CSR opens new automotive design centre in Germany

CSR opens new automotive design centre in Germany

Wireless chip designer Cambridge Silicon Radio has opened a new Automotive Systems Development and Applications Centre in Ingolstadt, Southern Germany.

CSR acquired the facility, which was built by TEMIC Telefunken Hochfrequenztechnik, a provider of RF system solutions for auto-infotainment and consumer products, as part of its merger with Zoran last year.

"The Ingolstadt Automotive Centre has been specifically designed, built and staffed with very experienced engineers targeting the automotive market," said Charlie Lesko, Senior Vice President for CSR's Automotive Business Group. "CSR has been committed to the automotive market over a decade by offering our industry-leading connectivity, location, telematics and infotainment solutions. The investment in this facility is a strong indication of CSR's ongoing commitment to this business and is a key part of our growth strategy. The facility and staff will enable us to offer local support as well as unique services to our automotive customers in Europe."

The experienced RF, hardware and software engineering team based at the new facility will allow CSR to continue to expand support and access for German and European customers to the entire CSR automotive product portfolio including location, connectivity and infotainment SoC solutions, says the company, whcih also includes the SiRF GPS chip and module range. It will also strengthen partnerships with automotive OEMs and key Tier Ones by offering greatly enhanced, design-in support and test infrastructure.

The facility will also support increased marketing and business development activities across the region.

The facility will be the in-vehicle test and validation centre for all CSR automotive technologies, ensuring the company's automotive customers get the best possible performance from our connectivity, location and SoC technologies.

"I am delighted to join CSR's Automotive Business Group and for our facility to be at the centre of our new growth strategy in this exciting space," said Andreas Hennig, site manager for CSR's new facility and formerly with Zoran and Microtune in Germany. "The Ingolstadt team is fully committed to deploying our extensive skills and automotive experience to further build on CSR's success in the automotive sector."

This article originally appeared on EE Times Europe.

TAG:automotive design connectivity location telematics infotainment

Fujitsu shows radiation-hardened RFID using FRAM technology

Fujitsu shows radiation-hardened RFID using FRAM technology

Fujitsu Semiconductor America (FSA) and a group of partner companies will highlight innovative radio-frequency identification (RFID) solutions using Fujitsu's Ferroelectric Random Access Memory (FRAM) technology at Interphex 2012 from May 1-3 in New York City.

Joining Fujitsu at Interphex will be Verigenics (http://www.verigenics.com), Vizinex RFID (http://www.vizinexrfid.com) and Toppan Printing Co., Ltd. (http://www.toppan.co.jp).

"Fujitsu's high-performance FRAM technology can track medical devices and supplies, even through the gamma sterilization process," said Tong Swan Pang, senior manager of marketing at Fujitsu Semiconductor America. "The partner companies joining us at Interphex 2012 have integrated Fujitsu's FRAM into their products to provide radiation-resistant, high-performance RFID solutions for use in the medical, bio-processing, and pharmaceutical industries."

FRAM is a high-performance, low-power and non-volatile memory that combines the benefits of non-volatile memories (Flash and EEPROM) with high-speed RAM (SRAM and DRAM). Compared to other nonvolatile memories, key advantages of FRAM include a fast read / write speed (around 150 nanoseconds), low power consumption (more than 200 times lower than EEPROM), and high endurance (10 billion read/write cycles). This tamper-resistant, secure memory is not affected by magnetic fields. Most important for medical and pharmaceutical applications, FRAM is radiation-resistant. FRAM data is protected against up to 50 kGy gamma ray sterilization, more than twice the typical dosage used in medical applications.

Combined with RFID technologies, FRAM simplifies the task of assuring that vital medical and pharmaceutical products are safe. FRAM overcomes the serious limitation of conventional RFID tags that use EEPROM, a memory technology that can be compromised by small doses of radiation. Since the ferroelectric material at the heart of Fujitsu's FRAM technology is inherently radiation hardened, it can easily withstand the typical gamma ray sterilization.

Fujitsu offers HF and UHF RFID products with embedded FRAM that outperforms conventional EEPROM/Flash based RFID chips and is better suited for medical and pharmaceutical applications. The FerVID FRAM RFID family, unlike conventional RFID tags, features high speed data transfer rate for both reading and writing over long distances.

The FerVID FRAM RFID family products are ISO/IEC15693, ISO/IEC 18000-3 or EPCglobal Class 1 Generation 2 compliant. The company offers wafers, sawn wafers or packaged chips. Derivatives with combined contactless and contact-based SPI interfaces are available. RFID products come with capacities ranging from 256 Bytes to 64k Bytes of FRAM.

http://us.fujitsu.com/semi/fram.

This article originally appeared on EE Times Europe.

TAG:radiation hardened RFID FRAM Ferroelectric Random Access Memory Interphex Fujitsu

Light but safe: Research project aims at a high-volume urban e-car

Light but safe: Research project aims at a high-volume urban e-car

While electric vehicles, driven by energy from renewable sources, could be an attractive option for urban mobility, e-cars derived from conventional cars are too heavy and too expensive to gain the acceptance of the masses. Light cars, in contrast, do not reach an acceptable level of safety. The Technical University of Munich has now launched a research project aiming at designing a vehicle that is light, safe and at the same time easy to manufacture.

In the "Visio M" project, the researchers are working side by side with experienced professional car designers - the research consortium is led by carmaker BMW. The specifications for the concept car to be developed are: 15 kW engine power and maximum weight excluding battery of 400kg. In addition, the vehicle will have to meet the requirements of the car approval class L7e.

In the scope of the project, the researchers will use the MUTE electric concept vehicle which has been developed by the Munich Technical University in an earlier project, in order to explore new technologies with respect to vehicle safety, drive, energy storage and HMI concept. The focus of the research activities is on the safety design: Despite its very low weight, the goal of the Visio M concept is a safety level on par with today's conventional cars.

BMW acts as the consortium manager in the Visio M research group. Besides BMW and TU Munich also carmaker Daimler AG is involved, as well as tier ones Autoliv and Continental, electricity provider Eon, Siemens, chip vendor Texas Instruments, and safety services provider TÜV Süd. The project is funded in part by the German federal research ministry.

This article originally appeared on EE Times Europe.

TAG:e car electric vehicle urban MUTE electric concept vehicle Technical University of Munich BMW

Robotic probes plumb brain's circuitry

Robotic probes plumb brain's circuitry

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Robots enabled the human genome to be mapped in just over 12 years, but it took less than four years for the Paul Allen--Microsoft co-counder--Brain Atlas to be completed last month by robots. Now researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) are hoping to use robots to create a parts list and electrical wiring diagram of the brain, giving companies like IBM a leg-up on creating the cognitive computers of the future.

"By automating the process of measuring electrical activity in the brain with robots, we can now really begin to understand how the brain works," said Georgia Tech engineering professor Craig Forest. "Imagine being able to stimulate any cell in the brain, and record its response to determine the precise electrical functions of each type of neuron. Now imagine automating the process of measuring the interaction between neurons, say between the hippocampus and the cortex during learning, or between the thalamus and the cortex when you pull your hand from a hot stove."

For the last 30 years, brain science has been hampered by the manual methods required to locate and record the activity of brain cells--called neurons--but this new robot, combined with smart computer algorithms, has now automated the technique, enabling the cataloging of neuron types by their electrical properties. As a result, the researchers hope to build a catalog of necessary brain components and their interconnection method, which will then be used to build future brain-like computers.

The brainchild of Georgia Tech doctoral candidate Suhasa Kodandaramaiah, working in Forest's lab and in cooperation with professor Ed Boyden at MIT, the robot arm guides a micropipette inside a living brain. By measuring the electrical impedance--which is low until a brain cell is encountered--the probe can take two-micron steps until it just touches a neuron--at which time the impedance goes up.

Unlike manual methods which nearly always rupture the cell on contact, the robot can immediately stop before damaging the neuron. Suction is then applied and a tiny electrical probe inserted to record its normal electrical activity while the animal is still alive. After the recording is made, a sample of the cells genetic makeup can be extracted to analyze which genes are currently activated. By repeating the process in all the different regions of the brain, the researchers hope to create a parts list of the brain's neural components, complete with their electrical properties. Next the researchers are planning multi-tip probes so that the robot can measure electrical activity at several points simultaneously, allowing it to create a wiring diagram of how the different regions of the brain interact.


TAG:Robotic probes Brain Circuitry

Researchers claim low-cost solar cells based on abundant metals

Researchers claim low-cost solar cells based on abundant metals

PARIS – Researchers at the University of Basel, in Switzerland, said they have described a paradigm-shifting approach to sustainable and renewable photovoltaics devices and moved towards low-cost solar cells based on abundant metals, according to an article published in the Chemical Communications journal.

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) consist of a semiconductor, titanium dioxide, which is coated with a colored dye. The dye absorbs sunlight and injects an electron into the semiconductor. This is the primary event leading to the photocurrent, chemists said.

Researchers claimed they have achieved two breakthroughs. Firstly, they said they have developed a strategy for making and attaching colored materials to the surface of titanium dioxide nanoparticles. Secondly, they said that they have demonstrated that simple compounds of the readily available metal zinc may be used. The achievement was finding a method for the simultaneous synthesis of the dye and its attachment to the semiconductor surface, the team said.

Dye-sensitized solar cells have been assembled using a sequential approach: a TiO2 surface was functionalized with an anchoring ligand, followed by metallation with Zn(OAc)2 or ZnCl2, and subsequent capping with a chromophore functionalized 2,2':6',2''-terpyridine; the DSCs exhibit surprisingly good efficiencies confirming the effectiveness of the new strategy for zinc-based DSC fabrication.


TAG:University of Basel Dye Sensitized Cell DSC

Researchers claim low-cost solar cells based on abundant metals

Researchers claim low-cost solar cells based on abundant metals

PARIS – Researchers at the University of Basel, in Switzerland, said they have described a paradigm-shifting approach to sustainable and renewable photovoltaics devices and moved towards low-cost solar cells based on abundant metals, according to an article published in the Chemical Communications journal.

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) consist of a semiconductor, titanium dioxide, which is coated with a colored dye. The dye absorbs sunlight and injects an electron into the semiconductor. This is the primary event leading to the photocurrent, chemists said.

Researchers claimed they have achieved two breakthroughs. Firstly, they said they have developed a strategy for making and attaching colored materials to the surface of titanium dioxide nanoparticles. Secondly, they said that they have demonstrated that simple compounds of the readily available metal zinc may be used. The achievement was finding a method for the simultaneous synthesis of the dye and its attachment to the semiconductor surface, the team said.

Dye-sensitized solar cells have been assembled using a sequential approach: a TiO2 surface was functionalized with an anchoring ligand, followed by metallation with Zn(OAc)2 or ZnCl2, and subsequent capping with a chromophore functionalized 2,2':6',2''-terpyridine; the DSCs exhibit surprisingly good efficiencies confirming the effectiveness of the new strategy for zinc-based DSC fabrication.


TAG:University of Basel Dye Sensitized Cell DSC

Sagantec buys Dutch 20-nm EDA specialist

Sagantec buys Dutch 20-nm EDA specialist

LONDON – EDA company Sagantec North America Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) has announced that is has acquired NP Komplete Technologies BV (Eindhoven, The Netherlands), a startup company founded in 2009. Sagantec did not disclose how much it paid.

NP Komplete Technologies provides physical IC design migration tools and services to automate migration and optimization of libraries, memories and custom layout for meeting new design rules and yield goals in new processes. and specializes in the 28-nm, 22- and 20-nm manufacturing process nodes. All the company's customers are among the top 20 semiconductor companies in the world.

Sagantec, which has its engineering teams in Eindhoven, The Netherlands and Haifa, Israel, said that the NPKT team is now integrated with its Eindhoven team.

The NPKT migration technology is an automated layout optimization technology, and was designed to address 20-nm design rules and beyond. Most of the additional design rules at 20-nm are required to overcome challenges of manufacturability that impact yield. The NPKT technology has been proven with clean design rule checked results at several semiconductor companies, and on 28- and 20-nm processes at foundries.

The 22-nm nomenclature for a process node is only being used by Intel at present.

According to its website NPKT develops and maintains all of design for manufacturing (DFM) products marketed by Takumi Technology Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.)


Related links and articles:

www.sagantec.com

www.np-komplete.com

www.takumi-tech.com

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TAG:NP Komplete Intel Sagantec NPKT process semiconductor library compaction 20 nm foundries

Sagantec buys Dutch 20-nm EDA specialist

Sagantec buys Dutch 20-nm EDA specialist

LONDON – EDA company Sagantec North America Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) has announced that is has acquired NP Komplete Technologies BV (Eindhoven, The Netherlands), a startup company founded in 2009. Sagantec did not disclose how much it paid.

NP Komplete Technologies provides physical IC design migration tools and services to automate migration and optimization of libraries, memories and custom layout for meeting new design rules and yield goals in new processes. and specializes in the 28-nm, 22- and 20-nm manufacturing process nodes. All the company's customers are among the top 20 semiconductor companies in the world.

Sagantec, which has its engineering teams in Eindhoven, The Netherlands and Haifa, Israel, said that the NPKT team is now integrated with its Eindhoven team.

The NPKT migration technology is an automated layout optimization technology, and was designed to address 20-nm design rules and beyond. Most of the additional design rules at 20-nm are required to overcome challenges of manufacturability that impact yield. The NPKT technology has been proven with clean design rule checked results at several semiconductor companies, and on 28- and 20-nm processes at foundries.

The 22-nm nomenclature for a process node is only being used by Intel at present.

According to its website NPKT develops and maintains all of design for manufacturing (DFM) products marketed by Takumi Technology Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.)


Related links and articles:

www.sagantec.com

www.np-komplete.com

www.takumi-tech.com

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Viewpoint: IC technology choice moves in multiple directions

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DFM tool repairs IC layouts

TAG:NP Komplete Intel Sagantec NPKT process semiconductor library compaction 20 nm foundries

Agilent releases aerospace, defense application videos

Agilent releases aerospace, defense application videos

PARIS - Agilent Technologies said it has produced aerospace and defense application videos that provide information on interference mitigation, switch repeatability and on a tool for instrument control in Excel.

Agilent claimed that the three videos, available now, help achieve program or mission goals by delivering information on Radar/EW MilComms, Satellite and ELINT/SIGINT. The short application videos, Agilent continued, focus on RF, uW and mmW measurements, signal generation, distortion and modulation for wideband comms, OFDM waveforms, phase noise and more.



TAG:Agilent Technologies Aerospace Defense Videos Test

Agilent releases aerospace, defense application videos

Agilent releases aerospace, defense application videos

PARIS - Agilent Technologies said it has produced aerospace and defense application videos that provide information on interference mitigation, switch repeatability and on a tool for instrument control in Excel.

Agilent claimed that the three videos, available now, help achieve program or mission goals by delivering information on Radar/EW MilComms, Satellite and ELINT/SIGINT. The short application videos focus, Agilent continued, focus on RF, uW and mmW measurements, signal generation, distortion and modulation for wideband comms, OFDM waveforms, phase noise and more.



TAG:Agilent Technologies Aerospace Defense Videos Test

Reports: SK Hynix drops out of Elpida bidding

Reports: SK Hynix drops out of Elpida bidding

LONDON – SK Hynix Inc. (Icheon, South Korea), the world's second largest DRAM maker, has dropped its bid for Elpida Memory Inc. according to reports that referenced a regulatory filing in Seoul Friday May 4.

Elpida (Tokyo, Japan) has about 12 percent of the global DRAM market but prices for DRAMs are depressed due to an oversupply of components. They are used heavily in personal computers but less so in mobile devices. Elpida filed for bankruptcy protection in February with reported liabilities of 448 billion yen (about $5.6 billion) after failing to win a government bailout package.

Toshiba had reportedly also expressed some interest in Elpida but then withdrew.

The withdrawal of SK Hynix and Toshiba leaves a potential bid from Chinese investment firm Hony Capital teamed with U.S. private equity firm TPG in play and the possibility of a bid from DRAM maker Micron Technology Inc. (Boise, Idaho).

Hony Capital, founded in 2003 by John Zhao, has specialized in the buy-out of China state-owned enterprises and now has $6.8 billion in assets under management. TPG, formerly Texas Pacific Group, has $49 billion of capital under management.


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TAG:SK Hynix Elpida memory DRAM Hony TPG

Micropelt raises funds to expand energy harvest work

Micropelt raises funds to expand energy harvest work

LONDON – Thermoelectric cooling and energy harvest company Micropelt GmbH (Frieburg, Germany) has raised 6.5 million euro (about $8.5 million) to drive global expansion.

In June 2011 the company opened thin-film thermoelectric production facility in Halle, Germany, and since then the company has been striving to garner orders, increase production volumes and reduce unit costs. Micropelt was founded in 2006.

The recent funds include a 5 million euro investment by Ludgate Environmental Fund, a 1 million euro investment from Mitsubishi UFJ Capital 500,000 euro from the existing shareholders.

Micropelt's energy harvesting technology is based on the Peltier effect and early applications include radiator valve status monitoring and control, industrial automation and remote monitors that assess the condition of technical equipment.

"Eliminating the disposal and maintenance of batteries is important and the Micropelt solution has application across a wide number of industrial sectors," said Bill Weil, chief investment officer at Ludgate Investments Ltd., in a statement issued by Micropelt.

As part of the company's global expansion and commercialization of its technology, Micropelt recently agreed distribution relationships with Arrow in Europe, Tokyo Electronic Device and Hitachi High-Tech Materials Corporation in Japan.


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www.micropelt.com

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TAG:Peltier effect energy harvesting Micropelt Ludgate Peltier semiconductor

Micropelt raises funds to expand energy harvest work

Micropelt raises funds to expand energy harvest work

LONDON – Thermoelectric cooling and energy harvest company Micropelt GmbH (Frieburg, Germany) has raised 6.5 million euro (about $8.5 million) to drive global expansion.

In June 2011 the company opened thin-film thermoelectric production facility in Halle, Germany, and since then the company has been striving to garner orders, increase production volumes and reduce unit costs. Micropelt was founded in 2006.

The recent funds include a 5 million euro investment by Ludgate Environmental Fund, a 1 million euro investment from Mitsubishi UFJ Capital 500,000 euro from the existing shareholders.

Micropelt's energy harvesting technology is based on the Peltier effect and early applications include radiator valve status monitoring and control, industrial automation and remote monitors that assess the condition of technical equipment.

"Eliminating the disposal and maintenance of batteries is important and the Micropelt solution has application across a wide number of industrial sectors," said Bill Weil, chief investment officer at Ludgate Investments Ltd., in a statement issued by Micropelt.

As part of the company's global expansion and commercialization of its technology, Micropelt recently agreed distribution relationships with Arrow in Europe, Tokyo Electronic Device and Hitachi High-Tech Materials Corporation in Japan.


Related links and articles:

www.micropelt.com

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Arrow to deliver Micropelt’s thermoharvesting power module

Wireless sensors push smart machines into Green revolution

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TAG:Peltier effect energy harvesting Micropelt Ludgate Peltier semiconductor

Spreadtrum profit squeezed but outlook lifts

Spreadtrum profit squeezed but outlook lifts

LONDON – Fabless chip company Spreadtrum Communications Inc. (Shanghai, China) has reported that its sales revenue for the first quarter of 2012 was $161.1 million, down 16.2 percent sequentially but up 17.5 percent from the same quarter a year before.

The company made net income of GAAP net income of $24.3 million, compared with $35.2 million in the previous quarter and $27.5 million in 1Q11.

"During the first quarter, we laid a strong foundation for 2012 growth in smartphones with more than 200 design wins for our 1-GHz TD-SCDMA and 1-GHz EDGE/Wi-Fi smartphone chipsets. Our smartphone platform is now commercially available and we expect to ship more than one million units in the second quarter," said Leo Li, chairman and CEO of Spreadtrum, in a statement.

The company expects 2Q12 revenue to be between $170 million and $175 million, a sequential and year-over-year increase of 6 to 9 percent.

One reason for the decline in profit was declining ASPs for chipsets amid increasing competition. However, Spreadtrum said it has secured more than twenty-five additional premium smartphone design wins for its TD-SCDMA baseband modems, mostly with first tier customers in China.

In the first quarter, Spreadtrum made a $10 million equity investment in handset brand Micromax, which is the third largest handset brand in India.


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www.spreadtrum.com

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TAG:Spreadtrum mobile TD SCDMA 3G 4G semiconductor