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MEMS Motion Sensors: The Technology Behind the Technology

John Donovan

MEMS motion sensors are widely used in automotive electronics, medical equipment, hard disk drives, and portable consumer electronics. Today a smart phone can hardly be called 'smart' if it doesn't include a MEMS accelerometer, gyroscope and possibly a compass, too. A small niche product five years ago, MEMS sensors now constitute a multi-billion dollar industry. So what exactly are MEMS motion sensors and how do they work? More

The incredible vanishing power of a machine instruction. Is this the way to the brain?

Steve Leibson

I attended DATE (Design and Test Europe) this month in Grenoble and was fascinated by Steve Furber's keynote titled "Biologically-inspired massively-parallel architectures-computing beyond a million processors." Furber's introductory remarks really clarify what's been happening to the energy cost per instruction executed over the past 60 years-and what's likely to happen in the future. Strike that-make it "what's got to happen." More
Touch with the Microsoft Surface 2.0
Robert Cravotta 
Over the past few years, electronic ink has been showing up in an increasing number of end-user products. Approximately ten years ago, there were a couple of competing approaches to implementing electronic ink, but E-Ink's approach has found the most visible success of moving from the lab and viably existing in production level products, such as e-readers, indicators for USB sticks or batteries, as well as watch, smart card, and retail signage displays.

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March Wireless Update: Mobile World Congress: A Success
Will StraussWith double-digit attendee growth to the 60,000 level, MWC'11 has to be labeled as a big success. Moreover, the new products introduced and the overall optimism exhibited bodes well for continued wireless market growth in 2011 and beyond. Of course, many LTE-related products were introduced along with a myriad of new software and service offerings. I'm sure that you have seen many of the news releases, so I'll only highlight a few things from MWC and some beyond MWC that I think will be of interest to you.More
April Events

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Industry News
Mentor Graphics Tessent YieldInsight Demonstrates Faster IC Failure and Yield Analysis at Fujitsu
Mentor Graphics Corporation today announced evaluation results at Fujitsu Semiconductor Ltd. that shows the Tessent YieldInsight diagnosis-driven yield analysis tool can help cut the time required to determine the cause of IC yield loss.

Dr. R. Fabian W. Pease Receives International Society for Quality Electronic Design's 2011 Quality Award
The International Society for Quality Electronic Design today announced the winner of the 2011 prestigious Quality Award (IQ-Award 2011).

MIPI CSI-2 Penetration to Surpass 70% in Computing and Consumer Electronic Devices with Image Sensors by 2016, Says In-Stat
Image sensor interfaces have historically been proprietary and/or parallel. But increasing demand for higher image resolutions is pushing the bandwidth capacity of processor-to-camera sensor interfaces beyond their capability to perform effectively.

ON Semiconductor Releases Power Factor Correction Handbook
ON Semiconductor today announced the release of the updated edition of its Power Factor Correction (PFC) Handbook.

 

Product News
STMicroelectronics Demonstrates New Ultra-Low-Power Technology for Energy-Efficient Applications
STMicroelectronics today announced that it has successfully demonstrated a next-generation variation of its world-leading smart power technology.

Cadence Releases Industry's First Wide I/O Memory Controller IP Solution
Cadence Design Systems, Inc. has announced that it is first to market with a licensable, wide I/O memory controller core, along with an integration environment, that brings PC-like performance to mobile applications like smartphones and tablets.

Microchip Introduces Low-Cost 8-bit PIC Microcontrollers With eXtreme Low Power Technology and Integrated LCD Control
Microchip Technology Inc. has announced an expansion of its 8-bit segmented LCD microcontroller (MCU) family with five new devices-the PIC16LF1902/3/4/6/7 (PIC16LF190X) MCUs.

New Tensilica IP Cores Targeted to Dataplane and Signal Processing Functions Such as Imaging, Communications and Networking, Boost Data Bandwidth 4X
Tensilica, Inc. has announced that it is extending its leadership in IP (intellectual property) cores for compute-intensive dataplane and DSP (digital signal processor) functions such as imaging, video, networking and baseband wired/wireless communications.

STMicroelectronics Introduces the Market's Smallest 3-Axis Analog Gyroscope
STMicroelectronics has extended its motion-sensor portfolio with the market's smallest 3-axis analog-output gyroscope.

CEL's MeshConnect Sub-G Modules Deliver Superior Performance
California Eastern Laboratories (CEL) is now offering its new MeshConnect Sub-G modules, built on the highly integrated circuits (ICs) for wireless applications, the Si1000 and Si1002 from Silicon Labs.

Picochip announces volume shipments of PC333 basestation-on-a-chip
Picochip has announced that it has commenced volume production of the PC333, the industry's most advanced basestation-on-a-chip solution.

Training Courses

computerFundamentals of Solar: Grid Connected

Photovoltaic (PV) solar technology is at the heart of the multi-billion dollar clean/green/renewable energy industry, powering everything from road signs to entire cities. This course covers the fundamentals of grid-connected PV systems, with the aim of providing engineers with a good overview of the technologies, topologies and electronics that make up such systems.

 

computerFundamentals of Microcontrollers

EE Times Fundamentals course provides an introduction to microcontrollers (MCUs) including usage and selection of the devices. The course also includes a video explaining showing how to get started with an mbed evaluation kit.

John Donovan
Editor/Publisher, Low-Power Design & Low-Power Wireless