Electronics Weekly articles from May 2006

Electronics Weekly archives from May 2006

News.
May 10, 2006... The European Commission looks set to review a loophole in the RoHS Directive which may be allowing some manufacturers to claim their products are exempt from the lead-free rules. The EC has asked a number of RoHS specialists, including one...

Robot tests infant senses.
May 10, 2006... This is BabyBot, a robot modelled on the torso of a two year-old child that is being used to test models of human perception. The European ADAPT project, which involves teams from Italy, Switzerland and France, studied babies aged between...

European-Indian venture invests in chip start-ups.
May 10, 2006... By David Manners reporting from Budapest Silicon Capital, a new European-Indian venture capital fund focused exclusively on semiconductors, has funded its first start-up and has several more in the pipeline. "Silicon Capital is the world's...

Gallium nitride set to impact wireless power amp market.
May 10, 2006... By Melanie Reynolds melanie.reynolds@rbi.co.uk Gallium Nitride (GaN) will change the nature of the wireless basestation RF power amplifier market, according to analyst firm ABI Research. The firm believes that over the last two years there...

Verification platform can take any data.
May 10, 2006... Mentor Graphics has released the latest version of its Questa verification platform, and announced an advanced verification methodology (AVM) with open source test bench components, and a 23-member partner programme. Among its features are...

News.
May 10, 2006... Were you lucky enough to buy CSR shares when the firm floated? If you were, last week's Q1 results will have put a smile on your face as the firm's shares gained to reach an all time high of 1407p. Predictions from the firm of further strong...

3D antenna design increases mobile phone bandwidth.
May 10, 2006... By Steve Bush steve.bush@rbi.co.uk Barcelona-based aerial firm Fractus is designing earthed 3D structures to improve the performance of mobile phone antennas. "In conjunction with the antenna and PCB, it boosts performance and improves...

Distributor wins design-in award.
May 10, 2006... FCI has awarded distribution firm Abacus with its design-in distributor of the year award for the UK. "Abacus has demonstrated exceptional focus on developing and growing their business with FCI," said Gavin Darling, UK distribution manager for...

Altera lines up 65nm chip for launch in second half.
May 10, 2006... By David Manners reporting from Munich Altera is targeting the second half of 2006 for the launch of its first 65nm product, the Stratix III family. The firm claimed the migration to 65nm will double the density over 90nm and deliver an...

Contract manufacturers' sliding revenues promise consolidation.
May 10, 2006... Consolidation is on the way in the global contract manufacturing industry after a bad year in 2005. "Consolidation is on the horizon because of the negative growth of four of the top six EMS [electronic manufacturing services] companies,"...

News.
May 10, 2006... Raytheon System has been testing the tactical ground stations that are part of the Ministry of Defence's Airborne Stand-Off Radar (Astor) programme. Raytheon is prime contractor on the Astor programme.

News.
May 10, 2006... May 15-19: Mach 2006, manufacturing technologies exhibition. www.mach06.com May 16-18: NEEDS 2006, Electrex, Drives and Controls and Air-Tech exhibitions, NEC Birmingham. www.electrex06.com May 17: Automotive EMC 2006 Conference...

wally rhines CEO of mentor graphics.
May 10, 2006... Walden Rhines is CEO of EDA firm Mentor Graphics. He has previously been the executive v-p of Texas Instruments' semiconductor group. Why did you choose to join the EDA industry? Actually, I had a fairly onerous "non-compete" agreement with...

Memory firm gets $15.5m to develop low-power project.
May 10, 2006... Non-volatile memory developer Cavendish Kinetics has raised $15.5m in second-round funding. The firm said the funds will be used to continue developing its Nanomech' micromachine technology. "There are growing demands in automotive,...

Comms institute aims to become 'largest in Europe'.
May 10, 2006... By David Manners david.manners@rbi.co.uk Swansea University's Institute for Advanced Telecommunications (IAT) is now fully funded, has recruited its core staff and is set to become "the largest institution for telecommunications at any...

Ethernet firm in merger to develop 10Gbit/s networks.
May 10, 2006... Cambridge-based Ethernet developer Level 5 Networks has merged with US firm Solarflare Communications, which makes mixed signal chips for 10Gigabit Ethernet. The incorporated company, which has a total of $50m backing, will be called...

News.
May 10, 2006... Dear Editor, I note that Renee Ludwig of Lavelle Industries (Dr RoHS 22/3/2006) is having problems with detecting hexavalent chromium in the plating of metal parts. We source many of our components from the Far East and whenever we...

Positive outcome boosts draft Battery Directive after recycling target agreed.
May 10, 2006... By Steve Bush steve.bush@rbi.co.uk The draft Battery Directive is approaching sign-off after the European Parliament and Council agreed a recycling target for batteries not containing cadmium or lead. The Parliament was pushing for 55 per...

European design work increases on global scale.
May 10, 2006... By David Manners reporting from Budapest Europe is increasing the proportion of electronics design activity which it undertakes, according to Jean-Philippe Dauvin, group v-p and chief economist of STMicroelectronics. "Europe is gaining...

News.
May 10, 2006... This IBM logo, which is made from lines of DNA fragments 59-79nm wide, was written by researchers at the company's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California, using an atomic force microscope (AFM) tip. The team developed a technique of...

News.
May 10, 2006... london university opens MSc in nanotechnology University College London (UCL) has launched an MSc in nanotechnology intended to satisfy "mounting industry demand for highly skilled graduates". The course will start in September and be taught by...

News.
May 10, 2006... By Harry Yeates harry.yeates@rbi.co.uk Plastic optical fibre (POF) promises to enable denser, lower power, more robust deployments of 10Gbit Ethernet enterprise networks. Nick Weiner, CTO of Bristol analogue and mixed signal IC developer...

News.
May 10, 2006... High level behavioural modelling has been a significant aim of the electronic design automation industry for several years now. As systems become more complex, with multiple processor cores and many peripherals in the single chip, it is...

The value of IP.
May 10, 2006... When did you last think about or concern yourself with intellectual property (IP)? Not for a while? The problem with IP-related issues is they are strategic, which for a lot of us means important but not urgent'. Also in many people's view IP...

News.
May 10, 2006... Dear Dr RoHS Our company develops and manufactures devices that are connected to water meters for the purpose of remote monitoring of water consumption, as well as for detection of potential leaks. The equipment does not perform any...

MEMS cooling pump uses electric fields to drag water through channels on chip.
May 10, 2006... By Steve Bush steve.bush@rbi.co.uk Engineers at Purdue University in the US have developed a micromachined pump to circulate cooling water through channels etched into a chip. "Because it's a MEMS pump, we were able to integrate the entire...

News.
May 17, 2006... Almost every electronics company in the UK will be affected by a new EU Directive which aims to cut energy consumption. "It promises to have an even more profound effect on industry than the RoHS Directive," Gary Nevison who heads RoHS work at...

News.
May 17, 2006... What: The Scottish Microelectronics Centre (SMC). Where: Located on the King's Buildings science and technology campus of The University of Edinburgh. Established: July 2000 People: The cleanroom operations director is Tom...

Japan plans 45nm foundry and mulls memory merger.
May 17, 2006... By David Manners david.manners@rbi.co.uk Japan is about to implement a further radical restructuring of its semiconductor industry under the auspices of the Ministry for Economics Trade and Industry (METI). One proposed plank in the...

News.
May 17, 2006... Welsh semiconductor equipment manufacturer Syniad Systems has won a contract to develop the next generation of wafer sorting machine. The order is from an unnamed UK semiconductor processing facility and will lead to more than [pounds...

News.
May 17, 2006... GSPK Circuits is the first PCB manufacturer to be awarded with the RoHS trusted service Kitemark by the BSI. The Kitemark was created by the BSI as a means to verify and accredit those firms which have put in place the necessary business...

Boundary scan test system firms push JTAG on-chip test technology.
May 17, 2006... Boundary scan test system suppliers at Nepcon last week were stepping up their activities to encourage wider adoption of the on-chip test technology which is defined by the JTAG standard. Jtag Technologies was debuting its ProVision tool...

Business on up as firms look to RoHS deadline.
May 17, 2006... By Richard Wilson reporting from Birmingham Manufacturers and test firms talked confidently at the Nepcon Electronics exhibition last week about business conditions in the UK electronics market in the run up to the July deadline for the...

JTAG benefits help designers.
May 17, 2006... Greater use of difficult-to-probe micro-BGA and chipscale packages will make the adoption of JTAG boundary scan on-chip test techniques more cost and time effective, said test system supplier Xjtag. "I believe we need to educate the market...

Manufacturers could struggle to meet demand with lead-times under pressure, says Charcroft.
May 17, 2006... Manufacturers may not have recovered sufficiently from the last boom-bust cycle to meet a sustained increase in demand, according to Edmund Coady, sales director of distributor and manufacturer, Charcroft Electronics. "Lead-times are...

Pirelli makes tracks in GSM handset market.
May 17, 2006... By Melanie Reynolds melanie.reynolds@rbi.co.uk Pirelli Broadband Solutions has entered the handset market with a low cost, dual mode GSM/WiFi phone which it believes will bring fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) technology to a wider market....

News.
May 17, 2006... Axis Electronics has been awarded a contract from Arinc to build a system component which will allow aircraft passengers to safely use their mobile phones. Axis will make the AeroMobile cell phone radio frequency management unit. Thierry...

News.
May 17, 2006... Shares in Filtronic gained over 17 per cent to reach 207p after the firm said it is in talks with a potential buyer for its basestation transmit receive module and power amplifier businesses. The manufacturer has said it is in exclusive...

Foundry prepared for 65nm volume.
May 17, 2006... By David Manners david.manners@rbi.co.uk TSMC has announced it is open for volume foundry business at the 65nm node with a low power version of the process and other versions will follow. "Volume in the foundry business means that you've...

Web service helps firms to navigate RoHS.
May 17, 2006... Warwickshire-based environmental consultancy Eco3 has launched a self-help web service for the RoHS and WEEE Directives. "This legislation will affect thousands of firms who make or import any electrical product," said Eco3 consultant Mark...

News.
May 17, 2006... DeepStream Technologies has appointed Philippe Vedel, as its vice-president of sales and marketing. He previously worked for more than nine years at technology firm Eaton Corporation. Toumaz Technology has appointed Dr Ian Lindsay McWalter...

Database links female engineers.
May 17, 2006... The UK's female scientists, engineers and technologists are being encouraged to register their details on an online database which will provide links with other women, opinion formers and decision makers. Former Young Woman Engineer of the...

Plain vanilla CMOS turns Neapolitan.
May 17, 2006... Not so long ago it was received wisdom that plain vanilla' CMOS was a pretty ubiquitous technology, available at multiple foundries and not regarded as a significant competitive differentiator. How times have changed. Xilinx has just come...

TONY HARKER CEO of ISLI.
May 17, 2006... Tony Harker is CEO of the the Institute for System Level Integration (ISLI). The ISLI provides postgraduate education, professional training and research in system level integration and system-on-chip. How much of your time is spent...

Transistor testing costs are a 'serious' problem.
May 17, 2006... By Alex Mayhew-Smith alex.mayhew-smith@rbi.co.uk The cost of testing a transistor will approach and may exceed the cost of manufacturing it, Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi at the University of Southampton, has warned. Al-Hashimi, who is at the...

Analysts speculate on reasons behind reorganisation of Intel's memory unit.
May 17, 2006... By David Manners david.manners@rbi.co.uk Speculation around the future of Intel's memory division has been raised by the company's reorganisation of the business unit. Earlier this month, Intel told employees that the company's memory...

Use your brains for chip design and testing.
May 17, 2006... Semiconductor chips today are stunningly reliable. They perform hundreds of millions of operations a second and keep working for years. Usually we throw them away because we want the latest product, not because the old one has stopped working....

4GHz multicore processor uses four DSPs for VoIP gateways.
May 17, 2006... Wireless basestations and voice-over-IP gateways are the main technology drivers for Freescale Semiconductor's most powerful DSP silicon, announced this week. The 4GHz processor combines no fewer than four StarCore DSP cores each running...

Spectrum issues and cost of roll-out will determine mobile TV technology.
May 17, 2006... By Melanie Reynolds melanie.reynolds@rbi.co.uk The cost of rolling-out the technology and spectrum availability will be the major factors in determining which of the various competing mobile TV technologies will survive. "I would be...

RF chip takes six frequency bands.
May 17, 2006... London-based RadioScape has announced a software-controlled, single chip RF front-end that can handle six frequency bands for digital and analogue radio. Available only in a module, the IC offers Band III and L-Band for DAB digital radio,...

Incubator sends companies to US university in start-up deal.
May 17, 2006... SETSquared, the South-West incubator, has extended its reach to the US and expects soon to finalise a joint arrangement on start-up companies with IMEC. Under an agreement with the University College of San Diego, SETSquared is paying to...

Features.
May 17, 2006... In today's fast moving world, products have become more sophisticated, while at the same time the life cycle has become shorter and the market has become even more price sensitive. This has led to increased pressure on embedded application...

Dual conductor transmission produces travelling wave and reduces clock noise.
May 17, 2006... By Steve Bush steve.bush@rbi.co.uk Californian start-up Multigig has a resonant transmission line clocking technique claimed to increase clock purity and cut GHz clock network power consumption by 75 per cent. Fast ADCs will gain, said the...

News.
May 24, 2006... The UK should look to the US in its development of an LED lighting industry, claims the UK's Photonics Cluster following a DTI-sponsored Global Watch mission to Japan and the US. "The key finding from the mission was that the technology to...

News.
May 24, 2006... A standard for automating low power chip design has been proposed by a consortium of firms spread across the industry. The Power Forward Initiative has been set up by Cadence, and the official list of PFI collaborators include AMD, ARM,...

DRAM IP company branches out with complete patent packages and support.
May 24, 2006... By David Manners david.manners@rbi.co.uk Rambus, the DRAM interface IP supplier, is looking for customers prepared to take a total package of patents as well as product licences backed by engineering services. The firm may also be branching...

Chip executives debate industry issues before picking up guitars.
May 24, 2006... Speakers at the IEF2006 conference in Budapest highlighted key trends in the semiconductor industry, and then played the blues. "There are 200 active 65nm designs of which 50 had taped out in February. There was a dramatic increase...

Low-power Mosfets are fail-safe.
May 24, 2006... California's Advanced Linear Devices (ALD) has announced a range of depletion-mode Mosfet arrays. "Normally on' without applied power, these devices are for fail-safe circuits in alarms, battery back-up circuits and energy harvesting,"...

News.
May 24, 2006... Collimator front frosting can increase the light output from high-power LED lighting assemblies. "Frosting gives a two to three per cent gain," Ian Bryant, business development manager at collimator maker Carclo, told EW. This was not the...

Plextek builds 5GHz antenna demonstrator.
May 24, 2006... Plextek has designed and built a 5GHz wireless LAN adaptive antenna demonstrator for comms regulator Ofcom. The project, part of a consortium led by Vector Fields, is intended to ensure the optimal use of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is...

Plastic Logic could take manufacturing partners.
May 24, 2006... By Steve Bush steve.bush@rbi.co.uk Polymer semiconductor firm Plastic Logic is considering its manufacturing strategy, which includes the possibility of partnerships to support volume production. "We will decide by the end of the year,"...

Report presses regulator to increase unlicensed band power transmission.
May 24, 2006... By Melanie Reynolds melanie.reynolds@rbi.co.uk An increase in the power which can be transmitted over the licence-exempt 2.4GHz band is being recommended to regulator Ofcom as it is considered that the benefits outweigh the costs of...

Inductive sensor company wins [pounds sterling]100m orders.
May 24, 2006... TT Electronics said it has taken orders worth over [pounds sterling]100m for its Autopad inductive sensors. The firm was commenting on its trading position. "In the electronic sector passive component orders are up by more than 15 per cent...

BT rolls out wireless networks in six cities.
May 24, 2006... City-wide WiFi wireless networks are to be rolled out by BT in six UK cities - Birmingham, Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool, Cardiff and Westminster - following agreements with local councils. BT has been working with Intel to develop the...

News.
May 24, 2006... The sheer complexity of finding solutions to the problem posed by the power ceiling on IC design means that it has taken some three years from when ARM started its Intelligent Energy Management (IEM) project to when IEM will be used in a...

News.
May 24, 2006... David Young is the MARS integrated logistics support manager at Raytheon Systems. This month he takes over as chairman of the Component Obsolescence Group (COG). Why should companies join or at least take an interest in the activities of...

Intersil draws up plans to push into automotive analogue ICs.
May 24, 2006... By David Manners david.manners@rbi.co.uk Intersil is putting together a team to target the automotive analogue IC market and other high-reliability chip sectors. "I've appointed a vice-president and general manager to specialise in this...

Patents boost Tensilica's IP position.
May 24, 2006... Tensilica claims it has taken a dominant position in configurable processor IP after getting a number of patents approved, and fighting off an anonymous challenge to one of its core patents. "We have the predominant patent portfolio in the...

UK celebrates 85th birthday of the robot.
May 24, 2006... The Cambridge Robot Project has been celebrating the 85th anniversary of the invention of the robot with film events, an exhibition and discussions. Kathleen Richardson, a social anthropologist at the university, told EW: "I think the...

WiMAX radio reconfigurable 100MHz to 6GHz in the field.
May 24, 2006... Belgium-based fabless chip firm AsicAhead is claiming to have the only WiMAX single chip programmable radio that can be reconfigured in the field to support multiple frequency bands. "We have maximised the level of integration and...

Liquid chip cooling technique can achieve chill densities of 300W/cm2.
May 24, 2006... By Harry Yeates harry.yeates@rbi.co.uk IBM has developed a technique for liquid cooling chips using branched, tree-like manifolds to feed an array of 50,000 nozzles and cool power densities of 300W/cm2 with a single phase water cooler. The...

Near-field communications in all mobile phones, claims IBM.
May 24, 2006... Near-field communications (NFC) embedded in mobile phones is becoming a crucial technology, enabling users to perform a variety of secure transactions via their handset, according to IBM. "All your mobile phones will eventually contain...

Power IC cuts costs.
May 24, 2006... For low-power applications - those that require 4W or less - linear-regulated power supplies have historically been a popular choice thanks to their simplicity and low cost. However, these are now falling out of favour. Many linears are sold as...

Wolfson, ARM and universities go deep sub-micron.
May 24, 2006... Wolfson Microelectronics and ARM are collaborating with five UK universities to use distributed Grid computing to develop next generation integrated circuits. The [pounds sterling]5.3m project is funded by the Engineering and Physical...

News.
May 24, 2006... nano firm wins DTI grant for active cathodes Southampton nanotechnology materials company Nanotecture has been awarded a [pounds sterling]131,000 grant by the DTI to support a two year project to develop active cathodes for high-performance...

News.
May 24, 2006... virtual version of NEC Papero personal robot NEC has come up with a virtual version of the PaPeRo robot developed by its Personal Robot Research Center. PaPeRo CG is an avatar with which users can interact via a PC or PDA in the same way as...

Features.
May 24, 2006... In most modern power semiconductor applications there is a need to carefully manage the heat energy dissipated within those applications. Typically the Mosfets used as power switches within such applications are a significant source of heat,...

Features.
May 24, 2006... Designers are under constant pressure to improve the efficiency of power supplies. Regulations, cost savings, reliability and emerging technologies are all major drivers. The environmental reason is a straightforward one; more efficiency equals...

Complete lighting assemblies shine at UK LED conference.
May 24, 2006... Excitement in the general lighting industry over the potential of high-power LEDs is creating a bonanza for electronics component suppliers. So much so, that firms which previously only operated in a narrow segment of the market are now...

July too early to bring Category 9 into RoHS.
May 24, 2006... Dear Dr RoHS I noted the article in the current Electronics Weekly regarding monitoring and control device exemption from RoHS. Our business is instruments for electrostatic measurements and as such we had understood that we came within...

FRAM and flash memory combined on microcontroller.
May 24, 2006... By Steve Bush steve.bush@rbi.co.uk Ramtron has introduced a 8051 microcontroller with 8kbyte of on-board FRAM. The MCU also has flash memory, so why the FRAM? "FRAM can take endless write-erase cycles, flash and EEPROM are limited. FRAM...

Features.
May 31, 2006... After years of promise, 2005 saw sales of organic LED (OLED) displays exceed $500m. Most of these displays were based on passive matrix mode with a small physical size and low screen resolution displaying up to four colours only. Key...

News.
May 31, 2006... UK start-ups and SMEs have been left confused and frustrated by changes to a Government scheme intended to provide them with R&D funding. Recent alterations to guidelines on how the Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) should be...

News.
May 31, 2006... UK RoHS Directive enforcer the National Weights and Measures Laboratory (NWML) has issued its RoHS enforcement guidelines. Aiming to produce a level playing field across Europe, the document has been written in consultation with the other...