tablets, and e-readers.
ARM Processor Technology and ARM Partners Continue to Lead in Wireless Connectivity with the Transition to LTE and LTE-Advanced Markets
ARM and a number of its Partner Community, which includes all the leading silicon vendors in wireless connectivity, today highlighted their ongoing activity in baseband modem designs and momentum in the LTE and LTE-Advanced markets. The group also welcomed the acceleration of LTE / 4G technologies that will provide consumers with improved mobile experience based on the ARM architecture. Over the last 20 years ARM processors have proven to be almost ubiquitous in 2.5G and 3G handsets, with all current 3G baseband shipments incorporating the technology. ARM processors are now used in 95% of LTE baseband designs world-wide.
Imec reports reconfigurable radio solutions enabling low-cost and low-power spectrum sensing
Imec presents a digital front-end component for low-cost and low-power spectrum sensing, paving the way to power-efficient cognitive radios and networks. The new results support industry's search for increased flexibility and reliability for their next-generation wireless devices.
Broadcom's New Combo Chip Integrates 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 + HS and FM to Bring New Multimedia Applications to Smartphones, Tablets and Other Mobile Devices
Broadcom announced its newest wireless combination (combo) chip designed to support more media and data applications without impacting size or battery life for smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. The BCM4330 integrates Broadcom's industry leading 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and FM radio technologies on a single silicon die providing significant cost, size, power and performance advantages over discrete semiconductor implementations, making it ideal for mobile devices.
Agilent Technologies to Demonstrate Industry-First Design and Test Solutions for 3G/4G and LTE-Advanced at Mobile World Congress
Agilent will demonstrate its leading-edge communications test and measurement solutions for 3GPP LTE-Advanced, LTE,W-CDMA, HSPA+, E-EDGE (EDGE Evolution), UMA/GAN, WiMAX(tm), and femtocells at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Feb. 14-17.
STMicroelectronics’ IPAD Technology Shrinks and Simplifies Protection for High-Bandwidth Connections
STMicroelectronics has unveiled a new IC enabling manufacturers to reduce parts count and simplify the design of reliable, high-speed data circuits commonly used in smartphones, tablets and mobile computers, as well as for wired connections such as USB2.0 and HDMI. ST is the global leader in the Integrated Passive and Active Devices (IPAD) technology enabling these new devices.
CSR unveils next-generation, consumer wireless audio platform
CSR plc (LSE: CSR) announced the CSR8600 wireless consumer audio platform, a next-generation architecture CSR will employ for a new family of highly integrated system-on-chip devices offering superior high-fidelity audio quality, the latest Bluetooth wireless connectivity technologies and a sophisticated, highly efficient energy management system, all in a compact form factor with greatly reduced BOM count. The CSR8600 platform is designed to enable consumer electronics manufacturers to more easily, quickly and cost-effectively bring to market highly differentiated home entertainment and wearable audio products featuring unmatched sound quality and connectivity, longer battery life and smaller, lighter designs for a more compelling user experience.
CSR and TSMC extend collaboration to 90-nm embedded Flash process technology and IP
CSR plc. and TSMC today announced they are collaborating on the adoption of TSMC's leading edge 90-nm embedded flash process technology, IP and RF CMOS processes for CSR's next-generation wireless products. The 90-nm embedded flash process technology and IP can deliver twice the speed of previous generation 0.18-micron process technology and IP. It is ideal for portable communications, smart card and high-speed micro-controller applications.
Microsemi Announces Commercial Off-the-Shelf Up-Screening for Plastic Packaged Products
Microsemi today announced it is offering commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) up-screened plastic packaged products. The up-screening program is targeted at both commercial and defense system designs requiring higher levels of reliability assurance.
TI’s OMAP 5 platform transforms the concept of ‘mobile’
Texas Instruments announced today the next generation of its popular OMAP family: the OMAP 5 mobile applications platform, which is positioned to transform how mobile devices, such as Smartphones, tablets and other mobile form factors are used, making them even more valuable in our daily lives.
DLP-HS-FPGA High-Speed FPGA Module
DLP Design, Inc. announced the new DLP-HS-FPGA high-speed FPGA module based on silicon from Xilinx and FTDI.
Oxford Advanced Surfaces validates core adhesion technology for Printed Electronics
Oxford Advanced Surfaces Group Plc (OAS) has announced today that it has successfully completed the Technology Strategy Board -funded project work on Customised Adhesion of Inter-layers for Plastic Electronics (CAIPE). The project aimed to develop a much needed solution to the persistent interlayer delamination problems facing device manufacturers in Plastic Electronics. In collaboration with their project partners PETEC (Printable Electronics Technology Centre) and OMIC (Organic Materials Innovation Centre) the technology has delivered robust adhesion between the different interfaces in the multilayer flexible electronic device.
Picochip - First end-end demo of LTE femtocell
Picochip today unveiled the world's first public demonstration of a commercial LTE femtocell eNodeB basestation working with terminals. The end-to-end system will be demonstrated at Picochip's stand (D56 in Hall 1) at this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Picochip's PC960x is the only LTE basestation specifically designed for cost-effective 'small cells', and combines the company's field-proven OFDMA expertise with its high-volume 3G femtocell experience.
IDT Introduces Industry’s First Single-Layer Multi-Touch Capacitive Touch Screen Controller
Integrated Device Technology announced the industry's first touch screen controller IC optimized for IDT's proprietary single-layer multi-touch projected capacitive touch screen technology. This new touch screen technology and controller solution revolutionizes the market by offering a true single-layer solution, not requiring cross-over isolation points that other solutions require, yet still maintaining full multi-touch capability. The result is a lower-cost total solution that does not sacrifice features or performance. Typical applications include mobile handsets, personal navigation devices, and handheld gaming platforms with screen sizes up to five inches.
National Semiconductor Demonstrates 28 Gbps Data Centre Technology with Molex and Amphenol
National Semiconductor today announced it has achieved a breakthrough in high-speed signal conditioning by becoming the first company to successfully demonstrate 28 Gbps discrete quad-channel retimer technology with ultra-low power consumption to drive 100 Gbps to 400 Gbps interfaces in next-generation data center systems.
Cadence Drives Giga-gate/Gigahertz Design at 28nm with New Digital End-to-end Flow
Cadence Design Systems today advanced the design of giga-gate/gigahertz system on chips (SoCs) with a proven digital end-to-end flow at 28 nanometers that yields both performance and time-to-market advantages. Driven by the Cadence Silicon Realization approach, the new Encounter-based flow provides a faster, more deterministic path to achieve giga-gate/gigahertz silicon through technology integration and significant core architecture and algorithm improvements in a unified design, implementation and verification flow.
Toshiba offers access to mature technologies and long-life process support for European ASIC customers
Toshiba Electronics Europe (TEE) has announced that its ASIC and Foundry business unit is offering European customers long-life process support while continuing to make mature ASIC technologies available for new design starts. Both options will be particularly attractive to customers developing system-on-chip (SoC) solutions for industrial and other medium-volume applications where extended product lifecycles and/or cost optimized design are key criteria.
element14 adds new open-source Arduino whiz Jeremy Blum to its “Ask an Expert” engineering panel
element14, a collaborative social community and electronics store for design engineers and electronics enthusiasts, today announced the addition of Jeremy Blum to its "Ask an Expert" panel, giving professionals, enthusiasts and DIY-ers alike a valuable resource for Arduino programming questions and topics.
AMD to Offer OpenGL 4.1 Support on Microsoft Windows and Linux Platforms In Latest Driver Release
AMD announced wide-ranging support of OpenGL 4.1 for Microsoft Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP and Linux across select ATI FirePro, ATI FireGL and AMD Radeon graphics cards. The new functionality is made possible with the release of the latest professional and consumer graphics drivers, ATI FirePro and ATI FireGL unified driver 8.801, and AMD CatalystTM 10.12, available on the AMD website.
Huawei and China Telecom Complete Test of End-to-End 1588v2 Clock Solution
Huawei and China Telecom today jointly announced the successful lab testing of its end-to-end (E2E) 1588v2 clock solution, using Huawei's OTN (Optical Transport Network) and MSTP (Multi-service Transmission Platform) transport products. Being organized by China Telecom Beijing Research Institute, the test demonstrated the high performance and reliability of Huawei's 1588v2 clock solution, which exceeds the current performance standard required for commercial use. It also provides an important reference for China Telecom to deploy 1588v2 over the live network.
Huawei Advances China's Railway Communication into R4 Softswitch Era
Huawei today announced its successful migration of the Daqin railway line GSM-R network from the 3GPP R99 platform to a 3GPP R4 platform. The migration process was designed and carried out by Huawei so that full rail operation of the Daqin line could be maintained throughout the project. The successful migration of the Daqin GSM-R network represents an important milestone for GSM-R network operators all around the world. This project demonstrates that even GSM-R networks with the highest demands on reliability and high volumes of rail traffic can be migrated while full rail operation is maintained.
Calico Energy Services and Digi Partner to Enable Smart Grid Technologies for Energy and Demand Management
Calico Energy Services and Digi International today announced the availability of an integrated smart grid technology solution for energy and demand management. The solution is built upon the Digi X-Grid platform which provides device connectivity infrastructure, and Calico Energy's EIS platform, which provides a complete utility energy management solution coupled with residential and commercial load control.
Mentor Graphics Calibre PERC Programmable Electrical Rule Checker Improves Fujitsu Chip Reliability
Mentor Graphics Corporation today announced that Fujitsu Semiconductor Limited is now using the Calibre® PERC product for electrical rules checks that improve the correctness and reliability of its IC designs before committing to manufacturing. The product, which automates electrical checks based on user-defined rules, is designed to address customers' need to improve reliability by identifying areas of vulnerability to catastrophic electrical failures in ICs during factory test, transport, and field operation. Among the specific checks being performed at Fujitsu Semiconductor are electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection circuit checking, cross-domain and multi-cross-domain protection checking, level shifter checking, and optimal ESD I/O placement checking.
Avago - Isolation Amplifiers with Increased Accuracy for Motor Drivers and Renewable Energy Power Converters
Avago announced new precision optical isolation amplifiers for motor control and current sensing applications. The ACPL-790B, ACPL-790A and ACPL-7900 devices improve the accuracy and response times of the Avago isolation amplifier portfolio, while addressing compact applications with a smaller footprint package design. The high-precision isolation amplifiers are ideal for current and voltage sensing in AC and brushless DC motor drives, industrial inverters, servo motor drives, wind power generation, solar panel power systems and general analog isolation.
Siemens Aerospace Uses Analog Devices iCoupler Digital Isolation Technology For Sophisticated Satellite Power Protection System
Analog Devices, Inc. is providing its highly integrated iCoupler® digital isolation solution to Siemens Aerospace for its PowerSCOE™ system, a sophisticated satellite power protection system that will shut down kilowatts of power within the satellite within microseconds in the case of an anomaly. Serving as the advanced technology group for Siemens AG, Siemens Aerospace designed the system with other applications in mind, such as smart grid power monitoring.
STMicroelectronics - First Single-Chip Positioning Device for Multiple Global Navigation Systems
STMicroelectronics introduced Teseo II, a new generation of single-chip stand-alone positioning receivers for Portable Navigation Devices, in-car navigation and telematics applications. These Systems-on-Chips are the industry's first monolithic devices capable of receiving signals from multiple satellite navigation systems, including GPS, GALILEO, GLONASS and QZSS*. ST's Teseo II family combines high positioning accuracy and indoor sensitivity performance with powerful processing capabilities and superior design flexibility.
Imec launches new research program on high-bandwidth optical I/O
Imec announces the launch of a new industrial affiliation program on high-bandwidth optical input/output (I/O). The primary objective of the new program, which is part of imec's research platform on deep-submicron CMOS scaling, is to explore the use of optical solutions for realizing high-bandwidth I/O between CMOS chips.
Arrow plays key role in development and manufacture of projectiondesign ultra-high resolution DLP projector
High-performance projector specialist projectiondesign has confirmed that Arrow Electronics has played a key role in helping the company to design and manufacture a new high-performance projector that offers double the resolution of other systems on the market. Arrow supplies most of the electronic components in the new F35 WQXGA (2560 x 1600) resolution projector and the company made use of Arrow's engineering expertise during product design and development.
Cadence Introduces 32/28-Nanometer Low-Power RTL-to-GDSII Silicon Realization Reference Flow for Common Platform Alliance
Cadence Design Systems today introduced a qualified 32/28-nanometer reference flow targeting Common Platform technology. Cadence® collaborated closely with members of the Common Platform alliance—IBM, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, and Samsung Electronics—to develop a comprehensive flow from RTL synthesis to GDSII signoff for the advanced node, low-power high-k metal gate (HKMG) process technology.
STMicroelectronics - Supports New Security Technologies in Latest Generation Set-Top Box Chips
STMicroelectronics , has announced it is the first to sample STB decoder chips providing support for next-generation security and content protection technologies that include the NDS VideoGuard Security Kernel and DVB-CSA3 descrambler system.
Maxim - DS1878 SFP+ controller includes a digital LDD interface for communication with a laser driver/limiting amplifier.
Maxim introduced the DS1878, a small form factor pluggable (SFP+) controller with a digital laser diode driver (LDD) interface. State machine based, the DS1878 eliminates the tedious software development process. It enables efficient implementation of the SFF-8472 specification and greatly reduces the time to market. Moreover, as the most reliable I2C controller available to optical transceiver designers, the DS1878 enhances the reliability of SFP+ optical transceiver modules.
Gate driver reference design for SemiSouth normally off SiC JFETs enables very fast turn-on/ turn-off
SemiSouth Laboratories, Inc., the leading manufacturer of silicon carbide (SiC) products for high-power, high-efficiency, harsh-environment power management and conversion applications, today announced a reference design and applications note which describes a gate driver optimized for high speed, hard switching of the company's normally-off SiC vertical JFETs. The design enables very fast turn-on and turn-off in Isolated Bridge topologies and provides a peak output current of +6/- 3A for fast turn-on transients yielding record low switching energy losses.
Analog Devices Introduces Industry’s First I2S Digital MEMS Microphone
Analog Devices introduced today the ADMP441 iMEMS microphone, the industry's first high-performance MEMS microphone with an I2S (Inter-IC Sound) digital output. The ADMP441 also features an extended frequency response from 100 Hz to 15 kHz, high SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) of 61 dBA, and high PSRR (power-supply-rejection ratio) of 80 dBFS – features that have become the hallmarks of Analog Devices' award-winning MEMS microphone portfolio. The new MEMS microphone uses patented ADI MEMS and audio signal processing technologies and is available in a thin 4.72 mm × 3.76 mm × 1.00 mm surface-mount package. It is reflow solder compatible with no sensitivity degradation.
Cypress Extends Deadline for First Phase of ARM Cortex-M3/PSoC® Design Challenge
Cypress Semiconductor today extended the deadline for it's ARM Cortex-M3/ PSoC 5 Design Challenge. In order to accommodate exceptional demand, participants now have until January 24, 2011 to complete stage one of the challenge. The design challenge aims to find the most innovative and useful designs from the millions of possibilities available to designers using the Cypress PSoC 5 architecture powered by the ARM Cortex-M3 processor.
NXP Announces Industry’s First Integrated CAN Transceiver Microcontroller Solution
NXP Semiconductors (Nasdaq: NXPI) today announced the LPC11C22 and LPC11C24 – the industry's first integrated high-speed CAN Physical Layer transceiver and microcontroller with easy-to-use on-chip CANopen drivers. Offered as a unique System-in-Package solution, the LPC11C22 and LPC11C24 with integrated TJF1051 CAN transceiver combine complete CAN functionality into a low-cost LQFP48 package.
