| Bluetooth Goes Ultra-Low-Power | |
 There's hardly a cell phone on the planet that doesn't have a Bluetooth transceiver for connecting to a wireless headset. Most new PCs now incorporate Bluetooth chips for the same purpose, letting you type while you talk or listen. Many, if not most new cars have Bluetooth to let you talk hands free while driving. However, while that's all well and good, there is a wide range of applications for which Bluetooth isn't appropriate - or at least it wasn't until now. Bluetooth Low Energy was designed from the beginning to be an ultra-low-power (ULP) protocol to service short range wireless devices that may need to run for months or even years on a single coin cell battery. More
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| 2011: A great year for low-power design, wasn't it? | |
2011 was a great year for low-power design. I don't think I can remember a year as good to low-power designers. I thought I'd devote this blog to a review of some major developments in 2011 that made low-power designers' lives easier. In fact, there's so much to talk about that I'm splitting this blog post in two. In the first half, I'll write about significant developments in standard silicon offerings including microcontrollers, embedded application processors, and FPGAs. In part B, I'll discuss some of the year's most significant developments in design at the silicon level and the implications for people who design ASICs, SoCs, and ASSPs. It truly was a bountiful year. More |
| Question of the Week: Is the rate of innovation stagnating? |  Around this time of year many people like to publish their predictions for the next year--and according to an article, the "experts and analysts" do not see a lot of innovation coming out of the United States soon. The article mentions and quotes a number of sources that suggest the rate of innovation is going to be sluggish the next few years. One source suggested that "bigger innovation labs and companies are holding back on numerous innovations until they can properly monetize them." I wonder if these observations and expectations are realistic. I see innovation every time I see some capability available for less cost, training, or skill than before. More |
| Spectral Observations |  This has been a particularly active (and more importantly, interesting) month for broadcast spectrum issues, which it's increasingly clear to me have become the hot topic in technology today (as is more generally the case for any highly valued, limited-supply resource--oil, gold, diamonds, habitable and fertile land, water, etc). Robust wireless communications is especially critical for portable devices such as cellular handsets, portable multimedia devices, tablets and laptops--which by virtue of their inherent un-tethered nature are also battery-fueled and therefore low-power-consumption-optimized. As such, I thought I'd devote this month's post to the topic. More |
| December Wireless Update: MIPS Claims First "Ice Cream Sandwich" Tablet: And Under $100 |  In what appears to be an end-run around the ARM crowd, little-known Ingenic Semiconductor, a China-based CPU provider for mobile multimedia applications, has announced worldwide availability of the world's first tablet based on Android 4.0, known as "Ice Cream Sandwich," that is retailing for less than $100 (U.S). The 7-inch Novo tablet is powered by Ingenic's JZ4770 mobile applications processor, which leverages a MIPS-Based XBurst CPU running at 1GHz and Vivante GC860 GPU. The tablet features include Wi-Fi, USB 2.0 port, HDMI 1.3, microSD card slot, front and rear cameras and 1080p 3D video decoding. Although memory is not stated, the features are enough to give pause to more expensive competitors. The Novo is made by Ainol Electronics Co., Ltd. and currently described online at www.ainovo.com. More |
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| Training Courses | |
 Fundamentals of Solar: Off-Grid
This course covers the fundamentals of off-grid, stand-alone photovoltaic (PV) systems, with the aim of providing engineers with a good overview of the technologies, topologies and electronics that make up such systems. The course content includes: · Introduction to Photovoltaic Systems · Grid-Connected vs. Off-Grid Solar Systems · Solar Energy Storage · Charge Controllers · Power Conditioning · Energy Harvesting · Integration Issue.
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. |
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