Electronics Weekly articles from April 2006

Electronics Weekly archives from April 2006

Features.
April 5, 2006... Today's consumers take for granted the ability of the electronics industry to squeeze more functions into smaller, more portable devices. Mobile phones are cameras and are now adding flash features; still cameras shoot video; laptop computers...

Features.
April 5, 2006... The appearance in the near future of high performance consumer products, such as 3G mobile communications and high definition TV, are pushing the operating parameters of classic RF connectors such as BNC, SMA and N-Type. The design and use...

Features.
April 5, 2006... Component obsolescence is today an accepted problem [degrees] as much for producers of mainstream electronics as for those working on military, high-reliability and long-lifetime products. Thanks to the efforts of organisations such as the...

A/D converters set analogue alight at National.
April 5, 2006... National Semiconductor is targeting the A/D converter market to fuel its growth in the analogue semiconductor market. The company currently has a five per cent share of a market sector where the top five players alone generate close to two...

Fabless chip firm highlights need for high performance computers.
April 5, 2006... ClearSpeed Technology claims there is growing demand for high performance computers outside of government and academic labs. The company listed aerospace and automotive, energy, oil and gas and life sciences as some of the areas that are...

Holographic storage company claims record for data density.
April 5, 2006... Colorado-based holographic storage firm InPhase Technologies claims to have achieved "the highest data density of any commercial technology" by recording 515Gbit/in2. "InPhase will deliver the industry's first holographic drive and media...

TI considers CMOS-fabbed RF for mobile DSP market.
April 5, 2006... By Richard Wilson richard.wilson@rbi.co.uk Texas Instruments is considering integrating RF elements into DSP devices for the mobile phone market. This follows the acquisition last year of technology which allows multi-gigahertz RF circuits...

News.
April 5, 2006... Sion Davies PCB assembly and contract manufacturer Exception EMS has recruited Sion Davies as operations director. He was previously manager of operations at Sony's site at Pencoed, South Wales and worked for Sony for 15 years. Chris...

Veggie mobile casing resists heat and falls.
April 5, 2006... NEC and Unitika have developed a plant-based material for mobile phone cases. Used in the DoCoMo N701iECO (pictured above), the plastic is polylactic acid (PLA). "This is plastic in which polymerisation of lactic acid is achieved...

Tool kit takes IP to application.
April 5, 2006... Harry Yeates harry.yeates@rbi.co.uk ARM has released the latest version of its RealView development suite, adding features to support hardware-software co-design in Asic, SoC and FPGA designs. Brian McAllister, director of marketing for...

February bookings boost supply industry.
April 5, 2006... Increased bookings at component distributors in February has lifted confidence in the supply industry, according to industry association Afdec. February booking figures from Afdec's members follow good figures in January. They showed that...

Students' car ready to race.
April 5, 2006... Students from the University of Birmingham's School of Engineering have designed and built their annual entry to the Formula Student competition in July. This year's car uses a new weight-saving front shear plate design that eliminates the...

Ferranti, Plessey legacy fuels analogue start-ups.
April 5, 2006... By David Manners david.manners@rbi.co.uk UK start-up activity in the analogue, mixed signal and RF area has increased tenfold in the last five years, according to Mentor Graphics. "In the UK we see ten analogue/mixed signal/RF start-ups a...

News.
April 5, 2006... Telent's shares rose over 20 per cent to reach 489p after applying to list 61,306,666 new shares at 87.5p. The firm, which is made up of the telecoms services business that was left over from the sale of Marconi to Ericsson, will release its...

News.
April 5, 2006... One man's bad news can be another man's good news. In the NAND flash memory market headlines last week talked about a 63 per cent drop in pricing so far this year, other figures came out showing that the market for NAND is expected to rise by...

News.
April 5, 2006... David Jones is the CEO of PCB firm Invotec, the biggest remaining PCB firm in the UK. What surface finishes are you recommending for lead-free circuit boards? It depends on the application and customer's preference. We offer several...

DTI invites consultation for WEEE Directive proposals.
April 5, 2006... By Steve Bush steve.bush@rbi.co.uk The DTI has released for comment its implementation proposal for the WEEE Directive in the UK. "There are no real surprises [in the proposal]," Alan Dukinfield of recycling firm RID told EW. "There is a...

Photonics firms press EU for R&D cash.
April 5, 2006... By Melanie Reynolds melanie.reynolds@rbi.co.uk Recommendations for higher national spending on photonics R&D and a pan-European strategy for the sector were presented to a EU commissioner this week by Photonics21. Photonics21 is formed from...

University unveils news podcasting.
April 5, 2006... The University of Southampton has launched a video podcast to tell people about its research and events. The School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), whose research includes multimedia and mobile communications, is running the...

News.
April 5, 2006... Dear Editor I read with interest the article in Electronics Weekly (1/3/2006) by Harry Yeates entitled "UK desperate for silicon technology R&D facility". I am a former employee of Zarlink Semiconductor based in Swindon. I recently...

Wireless gets nod for 6-8.5GHz, WiMedia wins technology battle.
April 5, 2006... By Harry Yeates harry.yeates@rbi.co.uk Peace broke out last week in the fractious world of ultra wideband (UWB), with two significant decisions paving the way for companies to develop products. First the European Electronic Communications...

Philips lines up customers for software-based GPS processor.
April 5, 2006... By Steve Bush steve.bush@rbi.co.uk Philips has demonstrated its SPOT' software GPS processor, and already has customers for the satellite navigation device. "We have design-ins, but I am not going to say with who or on what platform,"...

Cheap TV set-top policy suffocating more complex digital technology, says report.
April 5, 2006... The emphasis on low-cost set-top boxes to receive digital TV means an opportunity is being missed to encourage the take-up of more sophisticated digital technology, according to the Culture Media and Sport Select Committee. In its report...

News.
April 5, 2006... Locusts and mosquitoes are being examined by researchers at the University of Bristol to find out how their hearing works. The idea is that the behaviour could be mimicked to create microphones able to pick up very faint sounds. The locust...

News.
April 5, 2006... What: Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) Where: University of Southampton. A new facility is currently being designed after a major fire in October last year. Established: 1989, as an interdisciplinary research centre merging the...

News.
April 5, 2006... By Harry Yeates harry.yeates@rbi.co.uk A group of European researchers has managed to create an interface between the crucial signalling structure of rat neurons and a CMOS chip. The work initially offers a powerful means of testing new...

Bluetooth's medical profile.
April 5, 2006... Having the majority of consumer personal area networking devices covered, Bluetooth is making its way to medical equipment. Driving this evolution are the proven technology, reliability, being a globally accepted standard, highly secure...

Government issues clarion call for more SET undergraduates.
April 5, 2006... By Melanie Reynolds melanie.reynolds@rbi.co.uk The Government has been enthusing about the growing number of science, engineering, and technology (SET) graduates, while accepting that more must be done to convey the excitement and...

RoHS Directive seminar to focus on EDA aspects.
April 5, 2006... By Melanie Reynolds melanie.reynolds@rbi.co.uk A seminar on the RoHS Directive with a focus on design is being offered by electronic design automation software and skills training specialist Premier EDA Solutions. The firm believes current...

Features.
April 5, 2006... Apr 24: Fundamentals of FPGA Design - Bournemouth www.doulos.com Apr 24-28: Verilog Applications Workshop - Bracknell www.esperan.com Apr 25-26: Designing For Performance - Bournemouth www.doulos.com May 9-10:...

Pedal-powered generator rates 30W.
April 5, 2006... By Steve Bush steve.bush@rbi.co.uk South African wind-up radio firm Freeplay Energy has designed a 30W foot-powered generator with a battery for emergency engine starting and supplying 12V equipment. Emphasis has been placed on...

Lucent, Alcatel merger is consolidation trigger.
April 12, 2006... By Melanie Reynolds melanie.reynolds@rbi.co.uk The merger of Alcatel and Lucent Technologies marks the start of real consolidation in the telecoms industry and will push other companies to move forward with merger and acquisition plans,...

Spectacles offer bifocal vision with a full field of view.
April 12, 2006... Researchers at the University of Arizona,have developed a pair of glasses that can be switched between two different indices of refraction to provide bifocal vision with a full field of view. The glasses, which were five years in...

Graphene gives researchers a different view of electronics.
April 12, 2006... By Steve Bush steve.bush@rbi.co.uk US and French researchers are exploring thin layers of graphite, graphene, as a semiconductor. Consisting of less than 10 layers of graphite, and with a similar chicken wire structure to an unrolled...

Europe still valuable location for manufacturing, says Solectron.
April 12, 2006... By Richard Wilson richard.wilson@rbi.co.uk Western Europe remains competitive as a location for volume manufacturing despite the impact low labour cost areas such as China have had on the market, according to a senior executive at...

Wireless firm integrates FM radio into Bluetooth chipset.
April 12, 2006... CSR continues to widen its market footprint with the demonstration of its BlueCore5-FM silicon which integrates Bluetooth and FM radio functions in a single chip. BlueCore5-FM, which supports data transfer rates of up to 3Mbit/s, includes...

Spirit standards for IP packaging to 'widen scope'.
April 12, 2006... By Harry Yeates harry.yeates@rbi.co.uk Representing IP in multi-vendor EDA tool flows involves issues that still need to be addressed, according to Chris Lennard, vice-chairman of the Spirit Consortium. "The consortium is looking towards...

News.
April 12, 2006... Southampton silicon technology developer Innos has filed a patent for its e-beam lithography IC prototyping process. The process is intended for fast turnaround of RF CMOS designs, and uses equipment at the Philips MiPlaza R&D facility in...

News.
April 12, 2006... In ten years time the LED market will be bigger than the DRAM market leading to huge demand for LED driver ICs, according to Hans Rohrer, CEO of Zetex. "Twenty per cent of the world's energy gets wasted by inefficient light creation,"...

News.
April 12, 2006... Mentor Graphics has released an automated routing version of its XtremePCB design tool that can be distributed over up to 15 CPUs to cut design cycle times. XtremeAR is aimed at the large, dense digital designs that are more amenable to...

News.
April 12, 2006... Wireless chip company CSR saw its shares pushed to 1,247p, up almost 12 per cent. The firm benefited from rumours that a Bluetooth iPod is being planned. The company recently announced a further extension of its products from its core Bluetooth...

Arctic robot uses solar power.
April 12, 2006... The Cool Robot is a solar-powered four-wheel-drive autonomous science vehicle designed for summer use in the Antarctica and Greenland. Developed in New Hampshire by the US Army's Cold Regions Re-search and Engineering Laboratory, together...

News.
April 12, 2006... Apr 19-21: Printed Electronics Europe 06 conference and exhibition, Cambridge. www.printelec.com Apr 21: Wireless - the Sixth Sense seminar, Glasgow. www.innovationcentre.org/wireless Apr 25-26: Rapra conference on joining...

Business innovation scheme to target SMEs in south east.
April 12, 2006... By Alex Mayhew-Smith alex.mayhew-smith@rbi.co.uk An innovation advisory service has been set up in the south east to help SMEs and larger firms. The service is funded by the South East of England Development Agency (SEEDA) and has received...

Birth of operator heralds WiMAX service for UK.
April 12, 2006... The UK is to get a wireless broadband service based on WiMAX following the announcement of the formation of an operator, Pipex Wireless, by Intel and Pipex Communications. Intel Capital has invested $25m in the firm and Pipex has...

The future of Asics lying in the balance.
April 12, 2006... LSI Logic, a firm which built its business on custom design chips manufactured in its own fabs, threw a substantial rock into the Asic pond when it recently announced the ending of further development of its structured Asic product known as...

News.
April 12, 2006... Are 50 per cent gross margins in the analogue business a reasonable expectation? Defining a figure for typical gross margins in a sector which covers such a varied range of product types isn't straight forward. What you can say with certainty...

Linear to build first European design centre in Germany.
April 12, 2006... Linear Technology is to build a design centre in Germany, its first such facility in Europe. "By centrally locating our latest design centre on the European continent, this puts us in an even better position to develop the right products...

Digital media will drive chip market growth, claims IDT.
April 12, 2006... By Richard Ball richard.ball@rbi.co.uk Looking for the next killer application to fuel growth in the chip market is likely to be a search in vain, according to chip firm IDT. The US company said that rather than a killer application, the...

Leadtimes up as July RoHS deadline looms.
April 12, 2006... By Richard Wilson richard.wilson@rbi.co.uk Component buyers are facing increased leadtimes with one manufacturer being quoted four months for some products. The purchasing manager at one manufacturer told EW that leadtimes of specific items...

Products.
April 12, 2006... Anglia has signed a UK and Ireland distribution agreement with 8-bit microcontroller specialist Microchip Technology. Pictured are (left to right): Jim Ward, sales director at Anglia; Marta Robjohns, internal sales representative at Microchip;...

Eleksen lists on AIM and seeks staff.
April 12, 2006... Smart fabric and sensing company Eleksen has listed on the AIM stock exchange after reversing' into a shell company. The firm did not raise any money in the float and did not need to, according to chief financial officer Ted Bechman. "We...

Engineers wanted after UK firm wins R&D grant.
April 12, 2006... Cambridge-based Light Blue Optics has been awarded a [pounds sterling]75,000 R&D grant towards a colour demonstrator of its novel miniature projector, and it is looking to recruit engineers. Light Blue's projector, which only occupies...

Firms agree power-LED deal.
April 12, 2006... Philips-owned Lumileds Lighting and Toyoda Gosei have agreed to share power-LED intellectual property. "Lumileds holds valuable patents for high-brightness red LEDs and high-power blue LEDs. Toyoda Gosei likewise holds a number of valuable...

Speed is crucial for switchover to next generation network, says BT.
April 12, 2006... By Melanie Reynolds melanie.reynolds@rbi.co.uk The key to making the changeover to a next generation network (NGN) is to do it fast, according to BT. The operator planned to take five years to make the switch, but is now considering a...

News.
April 12, 2006... "A great emphasis of the TSaR group's work is on interdisciplinary research," says Professor Nick Mitchell. "Almost all of our work involves radio science, and in particular radio propagation in complex environments and remote sensing. We carry...

News.
April 12, 2006... Systems for brain-computer interaction use two different approaches, known as the p300 response and sensory motor rhythms, or SMR. The p300 technique elicits a microvolt spike in brain activity, which has a particular waveform, by using a...

Multi-core: will it fulfil its potential?
April 12, 2006... Multi-core processing is the future. Everyone says so. So why is it not moving more quickly into the industry mainstream? "Von Neumann is a poor use of scaling, all the energy is going on the communication between the processor and the...

FPGAs are the power behind image and video processing.
April 12, 2006... The Institute for Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT) at Queen's University, Belfast combines the capabilities of research groups including system-on-chip; speech, image and vision; and high performance computing. ECIT...

Innovation.
April 12, 2006... The second Innovation Showcase for Electronic products in Edinburgh's Corn Market enjoyed 20 per cent growth over the first year with 50 participants and 60 exhibits, and attendance on the day being close to 600. Both Scottish Enterprise and...

CMOS silicon set to remain chip technology 'for many decades'.
April 12, 2006... By Richard Wilson richard.wilson@rbi.co.uk CMOS will remain the chip process technology of choice for performance and cost for decades to come, according to a senior technologist. Gene Frantz, Texas Instruments principal fellow in the DSP...

Coax cable driver circuit has common mode noise cancellation.
April 12, 2006... A coaxial cable carries signal through a central wire covered by a dielectric and an outer ground shield. Sometimes with long cables, the actual value of ground is not 0.000V at both ends of the cable. This common mode voltage (CMV) between...

Lynux avionics puts reusable software in the ascendant.
April 12, 2006... The growing volume of embedded safety-critical software in avionics and other applications is threatening to create a workload overwhelming for developers and regulators alike. The recent Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reusable software...

Diamond will add sparkle to UK nanoscale research.
April 19, 2006... By Harry Yeates harry.yeates@rbi.co.uk Fundamental research in the UK into fields including materials design, spintronics, nanoscale engineering, and superconductivity will receive a boost in January next year when the Diamond Synchrotron...

News.
April 19, 2006... Japanese researchers have created a liquid silicon' that can be inkjet printed to create thin-film transistors with higher mobilities than organic semiconductors. The work could lead to a low cost, scaleable process for depositing TFTs for...

Test company seeks chipset data-sharing deal for mobiles.
April 19, 2006... By Alex Mayhew-Smith alex.mayhew-smith@rbi.co.uk Test firm RFI Global Services is negotiating with two key customers to begin sharing mobile phone chipset test data between cutomers. Richard Jacklin, RFI's director of cellular testing at...

Ofcom auctions off frequencies.
April 19, 2006... Communications regulator Ofcom has announced another two auctions of frequency spectrum at 1452-1492MHz, and 412-414 MHz with 422-424 MHz bands. Possible uses for 1452-1492MHz include mobile TV, broadband wireless access and satellite...

Ethernet flash MCUs sampling.
April 19, 2006... Freescale is sampling its first flash-based ColdFire microcontrollers with Ethernet, with USB On-The-Go to follow. Aimed at industrial control and home automation, the MCF5223x family includes 10/100 Ethernet control and PHY, as well as a...

Chip firms claim non-volatile memory is 1,000 times faster than NAND flash.
April 19, 2006... By David Manners david.manners@rbi.co.uk A number of chip firms are pursuing a route to non-volatile memory claimed to be 1,000 times faster than NAND flash, called Resistive RAM. Sharp is pursuing the technology in a collaboration with...

Spectacles incorporate directional microphones.
April 19, 2006... These glasses, originally developed at the Technical University of Delft in Holland, incorporate a directional hearing aid into the frame, to provide better selection of sounds of interest from background noise. A row of four interconnected...

Prices out of control, says analyst.
April 19, 2006... By David Manners david.manners@rbi.co.uk The semiconductor industry has lost control of its pricing, according to UK analyst Future Horizons. "One reason is the elongated recovery process after the crash which saw companies slash prices to...

News.
April 19, 2006... Neil Gaydon Neil Gaydon has been appointed as CEO of Pace Micro Technology. Gaydon is the firm's director of worldwide sales and marketing and has worked for the firm since 1995. His appointment follows the retirement of chief executive John...

News.
April 19, 2006... Dr Alf Roberts is CEO of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET). The IET was created in the recent merger of the IEE and the IIE. Was membership and recruitment falling at the IEE and IIE? No, in fact the membership of both...

News.
April 19, 2006... David Milne is the CEO of Wolfson Microelectronics. The firm floated on the London Stock Exchange in October 2003. Will mobile TV devices take off in the same way the iPod has? Mobile TV is the next great driving force for the media...

Automated RTL-to-tape-out tool tackles design costs and brings 65nm process into mainstream.
April 19, 2006... Magma Design Automation has released an automated RTL-to-tape-out tool intended to tackle escalating design costs and make 65nm processes more economically viable. The Talus tool uses a constraint Magma calls relative placement' to...

Nano memory results due out.
April 19, 2006... Atmel has announced that first product results from its nanotechnology memory collaboration with the R&D labs of the French Atomic Energy Commission CEA Leti, will be released later this year. The organisations have been collaborating on...

Photonic device challenges all-optical comms approach.
April 19, 2006... By Melanie Reynolds melanie.reynolds@rbi.co.uk US photonic specialist Infinera believes its integrated photonic chip circumvents the need to develop an all-optical network. "This is the central essence of what we're doing," said Jagdeep...

CEMs join up for surface mount and chip-on-board components.
April 19, 2006... By Steve Bush steve.bush@rbi.co.uk Two Cambridgeshire contract manufacturers have joined forces to offer chip-on-board alongside surface mount components. Prism Electronics has linked with MCE to offer the manufacturing service. "We have...

News.
April 19, 2006... NXT's shares were up 10 per cent to 44p after the firm said its chairman and non-executive directors are taking part of their fees in ordinary shares which cannot be cashed in for a minimum of three years. Earlier in the month the firm said...

Problems with PCB purchasing.
April 19, 2006... Can anyone recommend a good PCB fab house? Asks Colin Smithers, managing director at design firm Plextek It all seems fairly straightforward. You set out to design a state-of-the-art board level product that incorporates the latest BGA...

Scientists build electrode materials from viruses to boost lithium ion battery power.
April 19, 2006... US researchers have engineered viruses to build electrode materials for lithium ion batteries. The researchers recorded a reversible capacity that settled at 600mAh/g after 20 charging cycles. Led by Professor Angela Belcher, the...

3D electric field sensor videos gas-liquid mixture.
April 19, 2006... Ohio State University has scanned mixed gas-liquid-solid flow in 3D using a technique previously employed only for 2D scans. "Capacitive tomography has been practiced for many years, but not in 3D," Professor Liang-Shih Fan at the...

News.
April 19, 2006... For a start-up company to take on the giants of the industry for its first product seems like an insanely ambitious strategy, but three year-old Bristol-based Icera Semiconductor believes it can take on, and beat, the biggest companies in the...

Power drain strategies use Mosfets for battery times.
April 19, 2006... Adding processor hungry features to electronic systems can come at a cost of increased battery drain current, which equates to shorter battery operating times. One technique to conserve battery power is to use discrete semiconductor...