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:
Benchmark Stresses Big Chips
CoreMark-Pro targets 32-, 64-bit processors
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325752&
The Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium (EEMBC), a trade group of 47 chip and system designers, released CoreMark-Pro. The suite of benchmarks for 32- and 64-bit processors expands the original CoreMark, a single performance test released in 2009 for microcontrollers and processors.
The CoreMark-Pro suite provides a much richer set of metrics for high-end chips and also provides an extension of the group’s AndEBench, a suite of tests for Android-based systems. The consortium also is working on systems benchmarks for the Internet of Things and networking infrastructure.
CoreMark-Pro consists of five integer and four floating-point tests. The integer workloads include JPEG compression, Zip compression, an XML parser, the SHA-256 security algorithm, and a more memory-intensive version of the original CoreMark. The floating-point workloads include a fast-Fourier transform, a linear algebra routine derived from Linpack, an enhanced version of the Livermore Loops benchmark, and a neural-net algorithm to evaluate patterns.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wearable sensor measures UV index
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4438746/Wearable-sensor-measures-UV-index?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20150226&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20150226&elq=ce4ca89d70544c4db186963362c90248&elqCampaignId=21820&elqaid=24501&elqat=1&elqTrackId=d27a830291934b3b990f243fc1b8dabd
The latest addition to STMicroelectronics’ portfolio of environmental sensors, the UVIS25 provides a direct digital output of UVI (ultraviolet index)—the international measurement of the strength of ultraviolet radiation, primarily from the sun, at a given place and time. Aimed at wearable devices, smart-phone, and tablet applications, the UVIS25 is sensitive to UV waves in the 200-nm to 400-nm range. This range covers the UV-A (315-nm to 400-nm) and UV-B (280-nm to 315-nm) wavelengths, which are of greatest concern to human health.
The device furnishes more than just sensing, calculating the UVI internally and eliminating the need for external processing algorithms or calibration on the customer’s manufacturing line.
Tomi Engdahl says:
18 Views of ISSCC
Intel, Xilinx debate 3-D chip stacks
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325829&
Samsung described a second generation of its 128 Gbit 3-D NAND flash, a 3-bit/cell version with 32 layers now in production on a 68.9mm2 die. The Korean giant is ahead of the pack in dense flash and also is expected to beat TSMC to market with 14/16nm FinFET logic later this year, a fact that help it retain archrival Apple as a foundry customer.
Only a handful of papers at ISSCC described designs using TSMC’s 16nm process. Expect many more next year as well as perhaps the first papers of foundry customers using Intel’s 14nm FinFET process.
You don’t have to go to the cloud for analytics, said Chris van Hook, a medical electronics specialist at the Imec institute outside Brussels. More self-learning algorithms are getting embedded at node-level chips in papers he saw.
Back at the high end, analyst David Kanter of the Linley Group said IBM’s mainframe chip designers will be challenged to continue differentiate their processors as they increasingly move to off-the-shelf technologies.
Liam Madden rallied for the 2.5-D chip stacks he is helping create at Xilinx, the latest of which will use a 20nm process pack 19 billion transistors including 10 ARM A9 cores. With two new metal layers added in the latest nodes, “the RC delays are killing you routing across chip,” he said.
“We need vertical interconnects one or two orders of magnitude more dense than today’s through-silicon vias,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sudden Impact Wearables Design Challenge Competitors
http://www.element14.com/community/community/design-challenges/sudden-impact
Tomi Engdahl says:
Michael J. de la Merced / New York Times:
Netherlands’ NXP Semiconductors to acquire Austin-based chip maker Freescale in an $11.8B deal
Chip Makers Will Merge in Deal Worth $11.8 Billion
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/02/business/chip-makers-will-merge-in-deal-worth-11-8-billion.html
NXP Semiconductors said on Sunday that it would buy a smaller peer, Freescale Semiconductor, in an $11.8 billion deal that would create a big maker of chips for industries as varied as automobiles and mobile payments.
The merger will also offer some relief to the private equity firms that bought Freescale at the height of the leveraged buyout boom, only to see the financial crisis bring the company low.
A combination would help the two chip manufacturers in their dealings with customers like car companies and phone makers that are looking to consolidate their lists of suppliers.
Both NXP and Freescale have also benefited from a recent boom, as companies of all stripes look to add networking capabilities to their products. NXP in particular has had a surge in demand for so-called near-field communications technology that lets phones — notably the iPhone 6 — interact wirelessly with equipment like payment terminals.
Together, NXP, which has its headquarters in the Netherlands, and Freescale, which is based in Austin, Tex., reported $10.6 billion in sales last year.
“The combination of NXP and Freescale creates an industry powerhouse focused on the high-growth opportunities in the smarter world,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
75 GHz Clamshell BGA Socket
http://www.eeweb.com/news/75-ghz-clamshell-bga-socket
Ironwood Electronics announced the release of its new BGA socket design using high performance elastomer capable of 75GHz, very low inductance and wide temperature applications. The GT-BGA-2019 socket is designed for 25×25 mm package size and operates at bandwidths up to 75GHz with less than 1dB of insertion loss.
The socket is mounted on the target PCB with no soldering, and uses very small real estate allowing capacitors/resistors to be placed close by.
The GT-BGA-2019 socket is constructed with high performance and low inductance elastomer contactor.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Transactors — Expanding the Role of FPGA-Based Prototypes
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1325859&
FPGA-based prototypes offer unbeatable flexibility, capacity, and speed. Extending their functionality through the use of a transactor interface opens up tremendous possibilities to designers.
Power to spare
It wasn’t all that long ago that FPGA-based prototypes were the sole province of hardware designers and lab technicians. Viewed as finicky boards covered with rows of devices and bristling with cables, they were relegated to back rooms where engineers would endlessly tinker with them in a desperate effort to bring up designs of limited size and complexity.
No more. Today’s FPGA prototypes represent muscular platforms for developing ultra-large systems running at blistering speeds. With this kind of power, these systems are used for a wide range of tasks, including design integration, system verification, and software development (see also Big Design — Small Budget?).
This solution is well-suited to designs fully rendered in RTL that can be mapped to an FPGA. But what about cases where portions of the design are still only available as behavioral models in descriptions such as C++ or SystemC?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Graphene Polymer Speeds Electron Transport
Hybrid organic electronics better than silicon
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325843&
Graphene is considered by many as the successor to silicon because its electron mobility can be over 10X that of silicon plus it solves many of the problems with scaling silicon. However, graphene’s lack of the bandgap it needs to create transistors has slowed its development. Now researchers propose coating it with a conductive polymer to produce organic electronics that rival silicon at a fraction of the price.
Researchers at the Umeå University (Sweden) in collaboration with Stanford University and its Synchrontron Radiation Lightsource at SLAC (formerly the Stanford Linear Acceleration Center) created prototypes of the new hybrid graphene/polymer material with remarkable results. Besides greatly accelerating the polymer, making it into a high-mobility semiconductor, the hybrid material maintained its flexibility and seemed to work both for planar electronics and vertically oriented conduction for light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and solar cells.
Tomi Engdahl says:
News & Analysis
Freescale, Cisco, Ciena Give Nod to FD-SOI
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325866&
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. and NUREMBERG, Germany — Freescale, Cisco and Ciena have defied the general skepticism of fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) by revealing their own experience with the process technology, creating expectations that more companies might follow.
Freescale Semiconductor last week during the Embedded World conference in Nuremberg, Germany, acknowledged that it’s designing chips with FD-SOI process technology.
Geoff Lees, Freescale’s senior vice president and general manager responsible for microcontrollers, told EE Times the company’s plan to use 28nm FD-SOI for its next generation microprocessor iMX7.
Guntram Wolski, Cisco’s principal engineer managing implementation and physical design, said on the panel that he sees value in FD-SOI, since it offers only a quarter of the leakage in bulk performance, allows a simpler cooling system and provides form-factor flexibility.
Similarly, Ciena, too, came out of closet at the same event in San Francisco that it is using FD-SOI.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung Phones Pack 14nm SoC
Eight-core Exynos drives handsets, says report
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325868&
Samsung will pack a handful of new technologies — including a 14nm Exynos applications processor — into its new Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge smartphones announced at the Mobile World Congress here. Analysts said the handsets will give Samsung a technical edge that could help it regain momentum, at least until Apple debuts next-generation iPhones later this year.
The Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge — which has a much-rumored curved display — include a 14nm Exynos application processor, a novel memory stack, a new fast-charging battery and new display and camera capabilities.
Tomi Engdahl says:
News & Analysis
NXP, Freescale Plan Mega Merger
Deal would create $10+B embedded giant
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325871
In one of the biggest consolidations in the semiconductor industry to date, NXP and Freescale have announced plans for a merger. If the deal is approved, they would create a top-ten chip maker and embedded processor giant with more than $10 billion in combined revenues.
The deal would make the two companies the world’s ninth largest chip maker. It would leapfrog competitors STMicroelectronics and Renesas at $7 billion each and approach Texas Instruments at $12 billion, according to figures from IC Insights.
The deal comes at a time of rapid consolidation as the semiconductor industry generally lumbers to single-digit growth rates. For its part, Freescale still carries significant debt but returned to profitability last year as it struggles toward a goal of 50% gross margins.
In a smaller but similar deal announced in December, Cypress bid $4 billion to acquire Spansion. A year earlier, Avago bid $6.6 billion for LSI, then sold part of the company to Intel.
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For their part, NXP and Freescale stuck a definitive agreement for a deal they valued at $40 billion. They claim the combination would make them the largest supplier of automotive chips and general-purpose microcontrollers.
The transaction has been unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both companies and is subject to regulatory approvals as well as the approval of NXP and Freescale shareholders.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM sued for talking up semiconductor business it couldn’t give away
Firm alleges investors didn’t realize Big Blue would need to PAY to have its chips hauled off
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/03/ibm_sued_for_talking_up_chip_business_it_couldnt_give_away/
A US public pension fund has filed a class-action lawsuit against IBM, claiming the company misrepresented the value of the semiconductor business it offloaded to GlobalFoundries in October.
The suit filed by the City of Sterling Heights Police & Fire Retirement System in Michigan accuses IBM of having inflated its own share price by valuing its chip manufacturing business at US$2.4bn, when it was actually worth substantially less.
To be precise, it turned out to be worth substantially less than nothing.
GlobalFoundries eventually took the business unit off IBM’s hands, but only after IBM agreed to pay GlobalFoundries $1.5bn to help prop up operations while it tried to get the loss-making business back on track. At the same time, IBM wrote off a $4.7bn charge for the transfer.
The warning signs were there early on.
The pension fund’s suit alleges that no bidder was ever willing to pay more than around $1bn for IBM’s chippery kit-and-kaboodle, contrary to the firm’s representations to investors.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Simultaneous time, frequency domain analysis at 1 GHz
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4438741/Simultaneous-time–frequency-domain-analysis-at-1-GHz?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20150302&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20150302&elq=19bb87e54fcc48c2bcde1889890b7eed&elqCampaignId=21870&elqaid=24554&elqat=1&elqTrackId=3c32463fa6e54eba933596b228aed5e0
Rohde & Schwarz has added the R&S RTM-K18 spectrum analysis and spectrogram option to its RTM oscilloscope family, which the company says makes RTM the only oscilloscope in its class that can analyze the time domain while simultaneously analysing the spectrum, logic and serial protocol. Interactions such as those that occur in electronic devices with RF components are quickly analyzed in a single measurement.
Time and spectrum analyses can be configured completely independently of one another. This means that users can simultaneously analyze signal details that differ in time and frequency, with the optimum settings for each. Separate implementation of the signal paths makes this possible.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Spansion Adds RAM to HyperBus
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325883&
Spansion is following in the footsteps of its HyperBus interface and HyperFlash announcements last year with the introduction of a companion RAM device: HyperRAM is designed for use in SoCs and microcontrollers (MCUs) where both RAM and flash are connected to the same Hyperbus Interface.
Tomi Engdahl says:
News & Analysis
Asian Share of Global Fab Capacity May Top 69% by 2019
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325877&
Asia is expected to account for a new record, nearly 70% of the world’s fab capacity, by 2019, according to a new report from IC Insights.
South Korea and Taiwan together accounted for 40.5 percent of the world’s installed fab capacity by the end of last year, according to the report, which forecasts that their share of total capacity will grow to 42.6 percent by 2019.
The only other nation that’s expected to grow its fab capacity is China, forecast to increase to 10.9 percent in 2019 from the current 9.2 percent share.
Add Japan’s forecast capacity of 16.2% into the mix, and Asia’s total expected capacity comes to 69.9 percent by the end of this decade.
“Europe has recently revealed its intentions to try regaining some of the global capacity share it lost over the past several years,” IC Insights said in the report. “It will be difficult for Europe to wrestle away shares from other regions,” the report added.
Tomi Engdahl says:
News & Analysis
Benchmark Stresses Big Chips
CoreMark-Pro targets 32-, 64-bit processors
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325752&
The Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium (EEMBC), a trade group of 47 chip and system designers, released CoreMark-Pro. The suite of benchmarks for 32- and 64-bit processors expands the original CoreMark, a single performance test released in 2009 for microcontrollers and processors.
The CoreMark-Pro suite provides a much richer set of metrics for high-end chips and also provides an extension of the group’s AndEBench, a suite of tests for Android-based systems. The consortium also is working on systems benchmarks for the Internet of Things and networking infrastructure.
Tomi Engdahl says:
VTT press OLED on plastic surfaces
VTT has developed press machine technology, which can be implemented textured, flexible light surfaces, for example, advertising displays, info, signage and lighting. Also, a window box or container attached to the intelligent, transparent plastic surfaces are now possible.
A similar enlightening film and processed in the air has not been done before on this scale.
OLED light surface used in the manufacture of traditional printing methods such as gravure printing and silk-screen printing, which enables very high production volumes. Production is thus possible to traditional printing house plant of the kind.
OLED light surface is about 0.2 mils thick and a few hundreds of nanometers thick polymer layers and electrodes, in which light emission takes place.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2501:vtt-painaa-oled-valopintoja-muoville&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cypress to Acquire Spansion for $1.6 Billion, Adding NOR Flash Capability
Cypress Semiconductor and Spansion plan to merge in a move the companies call an all-stock, tax-free transaction valued at approximately $4 billion. Cypress will be trading 2.457 Cypress shares for each Spansion share, resulting in a purchase price of roughly $1.6 billion. The transaction has been unanimously approved by the boards of both companies, and is expected to close in the second quarter of 2015, pending approval by Cypress and Spansion stockholders and review by regulators in the U.S., Germany, and China.
The new company, to be called Cypress Semiconductor Corporation, will have annual revenues of more than $2 billion.
Cypress points out that it is the leading producer of SRAMs, and that Spansion is the leading NOR flash provider.
Source: http://rtcmagazine.com/articles/view/105730
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Wide World of Regulatory Testing and Certifications
http://www.eeweb.com/blog/advance_assembly/the-wide-world-of-regulatory-testing-and-certifications
Tomi Engdahl says:
News & Analysis
Embedded Job Market Expands, But Boomers Feel the Squeeze
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325881&
“Urgent Need…Principal Embedded Software Engineer Job Details … 10-15% Bonus, 401k Match, Tuition, 3 Weeks PTO.”
By almost any measure, the job market appears to be looking very good right now for embedded engineers.
The economy is getting stronger. In February, the U.S. Labor Department touted news of a net employment gain in 2014 of 2.9 million jobs. Moreover, some recruiters say that demand for embedded engineers is up around 15% compared to 2013, possibly a reason for the panicky wording in some job postings like the online listing above.
“As the economy stabilizes, companies are feeling an urgency to hire engineers to jump-start projects that were previously postponed,” said Henry Wintz, Solutions Manager for the Embedded Industry Practice at Randstad Technologies, an engineering and employment hiring services firm.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NXP CEO: ‘Security, IoT, Cars’ Drove Freescale Deal
Clemmer on overlapping businesses
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325901&
Clemmer insisted that the planned NXP-Freescale deal is a strategic, not a tactical, acquisition. He explained, “Through the merger, we are adding Freescale’s computing power to our security and [wireless] communication strengths, in order to drive the Internet of Things.”
Product divisions that don’t appear to belong to NXP’s stated focus on “security and connectivity with a smarter world” are Freescale’s network processors and NXP’s standard products, Clemmer pointed out. “But if they continue to perform well, why not? We might as well keep them.”
Freescale certainly isn’t the first company NXP has studied as an acquisition target.
Breaking down automotive chip business
The merged NXP would become number one in automotive chips, a company “nobody can match,” said Clemmer.
Today, NXP’s AM/FM car radio chips are used on “27 out of 28 car audio platforms of choice” used by Tier Ones and car OEMs, said Clemmer. “We’ve got silicon tuners and DSPs.” But once Freescale’s apps processors are brought to NXP’s car radio platforms, the new NXP would be suddenly able to offer much fuller, compelling car infotainment systems.
NXP has been working on ADAS with Mobileye for vision processors, according to Clemmer. “
Asked about if NXP and Freescale are both pushing for security in connected cars, Clemmer said, “Freescale is doing security in software, whereas we’re doing security in hardware” by leveraging NXP’s security chips used in identify and banking cards.
Freescale is very strong in radar. But NXP has revealed at the Mobile World Congress this week that the company has developed a CMOS-based small radar chip.
The analyst said, “The announced merger between Freescale and NXP gives birth to a company that is strongly positioned and one that is able to serve complete automotive semiconductor solutions to all high-growth segments.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Checking Populated PCB Clearance with a 3D Printer
http://hackaday.com/2015/03/04/checking-populated-pcb-clearance-with-a-3d-printer/
Laying out one PCB, sending it out to a fab, stuffing it with components, and having the whole thing actually work when you’re done is a solved problem. Doing the same thing and having it plug in to another PCB… well, that’s a bit harder. Forget about building a PCB and having it fit inside an enclosure the first time.
The usual solution to this problem is printing the board to be fabbed on a piece of paper, take some calipers, and measure very, very carefully. Extra points for sticking a few components you’re worried about to the paper before lining the mechanical prototype up to the existing board. [N8VI] over at the i3 Detroit hackerspace had a better idea – print the whole thing out on a 3D printer.
pre-fab PCB sizing testing
https://www.i3detroit.org/pre-fab-pcb-sizing-testing/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Product how-to: Build your own designs on flexible circuit boards
http://www.edn.com/design/pc-board/4438769/Product-how-to–Build-your-own-designs-on-flexible-circuit-boards?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_systemsdesign_20150304&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_systemsdesign_20150304&elq=01177e9d5a5c4b41b2ac8e081fe43757&elqCampaignId=21912&elqaid=24604&elqat=1&elqTrackId=5815a8109e6a48ea98d626fd64e7e047
The advent of microcontroller modules like the Arduino opened up ability to build and program interactive objects to a whole generation of makers. Today these modules make it simple to control everything from DIY robots to remote control door bells. This learning tool is supported by add on modules known as shields that include displays and drivers, motor drivers, sensors, and communications units. These are all pretty much plug-and-play, and with the support of an ever growing software library have opened new possibilities for makers and innovators to test their ideas.
Some platforms, such as Printoo, have embraced flexible electronics which does literally add a new dimension to projects – they no longer need to be flat two dimensional objects. Enter affordable 3D printing and the threshold to developing innovative, interactive ideas just got lowered further.
But what do you do when there is no standard module to perform the function you need?
Printing flexible PCBs is now an accessible, low-cost option for the DIY maker. The technology has been developed for over a decade, and with digitally printed flexible circuits now a reality, professional quality flexible PCBs are affordable options not just for professional developers but also the hobbyist.
http://www.printoo.pt/
Tomi Engdahl says:
A data-acquisition system on a chip
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4438759/A-data-acquisition-system-on-a-chip?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_systemsdesign_20150304&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_systemsdesign_20150304&elq=01177e9d5a5c4b41b2ac8e081fe43757&elqCampaignId=21912&elqaid=24604&elqat=1&elqTrackId=fda00714dd714a77a5d4c70e9322e439
Multifunction data-acquisition systems have been around for a long time as stand-alone instruments, plug-in cards, cabled computer peripherals, and embedded in systems. Such systems are often designed with separate ADCs, DACs, and digital I/O devices. Many microcontrollers include ADCs and DACs, but that locks you into using that device. The AD5592R from Analog Devices combines all of these I/O functions, letting you use one chip to design measurement-and-control functions into systems.
Programmable through its SPI bus interface, the AD5592R contains eight 12-bit, successive-approximation ADCs, eight 12-bit DACs, a 2.5-V voltage reference, and eight digital I/O ports. The AD5592R also contains an internal temperature sensor that can measure from -40°C to +105°C, the device’s operating range.
ADC throughput rate is 400 ksamples/s, so you must divide that rate by the number of analog-input channels used to get the maximum per-channel sample rate. Each conversion takes 2 µs to complete.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The fully Digital radio transmitter: Is it real or more hype?
http://www.edn.com/design/analog/4438807/The-fully-Digital-radio-transmitter–Is-it-real-or-more-hype-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20150305&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20150305&elq=8433534c519b47ccb201e86f2d5241f9&elqCampaignId=21940&elqaid=24634&elqat=1&elqTrackId=b29e6967f02244b18fdb0512dd0f08be
Cambridge Consultants are claiming the world’s first fully digital radio transmitter built only from computing power. There are no analog components like a high-speed D to A converter with amplifier, although I would think they would need a Power Amplifier (PA) to broadcast a great distance. This is a Digital Radio transmitter and not part of a Software Defined Radio (SDR) architecture which requires analog components.
They are demonstrating the transmitter at the Mobile World Congress (MWC)
Many so-called All-Digital Radios have been tried in the past. Here are some that stand out, but in my skeptical analog brain I find it hard to conceive a truly All-Digital Radio
Cambridge Consultants All-Digital Radio transmitter
Cambridge Consultants just demonstrated their all-digital radio transmitter at the Mobile World Congress.
Their creation, called “Pizzicato”, greatly intrigued me because unlike the previous attempts at the All-Digital radio outlined above and in the five references, Cambridge has taken the design to a new level with their proprietary patented software algorithms and mathematical software prowess.
An interesting note is that they started this design with an old, 3Gbps bitstream from a Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA serdes port. They use a bandpass sigma-delta converter in the bitstream like the early one bit audio sigma-delta devices.
Watch this company because they have some really bright innovator geeks (our brethren) and I expect to see many new enhancements in this technology over the next few years. These types of Digital radios can fully take advantage of Moore’s Law leading to smaller sizes, lower cost and lower power consumption using next-gen digital IC technology node advancements. An example of the architectures that can benefit from this is the 14 simultaneous cellular base station signals they were able to create with this first prototype.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Time for multimedia SoCs to get their analog signals right
http://www.edn.com/design/integrated-circuit-design/4438799/Time-for-multimedia-SoCs-to-get-their-analog-signals-right?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20150305&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20150305&elq=8433534c519b47ccb201e86f2d5241f9&elqCampaignId=21940&elqaid=24634&elqat=1&elqTrackId=537808cd32d644c19a63462f1c881cc5
Multimedia applications such as Digital TVs (DTVs), Over the Top (OTT) devices, and Set-Top Boxes (STBs) rely on digital and analog interfaces to transmit & receive audio and video content. The integration of digital interfaces is well established and understood; however, the integration of analog interfaces has usually been implemented with discrete external components. Today, cost, power, and area reduction requirements are driving the integration of analog interfaces into multimedia system-on-chips (SoCs). Among other challenges, successful implementation of modern multimedia SoCs requires a good understanding of the most relevant characteristics of analog interfaces and how they can be integrated while ensuring the transmission quality of the analog audio/video signals.
A multimedia SoC needs different analog interfaces for the given application:
Digital TV chips interface with: WiFi, TV tuner, analog audio outputs and inputs (such as loudspeakers, microphones for voice commands) and potentially a cable or wireline transceiver.
Set-top box chips interface with: WiFi, TV tuner, analog audio outputs and inputs (such as loudspeakers), with cable and or satellite reception and potentially a cable or wireline interface. They typically include several analog video outputs.
OTT chips interface with: WiFi, potentially with a cable or wireline interface. They typically include an analog video output.
Summary
Today’s digital TVs, set-top boxes, and over the top applications require proper integration of analog interfaces into multimedia SoCs to reduce system cost and ensure accurate transmission of analog audio/video signals to (and from) the multimedia SoC. For this reason, designers must know the relevant characteristics of each analog interface and how to properly integrate them into the SoC, while meeting area, power and cost requirements – a key step in selecting analog IP. For more information on DesignWare Analog IP, visit http://www.synopsys.com/analogip.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Entering the era of 3D printed electronics
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/the-workbench/4438791/Entering-the-era-of-3D-printed-electronics?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_weekly_20150305&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_weekly_20150305&elq=d7c65291367b42788fdf3d64ef3858f5&elqCampaignId=21948&elqaid=24642&elqat=1&elqTrackId=ed9a151ace0a48f7a3dada0717921be4
The days when 3D printing was being used only for prototyping are long gone. In the not too distant future, the electronics industry will embark on a fascinating journey that realizes the advent of 3D printed electronics.
3D printing has gone through some exciting developmental stages in the past few years. Now, we can print 3D titanium objects and add transformation capabilities to objects using 4D printing. Now, we enter a new stage. Voxel8 and Autodesk have developed a fully integrated 3D printed electronics platform based on ten years of research conducted by the Lewis Research Group at Harvard University developing novel conducting materials and 3D printing technology.
Voxel8, a 3D printed electronics startup founded by Harvard professor Jennifer A. Lewis, who leads the Lewis Research Group at Harvard University, has conducted research and developed novel conductive materials and 3D printing technology with her team for the past decade.
Watch the short video below to see Voxel8′s 3D electronics printer in action printing a quadcopter:
Voxel8: The World’s First 3D Electronics Printer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbm2SSql8V8
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smartphone, Samsung in Trouble
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1325927&
With its Galaxy S6 announcement at MWC, Samsung and smartphones in general look to be in trouble and that’s bad news for the electronics industry.
It feels like trouble ahead for smartphones in general and Samsung specifically.
The view from Barcelona showed Samsung looking like king of the hill. It announced at the Mobile World Congress its Galaxy S6 handsets, the first in the world run on chips built in a 14nm FinFET process. So how can a company leapfrogging Apple in smartphones and TSMC in process technology be in trouble?
Analyst Robert Maire says the new Samsung phones don’t have enough panache to shift momentum away from the red-hot iPhone 6. What’s worse, he suspects Samsung’s 14nm yields are low, making the process in which rival Apple is said to be making its A9 SoC for its upcoming iPhone 7 unprofitable for many months to come
About the same time Samsung showed the Galaxy S6 to great fanfare in Spain, Gartner released the latest market share figures on smartphones. Samsung lost the top spot to Apple for the first time since 2012, and China suppliers Lenovo, Huawei and Xiaomi are nipping at Samsung’s heels.
If smartphone growth slows for lack of a driver, as tablet growth is already doing, the electronics industry could be in trouble. Mobile devices have become not only one of its biggest markets but one of its main tech drivers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel Calls for 3D IC
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1325921&
Intel is right: heterogeneous integration enabled by 3D IC “increasingly important part of scaling.”
At the recent ISSCC Intel presented the following slide. Quoting from Extremetech coverage: “At 10nm and below, the path forward will become increasingly murky. What Intel has proposed is essentially a shift towards other types of cost-saving technologies and process adoptions rather than relying on strict lithography improvement. Intel may be keeping its next-generation materials and lithography plans quiet, but the company does intend to push the envelope in other ways. 2.5D and 3D integration will be critical to the development of next-generation SoCs.”
We clearly agree with Intel that the heterogeneous integration enabled by 3D IC is an “increasingly important part of scaling”. This will become even more true as mobile and IoT markets increasingly will consume the lion share of the semiconductor business.
Tomi Engdahl says:
First Fully Digital Radio Transmitter Built Purely From Microprocessor Tech
http://radio.slashdot.org/story/15/03/05/2318257/first-fully-digital-radio-transmitter-built-purely-from-microprocessor-tech
For the first time in history, a prototype radio has been created that is claimed to be completely digital, generating high-frequency radio waves purely through the use of integrated circuits and a set of patented algorithms without using conventional analog radio circuits in any way whatsoever.
First all-digital radio transmitter
http://www.cambridgeconsultants.com/media/press-releases/first-all-digital-radio-transmitter
Cambridge Consultants demonstrates a world first in radio design
Technology innovation firm Cambridge Consultants has successfully completed initial trials of the world’s first fully digital radio transmitter – a turning point in wireless design and a real enabler for the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) and 5G technology. It’s a radio built purely from computing power, using the same familiar digital technology you’d find in a computer microprocessor in your home or office.
Unlike ‘software-defined radio’ (SDR), it’s not a mixture of analogue and digital components – for the first time, the radio is completely digital, which can enable new ways of using spectrum intelligently. The innovation is set to be hugely disruptive, like a previous Cambridge Consultants breakthrough – the development of the first single-chip Bluetooth radio, which led to the spinout of the global short-range wireless and audiovisual giant CSR.
The latest breakthrough – codenamed Pizzicato – unlocks the potential of the IoT. It opens the door to a new dynamic way in which the predicted 100 billion IoT devices can operate together in a crowded radio spectrum. And it will enable the creation of 5G systems, with multiple radios and antennas.
The Pizzicato digital radio transmitter consists of an integrated circuit outputting a single stream of bits, and an antenna – with no conventional radio parts or digital-to-analogue converter. Patented algorithms perform the necessary ultra-fast computations in real time, making it possible for standard digital technology to generate high-frequency radio signals directly.
“Our first trial of the technology has created 14 simultaneous cellular base station signals,”
“If we’re going to get high-speed broadband to every mobile phone in the world, we’ll need lots of tiny, high-performance radios in those phones. The radios will be squashed together in a way that analogue just doesn’t tolerate. Whereas a Pizzicato-like digital radio can follow Moore’s Law to smaller size and lower power consumption.
Good radio spectrum is a scarce resource – only low frequencies (1GHz or lower) propagate well over distance or through walls, so they are in great demand. Greater efficiency requires the use of dynamic or ‘cognitive wireless’ techniques to sense the radio environment and switch parameters on the fly. This could give access to more of the estimated 90% of the allocated spectrum which is not in use at any one time.
Making use of the higher carrier frequencies of 10GHz and beyond, however, will require techniques such as meshing and beamforming to circumvent the inherently poor range – and the analogue parts of radios are becoming an increasing bottleneck.
World’s first fully digital radio transmitter built purely from microprocessor technology
http://www.gizmag.com/digital-radio-transmitter-microprocessor-technology/36380/
For the first time in history, a prototype radio has been created that is claimed to be completely digital, generating high-frequency radio waves purely through the use of integrated circuits and a set of patented algorithms without using conventional analog radio circuits in any way whatsoever. This breakthrough technology promises to vastly improve the wireless communications capabilities of everything from 5G mobile technology to the multitude devices aimed at supporting the Internet of Things (IoT).
“If we’re going to get high-speed broadband to every mobile phone in the world, we’ll need lots of tiny, high-performance radios in those phones,” said Barlow. “The radios will be squashed together in a way that analog just doesn’t tolerate. Whereas a Pizzicato-like digital radio can follow Moore’s Law to smaller size and lower power consumption. It could also be programmed to generate almost any combination of signals at any carrier frequencies, nimbly adapting its behavior in a way that is impossible in conventional radios. It is early days for this technology, but we believe radio design has reached a turning point.”
The Pizzicato digital radio was recently demonstrated at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Tomi Engdahl says:
National Instruments ups PXI game to Gen 3
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/test-cafe/4438827/National-Instruments-ups-PXI-game-to-Gen-3?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150309&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150309&elq=451393604ad947ad989b53da758388a6&elqCampaignId=22001&elqaid=24700&elqat=1&elqTrackId=bb300add08034e9e90fad7e4632c18b7
NI has just announced the first Gen 3 PXI embedded controller and chassis in the industry. Gen 3 refers to the speed of the PCIe (PCI Express) backplane data fabric that is inherent to PXI.
PXI began in 1997 by adopting the PCI bus as its backplane
In the mid-2000s, as PCs migrated to using the faster PCIe fabric, so did PXI.
PXI followed the PCIe speed curve to Gen 2, doubling the speed again.
This 8-lane wide Gen 2 bandwidth has brought bus bandwidth to 4GB/s, and has been the high speed option for PXI users.
NI’s announcement of a Gen 3 controller and a Gen 3 chassis doubles the top theoretical speed to a module again, to 8 GBytes/s. On the controller side, the PXIe-8880 utilizes a 24-lane path to the PXIe-1085 backplane, enabling a total system throughput of 24 GBytes/s. This compares favorably to the 8 GBytes/s limit of 16-lane Gen 2 systems.
What can all this bandwidth be used for? Data streaming. In some applications, it is necessary to stream high-speed but long data patterns back to a controller, or onto a disk array. Continuous monitoring of spectrum for surveillance purposes is one example. Capturing very long records from digitizers for scientific research is another.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Predictive energy balance control for PDN applications
http://www.edn.com/design/power-management/4438821/Predictive-energy-balance–PEB–control-for-PDN-applications?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150309&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150309&elq=451393604ad947ad989b53da758388a6&elqCampaignId=22001&elqaid=24700&elqat=1&elqTrackId=0c2629ae53cb4cd4a635a19a96e55512
Power integrity (PI) and power distribution network (PDN) design are now central elements in the design of all high-speed, high-performance, and low-noise electronic circuits. The first rule in achieving optimum performance is to maintain the power distribution path impedance magnitude below some specific level, often referred to as the target impedance. The second rule is to keep the power distribution impedance as flat as possible over frequency. Semiconductor companies are introducing new voltage regulator architectures incorporating non-linear controls, multiple loops, and hysteretic operation to achieve these goals.
Tomi Engdahl says:
TechInsights: Non-Stop Innovation in Chip Packaging
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325656&
The semiconductor industry is entering the era of Internet of Things (IoT), where integration of sensing and actuation systems along with low power radio devices must be combined in a single package. For a large number of applications, the control of the devices will probably be done by handheld devices, so the overall footprint of the package is critical. The need for high performance multifunctional devices in a single package is pushing the industry to innovate in multi-chip packaging. This high level of integration has presented an enormous challenge, because all the individual components in the package must contact between their respective bond pads and the external board.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is Tech Heading to a Recession?
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1325964&
28nm is still the last node of Moore’s Law, says Zvi Or-Bach of MonolithiC 3D Inc., who beats the drum for monolithic 3D.
“Samsung and smartphones in general look to be in trouble and that’s bad news for the electronics industry” wrote Rick Merritt in his Smartphone, Samsung in Trouble recent report from MWC15 in Barcelona. Rick clearly points to 14nm FinFET as the source of the problem and continues “[i]f smartphone growth slows for lack of a driver, as tablet growth is already doing, the electronics industry could be in trouble … it’s beginning to feel like another big bubble building up.”
About a year ago McKinsey published a report Moore’s law: Repeal or renewal? subtitled “Economic conditions could invalidate Moore’s law after decades as the semiconductor industry’s innovation touchstone. The impact on chipmakers and others could be dramatic.” It goes on to say:
As a result, Moore’s law has swept much of the modern world along with it. Some estimates ascribe up to 40 percent of the global productivity growth achieved during the last two decades to the expansion of information and communication technologies made possible by semiconductor performance and cost improvements… The law retains its predictive power because of constant improvements in production technology, which are driven by the industry’s “global semiconductor road maps.” These describe the progress required for the continuation of Moore’s law.
The report concludes with this: “We believe that interesting years lay ahead for the semiconductor industry because the steady evolution the industry historically counted on might be coming to an end.”
And it does seem that this is ahead of us as we presented in our well-read blog 28nm: The Last Node of Moore’s Law.
Since the publication of that blog more information has been released, mostly supporting the conclusion that 28nm was the last node. This includes the following finding from a survey conducted by KPMG “Only a fourth of semiconductor business leaders believe Moore’s Law will continue for the foreseeable future … More than half said Moore’s Law will no longer apply at various nodes less than 22 nanometers, while 16 percent said it already has ended.”
“The reason for increasing transistor cost is the complexity of the devices, and the cost of the equipment required to produce them. … these costs are going up exponentially,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
TechInsights: Overcoming Smart Glasses’ Performance Challenges
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1325858&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bosch Debuts 1st MEMS Sensor Hub
Subsidiary Akustica ups anti on Mics
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325953&
Microelectromechanical system (MEMS) chip manufacturer Robert Bosch GmbH has introduced its first sensor hub, in two models, which it claims has lower power consumption than the competition for always-on applications with extended battery life. The same group introduced application specific sensor nodes (ASSNs) with firmware that handles specific Internet of Things (IoT) and wearable applications. Its subsidiary Akustica simultaneously announced two high-definition (HD) MEMS microphones for better voice recognition accuracy and improved noise suppression.
“Bosch has already been combining different sensors on the same chip for inertial, geomagnetic and environmental applications,” Jeanne Forget, Global Marketing Director, Bosch Sensortec told EE Times. “But now we are announcing Bosch’s first sensor hubs, to combine MEMS sensors of any type with an on-chip micro-controller to perform the sensor fusion, which is especially good for IoT applications.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Synopsys Opens Up ARC Processor Architecture Online
Open ARC Platform brings open-source tooling to ARC
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325954&
Synopsys Corp. has just inaugurated the embARC.org website where developers can access its new Open Software Platform. The site offers a variety of open-source drivers, operating systems and middleware for use with the company’s ARC processor architecture in a wide range of Internet of Things applications.
While the ARC architecture has considerable success so far, with cores licensed by more than 190 companies in a wide range of consumer and industrial applications, the nature of the company’s strategy for adoption meant that ARC’s widespread adoption is not widely recognized, Allen Watson, product marketing manager for ARC Development Tools, Systems and Ecosystem, told EE Times. The cores are used in more than 1.5 billion products a year in a wide range of applications such as solid-state drives, connected appliances, automotive controllers, media players, digital TV, set-top boxes and home networking.
At the heart of the ARC is a 16-/32-bit RISC-based instruction set architecture that provides good performance and code density for embedded and host SoC applications. But the secret sauce of the architecture is that unlike most embedded microprocessors, extra instructions, registers and functionality can be added using the ARChitect processor configurator that allows developers to analyze a given task, choose the appropriate extensions, or develop their own ISA extensions.
https://www.embarc.org/index.html
The embARC Open Software Platform consists of software and documentation to accelerate the development of embedded systems based on DesignWare ARC processors.
Comprehensive suite of free and open-source software, including drivers, operating systems and middleware for embedded software development on DesignWare® ARC® processors for IoT applications
Includes ports of FreeRTOS and Contiki OS operating systems
Supported by free open source GNU Toolchain and premium MetaWare tools
Dedicated website with downloads, documentation and user forums
Tomi Engdahl says:
NXP to Focus on All CMOS Radar Future
Freescale deal spurs automotive push
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325956&
In announcing the planned acquisition of Freescale Semiconductor, NXP Semiconductor CEO Rick Clemmer last week explained how he expects the new entity — NXP and Freescale combined — to lead the growing automotive electronics market.
In briefings, Clemmer casually mentioned, without elaborating, that making today’s “big and clunky radars” small is one of the keys to next-generation advanced drivers’ assistance systems. It turns out that the small radars Clemmer referenced aren’t from Freescale’s, a company known for its fine 77GHz packaged radar front-end chipset using SiGe technology. Clemmer was talking about an RF CMOS-based 80GHz radar front-end transmitter chip — currently a working prototype — developed at NXP.
Sponsor video, mouseover for sound
Called Dolphin, NXP’s 80GHz chip uses digital CMOS process technology, an accomplishment long believed impossible.
Lars Reger, vice president strategy, new business, and R&D for automotive at NXP, told EE Times that the working prototype is currently in the hands of “our lead customers [Tier Ones and OEMs] under non-disclosure agreement.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
News & Analysis
Samsung Acquires YESCO to Strengthen LED Display Expertise
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325951&
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. has acquired YESCO Electronics LLC, a leading LED sign and display manufacturer with more than 2,000 installations across the U.S. and around the word.
The acquisition reinforces Samsung’s entry into the LED display market, extending the reach of the company’s technologies and expertise beyond large-format displays (LFDs) using LCD panels, where the company has been the worldwide market leader for six consecutive years.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stick a PUF to Your Board
A foil hat for your PCB?
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325947&
PARIS — The Fraunhofer Institute for Applied and Integrated Security (AISEC) is developing a very versatile and flexible form of Physically Unclonable Function (PUF), one that can wrap an entire circuit board to secure it from physical attacks.
The foil-based solution consists of patterned metal electrodes embedded into a polymer film with a self-adhesive backing. The electrodes are connected to the board to be protected and special read-out software IP running on the board’s controller can extract the PUF from the film as is has been wrapped around or stuck to the board.
Try to remove the PUF sticker, pinch it to probe through it, scratch it or unseal it and the PUF will be altered. By detecting that change, the circuit board will be able to take any counter-measure it will have been programmed for, for example sending an alert message and disabling itself at run-time, or wiping out all of its embedded software.
Showing a demo at Embedded World, Fraunhofer AISEC’s head researcher on the so-called PEP project (Protecting Electronic Products, maybe with a pun intended on Polyethylene Plastics), Sven Plaga didn’t want to say too much about the internals of the film.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Engineers on Creating Better Technical Documentation
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325930&
Everyone benefits from good documentation. So why does so much of it suck, and how can companies do better?
“We all understand that good documentation is important and we would all like it to be better, but unfortunately it’s very easy to convince yourself you can put off doing a better job — or even doing it at all — since it’s not a hair-on-fire situation,” said Svec.
The fact that documentation is important but not urgent, makes it an all-to-easy thing to kick down the road with the sincerest of intentions to get back to it later. But when that doesn’t happen, it becomes the next guy’s (or girl’s) problem.
And next time that person just might be the “future you.”
The thing is, everyone knows good documentation when they see it.
“They either got burned by something in the past or are really good at asking questions, because Spark clearly designed it for engineers like me,” noted Svec, who particularly likes the pinouts with circles on the diagram.
“It may seem surprising, but I don’t think that we invest a lot of time and energy into documentation and how it should be done,” said Zach Supalla, Spark’s CEO. “We are a bunch of web folks and I would say that rather than inventing anything new, we are taking a lot of best practices out there in the web world and applying them to the embedded world.”
With most hardware documentation, a user is typically forced to dig through a static datasheet or a pdf for information.
Because Spark makes hardware, the design team set out to create visual documentation that helped users understand what was actually happening in the real world. In addition to elaborate pinout diagrams, Spark’s documentation includes highly useful elements like tiny, five-second video files that show what a blinking LED (designating status of the board) looks like.
“We realized that we could make it even better over time, by making the documentation dynamic and editable by users,”
No matter how good your product is, Supalla pointed out that there will always be people who are going to be frustrated and confused about how it works, particularly with an international community. “Dynamic documentation empowers people to make contributions and suggest changes,” he stressed.
How can internal teams become better at documentation when the customer is a colleague who might not even look at it for months or years?
“At iRobot we created a set of best practices for the software group,” Svec said. “After presenting the six-page document to the company, I realized that while it was good, there were too many things in it to keep in your head all at one time.”
He wondered if there were a way he could distill those six pages into two or three guiding principles. The “a-ha” moment struck during a cross-country road trip with his dog. “I realized that it all comes down to empathy, in looking out for each other and our future selves to ensure that the code or hardware is understandable, maintainable, and approachable five or ten years down the road.”
That’s hard to argue with, but it’s not necessarily easy to see your design through a-yet-unknown-someone else’s eyes.
“Explain to them what you think you’re doing,” said Svec. “In the process, you will learn quickly what assumptions you’ve made that you are not even aware of, what’s confusing to a potential user, and also get great ideas on how you can make changes to the document or code or schematic that will help someone else understand it more easily.”
And there is one other, lesser-known benefit to creating good documentation, something an engineer at iRobot who is known for creating remarkable documentation figured out early on:
“I’m an introvert who doesn’t want to be bothered, I don’t like strangers or talking to people, and I find that the better my documentation, the more I’m left alone. I also find I tend to write a lot better than other engineers so I want to keep my abilities and showcase them, even if other people don’t realize it’s me.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
The touch screen can be printed even if the postcard
Saarland University computer scientists will present at CeBIT in Hannover, Germany, March 16, from the date technology to a standard inkjet printer can produce glow in the dark contact with the reactive screens.
Touch screen generated so that a user creates a display model, for example, Word or PowerPoint. When the document is ready, it will only be printed so as a conventional documentary.
The resulting displays are tenth of a millimeter thick. If regular paper to print in full screen, the ink sheet in the price is about 20 euros.
The production method is not limited, however, to the paper, but the ink sticks to the plastic, leather, ceramic, stone, metal and wood.
In the future, touch screens can also print 3D technology
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/2015-03-10/Kosketusn%C3%A4yt%C3%B6n-voi-printata-vaikka-postikorttiin-3217037.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Keysight expands bench DMM line to 7½ digits
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/electronic-product-reviews/other/4438790/Keysight-expands-bench-DMM-line-to-7-5-digits?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20150309&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20150309&elq=97b0eb8ca1924572a10f25a1b61cc34b&elqCampaignId=21991&elqaid=24691&elqat=1&elqTrackId=adf913cc54e04b64a93ce35be00693e1
Keysight Technologies has added two models to its Truevolt series of system/bench DMMs (digital multimeters) with the 7½-digit 34470A ($2890) and the 6½-digit 34465A ($1395). The 34470A puts Keysight in direct competition with Keithley’s DMM7510, introduced in January. The 34465A is the third 6½-digit Truevolt-series DMM, providing better DC accuracy and higher sample rates than the 34461A, the replacement for the classic 34401A.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Infineon: Why It’s Back at MWC?
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325924&
The last time Infineon Technologies came to the Mobile World Congress as an exhibitor was back in February, 2010. Its purpose was to roll out a new 3G slim-modem platform
But since 2011, when it sold its wireless business to Intel, Infineon’s name – along with its almost legendary baseband and RF technologies — has faded into the memory of the mobile world.
Infineon, however, has never left the mobile world, the company says now.
First, the Mobile World Congress is no longer a show about mobile handsets. Today, it’s all about billions of connected devices, the network infrastructure technologies enabling them, and the much-needed security that protects data transmission and transactions in networks and at end nodes.
Infineon executives tell us the Munich-based company has a lot to offer at Mobile World, with its focus on connectivity (RF in the network infrastructure), sensing (pressure sensors for smartphones), security (secure mobile payment technology embedded in handsets and tablets) and the energy efficiency it can bring to connected devices that need power.
For example, the high temperature-resistant pressure sensors Infineon originally developed for its automotive customers to monitor tire pressure in cars are now tailored to consumer handsets, and they are pitched as an answer to much needed indoor navigation applications
The company’s RF power group has been supplying power amplifiers in base stations – ranging from macro to micro and pico cells. It never left the mobile industry.
Tomi Engdahl says:
SMD air coils supply high Q factor for RF designs
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4438817/SMD-air-coils-supply-high-Q-factor-for-RF-designs?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150310&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150310&elq=788b5a12c9ec429da0f81bad8ba60321&elqCampaignId=22010&elqaid=24710&elqat=1&elqTrackId=adf6bb4bd4fb4109b6bdc0781c7883d5
Wurth Electronics has expanded its family of WE-CAIR surface-mount air-coil inductors with additional types that provide a Q factor of greater than 100 for use in high-frequency, high-current RF applications.
Inductance values for the WE-CAIR series range from 1.65 nH to 120 nH. Other specifications include rated current up to 3.5 A, self-resonant frequencies as high as 10 GHz, and inductance tolerances of 5% and 10%.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Can you use supercaps to power electric vehicles?
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/power-points/4438854/Can-you-use-supercaps-to-power-electric-vehicles-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150310&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150310&elq=788b5a12c9ec429da0f81bad8ba60321&elqCampaignId=22010&elqaid=24710&elqat=1&elqTrackId=2752036a03de401f841794f61f3107e3
Supercapacitors (also called ultracapacitors) are a relatively recent fundamental technology innovation for passive devices, with the first ones coming to market in the 1970s with widespread use by the early 1990′s. Prior to their development, the “conventional wisdom” and textbook view that even a one-farad capacitor was impractical for real designs, as it would be the size of a desk. Yet today, the supercap is a standard component in the engineer’s bill of materials (BOM) kit.
These capacitors have both advantages and disadvantages compared to rechargeable batteries. They typically can store 10 to 100 times more energy per unit volume or unit mass than standard electrolytic capacitors but have only about 1/10 the energy density of batteries (and thus are physically larger for a given amount of energy); can be charged and discharged more quickly than batteries; and tolerate many more charge/discharge cycles than rechargeable batteries. In many designs they replace or complement batteries for short- or long-term backup and operation.
So what about using them in electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), instead of the battery packs? So far, none of the commercially available EVs and HEVs use them, as far as I can tell.
But that hasn’t stopped people from speculating, and this speculation can make it all sound so easy. I recently saw that NASA Tech Briefs gave an honorable mention to an idea – and I emphasize the word “idea” – of using an array of one type of supercap for energy storage in an EV with a 3000-mile (approximately 4800 km) range, see here .
Wow, that’s impressive…until you realize that this idea is entirely speculative.
Will an array of MLCCs be the next big thing for EVs? I’ll admit it: I don’t know. I do know that when someone says it will be easy, and yet has never actually built and tested an actual unit, it’s a good idea to be skeptical.
3000 Mile Capacitor Powered Electrical Vehicle
http://contest.techbriefs.com/2014/entries/automotive-transportation/4729
Tomi Engdahl says:
2014 Electrical, Power Study: Seven key findings
http://www.csemag.com/single-article/2014-electrical-power-study-seven-key-findings/571cbc8e627c296e8d6b9ec1d1e33902.html
According to the data in this report, inadequate budgets and keeping up with frequent codes and standards updates for electrical and power systems design are continuous challenges that aren’t expected to change anytime soon.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Design in Package Flexibility into Your Next PCB
http://hackaday.com/2015/03/11/design-in-package-flexibility-into-your-next-pcb/
To err is human. And to order the wrong component foot print is just part of engineering. It happens to us all; You’re working hard to finish a design, you have PCBs on the way and you’re putting in your order into your favorite parts supplier. It’s late, and you’re tired. You hit submit, and breathe a sigh of relief. Little do you know that in about a week when everything arrives, that you’ll have ordered the wrong component package for your design.
Well, fear not. [David Cook] has a solution that could save your bacon. He shows you how to design multiple footprints into your board to avoid the most common mistakes such as voltage regulators with different pin-outs than expected.
PCB Design Patterns
http://www.robotroom.com/PCB-Layout-Tips.html
Flexible Voltage Regulator Layout
Choice of Trimmer Potentiometers
Choice of Capacitors
Error-Free Part Insertion
Button Choice
Faster and More Reliable Soldering of Through-Hole Parts
Solder Mask Issue
Copper Fill to Reduce Heat and Increase Efficiency
Wire Loop for Test Probe Hook
Traces
Simple Changes
As you can see, layouts featuring a few extra holes and a little bit more copper can increase flexibility, speed installation, and improve reliability of your printed circuit boards.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Magnetized graphene could ‘change the course of human civilization’
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/tech-edge/4438843/Magnetized-graphene-could–change-the-course-of-human-civilization-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150311&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150311&elq=82acecd029f244fc9af79f515b5ff65c&elqCampaignId=22030&elqaid=24735&elqat=1&elqTrackId=fa969d31243c4a5baa51c1ca08afc498
Graphene, a material formed of a mesh of hexagonal carbon atoms, has, according to ExtremeTech author Ryan Whitwam, “many fantastic properties that could change the course of human civilization. It’s chemically stable, highly conductive, and incredibly strong.” In a recent New Yorker article, John Colapinto stated graphene “may be the most remarkable substance ever discovered.” One thing graphene is not, however, is magnetic.
Researchers at the University of California, Riverside have developed a way to induce magnetism in graphene while preserving its electronic properties. The research team did this by bringing a single sheet of graphene into close proximity to a magentic insulator.
Though graphene is intrinsically nonmagnetic, “it is possible,” says IEEE Spectrum Contributing Editor Dexter Johnson, “to induce magnetism in graphene by doping the material with magnetic impurities. Unfortunately, that process comes at the high cost of eliminating all the attractive electrical properties of graphene, such as its high conductivity.”
The research team subsequently carried out Hall-effect measurements
could “lead to transport phenomena such as the quantized AHE [anomalous Hall effect], which are potentially useful for spintronics.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bosch Sensortec and Akustika: Android , MEMS, microphones and the Sensor Hub
http://www.edn.com/design/analog/4438883/Bosch-Sensortec-and-Akustika–Android—MEMS–microphones-and-the-Sensor-Hub?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20150312&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20150312&elq=4e99fa3e825343c880454e6adef2695d&elqCampaignId=22047&elqaid=24752&elqat=1&elqTrackId=841da9eddd3e4965a0ce370bb914801e
With an accumulated MEMS volume production of 5B, I guess I would say that Bosch Sensortec is riding high in the Internet of Things (IoT) space. They have a state-of-the-art portfolio containing sensors highlighted by inertial, geomagnetic, environmental, smart sensors and microphones and Sensor Fusion software is the bond that creates unity and coherence in performance.
Their recent launch of two integrated sensor hubs, BHI160 and BHA250, take the SmartHub to a new level by combining lowest power with an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) of less than 1 mA, great sensor fusion software and an optimized sensor FUSER Core with integrated microcontroller for Android smart phones. These two devices implement the full Android Lollipop sensor stack and are software upgradeable for future releases of software.
By integrating a dedicated sensor hub they have lowered power consumption significantly, which helps especially in always-on sensor applications such as fitness tracking, indoor navigation and gesture recognition. That does not mean that the stand-alone Sensor Hub will fall by the wayside, but it does mean co-existence with a variety of architectures.