Here are my collection of trends and predictions for electronics industry for 2015:
The computer market, once the IC growth driver per se, apparently is approaching saturation status. Communications industry is still growing (6.8%.). Automotive V2X, LED lighting and smart domestic objects are set to drive semiconductor market growth through the year 2020, according to market analysis firm Gartner.
Car electronics will be hot in 2015. New cars will have more security features, smart infotainment and connectivity in them. It is an are where smart phone companies are pushing to. Automotive Industry Drives Chip Demand article says that until 2018, the IC demand from automotive customers is expected to exhibit the strongest average annual growth — 10.8% on average. This is significantly higher than the communications industry, at second place with 6.8%. Demand drivers include safety features that increasingly are becoming mandatory, such as backup cameras or eCall. But driver-assistance systems are also becoming ubiquitous. Future drivers will include connectivity, such as vehicle-to-vehicle communications, as well as sensors and controllers necessary for various degrees of autonomous driving.
Power electronics is a $90 billion-per-year market. The market for discrete power electronics is predicted to grow to $23 billion by 2024 from $13 billion today. Silicon rules power electronics industry, but new materials are pushing to headlines quickly. In the power electronics community, compound semiconductors such as gallium nitride (GaN) are drawing more attention as they try to displace silicon based power devices, which have been doing the heavy lifting for the past 30 years or so. While silicon-based devices are predicted to remain predominant with an 87% share of the market, it is expected that SiC- and GaN-based components to grow at annual rates of 30% and 32%, respectively. There’s no denying the cost advantages that silicon possesses.
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 2015. 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. There will be many presentations on first designs made in 16 and 14 nm FinFET processes at IBM, Samsung, and TSMC.
There is push to go to even smaller processes, and it seems that next generation of lithography equipment are started to being used. Earlier expectation was for chipmakers to use traditional immersion lithography for production of 10 nm chip, but it seems that extreme ultraviolet (EUV) scanners that allows allow scaling to 10 nm or even smaller is being used. TSMC to Use EUV for 7nm, Says ASML. Intel and TSMC have been injecting money in ASML to push process technology.
2015 promises to see initial FPGA product releases and (no doubt) a deluge of marketing claims and counter-claims. One thing is certain: 2015 will not be boring. There will be FPGA products that use processes beyond 20nm, for example Altera and Xilinx have committed to use the TSMC 16nm FinFET technology. There is publicized (and rumored) race to get to production at 14nm has seen time frames for initial samples move into 2015. However, with both FPGA companies reporting gross margins of close to 70 percent, it would be possible for either company to take an initial hit on margin to gain key socket wins.
It seems that the hardware becomes hot again as Wearables make hardware the new software. Apple invest its time when it released the Apple Watch last quarter, going up against the likes of Google’s Android Wear and others in the burgeoning wearables area of design. Once Apple’s bitten into a market, it’s somewhat a given that there’s good growth ahead and that the market is, indeed, stable enough. As we turn to 2015 and beyond wearables becomes an explosive hardware design opportunity — one that is closely tied to both consumer and healthcare markets. It could pick up steam in the way software did during the smartphone app explosion.
There will be more start-up activity within hardware sector. For recent years, the software has been on the main focus on the start-ups, and the hardware sector activity has been lower. Hardware sector has seem some start-up activity with many easy to use open hardware platforms became available (make development of complex devices easier and reachable for smaller companies). The group financing (Kickstarter, Indiegogo, etc.) have made it possible to test of new hardware ideas are market-worthy and get finance to get them to production.
EEs embrace hackathons aand accelerators. Design 2.0 is bubbling up in the engineering community, injecting new energy into the profession. In many ways, it’s the new Moore’s Law. Easy to use open hardware development platforms have made it possible to design working hardware device prototypes within hackathons.
Silicon Startups Get Incubator article tells that there will be new IC start-up activity as semiconductor veterans announced plans for an incubator dedicated to helping chip startups design their first prototypes. Keysight, Synopsys, and TSMC have signed exclusive deals to provide tools and services to the incubator. Silicon Catalyst aims to select its first batch of about 10 chip startups before April.
MEMS mics are taking over. Almost every mobile device has ditched its old-fashioned electret microphone invented way back in 1962 at Bell Labs. Expect new piezoelectric MEMS microphones, which promise unheard of signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) of up to 80 dB (versus 65 dB in the best current capacitive microphones) in 2015. MEMS microphones are growing like gangbusters.Also engineers have found a whole bunch of applications that can use MEMS microphone as a substitute for more specialized sensors starting in 2015.
There will be advancements in eco-design. There will be activity within Europe’s Ecodesign directive. The EC’s Ecodesign Working Plan for 2015-2017 is currently in its final study stages – the plan is expected to be completed by January 2015. The chargers will be designed for lower zero load power consumption in 2015, as on February 2016, after the 5-watt chargers are no longer at no load connected consume more than 0.1 watts of power. Socket for power supplies values are defined in the new Energy Star standard VI.
LED light market growing in 2015. Strategies Unlimited estimates that in 2014 the LED lamps were sold $ 7 billion, or about 5.7 billion euros. In 2019 the LED lamps will already sold just over 12 billion euros. LED technology will replace other lighting technologies quickly. For those who do not go to the LED Strategies Unlimited permission difficult times – all other lamp technologies, the market will shrink 14 percent per year. The current lighting market growth is based on LED proliferation of all the different application areas.
IoT market is growing fast in 2015. Gartner is predicting a 30 percent compound annual growth rate for the IoT chip market for the period 2013 to 2020. The move to create billions of smart, autonomously communicating objects known as the Internet of Things (IoT) is driving the need for low-power sensors, processors and communications chips. Gartner expects chips for IoT market to grow 36% in 2015 (IoT IC marker value in 2014 was from $3.9 billion to $9 billion depending how you calculate it). The sales generated by the connectivity and sensor subsystems to enabled this IoT will amount $48.3 billion in 2014 and grow 19 percent in 2015 to $57.7 billion. IC Insights forecasts that web-connected things will account for 85 percent of 29.5 billion Internet connections worldwide by 2020.
With the increased use of IoT, the security is becoming more and more important to embedded systems and chip designers. Embedded systems face ongoing threats of penetration by persistent individuals and organizations armed with increasingly sophisticated tools. There is push for IC makers to add on-chip security features to serve as fundamental enablers for secure systems, but it is just one part of the IoT security puzzle. The trend toward enterprise-level security lifecycle management emerges as the most promising solution for hardened security in embedded systems underlying the explosive growth of interconnected applications. The trend continues in 2015 for inclusion of even more comprehensive hardware support for security: More and more MCUs and specialized processors now include on-chip hardware accelerators for crypto operations.
Electronics is getting smaller and smaller. Component manufacturers are continually developing new and smaller packages for components that are mere fractions of a millimeter and have board to component clearances of less than a mil. Components are placed extremely close together. No-lead solder is a relatively recent legislated fact of life that necessitated new solder, new fluxes, higher temperatures, and new solder processing equipment. Tin whisker problems also increased dramatically. You should Improve device reliability via PCB cleanliness, especially if you are designing something that should last more then few years.
Photonics will get to the circuit board levels. Progress in computer technology (and the continuation of Moore’s Law) is becoming increasingly dependent on faster data transfer between and within microchips. We keep hearing that copper has reached its speed limit, and that optics will replace copper for high-speed signals. Photonics now can run through cables, ICs, backplanes, and circuit boards. Silicon chips can now have some optical components in them using silicon photonics technologies. For more than 10 years, “silicon photonics” has attracted significant research efforts due to the potential benefits of optoelectronics integration. Using silicon as an optical medium and complementary metal-oxide semiconductor fabrication processing technology, silicon photonics allows tighter monolithic integration of many optical functions within a single device.
Enter electro-optical printed circuits, which combine copper and optical paths on the same board. Electro-optical PCBs use copper for distributing power and low-speed data, and optical paths for high-speed signals. Optical backplane connectors have been developed, as well as a technique to align the small waveguides to transceivers on the board. The next challenge is to develop waveguides on to boards where the tight bends don’t degrade performance to unacceptable levels.
3D printing will bring structural electronics. With 3D printing hot in the news, and conformable, flexible, or even printed electronics fitting any shape, it is only a matter of time before electronic circuits can be laid-out as part of the 3D-printing process, the electronic framework becoming an integral supporting part of any object’s mechanical structure. For example “structural batteries” have already been implemented in electric cars, in racing-car aerofoils, and in the Tesla pure electric car.
Superconductors are heating up again. Superconductivity will be talked again in 2015 as there were some advancements in the end of 2014. A group of international scientists working with the National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, Calif., have discovered lasers that can create conditions for superconductivity at temperatures as high at 140°F. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has discovered a law governing thin-film superconductors, eliminating much of the trial and error for companies that manufacture superconducting photodetector. With MIT’s new mathematical law, new superconducting chips can be designed with the correct parameters determined ahead of time.
Frost and Sullivan forecast that “PXI to disrupt automated test” between 2015 and 2018. They predict PXI to achieve $1.75B in annual sales by 2020, up from $563M in 2013. That’s an aggregate growth rate of over 17%. Not bad for an industry that has an overall secular growth rate of 3 percent.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
The Hardware Startup Review
Weekly insights in Hardware Startup Universe. Hackaday-style.
http://hackaday.io/project/883-the-hardware-startup-review
Tomi Engdahl says:
PAM4 takes the spotlight at DesignCon 2015
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/eye-on-standards/4438092/PAM4-takes-the-spotlight-at-DesignCon-2015?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150106&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150106&elq=6db3b65852a342ad98aa923f6efbb3d2&elqCampaignId=21020
With 25+ Gbit/s systems being deployed and 50+ Gbit/s on the white board, the prospects are grim for good old, digital-looking NRZ (non-return to zero) electrical signaling.
People have preached the PAM4 (4-level pulse amplitude modulation) gospel at #DesignCon for years, some with evangelical passion, but the idea has stayed mostly on the development bench. As long as we can get away with NRZ—even if we have to use complex equalization methods and insert FEC (forward error correction) into the gearbox—we’ll keep using it. But now, as we face the realities of 56 Gbit/s signals on standard, legacy PCB (printed circuit board), PAM4 looks inevitable.
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Implantable, transparent sensors give researchers a better view of brain activity
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/tech-edge/4438066/Implantable–transparent-sensors-give-researchers-a-better-view-of-brain-activity?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150105&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150105&elq=266393b67ee24506b37065b2a6eb7550&elqCampaignId=20992
A team of University Wisconsin-Madison researchers, with support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA’s) Reliable Neural-Interface Technology (RE-NET) program, have developed “invisible” implantable medical sensor arrays that will not block views of brain activity. Their research was published in the Oct. 20 issue of Nature Communications.
According to a recent Phys.org article, “electrical monitoring and stimulation of neuronal signaling is a mainstay technique for studying brain function, while emerging optical techniques—which use photons instead of electrons—are opening new opportunities for visualizing neural network structure and exploring brain functions.”
“One of the holy grails of neural implant technology is that we’d really like to have an implant device that doesn’t interfere with any of the traditional imaging diagnostics,”
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Anti-symmetric FIR filter slashes resource use
http://www.edn.com/design/integrated-circuit-design/4438062/Anti-symmetric-FIR-filter-slashes-resource-use?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150105&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150105&elq=266393b67ee24506b37065b2a6eb7550&elqCampaignId=20992
FIR filters used for signal manipulation in the digital domain have either a symmetric or anti-symmetric impulse response
Anti-symmetric filters have a phase-shift property and are widely used as phase shifters.
Even though anti-symmetric FIR filters contain negative coefficients (complements of the positive ones), it is possible to implement these filters with resources similar to symmetric ones, with the extra expense of N/2 complement stages.
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Home> Integrated-circuit-design Design Center > How To Article
Design planning for large SoC implementation at 40nm: Guaranteeing predictable schedule and first-pass silicon success
http://www.edn.com/design/integrated-circuit-design/4413580/Design-planning-for-large-SoC-implementation-at-40nm–Guaranteeing-predictable-schedule-and-first-pass-silicon-success
The physical design implementation of large complex deep sub-micron technologies has evolved to a stage where it is essential to consider every aspect of SoC design and implementation during the planning process. The era of a waterfall flow from RTL to GDSII was over long ago. Even the efforts to bridge the gap between the front-end and back-end design process, through tools and flows, are not always sufficient.
Modern SoC development requires a holistic approach and thorough planning starting at the design architecture of the SoC. The ASIC implementation process has to keep pace with the design complexity, performance, and time-to-market, all while ensuring first-time silicon success.
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Auto IC Market: Revving Up Product Line Means Revving Up Reliability
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1325190&
Many of the challenges faced by new entrants in the automotive IC market are attributed to the industry’s safety and reliability standards.
The adoption of electronics in the automotive market seems to be on the upswing.
Many industry reports and forecasts on integrated circuit (IC) growth point squarely at the automotive market to outpace growth in other IC related areas. IC Insights published a report showing communications and automotive to be the two strongest growth segments for 2011-2016, with the automotive market forecast to reach $28 billion in 2016, or 53% growth from its 2011 size.
These forecasts seem to be resonating well with recent financial disclosures by those focused on the automotive industry. For example, Freescale disclosed in July that 45% of its revenue today is “automotive-related.”
Many of the challenges faced by new entrants are attributed to the industry’s safety and reliability standards.
The automotive industry has developed an adaptation of the International Electrotechnical Commission’s Functional Safety standard, IEC 61508 for Electric/Electronic Systems, to create its International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 26262. This standard for functional safety features forms an integral part of each automotive product development phase, from the initial specifications to design, implementation, integration, verification, validation, and production release.
The AEC electrical component qualification requirements identify wearout reliability tests, which specify the testing of several failure mechanisms.
Electromigration
Time-dependent dielectric breakdown (or gate oxide integrity test) — for all MOS technologies
Hot carrier injection — for all MOS technologies below 1 micron
Negative bias temperature instability
Stress migration
Verification against these failure modes during the design process provides assurance that the actual device performance will meet reliability expectations.
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Europe lost its position in semiconductor manufacturing
Europe’s role in the new integrated circuits is practically non-existent. Of all the 300-mm silicon wafers to the old continent is processed by only one percent. Half of the wafers made from chips in Taiwan and South Korea.
Europe’s role in IC Insights’, the collapse of the last 10 years. At one time, such as AMD, Infineon and STMicroelectronics had big plans for 300-milligrams of wafer production, but these plans do not have much left.
In contrast, China’s status as a country of manufacture has been strengthened rapidly. China is already three times more 300-millimeter production capacity in Europe as a whole.
In May, the EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes set a target of 20 per cent of the world’s semiconductor production should get back to Europe by the year 2020. Current statistics in light of the achievement is a utopian dream.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2239:eurooppa-menetti-asemansa-puolijohdevalmistuksessa&catid=13&Itemid=101
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Samuli Bergström: User interface design is challenging
The user interface makes the product, either successful or unsuccessful. Whether it’s a mobile phone or a production system for testing the interface defines what the user experience of the product will eventually emerge.
Why is the user interface design is so challenging? The most common reason for their failure is due to the fact that, especially engineers we easily forget, to whom we are designing the user interface.
The same is true, for example, Internet sites. How often have I come to find a number of companies and educational site as simple a thing as a business address. Many other information from there, but tends beyond her business address, or it is hidden somewhere, where it is almost impossible to find.
Engineers designing user interfaces very often to themselves and not necessarily the production operators.
So what makes a good user interface? A good user interface is very simple and its design is based on the co-operation the end customer.
You should also ask the operators, where the system is the best user interfaces and in the worst of all. Similarly, you should take into account what kind of user interfaces have been in the past.
New winds user interfaces have made internet sites as well as mobile phones and tablets. Ideas for a new way to make user interfaces that exudes from every direction. Touch screens will be already familiar to young children and they become more
The fingers when they do not fully replace the mouse, especially precision. I gotta think about the push buttons on the placement and size, in order to avoid damage. Ready-made design rules, fortunately, can be found online for free for various platforms such as iOS and Android, and they can also be used in other application fields.
Also the color scheme Internet sites and mobile / tablet applications is much richer than the production of test systems in gray and boring windows.
A good user interface is easy to use, visually pleasing, informative and forgiving to potential errors made by the user. Such development, however, requires close co-operation with the customer and the courage to try something new
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2226:samuli-bergstrom-kayttoliittyman-suunnittelu-on-haastavaa&catid=9&Itemid=139
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Connectivity a game changer for embedded design
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/embedded-insights/4437822/Connectivity-a-game-changer-for-embedded-design
Whether wired or wireless, adding network connectivity to an embedded system is a potential game changer. Connectivity, especially to the Internet, brings a host of opportunities and challenges not seen in stand-alone designs. But you have to challenge your assumptions about what your embedded system can and must do as part of its normal operation.
Many embedded systems already have some form of connectivity to other devices, often to exchange data and commands. Remote user interfaces are a similar application of connectivity. Typically these occur over either a direct connection or a local network of some kind.
But connectivity, especially over a wide area, can bring much more to embedded systems. The key is envisioning the rest of the network as an extension of the embedded system and considering the operation of it all as a single device. With that in mind, a wealth of opportunities becomes available to an embedded design as certain constraints fall away.
Embedded Design Profession Under Siege
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/embedded-insights/4438263/Embedded-Design-Profession-Under-Siege
In the early years, microprocessors were a generally unknown technology. Those of us working with them needed an intimate understanding of how they functioned. We worked in assembly language, often compiling by hand, and generally had to develop our own development tools. Most of our management had no clue how these system functioned.
Embedded systems developers formed communities, and specialized educational channels such as Dr. Dobbs Journal and the Embedded Systems Conference arose. Still, the state of the art continued advancing rapidly and those who were practitioners of the art remained specialists who could command respect and could earn great rewards.
But we seem to have done our job too well. The computing element at the heart of our designs became so ubiquitous that its abilities are now taken for granted. Our children grew up with computers a household item, and our grandchildren play with toys that outperform the supercomputers of those early days. Programming has become a wide-spread skill, making millionaires out of clever smartphone apps developers, and grade-school children are engaged in robot competitions.
Development tools, software libraries, and off-the-shelf processor modules have also become commonplace, and incredibly inexpensive if not completely free. Even professional-level mechanical and system design tools are now freely available to students. Anyone can become an embedded developer and do so easily. Those of us who have been trained in the profession have only our years of experience to differentiate ourselves from this wider developer community. Meanwhile, the industries in which we work are shifting to embrace the innovation and creativity these new developers bring to the table.
So where does this leave those of us who have been professional embedded developers? It’s hard to say.
But processors are getting faster and memory cheaper, so efficiency in programming is becoming less important. They’re also getting cheaper, and product lifetimes becoming shorter. Cost optimization of design is thus becoming less critical, and the time required to optimize is becoming an impediment to market success.
Embedded systems development as a profession is under siege. Companies like Oracle want to turn the millions of Java web programmers into embedded developers for the Internet of Things. Low-cost development boards such as the Arduino are reducing the need for electronics expertise to the level that anyone with a hint of cleverness can turn an idea into a working prototype. Experienced embedded systems professionals may well find themselves relegated to specialty areas such as hard real-time system
Tomi Engdahl says:
According to the OECD counterfeiting and piracy lead companies in potential revenue from $ 638 billion or 540 billion per year. Counterfeiting protection will require increasingly better techniques.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2263:vaarennokset-vievat-yrityksilta-540-miljardia-vuodessa&catid=13&Itemid=101
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Multi-equipment manufacturer wants to cover the knowledge of what components are circuit boards used. Swiss Escatec has developed a technique in which marking can be removed from the components so that the components are not subjected to any stress.
Reverse engineering or reverse engineering companies cause billion-dollar losses every year. In particular, many Chinese manufacturers copy Westerners products from the district level. China ups, of course, take a slightly different way than in the West.
In general, labeling components are removed after the circuit is complete. To delete entries manually is a time consuming and it can be a strain, for example, solder joints.
Escatecin solving existing laser marking machine is used to write the circuit board soldered to the surface of the component number pattern. Laser marking is rapidly removed, and the component affected in any way. The result is undefined pattern, which is unable to read afterwards.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2258:merkinnat-pois-komponenteista&catid=13&Itemid=101
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China Grabs 9 Spots in Fabless 50
China’s mobile chip designers on the rise
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325228&
Chinese companies took nine of the top fifty spots in the 2014 fabless IC company ranking, up from one of them in 2009, according to a report to be issued later this month by IC Insights. At least five of the eight new entrants to the Top 50 have a significant focus on today’s hot smartphone market.
China is still relatively small as a fabless chip supplier, accounting for just 8% ($80.5 billion) of the global market, the market watcher said. But its rise is significant, fast, and strategic.
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Circuit printers: Voltera and Voxel8
http://hackaday.com/2015/01/09/circuit-printers-voltera-and-voxel8/
There are two printers being shown off at the 2015 Consumer Electronics shows which really spark our interest. They are the Voltera and the Voxel8. Each is taking on the challenge of printing circuits. They use similar techniques but approach the problem in very different ways.
The Voxel8 marries the idea of a 3D printer with a silver conductive ink dispenser. You start by modeling your entire design, hardware and electronics, all in one. The printer will then begin the 3D print, pausing when necessary for you to add electronics and mechanicals.
The Voltera is a PCB printer that uses silver conductive ink. It prints the ink onto a substrate. Pads made of the ink are used to solder the components in place after the printing is finished. The trick added to this design is the ability to print two layers, both on the same side of the board. There is a second ink material which is an insulator.
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5 Things That Will Drive Test in 2015
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325231&
Test and measurement is everywhere. Why? Because everything has to be tested. Test equipment and methods must adapt to changing technologies, often in parallel with a technology’s development. To find out what will drive test & measurement in 2015, I asked people at several test-equipment companies. The five significant drivers of test & measurement are:
Wireless
High-speed serial buses
Automotive
Instrument interfaces
Power integrity
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Back in the backplane
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/rowe-s-and-columns/4438115/Back-in-the-backplane?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_pcbdesigncenter_20150112&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_pcbdesigncenter_20150112&elq=9c484b91ec0b4f2c98e53346cb9afefb&elqCampaignId=21104
Simonovich’s 32 years as an engineer with Nortel and now his consultancy, Lamsim Enterprises puts him at the forefront of backplane design. To learn more about how backplane design and modeling work, I spoke with Bert by phone.
He explained that most high-speed backplanes designed today use some kind of serial-link switched fabric architecture for boards to communicate with one another. The electrical interface can be one that’s a standard, but some large companies usually have proprietary backplanes. Small companies tend to use more “off the shelf” backplanes that are ATCA, CompactPCI or VME based.
“When designing a backplane from scratch,” he said, “I work with system architects, mechanical engineers, and PCB designers. I provide the blueprint for a backplane design.” He usually starts with a system block diagram from the system architect and has to figure out how to connect the I/O cards so they get proper signals and power. To design the backplane architecture, Bert has to make sense out of the connectivity mess. “You have to treat the problem as if it were an onion. You need to peel back the skin, one layer at a time, until the design sorts itself out.” That “mess” includes the backplane connectors.
Part of the design process involves modeling the backplane for signal integrity. “You need to have some idea of what the signal losses will be before you finalize on the design and begin board layout,” he noted. To do that, he creates circuit-based models of transmission lines that include vias, traces, and connectors. By building an electrical model of the transmission lines, he can tell if the insertion loss — caused by reflections, skew, and crosstalk — is within budget.
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Improved SMT pad design for high frequency signal transmission
http://www.edn.com/design/pc-board/4438228/Improved-SMT-pad-design-for-high-frequency-signal-transmission?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_pcbdesigncenter_20150112&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_pcbdesigncenter_20150112&elq=9c484b91ec0b4f2c98e53346cb9afefb&elqCampaignId=21104
In the high frequency domain, a signal or EM wave must propagate along the transmission path with uniform characteristic impedance. Whenever an impedance mismatch or discontinuity is encountered, a portion of the signal is reflected back to the transmitting end while remaining portion of the EM wave continues to travel to the receiving end. The severity of the signal reflection and attenuation depend on the magnitude of impedance discontinuity. When the magnitude of mismatched impedance increases, a larger portion of the signal is reflected and more attenuation or degradation of signal is observed at the receiver.
The phenomenon of mismatched impedance is encountered at SMT pads of AC coupling (a.k.a DC blocking) capacitors, board to board connectors, and cable to board connector (e.g., SMA).
In order to minimize the capacitive discontinuity, the reference plane area right under the SMT pads is cut out, and copper fill is constructed on the inner layer
The proof of concept with analysis of TDR and insertion loss is presented in the subsequent section of this paper.
The analysis in this paper proves that insertion of a cut-out on the reference plane underneath the SMT pads reduces the impedance mismatch and increases the bandwidth of the transmission line. The distance between the SMT pad and its reference copper on an inner layer depends on the width of the SMT pad, and also the effective thickness of SMT pad inclusive of connector pin and solder.
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Chipset measures 3-phase AC power
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4438299/Chipset-measures-3-phase-AC-power?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20150112&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20150112&elq=b70c2a1ab86a401b9645b1f85acd62b4&elqCampaignId=21125
The ADE7933/ADE7932 are isolated, 3-channel sigma-delta analogue-to-digital converters (Σ-Δ ADCs) for polyphase energy metering applications that use shunt current sensors. The ADE7923 is a nonisolated, 3-channel Σ-Δ ADC for the neutral line that uses a shunt current sensor. The ADE7932 features two 24-bit ADCs, and the ADE7933 and ADE7923 feature three 24-bit ADCs.
One channel is dedicated to measuring the voltage across the shunt when a shunt is used for current sensing. This channel provides a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 67 dB over a 3.3 kHz signal bandwidth. Up to two additional channels are dedicated to measuring voltages, which are usually sensed using resistor dividers.
The ADE7978 is a high accuracy, 3-phase electrical energy measurement IC with serial interfaces and three flexible pulse outputs.
The ADE7978 measures the active, reactive, and apparent energy in various 3-phase configurations, such as wye or delta services, with either three or four wires. The ADE7978 provides system calibration features for each phase, gain calibration, and optional offset correction. Phase compensation is also available, but it is not necessary because the currents are sensed using shunts.
Use the chipset in applications such as shunt-based polyphase meters; power quality monitoring; solar inverters; process monitoring; protective devices; isolated sensor interfaces; and industrial PLCs.
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CES 2015: MEMS that Wearables/IoT Need
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325262&
All things MEMS, especially how they provide greater functionality in smaller, more power-efficient wearable Internet of Things (IoT) devices, was the overall theme of the “Sensors and MEMS Technology” track at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2015, June 6-8, Las Vegas) sponsored by the MEMS Industry Group (MIG, Pittsburgh).
“MEMS/sensors are the frontline ‘edge’ device collecting the raw data from the environment, such as pressure and temperature, or human body data, such as number of steps taken and heart rate,” Stephen Whalley, chief strategy officer at MIG told EE Times. “In wearable devices and IoT applications such as smart homes, buildings, cities and vehicles, they usually form a sensing cluster around the application processor, feeding it with every sensory change taking place. That data is then processed using algorithms to make sense of it so that humans or machines can react appropriately.”
Wearable strategies are all over the map
One of the biggest problems with keeping them powered, because they are usually always-on and thus need to constantly stay charged to be useful. Besides the technical side, according to Holmes three things define wearables in 2015: “intimacy, immediacy and persistence.”
“A day on a smart watch a day’s battery life would be great — but we don’t have that yet,” said Oh.
power consumption is limiting the functionality of smartwatches.
When asked where the biggest power savings can come from in a wearable device Behrooz said it’s the sum of the display, processor, communications, sensors and software. In some use cases, such as always-on applications, you have limit the use of communications and GPS which runs down batteries quickly. But if you use sensor fusion to keep most of the battery-hungry circuitry off until needed, you can extend battery life to reasonable lengths.
Saxe added that consumers would prefer to have a battery life of 3-to-6 months with wearables that merely use sensors to report the data a smartphone.
“The top issues depend on whether the developer is thinking of a wearable device without a display, or one with a display.”
“The next ‘big’ algorithm for sensor hubs for wearables will be the one that achieves the lowest power,”
“Energy harvesting will create a whole new generation of products, we’ll see sensors — even see customized packaged goods.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
CogniMem on Digi-Key
http://www.eeweb.com/company-news/digikey/cognimem-on-digi-key
CogniMem develops practical cognitive computing for intelligent sensing to data mining application, offering a significant performance/ watt advantage over traditional approaches.
CogniMem is an innovator in neural network architecture built to resemble the synapses of the human brain, creating reactive memory components that use high speed and parallel pattern recognition to ‘learn’ versus being programmed. T
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home> Community > Blogs > Tech Edge
Eco-friendly electronics of the future will be designed to disappear
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/tech-edge/4438305/Eco-friendly-electronics-of-the-future-will-be-designed-to-disappear?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150113&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150113&elq=918a391adc784ff183ff8c08769c14a8&elqCampaignId=21135
Researchers at Scandinavian research organization SINTEF have made progress in developing components that dissolve in water. Printed on a silicon wafer, the components contain extremely thin circuits — only a few nanometers thick — that are designed to transfer energy. They are made of a combination of magnesium, silicon, or silicon with a magnesium additive; are water-soluble; and disappear after a few hours.
“It’s important to make it clear that we’re not manufacturing a final product, but a demo that can show that an electronic component can be made with properties that make it degradable,” says Karsten Husby, a research scientist in SINTEF’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) division. “Our project is now in its second year, but we’ll need a partner active in the industry and more funding in the years ahead if we’re to meet our objectives. There’s no doubt that eco-friendly electronics is a field which will come into its own, also here in Norway. And we’ve made it our mission to reach our goals.”
Researchers in the United States have been working on biocompatible electronic devices that can be implanted in the body for various uses — pain management, for example, or to combat infection — and then dissolve over time.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Triple-Level Cell Memory Makes Gains in Storage
SLC to fade as TLC sees uptake
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325264&
Two years after entering the client segment, triple-level cell (TLC) is expected to gain further traction in the data center, but in the long term conventional NAND growth with slow as 3D takes over.
To date, TLC has been primarily used in USB drives, flash memory cards, low-cost smartphones, client solid state drives (SSDs), said Gregory Wong, principal analyst with Forward Insights, but it’s starting to see use in the iPhone 6 and he anticipates it make further incursions into high-end smartphones and enterprise data center SSDs in 2015 and 2016.
The research firm expects 3-bits-per-cell and 3D to be the focal point of NAND technology evolution over the next year, noting that Samsung commercialized 3D NAND in 2014, but adoption will still be slow until late 2016, when all vendors will have commercialized it. Until then it will continue to be an multi-level cell (MLC) and TLC world, he said.
MLC will continue to be used in smartphones, tablet and SSDs through 2016, said Wong, and likely some Android-based smartwatches as they gain popularity next year, while single-level cell (SLC) continues to be used in consumer applications such as set-top boxes, digital cameras, printers and mobile devices. However, its volume has declined as mobile devices and cameras have moved to MLC. The main growth for SLC will come from industrial and automotive applications, said Wong.
One of the reasons TLC is seeing growth and finding viability in data center applications is smarter controllers that address concerns such as endurance.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Broadcom CEO: Life After LTE, 5G Cellular Exit
4K UHDTV, iGrill and proliferating remotes
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325250&
If you had to guess one product category conspicuously absent from Broadcom’s CES booth this year, would you name smartphones?
If you did, you were right.
The Irvine, Calif.-based chip giant, who couldn’t hack its way into the global baseband modem market, decided to bag it all together last year. The smartphone modem market, locked up by Qualcomm for years, is now under fresh attack by a number of “must-win-at-all-cost” chip companies in Asia, according to Scott McGregor, CEO of Broadcom.
The company’s focus is now on the broadband and connectivity businesses. “Our broadband is an extremely strong and valuable business. Our connectivity business is also very strong, and is focused more on the Internet of Things now,” he said. “Frankly, these are better businesses to be in and invest in.”
The company is broadening its technology and businesses. These include connected homes, and more recently, automotive. McGregor called the automotive segment “a great business we are sort of tiptoeing into” and finding it “very interesting.”
McGregor: So, if you think about the connectivity business, we won all of that business without any baseband participation. We never really had a high share in the baseband. We had a strong number one position in connectivity — and again, all without the benefit of baseband. That would have been on top of that share.
The reason we win in connectivity is because we have very strong execution across the broad range of technologies. And we are really good at integrating different connectivity technologies. We are creating a platform out of connectivity technologies. And that doesn’t change.
Chinese fabless are also getting into connectivity
EE Times: With all the capital going into the Chinese semiconductor industry, I hear that a lot of Chinese fabless companies have money to burn. They’ve begun licensing connectivity technologies from others because they want to be in that business [of modem and connectivity] for smartphones.
Shanghai-based Spreadtrum, a successful vendor of baseband chips but with no connectivity solutions, recently licensed connectivity IP core — such as Bluetooth Low Energy – from Ceva. And Spreadtrum isn’t alone making such deals.
Now, to me, that means trouble for Broadcom. No?
McGregor: Oh, potentially. But you can make the same argument about Samsung LSI or Huawei. But at the end of the day, they use our connectivity chips. There are big differences between the best and almost the best… or not at all the best. I think people want to have the best technologies in these spaces. You need that to win specs, market values, and there are a lot of features you enable with these products.
Broadcom CEO on IoT, iGrill and 4K UHDTV
EE Times: What have you seen on the show so far?
McGregor: Customers who come through today are finding our automotive platform also applies to avionics. We are finding the Internet of Things makes a lot of sense for devices we’ve never thought of. I met with a customer, one of the largest makers of kitchen appliances. They told us they are going to put Wi-Fi in pretty much all of their appliances.
EE Times: That’s an IoT coming to the kitchen story.
McGregor: I think there are a couple of themes at the show. One is that the Internet of Things has moved beyond just a total geek field. Mainstream consumers are starting to understand how they might actually like to have some of these devices. Price points are beginning to come down and the quality is going up. This will be an ongoing process. It’s not a binary thing.
EE Times: But none of the cable guys are doing 4K today. Are they?
McGregor: They’re all working on it. I mean, all of them. If they don’t have a plan to deploy it, they’ll be out of business. Because consumers are going to buy a 4K TV set, and if their cable provider does not offer 4K content, they will change. They’ll go to a satellite provider, or to streaming guys offering 4K. So, there is competition. It’s going to move fairly rapidly.
It’s going to be completely different from the 3D phenomenon we saw five years ago.
EE Times: Do you believe any open standard groups will affect the ease of connectivity?
McGregor: I think they’ll try. And over time, they’ll definitely do it. I mean, we have solved the problem…like when we go to a rental car, and pretty much figure out how to drive it. But it’s a little disorienting when you go to a new car. Braking, accelerator and ignition are generally obvious where they are. But when I go looking for a turn signal, windshield wiper or turn on lights, that’s not always obvious where those are. This is an example of a highly standardized industry and it’s been around for a long time. And they can’t do it.
So…expecting that we are going to do it in an even more sophisticated set of devices may be something inherently difficult.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Talking terminations
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/benchtalk/4438345/Talking-terminations?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150114&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150114&elq=bfe2062a15b2452fae3ab6def03c0937&elqCampaignId=21157
Over the years, signal integrity concerns have moved from RF and esoteric high-speed designs into the mainstream. Rare is the project these days that doesn’t have to consider transmission lines and controlled impedance PCBs.
you can find yourself absorbed for days researching transmission lines and terminations of all sorts.
By far, the most commonly encountered termination type is series, where a driver’s output impedance is matched to the transmission line (PCB trace or cable), either by virtue of its inherent output characteristics or by the addition of a resistor placed near the driver output. The load at the other end of the line is assumed to be an open circuit, but, in reality, there will be some capacitance and possibly some input current (bear in mind I’m thinking of digital design; RF inputs are usually 50Ω). The line takes a full round trip to settle, and you can’t generally have more than one load unless they’re grouped at the end. However, the load sees a clean signal, and the termination doesn’t dissipate any excess power.
Even with series termination, things aren’t always cut and dried.
Today’s FPGAs have great versatility in their output settings
Or perhaps being nominally 50Ω. How close do you need to be?
The load (or worse, loads) at the end of the line can have a bit more input capacitance than you’d like. How do you deal with that? I’ve seen people put a series resistor at the end of a line as well as at the beginning! How about a small inductance? Will it work? Ask an RF gal or guy!
Why can’t they make outputs with symmetrical drive of high and low voltages? Sure, some are that way – more and more of them, in fact – but a lot still aren’t. It’s impossible to optimize termination, so you decide if one edge is more important than the other, or you compromise.
How do you choose a termination resistor? Yes, I’m as guilty as the next designer of rule-of-thumbing it, but I do try to apply some gray matter to the choice. The output is from some piddly low-current chip? Throw in 22Ω or maybe nothing at all. It’s a bit beefier? Maybe 33Ω. You have a real driver? Try 39Ω on for size. OK, it’s a bit crude, but it’s often good enough.
scope a good number of signals
If it’s some old passive with 7pF at the tip, you’re likely to cause a significant change in your signal.
This is the time for an active probe or a high-end, low-capacitance passive. Don’t skimp now.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Achieve tamper-proof capacitive sensing
http://www.edn.com/design/sensors/4438316/1/Achieve-tamper-proof-capacitive-sensing-
Applications such as Point Of Sale (POS) devices and keypads for secure door locks are required to be tamper resistant. If these devices are tampered with, then there are possibilities for theft of confidential information such as the Personal Identification Number (PIN) of a credit/debit card or access code of a lock. Hence, the devices incorporate special measures to detect tampering and halt further operation to avoid loss of sensitive data.
One of the easiest ways to gain access into a device is through the region where electrical contacts are brought out, or are closer to surface. Mechanical buttons are required to gather user input and these generally use tactile switches placed beneath the rubber or plastic key mat. Since switches have electrical contacts that connect them to microcontrollers and, as these switches are relatively close to surface, they are an easy target for tamper attempts.
A micro drill is used to make small holes on the keypad overlay and reach electrical contacts beneath them. Once electrical contacts are reached, very thin wires are attached to them. Once electrical contacts are reached, very thin wires are attached to them and are connected to a parallel processing system
User will have no clue that the device is tampered with and thus become the victim of a tampering attack.
Similarly, there are other numerous ways used to tamper with a design. These may include tapping the communication lines of the controller or monitoring the transactions of the device passively by fixing a ‘bug’ on the system. It is also possible to cut the power supply of the device and tamper the system. The component of the system, which has least measures to protect it against tampering, becomes the most vulnerable part and thus the target of tampering attacks. Hence, it is not sufficient if we incorporate measures to secure any single component of the device in order to make the whole system tamper resistant. The combination of anti-tamper measures incorporated on every part that goes inside the device is what makes the system tamper-proof. In this article, we will concentrate on how to make the keypad tamper resistant.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ian King / Bloomberg:
Intel reports net income of $3.7B, record revenues of $14.7B, EPS of $0.74 for Q4; Q1 sales estimated to be a modest $13.7B
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-15/intel-sales-forecast-misses-estimates-signaling-deeper-pc-slump.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Circuit Plotting With An HP Plotter
http://hackaday.com/2015/01/18/circuit-plotting-with-an-hp-plotter/
Over the last few years we’ve seen a few commercial products that aim to put an entire PCB fab line on a desktop. As audacious as that sounds, there were a few booths showing off just that at CES last week, with one getting a $50k check from some blog. [Connor] and [Feiran] decided to do the hacker version of a PCB printer: an old HP plotter converted to modern hardware with a web interface with a conductive ink pen.
ECE 4760 Final Project: Rapid Circuit Prototyping
by Connor Archard and Feiran Chen
http://people.ece.cornell.edu/land/courses/ece4760/FinalProjects/f2014/fc254_cwa37/index.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Analysts Turn Negative on Outlook for TSMC
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325328&
Analysts switched to a more negative outlook for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) after the world’s largest contract chipmaker announced a record quarterly profit for the end of 2014 that may mark the start of a downturn for the company during 2015.
TSMC yesterday said net income soared 79 percent from a year earlier to NT$79.99 billion (US$2.51 billion), a new quarterly record. The company also reported record full-year earnings, surging 40 percent to NT$263.9 billion.
“There is no doubt TSMC is continuing to execute well, which combined with better than expected iPhone 6 demand has led to stellar quarterly earnings since the second quarter of 2014,” said Susquehanna Financial Group analyst Mehdi Hosseini in a January 15 report. “However, several material risk factors on the horizon … will ultimately lead to lower earnings and thus disappointment.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
In Praise of Analog Meters
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1325308&
Digital is everywhere, for reasons various and sound, but in metering analog still has its charm and place.
Most kinds of metering have gone digital these days, and little wonder. A digital meter can readily provide additional features such as auto-ranging, data logging, peak detection, and (in many cases) greater accuracy. Still, analog meters have a place in industrial systems that’s hard to fill.
If you look at a typical comparison of analog and digital meters, there are some pretty dry items. Analog meters tend to be less expensive, but also less precise. They are mechanical, which makes them subject wear as well as motion-related errors. Digital meters have no mechanical problems and can provide precision to as many digits as you like. Further, they can be (and often are) outfitted with extensive circuit protection and auto-ranging features not readily available on analog meters.
There is a challenge with digital meters, though. Because they provide the user with numbers, interpretation may require a little thought.
Analog meters, on the other hand, provide a pictorial view of signal characteristics that is easy to understand at a glance.
Analog meters also have the ability to mask irrelevant variations that are obvious on digital meters. This arises because of the meter’s ballistic response, which creates a kind of mechanical low-pass input filter.
in some cases, analog meters are a must-have item regardless of their strengths or weaknesses. In situations such as military ships or power plants where legacy designs used analog meters that became enshrined in specifications and certifications by regulatory agencies, a failed analog meter requires an analog replacement.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel Hits Revenue Record in 2014
PC and tablet groups exceed goals
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325317&
Intel reported better than expected financial results and a record-breaking full year revenue of $55.9 billion. In a conference call highlighting his first full year, Intel’s CEO said the company is “in a very different place” than it was 12 months ago and finished the year with a strong fourth quarter.
2014 revenue grew 6% while operating income rose 29% to $15.3 billion and net income hit $11.7 billion. Intel generated approximately $20.4 billion in cash from operations, paid dividends of $4.4 billion, and used $10.8 billion to repurchase 332 million shares of stock. Fourth quarter revenue was $14.7 billion and operating income was reported at $4.5 billion, with a net income of $3.7 billion.
Tomi Engdahl says:
7 Takeaways From ISS 2015
Samsung, GF winning 14/16 nm race
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325318&
The duo of Samsung and GlobalFoundries is expected to win the race to ship 14/16 nm chips this year, but some folks are even more excited about the second-generation 16 nm process ramping at TSMC.
The bad news is 3D chip stacks will not be ready for smartphones anytime soon. On another sour note, it probably will take until 2016 before vertical NAND memories are shipping from multiple suppliers in significant volumes. And don’t even talk about EUV — few of the attendees here did.
Mark Bohr, Intel’s point man on the 7 nm node, was characteristically upbeat about Moore’s Law. Although his team has been beating the rest of the industry to new nodes lately, including the 14 nm FinFET generation, he does not expect to be able to pass that success on to his foundry customers such as Altera.
“I suspect the foundries may beat us to true foundry products on 14/16 nm FinFET,” he said in a panel discussion.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Automatic ASIC-to-FPGA Conversion
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1325315&
Performing ASIC-to-FPGA clock tree conversions by hand is difficult and time-consuming for designers; the use of automated gated clock conversion makes this task much less challenging.
As electronic companies design today’s leading-edge ASICs, increasing costs and shortening development schedules are requiring ASIC designers to develop an early prototype. Prototypes are used to help accelerate hardware and software schedules and complete system verification. Companies often fulfill their prototyping requirements with platforms based on FPGAs, which provide developers the opportunity to have a hardware platform early in the design cycle.
Using a prototyping platform for initial software development has become standard practice that allows for faster software development and debug.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Venture Capital Spending Rises
2014 figures up in almost all categories
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325305&
Venture capital investment continues to increase in the US, with both the number of funds and amount invested rising in the fourth quarter of 2014. According to a report from Dow Jones VentureSource, 85 funds garnered $8.1 billion in 4Q 2014, a 25% increase in the amount raised and also a 4% rise in number of funds from the previous quarter.
Tomi Engdahl says:
FDA Approves Implantable Vagus Nerve Disruptor For Weight Loss
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/01/19/0412237/fda-approves-implantable-vagus-nerve-disruptor-for-weight-loss
FDA approves a device for weight loss
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-fda-device-weight-loss-20150114-story.html
In a bid to increase treatments for the nation’s 79 million obese adults, the Food and Drug Administration has approved U.S. marketing of an implantable device that stimulates weight loss by manipulating key appetite signals passing between the brain and the gut.
The new device is the Maestro Rechargeable System, manufactured by EnteroMedics of St. Paul, Minn. While the FDA has approved four medications for weight loss in the past 2 1/2 years, the Maestro system is the first weight loss device to be approved since 2007.
Using electrical leads implanted just above the stomach and a regulator carried under the skin near the ribcage, the device suppresses signals carried by the vagus nerve.
The device adopts a variant of a “neuromodulation” technique long used in the treatment of epilepsy: by applying intermittent bursts of electrical current to the vagus nerve, it disrupts the signals that prompt the stomach to relax, expand and prepare for an influx of food.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Video: Smart bullet carries two sensors
http://www.electronics-eetimes.com/en/video-smart-bullet-carries-two-sensors.html?cmp_id=7&news_id=222923511#
SmartRounds Technology LLC (Brighton, Colorado) has developed what it describes as the as world’s first smart, less-than-lethal bullet. It includes both a MEMS accelerometer and a CMOS image sensor that operates as it nears the target.
The accelerometer in the round is used to turn the bullet on and the image sensor is used to detect distance to the target and set off the payload milliseconds before it would otherwise impact the target.
These projectiles are designed to be fired from a standard 12 gauge shotgun
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home> Tools & Learning> Products> Product Brief
RF switch preserves signal integrity from DC to 8 GHz
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4438380/RF-switch-preserves-signal-integrity-from-DC-to-8-GHz?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20150119&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20150119&elq=10546b8270914ab588c404e7492712b4&elqCampaignId=21213
A reliable alternative to problematic mechanical relays and MEMS switches, the PE42020 UltraCMOS integrated RF switch from Peregrine Semiconductor operates from 0 Hz to 8 GHz, while offering high power handling and good RF performance and linearity.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Scope software characterizes LPDDR4 designs
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4438362/Scope-software-characterizes-LPDDR4-designs?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20150119&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20150119&elq=10546b8270914ab588c404e7492712b4&elqCampaignId=21213
Aimed at systems that employ low-power double-data-rate 4 memory, the N6462A software application from Keysight Technologies allows engineers to test and validate designs to ensure compliance with the LPDDR4 JEDEC JESD209-1 standard. The application also offers offline testing support for running signals from simulation tools, like Keysight’s Advanced Design System.
The N6462A DDR4 and LPDDR4 test application runs on Infiniium 90000A, 90000 X-Series, and 90000 Z-Series oscilloscopes, providing LPDDR4 physical-layer compliance measurements.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Desktop milling machine creates PCBs and packaging
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4438370/Desktop-milling-machine-creates-PCBs-and-packaging
Version 2 of the desktop Othermill milling machine is now available, and it’s accurate enough for a range of machining tasks, including double-sided PCBs.
The machine can handle a range of materials, like brass, aluminum, wood, and plastic. For PCBs, FR-1 is recommended over FR-4. With a small milling bit, footprints as fine as TSSOP & TQFP can be created. Solder paste stencils can also be cut using the mill.
Lipo charger board for the Arduino Nano
https://medium.com/@tomsimon/lipo-charger-board-for-the-arduino-nano-39e709f459bc
I own an OtherMill, so I can mill my own custom boards. It gives me the ability to control the placement of pins and the ability to create custom board shapes. I have the option of using surface mount components. So the circuit will be compact and low profile.
I started this design using “large” surface mount components, i.e. 1206 size. But I have become comfortable using 0603 devices. In some ways they are actually easier. For the record, before I received my OtherMill, I had only soldered components with leads. So I entered a whole new world with surface mount boards after starting to use the OtherMill.
I customarily use the “top” layer in Eagle for routing and the surface mount devices. The connectors and switches go on the bottom, so they need to be mirrored before they are placed.
Eagle .brd file after reading it in to OtherPlan, the OtherMill interface package
After milling a piece of FR1 this is what I had.
I had been very intimidated my surface mount components. But after using them on boards produced by the OtherMill, I now prefer them to through hole components with leads. One key ingredient is getting a hot air rework station, like the one from SparkFun. I set mine to around 320 degrees and keep the airflow very low.
First solder paste needs to be applied to the board where the components go.
There is a plug-in available for Eagle that will convert this layer to an SVG file so that it can be used to mill a piece of 5 mil mylar, which will serve as a stencil for the solder paste. The plug-in is called eagle2svg-1.1. The mylar is held down to the mill bed by double sided scotch tape.
https://github.com/robertstarr/ulp_user/blob/master/eagle2svg-1.1.ulp
After applying the solder paste on top of the stencil, a credit card was used to work it into the openings.
Then the stencil is lifted away and you can see how accurate the solder paste placement and thickness is.
This may look complicated, but it beats using a toothpick and dabbing solder paste on all the pads.
Next the components are placed with tweezers.
I used “large” components, size 1206. But I routinely use ones half this size, 0603, and get excellent results.
First heat the board from underneath to warm it up. Heat distribution is very important. Then move to the top of the board, keeping a good distance. Also keep the airflow to a minimum to avoid blowing the components around. Too rapid application of heat will rapidly boil the flux in the solder paste and move the components. Once the solder paste has heated up, it will liquify slightly and then turn lighter. Slowly circle the first component you wish to solder. There will be an instant when the paste will turn shinny and melt. Give it a second or two longer so it will flow properly. Components that are not perfectly aligned will often magically snap onto their pads. This is the surface tension of the solder pulling the metal surfaces together.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Adding Intelligence to Rotary Encoders
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325331&
It’s the dumb device that makes precision movement possible. Rotary encoders play a crucial role in motor control systems, providing information on the position and movement of motor shafts. This information, in turn, can be used by developers to control motor action for such purposes as precision movement and energy efficiency.
For the most part rotary encoders are dumb devices that simply provide pulse signals to a higher-level controller, but their intelligence may well be growing.
Intelligence in the encoder also allows the device to offer built-in diagnostics, which Smoot notes can help both developers and end-system users. Diagnostic data helps the developer during design by working to eliminate the encoder from the suspect list during debugging. Diagnostics help in the field by providing insight into encoder health before failures occur, and help separate encoder behavior from any preventative maintenance analysis of motor operation that might seek to identify issues such as misalignment or bearing wear. Smoot adds that the built-in diagnostics can also allow systems to verify that encoders are operating before engaging motors in critical motion-control applications, to avoid possible damage.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intersil has introduced the DC-DC power converter, which it says the market as the smallest in the series.
ISL8203M module:
Accepts input voltages from 2.85 to 6 volts
The output voltage is adjustable from 0.8 to 5 volts
Output is either two 3A outputs or one 6A output
Module has dimensions of 9 x 6.5 x 1.83 mm.
Efficiency is 95 per cent.
Module costs $ 5.97 each (1000 pieces volume)
The module is a complete solution, which is inside the housing PWM controller, synchronous switching/rectifier, inductors and passive components.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2309:intersil-kutisti-tehomoduulin&catid=60&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
FPGA manufacturer Xilinx has taken to deliver the volumes of the largest markets programmable logic circuit. Virtex Ultrascale VU440-chip logic cell count is as high as 4.4 million. It is four times more than in the other markets in the FPGA circuits.
Xilinx Virtex according to a new logic cells correspond to more than 50 million logic cell ASIC.
Chip is manufactured in TSMC’s 28-nanometer process.
User customizable I / O interfaces is 1456 pieces, and a memory 89 megabits.
Network devices backing plates there are 48 pieces of 16.3 Gbps connections.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2296:maailman-suurin-logiikkapiiri&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Electronic Spine Cures Paralysis
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325309&
Spinal cord injuries typically cause paralysis that can seldom be cured, but some scientists in Switzerland claim their new electronic spinal cord, which is bendable and stretchable, is capable of repairing damaged spinal cords, thereby curing the paralysis.
So far clinical trials have only cured paralysis in rats in research conducted at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale De Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland). EPFL promised to move on the human trials and deliver a commercial product soon. There are about 250,000 people living with spinal cord injuries in the U.S. alone.
“Neural implants are systems designed to stabilize and treat the injured nervous system,” says Stephanie Locur, a scientist at EPFL in the video below. “There are multiple technologies available, but in the long run very often they trigger inflammation and even rejection by the host. Our innovation, is that we designed an implant that is soft and stretchable just like the surrounding tissue while still integrating electrical stimulation and chemical stimulation and remaining fully elastic.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
7 Takeaways From ISS 2015
Samsung, GF winning 14/16 nm race
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325318&
The duo of Samsung and GlobalFoundries is expected to win the race to ship 14/16 nm chips this year, but some folks are even more excited about the second-generation 16 nm process ramping at TSMC
The bad news is 3D chip stacks will not be ready for smartphones anytime soon. On another sour note, it probably will take until 2016 before vertical NAND memories are shipping from multiple suppliers in significant volumes. And don’t even talk about EUV — few of the attendees here did.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Timing challenges for serial flash interface
http://www.edn.com/design/integrated-circuit-design/4438338/Timing-challenges-for-serial-flash-interface?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150120&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150120&elq=b0f8c3584ffe456f8e1102c90178def8&elqCampaignId=21237
In absence of any standards for serial flash memory, timing requirements are different for each vendor. Timing closure across PVT corners with shrinking technology nodes is a major challenge.
The system for any external serial NOR flash consists of a flash controller, external serial flash, and the interfacing path between the two.
The flashes today support various timing modes for example SDR, DDR, DQS. All these modes have their own timing requirements.
The increasing requirement of improved throughput has introduced the double data rate (DDR) mode. In DDR mode, the data is transferred on both the rising and falling edges of the clock signal. The DDR serial flashes sample as well as drive the data on both rising and falling edges of flash clock. The path is therefore of only half clock cycle, as a result of which meeting timing in high frequency DDR mode becomes a challenge.
Recently, Spansion introduced its Hyperflash into the market which supports a data strobe signal (RDS) similar to the DQS in DRAM interface [5]. This signal eases the timing closure in the DDR mode by allowing the timing of the input data w.r.t to the RDS/DQS signal provided by the flash instead of the conventional clock out data in timing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A simple approach to develop Spice macro models
http://www.edn.com/design/analog/4438382/A-simple-approach-to-develop-Spice-macro-models?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150120&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150120&elq=b0f8c3584ffe456f8e1102c90178def8&elqCampaignId=21237
Tomi Engdahl says:
UPDATE 1-Samsung Electronics ponders stock split to appease investors – exec
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/20/samsung-elec-stocks-idUSL4N0UZ04D20150120
* Company under pressure from shareholders after weak earnings
* Split could boost value but also invite greater volatility
* Samsung says not yet ready to decide whether to split
South Korean stocks tend to trade at a discount to those elsewhere due to weaker corporate governance, complicated cross-share holdings and low dividends.
The world’s top smartphone maker has launched a $2 billion share buy-back programme and promised to increase its 2014 year-end dividend by up to 50 percent in a bid to lift its share price and placate investors.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung and Apple to buy a fifth of semiconductors
Large consumer electronics manufacturing companies buy most components. Samsung and Apple will buy almost one-fifth, or 17 percent of all semiconductors. Samsung is number one in the list. It was used last year in the component input $ 32.1 billion. Korean giant mills journey thus 9.4 per cent of all the components, says Gartner statistics.
Apple is on the list as a clear number two in more than 25 billion dollars through their purchases. HP, Lenovo and Dell will reach even those on an annual basis over ten billion in purchases.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2317:samsung-ja-apple-ostavat-lahes-viidenneksen-puolijohteista&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Counterfeit components are a big problem. Manufacturers lose money and equipment break down, because the parts of lawns t work correctly. CIA Organization (Electronic Component Industry Association) has estimated that 5 to 25 percent of all electronics components are fakes.
According to the organization counterfeiting costs the electronics sector each year up to a hundred billion dollars.
Since beginning of 1990 counterfeit equipment selling has grown eight times faster than the legal goods trade.
Very often counterfeit parts are not cheap copies, but defective, unsuitable or non-functioning components that try to get the look of high quality. If they have access to the supply chain, there is a great risk that they will use the devices do not perform the tasks for which they are designed. This causes concern to any manufacturer. Industrial and other critical systems in preparation for it can lead to dangerous situations.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2316:jopa-joka-neljas-komponentti-on-vaarennetty&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
GaN technology will transform the future
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/from-the-edge-/4438419/GaN-technology-will-transform-the-future?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150121&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150121&elq=76d9d8ab506e46bdaddd00a63e5bc411&elqCampaignId=21259
For the first time in 60 years, a new higher-performance semiconductor technology is less expensive to produce than the silicon counterpart. Gallium nitride (GaN), has demonstrated both a dramatic improvement in transistor performance and the ability to be produced at a lower cost than silicon. GaN transistors have unleashed new applications as a result of their ability to switch higher voltages and higher currents faster than any transistor before. These extraordinary characteristics have ushered in new applications capable of transforming the future. But this is just the beginning.
GaN field effect transistors (FETs) are now available as discrete transistors and as monolithic half-bridges, with performance 10 times better than the best commercial silicon MOSFET. But what happens when many devices are integrated to create a system on a single chip? What happens when the performance of that chip is 100 times better than silicon?
If we will look out 5 to 10 years we can easily see how a transformative change in semiconductor technology can transform our everyday world.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD Upbeat Despite $330M Loss
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325357&
Advanced Micro Devices reported large operating losses in its latest quarterly financial update, but AMD officials remained hopeful about the company’s trajectory for 2015.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ARM Takes Critical Step for Functional Safety
Safety support applies to automotive, health and industrial markets
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325374&
Best practices for compliance to any standards start with documentation.
In a crucial step to help IC vendors design SoCs compliant to functional safety standards such as ISO 26262 in the automotive industry, ARM released Thursday (Jan. 22) a comprehensive safety document package for its Cortex-R5 processor.
Chris Turner, director of product marketing for CPU Group at ARM, told EE Times, “As cars are becoming more and more reliant on electronics and its software is getting more complex, the need for compliance to safety standards is paramount.”
By specifically documenting what’s inside the processing core and how to use it, “we can recommend to SoC designers how to manage various situations of safety functions more efficiently and correctly,” Turner explained.
System developers now have assurance that the Cortex-R5 processor serves safety-related applications because SoC developers have access to additional information required for demonstrating functional safety, said ARM.
ISO 26262
To recap: New automotive standards such as ISO 26262, released in November 2011, are set up to give manufacturers a common means to measure and document the safety of an automotive system. Created for production automobiles, ISO 26262 provides a series of steps to manage functional safety and to regulate product development on system, hardware and software levels throughout the entire product lifecycle — from concept development through decommissioning.
ARM’s safety engineering
According to Turner, the emergence of ISO 26262 functional safety standards “was the trigger for ARM” to get heavily involved in documenting functional safety
What’s new here is that ARM is delivering to its processor licensees a “safety manual package,” which describes in detail the processor’s fault detection and control features and information about integration aspects in its licensee’s device implementations. “We recommend design and verification methodology for functional safety, retain evidence and offer quality assurance.”
Bit flip in Toyota case
As far as functional safety is concerned, many engineers in the electronics industry remember the unintended acceleration (UA) issues that haunted several Toyota models.
A jury trial verdict in Oklahoma found that defects in Toyota’s Electronic Throttle Control System (ETCS) software and safety architecture caused a fatal UA mishap.
More specifically, during the Oklahoma trial, both Barr and Philip Koopman, an associate professor at the Carnegie Mellon University, testified that the 2005 Camry’s L4 source code and in-vehicle tests confirmed defects in Toyota’s ETCS.
However, in theory, compliance to ISO 26262 and the information that goes with functional safety, could have gone a long way to alert some of the problems associated with Toyota’s UA problems.