Ofcom specification opens up 60GHz for wireless gigabit Ethernet

Image via Wikipedia
In a move that has crept under the radar (!) the UK regulator Ofcom has opened up the 60GHz band for unlicensed operation.
It is to open the spectrum in the 59 – 64 GHz band for Fixed Wireless Systems (FWS) and to combine this with the existing 57 – 59 GHz band under one overall licence exempt authorisation approach for FWS. This creates one contiguous and flexible block of

Read More

Elpida Begins Mass Production of 40nm 2Gbit DDR3 SDRAM

Image via Wikipedia
Elpida Memory has started volume production of 40nm process 2GBIT DDR3 SDRAMs that will bring the price of DDR3 chips down and drive further adoption. Since completing development of the DDR3 SDRAM last October it has taken Elpida only two months to ramp up mass production at its Hiroshima plant.
The

Read More

UK Companies Slow to Grasp Plastic Electronics

We are on the brink of a new age of Plastic Electronics, production costs are tumbling and business opportunities are growing exponentially, yet companies are slow to take up the innovation challenge, according to research from the Advanced Institute of Management Research (AIM Research).
"Yoghurt pots that flash at you to say they're mouldy, animated e-papers like Harry Potter's Daily Prophet,

Read More

Arizona State stacks nanoscale memory chips

Researchers improve chip memory by stacking cells

Researchers at Arizona State University have developed an elegant method for significantly improving the memory capacity of electronic chips.
The researchers have shown that they can build stackable memory based on 'ionic memory technology' which could make them ideal candidates for storage cells in high-density memory. Best of all, the new

Read More

MPEGIF Launches “3D over MPEG” Campaign

The MPEG Industry Forum (MPEGIF) has formed a 3DTV Working Group with a “3D over MPEG” campaign. The new working group and campaign continue MPEGIF’s successful work in furthering the widespread adoption and deployment of MPEG-related standards including MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 video compression technology.
“3DTV is of keen interest to everyone in the video creation and delivery industries. The

Read More

Step forward for multicore Linux

CriticalBlue and MontaVista Partner to Expand Multicore Software Development

CriticalBlue, the Edinburgh-based pioneer of embedded multicore software analysis, exploration and verification tools, has joined the MontaVista partner program and will make their Prism product available on MontaVista Linux 6 and Montavista Linux Carrier Grade Edition products.
This announcement continues the

Read More

Western Digital and NEC collaborate on USB3.0

New Driver for SuperSpeed Connectivity for SCSI Hard Drives With Advanced Features

Western Digital and NEC Electronics are collaborating to promote the new SuperSpeed Universal Serial Bus (USB) 3.0 standard in storage devices supporting data transfer rates of up to 5 gigabits per second (Gbps), 10 times faster than the previous high-speed USB 2.0 transfer speeds.
The companies plan to develop a

Read More

Farewell Zilog

Zilog, the inventor of the ubiquitous Z80 microcontroller, has finally given up the ghost and is to be sold to IXYS, a power semiconductor and mixed signal vendor that is one of the fastest growing semiconductor companies. The $62m deal is expected to be completed by March next year as IXYS expects the microcontroller market to take off again next year.The combination of the two companies with

Read More

Single chip for HD image acquisition

HD image signal processors combine image signal conditioning circuitry, a 14-bit ADC, and precision timing core for medical, industrial and scientific designs As medical, industrial and scientific markets increasingly adopt high-definition (HD) image acquisition systems, designers of such systems must confront a host of signal-processing complexities in order to accurately capture and record

Read More

First Cortex-M0 microcontroller starter kit

$139 starter kit for popular low cost microcontroller IAR Systems has developed what it believes to be the world's first commercial starter kit for ARM Cortex-M0-based microcontrollers for the NXP LPC1114.One of the features which enabled the speedy development of this kit was the fact that the NXP LPC11xx Cortex-M0 family is 100% pin compatible with the NXP LPC13xx Cortex-M3 family. "This kit

Read More

Microtune plans DAB SDR chip

Microtune is planning to develop a version of its software defined radio chip for the DAB standard used across Europe.The current version supports AM/FM and HD radio but not DAB, making it a potial problem for equipment makers for the European market. The problem is that some key European countries such as Germany use the higher frequency L band. THis can be supported with a separate receiver

Read More

SDR comes to radio and TV

Microtune has developed a chip architecture that brings Software Defined Radio (SDR) to car radios.The MT3511 RF MicroDigitizer provides a flexible RF front end for many different standards and is coupled with a digital signal processor for a low cost implemention in a car radio. For automotive manufacturers, software defined radio (SDR) represents a revolutionary approach to in-vehicle car

Read More

VIA chipset for DDR3 all-in-one PCs

Blu-ray playback, DX10.1 graphics and DDR3 memory support VIA Technologies is set to push the adoption of next generation high speed DDR3 memory in all-in-one and embedded PCs with a new low power chipset.The VIA VN1000 digital media chipset features the ChromotionHD 2.0 video processor to guarantee smooth playback of the latest Blu-ray titles with superb hardware acceleration of the most

Read More

Global automotive telematics market to quadruple

Boom time as 68m cars ship with telematics by 2016Global shipments of automotive telematics systems are set to rise to 84.4 million units in 2016, up by a factor of more than four from 19.3 million in 2008, according to iSuppli.“From sending out an automatic distress call after a car crash, to enabling remote diagnosis of engine troubles, telematics can provide enormous benefits to motorists and

Read More

Netbook on a credit card with world’s first i.MX51 DIMM module

Runs Windows CE and Linux, measures only 67.6 x 26 x 4.2 mm Strategic Test has developed the world’s first Freescale i.MX51 processor-based System on Module (SOM). The TX51 measures just 67.6 x 26 x 4.2 mm (2.6” x 1” x 0.16”) and contains an ARM8 Cortex 800 MHz i.MX51 processor coupled with 128 MB mobile DDR-SDRAM, 128 MB NAND Flash memory and a 200-pin SODIMM connector, giving it the power of

Read More

WiFi and Coldfire on embedded tower development system

Modular development platform helps save months of development time through rapid prototyping and tool re-useFreescale Semiconductor has launched a rapid evaluation and prototyping development system with two interchangeable peripheral modules and 8- and 32-bit microcontroller (MCU) modules for the Tower System.The advanced peripheral modules offer developers 802.11b Wi-Fi and rapid prototyping

Read More