| Brian Dipert Joins Low-Power Design |
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It's with great pleasure that I welcome my old friend and ex-EDN Senior Technical Editor Brian Dipert to the staff at Low-Power Design, where he joins his fellow EDN alumni Steve Leibson, Robert Cravotta, and yours truly.
Brian spent 14 years as a technical editor at EDN, where he published his well read Brian's Brain blog and innumerable technical articles, for which he won a Jesse Neal Gold Award in 2008. Prior to joining EDN Brian spent eight years at Intel as a design engineer and engineering manager, helping to architect Intel's Series 2 flash memory card ASICs.
Please check out Brian's new blog regularly as well as those of his new colleagues and join me in welcoming Brian to the Low-Power Design community.
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| More Than MEMS |
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The fact that I spend too much time focusing on consumer electronics was brought home to me vividly by a visit to the Sensors Expo 2011 in Chicago. Far from the niche show that I expected, it was swamped by over 4,000 attendees checking out 140 exhibiting companies, making navigating the aisles a good application for GPS, LIDAR, a 3-axis accelerometer and a collision avoidance system. More |
| Need to cut IP power? (Who doesn't?) "Press here" says Calypto |
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All SoCs are built with IP blocks. Some of those are legacy IP blocks. Some are purchased from other vendors. Some are developed in-house. All of them draw power-static and dynamic power. At nanometer lithographies, the way to cut static power is through circuit tricks like high-Vt transistors and by powering down entire blocks when not needed. The way to cut dynamic power within an IP block is to stop clocking anything that doesn't need to be clocked. Designers can gate clocks during the development of an IP design but what about existing IP blocks? Some can be retrofitted with clock gating but the ease of that exercise depends on how familiar the IP designer is with that IP block and how well documented the block is. More |
| Touch me (too) tender |
 A recent video of a fly activating commands on a touchscreen provides an excellent example of a touchscreen implementation that is too sensitive. In the video, you can see the computing system interpreting the fly's movements as finger taps and drags. Several times the fly's movement causes sections of text to be selected and another time you can see selected text that is targeted for a drag and drop command. Even when the fly just momentarily bounces off the touchscreen surface, the system detects and recognizes that brief contact as a touch command. More |
| Wireless PANning: Which (If Any) Standard Will Be The Last One Standing? |
 Now that the snow is finally starting to fade away here at 7,000 feet in the Sierras, I'm phasing out my winter addiction, skiing (although Squaw Valley is re-opening next weekend), and transitioning to my primary summer craving, long-distance running. Perhaps not surprisingly, opportunities to merge my twin passions of fitness and technology tend to catch my eye. To wit, the coolest tech toy I've ever purchased (and trust me, I've acquired a lot of tech toys over the years), is my Garmin ForeRunner GPS watch. More |
| June Wireless Update: NVIDIA's Icera Purchase Changes the Cellular Chip Landscape |
 As I suggested in my November 3, 2010 newsletter, graphics leader NVIDIA has purchased Icera Semiconductor for $375 million in cash. I personally think that was a bargain price for Nvidia, since the acquisition now puts it on a level that could rival Qualcomm, Intel and ST-Ericsson in the fast-growing LTE cellphone chip market. Nvidia's Tegra 2 has been successful in the smartphone and tablet application processor marketplace and Icera's upcoming E410 LTE baseband/RF platform is the only chipset besides Qualcomm's that has demonstrated integrated 2G/3G/4G with tri-mode handover. The Icera multimode LTE baseband chip has been the only alternative to Qualcomm for test equipment and operator reference user equipment (UE) for their own multimode verification. More |
| Industry News |
Silicon Labs Ships One Billion Broadcast Radio ICs Based on Pioneering Digital Architecture
Reaching a major milestone in the broadcast audio market, Silicon Laboratories Inc. has announced that it has shipped its one billionth broadcast radio IC.
Imec processes first power devices on 200mm CMOS-compatible GaN-on-Si
Imec and its partners in the GaN industrial affiliation program (IIAP) have produced device-quality wafers with GaN/AlGaN layers on 200mm silicon wafers.
National Instruments to Acquire AWR Corporation, a Leader in RF Design Tools
National Instruments has announced that it has signed a definitive merger agreement under which NI will acquire AWR Corporation (AWR).
Xilinx Acquires Sarance Technologies
Xilinx, Inc. has announced its acquisition of Sarance Technologies, completing its industry-leading technology portfolio for addressing next generation line card applications by adding premier connectivity communications capabilities.
Cadence and TSMC Collaborate to Deliver DFM Services for TSMC Advanced Processes
Cadence Design Systems, Inc. has announced it has collaborated with TSMC to deliver their customers DFM expertise and technology in a service model.
Worldwide Smartphone Chip Revenue CAGR to Approach 21% 2009-2015, Says In-Stat
There is little question that smartphone shipments are increasing by leaps and bounds every year, and that these devices are being enabled with more processing power to perform complex tasks on multiple technologies.
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| Training Courses |
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 Fundamentals 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.
Fundamentals 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. |
