Electronics Weekly articles from September 2007

Electronics Weekly archives from September 2007

Technology.
September 5, 2007... 29aug07RensNanobattery A battery as thin and flexible as paper has emerged from work at New York's Rensselaer Polytechnic. "The device can be rolled, twisted, folded, or cut into any number of shapes with no loss of mechanical...

News.
September 5, 2007... NTT DoCoMo has been forced to partner with another firm, Acca Networks, to allow it to apply for the 2.5GHz spectrum which is due to be licensed for mobile WiMAX use in Japan. This follows the Japanese ministry's decision that it would not...

News.
September 5, 2007... Andy Allen is v-p Europe of EMS company Plexus Corp (UK) 05sep07plexus We hear you love supply chain management. Why? The business remains highly competitive and we feel that it can make the difference between the success and...

News.
September 5, 2007... Freescale Semiconductor has told Electronics Weekly that no final decision has been taken on the future of its Scottish wafer fab. In July, 900 manufacturing staff at the East Kilbride facility said they had been told that the company was...

News.
September 5, 2007... MIPS processors will be used in microcontrollers for the first time following processor intellectual property firm MIPS' purchase of analogue and interface design house Chipidea. Part of the MIPS-Chipidea deal is to encourage fabless chip...

News.
September 5, 2007... 05sep07Davinci.jpg Texas Instruments has launched its most application specific DaVinci processor to date with a price and power stream-lined media processor aimed specifically at portable high definition (HD) video designs. Unlike...

News.
September 5, 2007... Acer's move to acquire Gateway in a deal valued at $710m will see the Taiwanese company leap into the top three largest PC suppliers behind HP and Dell. Acer will also acquire Europe-based PC supplier Packard Bell, through an agreement...

News.
September 5, 2007... 05sep07sarantel Shares in Sarantel gained almost 50 per cent when the firm said it had won two deals for its ceramic antennas. The firm's shares gained to reach around 10p in a week which saw overall technology shares flat. 05sep07csr...

News.
September 5, 2007... Hugh potential to win business still exists for UK-based contract manufacturers, according to Steve Wilkes, commercial director at Axiom Manufacturing. Local contract manufacturers are trying to compete with the vastly reduced costs...

News.
September 5, 2007... Anglia is distributing ZigBee chips and software stacks from Ember after signing an agreement with the supplier. John Bowman, Anglia's divisional marketing manager believes "the ZigBee market is set for huge growth during 2008". Pictured (l to...

News.
September 5, 2007... By Richard Wilson richard.wilson@electronicsweekly.com With the US facing the recall of millions of children's toys manufactured in China, the head of a UK-based electronics outsourcing company is confident that the industrial...

News.
September 5, 2007... Audi is using ADI's Blackfin and SHARC processors for entertainment systems in its A5 Coupe. The car has a digital radio and a multimedia device interface for connecting to personal media players. Audi has also been given the go ahead...

News.
September 5, 2007... China has for the first time become the world's largest market for RFID devices.In 2007, the spend in East Asia will be $2.7bn of $4.96bn spent globally. The majority of this is in China, according to a report by IDTechEx. For more on this...

News.
September 5, 2007... By Melanie Reynolds melanie.reynolds@electronicsweekly.com Companies need to deal with the convergence of technologies and business models if they are to succeed in emerging markets, says the head of R&D consultancy, the Advanced...

News.
September 5, 2007... National Instruments has updated its Lego Mindstorms NXT robotics invention software to provide support for Windows Vista and for Intel-based Macs. With the software's improved memory usage, the update includes smaller compiled programs and...

Features.
September 5, 2007... Simplifying memory subsystem design reduces the total product cost and improves the time to market. For an embedded system designer, much of the memory architecture design effort is spent on selecting the multiple memories and chipsets that...

Features.
September 5, 2007... Many older monolithic buck type switching regulators have incorporated on-chip feedback loop compensation. While this makes for a very simple design procedure, it does not typically allow for optimisation of loop dynamics. This forces the need...

News.
September 5, 2007... The Government is failing to boost innovation in the UK through its procurement system, according to Jeegar Kakkad, a senior economist at the Engineering Employers' Federation (EEF). Despite publicly announced intentions to improve the...

Features.
September 5, 2007... One fixed version of WiMAX, 802.16d provides non-line-of-sight (NLOS) transmission to stationary devices using 2GHz to 11GHz frequencies over distances of four to six miles. The mobile version of the standard, 802.16e, is an extension of...

News.
September 5, 2007... Component distributor Digi-Key has added analogue and RF lines with the signing of Catalyst Semiconductor and RF Micro Devices. It will stock Catalyst's analogue, mixed-signal and non-volatile memory products as well as RF Micro's range of RF...

News.
September 5, 2007... Distributor association Afdec has pegged back its growth forecast for the UK component distribution market from 2 per cent growth to a decline in the range of 1 to 3 per cent this year. According to Afdec chairman Adam Fletcher, many analysts...

News.
September 5, 2007... 05sep07ianUnderwood Cambridge Display Technology has significantly improved the lifetime of OLED materials. A 200 per cent improvement in OLED lifetimes opens up the mobile phone market for the low power display technology. ...

Features.
September 5, 2007... Sep 12-13: PCB Layout with Altium Designer 6 - Hertfordshire www.eda.co.uk Sep 12-13: Introduction to Electrical Circuit Protection- Leatherhead shop.era.co.uk Sep 17-19: OFDM for Wireless Communications - Cambridge ...

Features.
September 5, 2007... Variability in device characteristics is an emerging issue for semiconductor manufacturers and the moment is fast approaching when its effects will be felt throughout the industry. When this moment arrives, manufacturing technology will no...

News.
September 5, 2007... Linux is expected to be the fastest-growing Smartphone operating system over the next five years, according to ABI Research. A report forecasts that Linux-based OS will account for nearly 31 per cent of all smart devices in the market by...

News.
September 5, 2007... Enter EW's Product Innovation of the Year - Readers Choice, sponsored by International Rectifier, with the chance to win 2 VIP tickets to the Elektra Awards and [pounds sterling]100 of shopping vouchers. Vote on one of the following...

News.
September 5, 2007... Enter EW's Product Innovation of the Year - Readers Choice, sponsored by International Rectifier, with the chance to win two VIP tickets to the Elektra Awards and [pounds sterling]100 of shopping vouchers. Vote for one of the following...

News.
September 5, 2007... ClearSpeed, the computer accelerator chip specialist, is licensing its next generation of accelerator technology to BAE Systems in a deal which extends the ClearSpeed business model from hardware vendor to IP licensor. "It's great to have...

News.
September 5, 2007... ARM has selected XJTAG's boundary scan development system for debugging and testing its range of ARM RealView development hardware tools. The microprocessor firm is using the boundary scan system on its RealView platform baseboards, which...

Technology.
September 5, 2007... VIA Technologies has announced what it claims is the world's most power efficient x86 processor. The 500MHz Eden ULV (ultra low voltage) idles at 0.1W and runs at 1W peak. Designed for industrial, commercial and ultra mobile...

Technology.
September 5, 2007... By Steve Bush FCI has developed the HCI connector system to increase current density in power hungry designs. "In response to increasing system power requirements, the connector design integrates both power and signal contacts to...

Technology.
September 5, 2007... Cadence has introduced a design kit to help companies iron bugs out of their functional verification process. "Large companies will use it looking for productivity improvements," programme director Gunter Strube told EW. "Smaller companies...

Technology.
September 5, 2007... 05sep07peroxideArm Professor Michael Goldfarb of Tennessee's Vanderbilt University, and his hydrogen peroxide powered prosthetic arm. In an attempt to increase the power to weight ratio of prosthetic arms, Vanderbilt University of...

Technology.
September 12, 2007... 12sep07astro....jpg - use both A standard picture from the 5.1m (200in.) Mount Palomar telescope, and one with the new camera. "Like all other ground-based telescopes, the images it normally produces are typically 10 times less detailed...

News.
September 12, 2007... A Cambridge start-up is using honey bees as the sensor to detect traces of explosives and chemicals in security and health applications in an extension of the idea of sniffer dogs. The bees are held in a cartridge (pictured) and trained...

News.
September 12, 2007... Entrepreneurs are calling on the UK Government to set up a scheme to channel money directly into innovation in small and medium companies by copying a scheme in the US. "There is a gap once you get past the government innovation grant...

News.
September 12, 2007... BMW, Fujitsu and Inova Semiconductors have got together to try and standardise on a gigabit interface technology from Inova for linking to in-car displays. To promote standardisation, Inova has agreed to license its APIX technology and the...

News.
September 12, 2007... Toshiba, the inventor of NAND flash memory, is aiming to overtake its licensee Samsung to become the largest NAND flash supplier, aided by the world's largest flash fab. With its partner, SanDisk, Toshiba has started running wafers at a...

News.
September 12, 2007... Semefab is building its nanotechnology manufacturing capability with the purchase of $1m worth of production equipment from local Scottish supplier Semi Scenic. Scottish Enterprise has invested [pounds sterling]3m and the Department of...

News.
September 12, 2007... Holystone Europe is planning to set up a sales network across Europe as part of its bid to break in to the European capacitor market. The Taiwanese ceramic capacitor manufacturer set up its first European sales office in the UK earlier in...

News.
September 12, 2007... Electronics stocks continue to be buffeted by the turmoil in the wider shares market which is still worried by the so-called credit-crunch in the US housing market. This is at odds with areas of the market, particularly defence and security,...

News.
September 12, 2007... Antenna designer Sarantel is optimistic about the GPS postioning system market following two design wins. Sarantel CEO David Wither believes there are opportunities in the wider GPS market for the Cambridge-based manufacturer. Last...

News.
September 12, 2007... Samsung has agreed to start collaborative research with a number of Scottish Unviersities on nano materials for electronics. Samsung Electro Mechanics will carry out the R&D of materials for use in future electronic devices at the...

News.
September 12, 2007... Here's a little jolt of Espresso to shake you out of the summer doldrums. Anyone who's seen the old movie: "It's a Wonderful Life" knows that banks never have enough money to cover all depositors. By their very nature, banks lend many...

News.
September 12, 2007... A [pounds sterling]1bn Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) has moved a step closer with the Government narrowing down its list of potential host universities."The ETI is being established to speed up the deployment of low-carbon energy...

Features.
September 12, 2007... Electrophoresis is the movement of particles or molecules by an electric field. Once just a neat trick in the Victorian parlour, the effect has been harnessed into displays that are quietly nudging aside a few LCDs, and even creating their...

Features.
September 12, 2007... Venture fund or privately financed companies which have set up operations in Europe in the last five years will be considered for the start-up of the year award. We invite entries from start-up companies building a world-class business in...

Features.
September 12, 2007... 12sep07DisSol1 The problem of reading information from any type of screen when the lighting is variable is familiar to most people. Transflective technology can eliminate the problems caused by light and shadow falling onto a screen,...

News.
September 12, 2007... Fergal Brosnan is CEO of IC Mask Design, the Limerick-based IC physical design company Is EDA complexity holding back innovation? EDA tools have developed to a stage where they are possibly overly complex as they attempt to support all...

News.
September 12, 2007... The Government's environmental policy has put reducing CO2 emissions at the top of the agenda for many companies. In moves that affect domestic appliance designers, the Government has now published its 'dynamic demand control' (DDC) report....

News.
September 12, 2007... With AMD finally about to release "Barcelona" server processors, Intel has also made a quad-core move. Six chips make up the Quad-Core Xeon 7300 series. The chips are claimed to deliver more than three times the performance-per-watt over...

News.
September 12, 2007... Cree has demonstrated light output of more than 1,000 lumens from a single LED in the lab. A single-die LED, driven at four amps, produced 1,050 lumens in cool white and 760 lumens in a warm-white version. Efficacy of the cool-white LED was 72...

News.
September 12, 2007... Broadcom has launched integrated RF tuners for set top boxes made on a 65nm CMOS process that puts it at the forefront of mixed signal chip development. The BCM4506, launched at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) this week, is...

News.
September 12, 2007... Premier Farnell held a fun day for employees at its Maybrook distribution centre in Leeds. CEO Harriet Green (right) and her assistant Melanie Pratt spent the day selling over 80 litres of organic ice cream raising money for Breast Cancer...

News.
September 12, 2007... Near field communication (NFC) technology is gathering pace with what is claimed to be the world's largest commercial rollout in Austria, and a trial of the technology being conducted on the London Underground. Mobilkom Austria, using...

News.
September 12, 2007... By Melanie Reynolds melanie.reynolds@electronics weekly.com Voice remains the key application for Bluetooth, according to CSR, which has announced improved audio performance and power consumption on the sixth generation of its BlueCore...

News.
September 12, 2007... Commonwealth medallist Kate Cullen is being sponsored by Edinburgh-based Wolfson Microelectronics. The Scottish track cyclist is bidding to compete in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. "Three years ago I was trying to balance a full time job with...

News.
September 12, 2007... A Cambridge University start-up is using a micromachined silicon device built in the UK as the heart of an ion spectrometer, as well as chemical sensors that are dramatically smaller than existing systems. Owlstone, which was set up by...

Technology.
September 12, 2007... IBM has probed the magnetic anisotropy of individual atoms. "This fundamental measurement has important technological consequences because it determines an atom's ability to store information," said the firm. The researchers used a custom...

Technology.
September 12, 2007... Meanwhile IBM scientists in Zurich have found a molecule that can be switched between two states without disturbing neighbours. " Previously researchers have demonstrated switching within single molecules, but the molecules would change their...

Technology.
September 12, 2007... Researchers at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology have shown that longer single-wall carbon nanotubes have sharper optical characteristics: absorption, near-infrared fluorescence and resonant Raman scattering. Tubes were...

Technology.
September 12, 2007... By Nick Flaherty 12sep07DigitalDome.....jpg Putting large images together with multiple projectors can be a nightmare of alignment and coordination, particularly for the domed surfaces used by in a planetarium or large digital cinema....

News.
September 19, 2007... A UK start-up has developed a virtual Internet Protocol (IP) set-top box running on a PC to provide TV and other IP services to thousands of students in a move that changes the status of the PC for TV licensing. Inuk Networks in Mid...

News.
September 19, 2007... By Melanie Reynolds Future technology raises fears amongst the general public about privacy and surveillance, employment, dependence, loss of the human touch and the potential for misuse, according to the ScienceHorizons project. The...

News.
September 19, 2007... NTT DoCoMo said it has developed and tested a low power chip for use in 3G LTE (long term evolution) handsets. The Japanese mobile network operator said the chip included, "advanced power-saving signal-processing technologies that enable...

News.
September 19, 2007... LCD is both the dominant display technology and the fastest developing display technology, according to Sharp. "In all displays there are only two dominant technologies, CRT and LCD," said Maximilian Huber, president of Sharp...

News.
September 19, 2007... The semiconductor industry is not certain whether wafers will need to increase from 300mm to 450mm. TSMC thinks 450mm will be needed, but Applied Materials, the world's largest maker of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, is less certain....

News.
September 19, 2007... Cyan, the configurable microcontroller developer, is confident of turning around the business during 2008 despite continuing losses in the first half of this year. The Cambridge-based semiconductor intellectual property (IP) firm expects...

News.
September 19, 2007... Four UK-based wireless development teams will transfer to a new owner following the decision by Analog Devices (ADI) to sell its mobile phone radio and baseband chipset business to Taiwan-based semiconductor company MediaTek. ADI's...

News.
September 19, 2007... Remploy Electronics has added to its PCB testing capabilities with the installation of automated optical inspection (AOI) equipment at its Bolton and Barking factories. The YesTech benchtop systems will be used to inspect solder joints and...

News.
September 19, 2007... The outlook in the telecoms market was a worry last week when Alcatel-Lucent issued a revenue warning. It initially saw its share price drop 12 per cent and the warning was deemed significant enough to influence the market as a whole. The worry...

News.
September 19, 2007... Video encoder makers are lining up for a battle over the next generation of video encoding technologies moving to 'full' high definition TV with a 1080 line progressive display. But this could be overshadowed by the coming Scalable Video...

News.
September 19, 2007... IBM has developed a CMOS RF semiconductor manufacturing process which it said will allow mobile chipset suppliers to reduce manufacturing costs for next generation mobile phones. IBM has described a CMOS 7RF silicon-on-insulator (SOI)...

News.
September 19, 2007... By Bill Jacobs editorial@electronicsweekly.com The Ministry of Defence's record for getting value for money from some of its largest military systems contracts is still "pretty dire", according to the House of Commons main financial...

News.
September 19, 2007... Cirrus Logic has extended its European distribution agreement with Avnet Memec to cover markets in the UK, Ireland, France and Italy. "The extension of the distribution agreement to UK, Ireland, Italy and France is the result of two years hard...

Features.
September 19, 2007... As has been the case for the last three years or so, the subject of mobile TV attracts huge headlines every spring and autumn, just before the two biggest European exhibitions for mobile technology and broadcasting. There is good reason...

Features.
September 19, 2007... Radio spectrum is the essential ingredient in every type of wireless service, from satellites and radars to broadcasting and mobile communications. But not all spectrum is equal. Certain frequencies are highly sought after and are consequently...

News.
September 19, 2007... Here we go again with mobile phones and the health risks once again making headlines. And, yet again, it is all about the lack of a connection between mobile phone use and adverse health effects. "Mobile phones have not been found to be...

News.
September 19, 2007... Dr James Truchard is president of National Instruments. How has PC technology changed the role of the test and design engineer? PC technology has created a big cost/performance advantage for the user. Typically instruments are...

Features.
September 19, 2007... 19sep07Staccato 19sep07Staccato.doc This is a mathematical representation of the density achievable by multiple WLP instances that can fit in the spatial coverage achievable by one instance of 802.11n. This is the model uses for...

News.
September 19, 2007... Renesas Technology has ported UK-developed touch-switch intellectual property to its microcontrollers. The touch technology, which is largely software-based with minimal hardware requirements, comes from Hampshire-based Quantum Research...

News.
September 19, 2007... Equipment makers and network operators in the UK are getting serious about rolling out WiMAX networks and looking to avoid the mistakes of mobile TV. Wireless infrastructure provider Arqiva is looking closely at providing a WiMAX network...

News.
September 19, 2007... Worthing-based C-Tech Electronics has been recognised for its staff support by Worthing Borough Council and West Sussex Primary Care Trust. Among its moves to promote healthy living, the design firm has built a gym for employees and their...

Features.
September 19, 2007... A remarkable commercial phenomenon has been quietly occurring under the noses of industrial electronics OEMs. The price that a mid-tier 8-bit microcontroller (MCU) fetched less than five years ago will now buy you a fully-fledged 32-bit MCU....