Electronics Weekly articles from September 2004

Electronics Weekly archives from September 2004

UK system-on-chip initiative seeks 'substantial' funding.
September 1, 2004... The industry-backed initiative to support system-on-chip design in the UK is preparing to make a fresh bid for substantial Government funding next month. The UKpsc initiative is also looking for support from industry body Intellect for its...

Modified polyester can protect hard disks even during very fast start-up.
September 1, 2004... The high rotational speeds of modern hard disks can cause problems with the perfluoropolyether lubricants used to protectively coat the disk surface. Centrifugal forces can create ripple effects, causing the read-head to clash with the disk;...

ISLI runs course on design for micro and nano manufacture.
September 1, 2004... The Institute for System Level Integration (ISLI) is running a three day course this month on the subject of design for micro and nano manufacture (DfMM). ISLI, which is based at the Alba Centre in Livingston, Scotland, claims DfMM methodology...

WiMAX mobility complexity causing design problems.
September 1, 2004... The complexity involved in adding mobility to the 802.16 WiMAX wide area networking standard has caught out some developers, according to one UK firm. The 802.16e modification, which is due to be published at the end of March next year, will...

Fujitsu details embedded ceramic capacitors on PCBs technique.
September 1, 2004... Fujitsu has revealed further performance details about the novel technique for layering ceramic capacitors onto FR4 PCBs which it announced last month (R&D Notes, EW 18/08/04). In the technique an aerosol of chemically active ceramic particles...

Electronics spends more on training.
September 1, 2004... The electronics sector is spending above the engineering sector average on training according to the 2003-2004 People Skills Scoreboard for the Engineering Industry. The survey, by engineering skills council SEMTA and manufacturers'...

Ribbons key to photonic circuits.
September 1, 2004... US researchers have shown that light can be guided by ribbons of crystalline oxides with a cross-section smaller than the wavelength of the light. The ribbons, many with diameters of 100-400nm, can be bent into a variety of shapes, and light...

UK technique fixes boron diffusion in SiGe.
September 1, 2004... The problem of boron diffusion in SiGe has been tackled by Innos, the Southampton-based silicon, MEMS and nanotechnology R&D outfit. The problem affects the scalability of MOS and bipolar technologies. Innos worked with the University of...

Industry body builds muscles.
September 1, 2004... Chief executive Dr Alf Roberts is keen to make the IEE more relevant to its members. He spoke to Richard Wilson ave you taken a close look at the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) recently? There is a new hard edge to the...

Agilent and Tektronix team for common probe footprint.
September 1, 2004... The common footprint used in the latest 34-channel connectorless logic analyser probes from both Agilent Technologies and Tektronix was developed by the two firms in conjunction with a major mutual customer, Agilent has told EW. Since the...

More lift for latest Epson microbot.
September 1, 2004... This is the [micro]FRII, the latest in Epson's family of flying microrobots. The machine has 30 per cent more lift than its predecessor, which was unveiled last November, thanks to a more powerful version of Epson's thin ultrasonic motors and a...

UK plans to develop magnetoresistive RAM production tool.
September 1, 2004... The UK could be among the first countries to offer production-capable tooling for magnetoresistive RAM (MRAM), following a [pounds sterling]3.3m award to south Wales-based materials processing specialist Trikon Technologies. Trikon, along with...

Plastic Logic targets 10[micro]m width inkjet printing lines.
September 1, 2004... Technology for inkjet printing lines of conductive inks and polymer semiconductors just 10[micro]m wide is the target of a project being led by Cambridge firm Plastic Logic. The company, with the University of Cambridge and materials suppliers...

Big fabless firms add weight to chip forum.
September 1, 2004... Industry leaders will be gathering together to discuss the state of the semiconductor industry next week at the IEE/FSA Semiconductor Executive Forum in London. "The event is of such significance because it is the first time that the large...

Flash memory firms converge ; as competition heats up in Q2.
September 1, 2004... The flash memory market became more competitive in Q2 as the differences between the top five suppliers decreased and Intel made a strong comeback, said analysts iSuppli. Less than four per cent of market share separates the second, third and...

Distributor eyes acquisitions to pursue European ambition.
September 1, 2004... Design-in firm Azzurri Technology is considering acquisitions in mainland Europe as it pursues its aim of becoming a pan-European technical distributor. The firm's CEO, Mike Carlucci, said there were expansion opportunities on the Continent:...

UK's position as key electronics design centre strengthened by growth in Ethernet networks.
September 1, 2004... Proliferation of Ethernet networking in factories and homes is opening up business opportunities for UK design firms. This is according to one US semiconductor supplier which has identified the UK as a strategically important market for...

UK firms cash in with linear collider following 'cold' technology decision.
September 1, 2004... UK firms could see hundreds of millions of pounds of new business over the next ten years following a decision to use so-called 'cold' technology in the proposed International Linear Collider (ILC) particle accelerator. Last week's decision...

ARM builds consumer strategy with purchase of US IP provider.
September 1, 2004... ARM has embarked on a new phase of its development with the acquisition of US IP provider Artisan Components. It continues previously avowed intentions by ARM chairman Robin Saxby: "By 2010 we want to have ARM technology in everything digital,...

Small firms make up over 99% of UK companies.
September 1, 2004... Small businesses of up to 49 people accounted for 99.2 per cent of UK companies in 2003 according to a Government report. Overall, small companies accounted for 46.2 per cent of employment and 38.3 per cent of turnover. In the natural...

Low DRAM supply to push Q4 prices.
September 1, 2004... The growing imbalance between supply and demand in the DRAM business could become much more pronounced in Q4, according to the world's largest manufacturer of DRAM, Samsung. As manufacturers switch production lines to flash memory, Samsung's...

Training shortfall blamed for job cuts in Northern Ireland.
September 1, 2004... Poor levels of investment and skills training have contributed to the loss of 16,000 manufacturing jobs in Northern Ireland in the last five years, according to the manufacturing union Amicus. "We have seen cuts right across manufacturing in...

Machine talk is opportunity for GPRS.
September 1, 2004... A significant market is opening up for GPRS 2.5G mobile technology in the machine-to-machine (M2M) data communications market, according to Basingstoke-based Alpha Micro Components. Christos Papakyriacou, MD of Alpha, said the push on GPRS so...

Actel queries 90nm benefits as Lattice moves over from 0.13[micro]m.
September 1, 2004... The next FPGA player to move onto 90nm processing is Lattice Semiconductor, but one firm still claims 90nm processes are not yet delivering benefits over 0.13[micro]m processes. "Hopefully we'll have something out on 90nm in the next couple of...

Motorola rejects PTT standards criticism.
September 1, 2004... Motorola has denied an assertion by PA Consulting that the standards for push-to-talk (PTT) over mobile phone networks, currently being reviewed by the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), are "not implementable". "It sounds crude, but if you look at...

HP switches on flat panel TVs.
September 1, 2004... As a further example of the trend by US computer companies to move into the consumer electronics industry, Hewlett-Packard has launched its first TV set. They are flat panel models: a 42 inch plasma television at $2,999 (or $4,999 for a higher...

Vauhall puts DAB radio into Astra.
September 1, 2004... Vauxhall is to fit DAB digital radio as standard in one of its Astra cars, the SXi Digital. This will be the first car in its class to offer DAB as standard. The car market is considered to be crucial for DAB as it is such a large market for...

Yorkshire batting for electronics.
September 1, 2004... Electronics Yorkshire is a new organisation designed to support and promote the region's electronics companies which employ 24,000 people and generate over [pounds sterling]3.3bn in revenues. Jointly funded by Yorkshire Forward and the Learning...

Down in the tubestation at midnight.
September 1, 2004... A European project to develop an intelligent real-time surveillance system that automatically identifies violence on underground transport has finished, with a demonstration installed in the Barcelona metro. The system could find an eager...

Green leaders wanted...
September 8, 2004... If the RoHS waste directives are to be met on time the industry needs the biggest players from each country to step forward and drag the rest towards a green future. Ann Steffora Mutschler asks 'are you up for the challenge?' o, this is...

E112: lost in legislation.
September 8, 2004... The European Commission is due to revisit the issue of locating mobiles in emergencies this year. But will it specify accuracy? And will anyone agree on a common technology? Melanie Reynolds finds out ince July last year there has been a...

Non-volatile memory structures are to come under scrutiny at IEDM this year, with flash still dominating, but newer technologies looking more like products and less like experiments.
September 8, 2004... Non-volatile memory structures are to come under scrutiny at IEDM this year, with flash still dominating, but newer technologies looking more like products and less like experiments. A team from Samsung's R&D centre in Korea will describe...

SiGe:C under spotlight as Philips adds metal emitter.
September 8, 2004... Philips has introduced a metal emitter to SiGe:C HBTs, which it says improves base current and increases open base breakdown current. It does this without reducing the structure's high cut-off frequency or collector current. Devices with...

NEC finds importance of pMOS transistor growing in future SRAM generations.
September 8, 2004... The pMOS transistor will become increasingly important in future generations of SRAM, because its contribution to soft error rates (SERs) in a cross-linked pair of CMOS inverters in an SRAM unit cell becomes comparatively greater with...

Not just displays: organic transistors show the way for image sensors.
September 8, 2004... The University of Tokyo will reveal a flexible sheet image scanner at IEDM which is laid onto the object to be scanned, and requires no scanning mechanics or optics. The device includes organic FETs and photodiodes, deposited onto a plastic...

RFEL sees cost saving with plan to remove analogue IF stage from spectrum analysers.
September 8, 2004... Isle of Wight-based DSP algorithm firm RF Engines (RFEL) aims to cut analogue IF stages out of spectrum analysers with an FPGA-based package. Called SpectraChip IF, "it provides a digital implementation of all the standard features, such as...

Plexus' PCB business wins global contract with test firm.
September 8, 2004... The UK-based PCB manufacturing operation of Plexus is to gain from a worldwide agreement between the contract firm and test company Fluke. The agreement initially involves Plexus UK manufacturing PCBs for Fluke's range of precision measurement...

Research in post-CMOS technologies.
September 8, 2004... Free-thinking scientists who fancy busting a few paradigms could do worse than respond to the latest call for proposals from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The [pounds sterling]5m Next Generation Electrophotonics call...

[pounds sterling]60m centre for training engineers.
September 8, 2004... A [pounds sterling]60m centre at Loughborough University for systems engineering was opened this summer by the minister for science Lord Sainsbury. Called the SEIC (Systems Engineering Innovation Centre), it was developed by BAE Systems,...

Antenna company develops low-cost phased-array system for use in cars.
September 8, 2004... Scottish researchers have developed a way to dramatically cut the cost of active phased-array antennas, and are looking to interest car makers. "We know we can develop and manufacture a 17mm-thick antenna you could put into the roof of a car,"...

Electronics hits interoperability hurdle with biometric passports.
September 8, 2004... The electronics industry is facing one of the biggest technology interoperability challenges over the planned introduction of biometric passports. "Electronic identity documents create issues in making sure they can be read everywhere," said...

Fabless chip firm sets its sights on Far East.
September 8, 2004... Fabless chip firm Frontier Silicon is making its move into the Asia-Pacific market after establishing an early lead in the European market for DAB chips. This week Samsung is to show a device for terrestrial digital multimedia broadcasting...

Ex-Zarlink staff form start-up marketing firm.
September 8, 2004... A group of ex-Zarlink Semiconductor staff have formed a start-up called AlphaHorizon to provide marketing services to young UK high technology companies. "In their rush to create world beating products, many start-ups lack, or fail to...

Chip growth still on track for 28%.
September 8, 2004... Worldwide semiconductor sales in July grew one per cent on June levels to reach $18bn, according to the US Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). The SIA is now projecting four to six per cent sequential growth for Q3 over Q2, and annual...

Biosensor detects water pollutants between 1ng/l to 1[micro]g/l.
September 22, 2004... The University of Southampton has made a biosensor which can detect water pollutants in the range 1ng/l to 1[micro]g/l. It is based around a sodium-doped glass slide with 3x3[micro]m potassium-doped waveguides in its surface. "The potassium...

Timebomb ticking for design houses.
September 22, 2004... There will only be three mainstream wafer fabs and no pure-play design houses in ten years' time, according to Gina Gloski, v-p and general manger of e-silicon. "In ten years' time," said Gloski, "more than 85 per cent of designs will have some...

Delegates talk chip foundry.
September 22, 2004... The spotlight at the International Semiconductor Executive Forum in London was on the role of mainland Chinese foundries and the opportunities opening up in the country. David Manners went along to listen he business and technology...

US gives green light for 90nm foundry in China.
September 22, 2004... SMIC, the Chinese foundry which raised $1.6bn in its initial public offer earlier this year, has come to an arrangement with the US to get around the provisions of the Wassernau Agreement. The agreement limits mainland China to having...

Low cost areas are a limited resource.
September 22, 2004... When the CEO of Intel believes that a South American country such as Brazil is no longer as attractive as it was as a source of low cost production then the message is obvious. Regions of very low cost electronics manufacturing have relatively...

Optical networking in the fast lane.
September 22, 2004... Embedded software suppliers need to support the changing nature of in-car networks, says Richard Wilson evelopers of operating systems for embedded systems in the automotive market have had to come to terms with that perennial networking...

Cambridge ceramic antenna firm wins development partnership with Siemens.
September 22, 2004... Siemens has signed Cambridge ceramic antenna firm Antenova as development partner for its automation and drives group. The first product as part of the agreement will be an industrial notebook, for mass production in April next year, using two...

Robotic arm in close shave with inventor.
September 22, 2004... Flexibot is a robotic arm from Staffordshire University which can walk on its own, end-over-end, along a row of docking stations. "The robot is a symmetrical arm with five degrees of freedom," inventor professor Mike Topping told EW. "The idea...

CCL targets embedded systems with XAP3.
September 22, 2004... Cambridge Consultants has unveiled its 32-bit processor core, with protected modes and mixed 16/32-bit instructions. The design adds to the firm's 16-bit XAP1 and XAP2 processors, the latter being used by CSR in its Bluetooth chipsets. "XAP3 is...

Five AVR flash chips at Atmel.
September 22, 2004... Atmel has added no fewer than five low power AVR flash microcontrollers to its MegaAVR range. "These new low power devices have a typical power consumption of 100nA at 1.8V in the power-down mode and have integrated brown out protection,...

RF chip firm unveils ZigBee development platform.
September 22, 2004... Norwegian RF chip firm Chipcon has announced a ZigBee development platform, including hardware, a protocol stack and development software. "It is widely recognised that standards such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are not suited for low-power...

'Look at medical industry' report advises safety-critical designers.
September 22, 2004... Designers of safety-critical automotive systems would do well to look to the medical device industry rather than aerospace for inspiration, claims a report from Cambridge Consultants (CCL). "The automotive industry has been trying to learn...

Microsoft settles out of court with Sendo.
September 22, 2004... The UK's only mobile phone maker Sendo has seen the end of its long-running dispute with Microsoft after settlement was reached out of court. Sendo is to receive back shares which Microsoft paid $12m for three years ago. "We've been in dispute...

Smallest tantalum capacitor hits 10[micro]F capacitance high, says AVX.
September 22, 2004... AVX claims to have the smallest tantalum capacitor with the highest volumetric efficiency on the market. The firm's 0402-sized TACmicrochip tantalum chip capacitor is now available at the all-important 10[micro]F capacitance value. "There is...

Manufacturers confident as more customers come home.
September 22, 2004... UK manufacturers are hoping to consolidate on business gains in the first half of the year as some firms see customers opting to move orders back from China. "Confidence is a lot higher and I expect the second half of the year to continue on...

Engineers wanted to develop digital audio and video chips.
September 22, 2004... Frontier Silicon is recruiting up to 20 engineers to work on digital audio and video chips and software. The firm said most of the jobs would be at its Cambridge R&D site, plus some at its headquarters in Watford. "We're now developing our...

TT Electronics sees huge rise in profits as market recovers.
September 22, 2004... TT Electronics has reported a massive hike in interim pre-tax profits to [pounds sterling]13.8m, up 52 per cent from the same period a year ago. Neil Rodgers, chief executive of the group, told EW: "It is pleasing for us and with the market...

UK start-up uses FPGAs in e-mail/web security.
September 22, 2004... An FPGA-based system for controlling e-mail content and access to websites has been developed by newly launched UK firm StreamShield Networks, a subsidiary of IT consultant Detica. "If you look at current content security companies the vast...

Sales hit at Celestica; Murata shuts Plymouth.
September 22, 2004... A sales warning has been announced by contract manufacturer Celestica, which is currently closing its Kidsgrove facility in the UK with 390 staff facing the prospect of redundancy. Talks between the company and union representatives have been...

Big growth predicted for Class D power amp.
September 22, 2004... The market for Class D audio power amplifier ICs is set to see "phenomenal growth" over the next five years, claims market research company IMS Research in a report. "Until relatively recently Class D, despite the attraction of its low power...

Centre gets [pounds sterling]4m fund to encourage women.
September 22, 2004... A centre to encourage women with science qualifications to enter or return to the science, engineering and technology (SET) sectors is being funded by [pounds sterling]4.1m from the Government. "The nation's science base is the bedrock of our...

Skills council in Jobcentre deal.
September 22, 2004... Skills council SEMTA has signed a sector wide recruitment agreement with Jobcentre Plus which will put businesses in direct touch with engineers seeking work. The programme aims to improve the image and raise the profile of the engineering...

Mobile 3G threat to WLAN.
September 22, 2004... Mobile 3G operators will be in a strong position to kill off wireless LAN (WLAN) hotspots by controlling the market, according to consultants Analysys. Its report suggests hotspot providers need to move quickly to create partnerships with the...

Ofcom proposes 2012 switch off.
September 22, 2004... Analogue TV transmissions will be switched off in the UK by the end of 2012 if proposals made by communications watchdog Ofcom for digital replacement licences are accepted. The digital licences will be issued to TV broadcasters to replace the...

Microcontroller integrates MAC and PHY blocks for Ethernet.
September 22, 2004... Freescale Semiconductor has introduced a microcontroller integrating both MAC and PHY blocks for 100BaseT Ethernet. Adding a transformer and connector gives a complete web server, said the firm, reducing the costs of adding Ethernet to...

Aspex follows trend of providing processing power to the desktop.
September 22, 2004... Aspex Semiconductor is the latest firm to follow the trend of providing server farm levels of processing power to the individual desktop. The parallel processing specialist has developed a PCI-X card containing four of its Linedancer chips and...

IBM links with Kodak for digital camera phones.
September 22, 2004... Kodak and IBM are to develop image sensors for digital still cameras and camera phones. The multi-year agreement will "leverage Kodak's portfolio of image sensor technology and IBM's CMOS processing expertise to allow Kodak to commercialise a...

UK technology firm reforms Radiant fixed wireless team.
September 22, 2004... The team which developed Radiant Network's Meshworks broadband fixed wireless access technology is being reformed by technology firm LamTech which has brought the company out of administration. "There's a lot of restructuring going on right...

Array of 64 electrodes is pain killer for foot drop.
September 22, 2004... A frequent effect of strokes is a condition known as foot drop, in which the patient is unable to raise their toes, which makes walking difficult. It is usually treated by a technique known as functional electrical stimulation (FES), in which a...

Importance of science education reflected in council funding review.
September 22, 2004... The House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee has asked the higher education funding council to consider the long term economic benefit of science education. The Committee is concerned that the formula used by the HEFCE (Higher...

UK workforce must put the hours in to be competitive.
September 22, 2004... UK technology businesses must be able to set their own working hours and vary staffing levels if they are to compete with the rest of the world, according to the head of a UK research centre. Paul Stein, the managing director of Siemens-owned...

A cost-effective design resource.
September 29, 2004... Brad Weaterton hat is your ultimate objective as a design engineer? To help your company develop a product that adds value to your customers whilst meeting a given specification and quality standard, and at a cost which generates a healthy...

Carbon nanotube makes oscillator.
September 29, 2004... Researchers at Cornell University in the US have used a carbon nanotube to build a tuneable oscillator that could also function as a sensitive balance. The nanotube is tensioned over a gate varied by electrostatic interaction. Applying an AC...

National makes change to analogue chip plans.
September 29, 2004... National Semiconductor has repositioned itself as a broad range supplier of analogue semiconductors finally ending its dependence on the PC-based digital signal processing business. The firm sold its Geode processor business to AMD last year,...

Ofcom liberates spectrum bands.
September 29, 2004... A consultation on the liberalisation of the spectrum for business radio, fixed wireless access and terrestrial point-to-point fixed link licences has been launched by Ofcom. These are the first bands being targeted by the regulator which is...

UK charities push Linux to the fore.
September 29, 2004... Linux is having an impact at the grass roots of business IT. UK charities are using the open source operating system to build affordable networks. Alone in London, a charity that works with young homeless people in the capital, set up a 30 PC...

Defining technical support and design-in.
September 29, 2004... echnical support and design-in are phrases used in the electronics business but mostly misused. In the same way that one takes one's car to the garage for 'technical support' once in a while much electronics technical support is of similar...

CoWare's latest version of SPW tool lets software engineers produce DSP code.
September 29, 2004... CoWare has developed a version of its SPW tool - Signal Processing Worksystem - that allows software engineers to produce code for DSPs. Called SPW 5-XP, the tool, as its name suggests, runs on Windows XP, rather than Linux or Unix as demanded...

Ethernet powered Piezo actuators work valves and locks at Servocell.
September 29, 2004... A UK firm has developed reference designs for locks and gas valves based on piezoelectric actuators with up to 2mm displacement. Harlow-based Servocell said it is already working with firms on products using the technology. "Lots of people have...

Capacitance converter can detect change down to 50aF.
September 29, 2004... From Analog Devices' Limerick design centre comes a capacitance to digital converter with 24-bit accuracy, detecting changes as low as 50aF (50x10-15) in an external capacitor. The design is essentially a charge-balancing *AE converter with...