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How Green Is Your MCU?

John Donovan

Ever since Intel hit the Power Wall in 2004-when the Pentium 4 drew 150W and approached 1000 pins-low-power design has come into its own. Over the past decade smart engineers have come up with a seemingly endless number of innovative tricks to stave off the frequently predicted death of Moore's law, which was supposed to happen first at 90 nm, then 65 nm than 40 nm, etc. Still, when gate doping variations of several atoms can cause a transistor to fail, the laws of physics are finally asserting themselves. As one wit observed recently about Moore's law, the party isn't over but the police have arrived and the volume has been turned way down. More
Solar cell seller sold on California

Steve Leibson

There's an interesting, well-written article on California's and Silicon Valley's suitability as a continuing base for high-tech companies and manufacturers published in today's San Jose Mercury News. If you've been in high-tech for any length of time, you've repeatedly heard the bad rap on California: high taxes, high living costs, impenetrable state and local bureaucracies, crumbling infrastructure, etc. Sounds bad, doesn't it? Looks bad too, when viewed with a certain lens. However, this bad rap doesn't explain away the fact that a lot of high tech firms continue to headquarter in Silicon Valley and startups do decide to plant their first tender roots here. More
The battle for multi-touch
Robert CravottaAs with most technologies used in the consumer space, they take a number of years to gestate before they mature enough and gain visibility to end users. Capacitive-based multi-touch technology burst into the consumer conscience with the introduction of the iPhone. Dozens of companies have since entered the market to provide capacitive touch technologies to support new designs and applications. The capabilities that capacitive touch technology can support, such as improved touch sensing for multiple touches, detecting and filtering unintended touches (such as palm and cheek detection), as well as supporting a stylus, continues to evolve and improve. More
April Wireless Update: Intel Bulks up Again in LTE
Will StraussIn early March, Intel purchased most of the assets of Cairo-based SysDSoft, one of only two licensors of LTE level-2-and-above software stacks. It is unlikely that Intel will allow the entity to continue the licensing business, so that leaves U.K.-based 4M Wireless as the last man standing in the merchant LTE level-2+ stack business.  Intel hired about 100 of SysDSoft's engineers and it will be interesting to see how Intel's new Cairo operations interact with their extensive wireless development center in Haifa.  However, it appears that Intel Mobile Communications in Germany (formerly Infineon Technologies) will be the primary interface with the newly acquired Egypt operation. More
April Events

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Industry News
TI introduces OpenLink, open source wireless connectivity solutions for low power applications
Texas Instruments Incorporated has announced delivery of a mobile-grade, battery-optimized Wi-Fi solution to the open source Linux community as part of the OpenLink project, focused on providing a wide range of wireless connectivity solutions for native Linux.

Over 225 Million Tablet PC Image Sensors to Ship Using MIPI in 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.

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.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES enters a broad strategic partnership with imec
GLOBALFOUNDRIES has signed a strategic long-term partnership on sub-22nm CMOS scaling and GaN-on-Si technology with the nanoelectronics R&D center imec.
Product News
TI simplifies microcontroller development with free Grace software platform
Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) today announced the Grace software platform, a free visual plug-in that enables developers to easily enable and configure ultra-low-power MSP430 microcontroller peripherals through a graphical user interface (GUI).

Microchip Expands Low-Power Leadership With Latest 16-bit eXtreme Low Power PIC Microcontroller
Microchip Technology Inc. today announced it has expanded its low pin-count 16-bit eXtreme Low Power PIC MCUs by adding an on-chip 12-bit ADC, EEPROM, intelligent mTouch capacitive sensing, and the capability to run from a 5V supply.

NXP Extends Fully Scalable USB Portfolio With LPC11U00 Cortex-M0 Series
NXP Semiconductors has announced its LPC11U00 series - a low-cost ARM Cortex-M0 based microcontroller featuring a new, highly flexible USB architecture, as well as a smart card interface.

Cadence Announces Availability of World's First DDR4 IP Solution
Cadence Design Systems has announced a comprehensive DDR4 solution that will enable SoC designers to take immediate advantage of the performance gains afforded by the emerging DDR4 memory standard.

Power Integrations' LinkSwitch -PH LED Driver ICs Eliminate Electrolytic Capacitors, Exceed 90% Efficiency and 0.9 Power Factor
Power Integrations has announced a new reference design (DER-278) based on the company's single-stage LinkSwitch-PH LED-driver IC family.

Low-Power, 12-bit, 1.8-V A/D Converter Consumes Only 660 mW at 500 MSPS
Analog Devices, Inc. has introduced two new data converters designed to deliver the speed and performance at low power necessary for a range of communications and industrial applications.

Cypress Introduces EZ-USB FX3 Controller, The Industry's Only Flexible SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Solution
Cypress Semiconductor Corp. today introduced its first USB 3.0 controller, the EZ-USB FX3 targeted at video and imaging, printing, scanning, and a variety of applications that need higher throughput than USB 2.0.
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