We’ve railed on this before … it is irritating that almost every embedded device has to come with its own unique wall-plug charger. I mean, why do we go to such trouble to take standard power out of the wall and make it into nonstandard power for a device? If a power connector could be standardized and the power could be set up intelligently, the “universal charger” would be a lot closer to reality.

Green Plug is partnering with Imagination Technologies to implement its Greentalk technology in new chips and processors based on Imagination’s IP that enable consumer electronic devices to exchange power information through the power line between power adapters and electronic products.

Green Plug will develop two new products using Imagination’s IP: the next-generation Green Plug Power Processor (GPP) chip for power supplies and the Greentalk Load Processor (GLP) macro for consumer electronic devices. With GLP, devices can communicate with Greentalk-enabled power supplies directly over the existing power cable and connector on the device.

We’ve railed on this before … it is irritating that almost every embedded device has to come with its own unique wall-plug charger. I mean, why do we go to such trouble to take standard power out of the wall and make it into nonstandard power for a device? If a power connector could be standardized and the power could be set up intelligently, the “universal charger” would be a lot closer to reality.

Green Plug is partnering with Imagination Technologies to implement its Greentalk technology in new chips and processors based on Imagination’s IP that enable consumer electronic devices to exchange power information through the power line between power adapters and electronic products.

Green Plug will develop two new products using Imagination’s IP: the next-generation Green Plug Power Processor (GPP) chip for power supplies and the Greentalk Load Processor (GLP) macro for consumer electronic devices. With GLP, devices can communicate with Greentalk-enabled power supplies directly over the existing power cable and connector on the device.

Because almost every home is wired, strategies for home networking based on coax, phone, and power lines shouldn’t be overlooked.

The HomeGrid Forum’s G.hn standard has been gaining ground fast, with both National Institute of Standards and Technology approval for smart grid apps and United Nations International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T) ratification coming within the last month. “G.hn is a technology that gives new use to cabling that most people already have in their homes,” said Malcolm Johnson, director of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Bureau. “The array of applications that it has the potential to enable, including energy-efficient smart appliances, home automation, and telemedicine devices, is remarkable. The sheer weight of industry support behind this innovation is testament to the extraordinary potential of this standard to transform home networking.”

In a related breaking story, two of the main supporters of the HomeGrid Forum and G.hn have agreed to merge, with Sigma Designs acquiring CopperGate Communications. Sigma provides media processors for the digital home, and adding CopperGate’s home networking technology should make their portfolio more interesting. G.hn-compliant silicon should appear in 2010.

Smart phones, Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), netbooks, mobile TVs, portable navigation devices, and other embedded devices with displays are seeing demand for TV-quality visuals that don’t drain batteries, even in outdoor lighting.

Made just for this challenge, QuickLogic’s ArcticLink II VX2 Customer-Specific Standard Product (CSSP) solution integrates the company’s second-generation Visual Enhancement Engine (VEE) Proven System Block (PSB) and Programmable Fabric. It’s a very low-power platform offering better quality for displays while prolonging battery life.

A new push for more embedded devices is happening in wireless with the advent of the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) spec. At ARM TechCon3, Triad Semiconductor displayed its ARM Cortex-M0 based “Mocha” System-on-Chip (SoC) design platform demonstrating BLE.

With a Z-Focus BLE-Z stack and an EM Microelectronics BLE radio, the demo showed how to quickly design mixed-signal platforms for very low-power wireless apps on embedded devices.

A new push for more embedded devices is happening in wireless with the advent of the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) spec. At ARM TechCon3, Triad Semiconductor displayed its ARM Cortex-M0 based “Mocha” System-on-Chip (SoC) design platform demonstrating BLE.

With a Z-Focus BLE-Z stack and an EM Microelectronics BLE radio, the demo showed how to quickly design mixed-signal platforms for very low-power wireless apps on embedded devices.

One way to cut power is to operate at a lower voltage. Most SoCs give up around 1 V, but Cypress Semiconductor has taken their new PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 parts down to the unheard of level of 0.5 V with an incredibly low standby power rating.

What would a programmable device with an 8051 or ARM Cortex-M3 core offering a hibernate mode consuming 200 nA do for some ultra-low-power applications? Read more about these devices in our ECD blog and see for yourself.

Many pieces of gear call for a fair amount of processing power, but only when it’s required. The rest of the time, the processor can literally nap while waiting for a job to arrive. Applications such as printing and backup storage devices meet this kind of profile.

Freescale Semiconductor’s latest QorIQ P1022 device integrates dual Power Architecture cores running from 600 MHz to 1 GHz along with PCI Express, SATA, SD/MMC, Ethernet and IEEE 1588, USB, an LCD controller, and more. The processor cores can operate independently in advanced media processing applications. The device also incorporates Jog technology, which lowers power consumption dynamically based on workload, and offers network-aware, packet-lossless, deep-sleep capability. Freescale claims network standby operation of 1 W, making the device ready to respond to packets instantly.

Three key support functions handle normal processor power management: a voltage supervisor, a watchdog timer, and a reset generator. While these functions are fairly common, different systems require programmable logic to implement the management logic needed to meet the conditions.

The ProcessorPM Development Kit from Lattice Semiconductor features a ProcessorPM-POWR605 device along with a Power Manager II-POWR6AT6 preconfigured in a demonstration design that can be programmed using PAC-Designer software. Connecting the board to a host via USB allows designers to simulate and design a complete power monitoring and management circuit for MCUs, DSPs, and FPGAs.

One of the major benefits of USB is its ability to power a connected device from the host port. USB 3.0 has done a couple of things to improve this capability by increasing the device unit load from 100 mA to 150 mA using a nominal 5 V and offering mandatory power management mechanisms such as inactivity timers and device-initiated power requests. A single USB 3.0 port now drives six unit loads. The question is: How can designers get the most, or more accurately, the least, out of this new power capability? To answer that, what would be useful is a USB protocol analyzer that could also measure power consumption, and that’s exactly what LeCroy has created. While the Voyager analyzer looks at USB 2.0 or 3.0 data traffic, its optional integrated Power Tracker feature simultaneously measures and plots voltage and current draw. Measurements are correlated so that designers can see power draw during different states of the protocol and make the right choices to save power.

Many types of power supplies are digitally controllable and able to be monitored over an I2C bus using the PMBus protocol. If you’ve got an I2C port handy and know how to use it, great, but let’s say you’ve got something higher level like a USB port, RS-485 port, or CANbus connection.

Emerson Network Power has designed three new simple extension cards to enable USB, CANbus, and RS-485 connectivity for the iMP and iVS AC-DC power supply families. These extension adapters provide the interface between the power supply control port (CaseRx/CaseTx) and the selected connectivity port, and program with a simple command set. This allows the energy-efficient iMP and iVS power supplies to be used in many industrial-type applications that rely solely on CANbus or newer installations that can use USB.

The idea of an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) isn’t anything new, but many UPS devices don’t go where they’re needed in embedded applications due to harsh environments. Companies have been ruggedizing industrial PCs for some time now, but what about the UPS? To help avoid power supply interruptions and voltage sags or spikes, noax Technologies has brought industrial packaging to the UPS. The company claims up to one hour of backup power using an integrated lead-gel accumulator, and the UPS operates from -20 °C to +50 °C. Software enables programmable shutdown sequence time and allows the battery to be changed without affecting the operation of connected computers. The UPS also offers selectable output of either 12 V or 24 V and has protection against input voltage reversal, output shorts, and unexpected battery discharge.

Texas Instruments continues to push the envelope of low-power DSPs, looking to pack additional functions into devices that need more and more battery life. The TMS320VC5505 and TMS320VC5504 DSPs provide up to 320 KB of on-chip memory and multiple integrated peripherals that reduce system cost by more than 20 percent. But the real news is that with standby power of less than 340 microwatts and active power of less than 0.3 mW/MHz, these DSPs allow up to 40 percent additional battery life compared to earlier devices.

Running at 100 MHz, the C5505 DSP offers a full set of peripherals including an LCD controller, an FFT hardware accelerator, increased on-chip memory, and a 10-bit SAR ADC. The lower-cost C5504 is pin-to-pin and software-compatible with the C5505 and comes with a basic peripheral set including SPI, MMC/SD, USB 2.0, and more.

multicore processing technology is continuing to evolve, and creative new architectures are showing up to do more work with less power consumption. A good example is the new Netronome NFP-32xx family, delivering more than 1.838 billion instructions per watt in a profile of 15 to 35 W. These highly integrated network flow processor engines are designed to team with Intel architecture processors using the Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) features of PCI Express Gen 2 to provide 256 queues for I/O coprocessing.

The 40 microengines are integrated into an optimized high-speed interconnect, with programming tools available to help designers utilize the architecture. To integrate with high-speed networks, NFP-32xx incorporates 25 Gbps Interlaken, SPI 4.2, and 10 Gbps XAUI interfaces. On-chip security processing is also important, with crypto engines supporting RC4, Triple Data Encryption Standard (3DES), Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), Secure Hash Algorithm 1 (SHA-1), and SHA-2.

The result, according to Netronome, is the ability to perform 20 Gbps of Layer 2-7 deep packet processing with line-rate security features, all in an optimized power profile.

I like the comment Jim Handy of Objective Analysis made to describe the problem of large-scale memory in applications where power can be lost: “DRAM is volatile, flash is slow, SRAM with batteries is unreliable, and alternative technologies are too costly to use in large densities.” Obviously that statement is a bit generalized, but it does tend to be true as memory densities get larger.

This is what the new AGIGARAM is designed to solve. Offering densities from 4 MB to 2 GB, AGIGARAM functions just like SDRAM during normal operation. When power is lost, it moves data into integrated NAND flash using energy stored in the on-module power subsystem.

There are two families: BALI, for more general-purpose embedded applications from 4 MB to 64 MB at 100 MHz operation, and CAPRI, for higher-end (up to 2 GB) and higher-speed (DDR-800) data storage. Operating life is 5 to 10 years depending on the model, packaging is a 200-pin SODIMM or mezzanine card, and operating temperature is 0 °C to +70 °C.

Power over Ethernet (PoE) is gaining ground, with the latest IEEE 802.3at standard (PoE Plus) offering higher power levels up to 25 W for Power Sourcing Equipment (PSE). It’s an ideal application for companies with robust mixed-signal technology, including advanced transistors.

Linear Technology has come to market with its new LTC4266, a four-port PoE Plus controller with optimized heat dissipation and advanced power management features. Each of the four channels can connect a Powered Device (PD), which can request up to 25.5 W of power using two-event classification.

Features include programmable current limiting and overload limiting, fast shutdown, four-point PD detection to provide immunity from false detection, and an I2C interface for integration with a host. Packaging is either a 38-pin 5 mm x 7 mm Quad Flat No lead (QFN) or a 36-pin Shrink Small-Outline Package (SSOP).

Today’s power supplies need to not only be efficient, but also offer a low standby power mode. STMicroelectronics has developed VIPer15/16/25/27/28 devices to form a broad VIPerPlus family of AC-DC converters that minimize both standby power consumption and the number of external components required while enabling easy compliance with Blue Angel, ENERGY STAR, and other low-power norms and directives.

All VIPerPlus devices include the controller, startup circuitry, and an 800 V avalanche-rugged power MOSFET in the package. New integrated functions including a high-voltage startup current generator, SenseFET, and high-breakdown voltage result in ultra-low standby power consumption less than 50 mW at 265 V, which can be reduced to 30 mW with optimized transformer design.

This best-in-class in standby power allows customers to meet the most demanding energy-saving regulations (ENERGY STAR 80 PLUS Bronze, Silver, Gold). Protection features include accurate, adjustable overvoltage and overload protection, hysteretic overtemperature protection, two levels of overcurrent protection, and open-loop failure disconnection.

Let’s say you have 40,000 monitoring and control points in a Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system with 30 generators and 50-60 Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) among other things on the network. The incoming data picks up power metrics, temperatures, oil levels, vibration sensors, output waveforms, and more. It’d be nice if all that data were on one protocol in real time, available instantly without single points of failure.

This is the problem the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is facing right now at the Grand Coulee Dam, and provides the reason behind their choice of Real-Time Innovations’ (RTI’s) Data Distribution Service (DDS) as the solution. Dave Brown, project manager and system architect for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, remarked, “We selected RTI after a comprehensive evaluation of DDS solutions. We liked RTI’s architecture because it eliminates all single points of failure. If a shared daemon fails, it impacts many critical applications. With RTI’s purely in-process solution, there is no dependence on shared services. We will be able to implement N-way redundancy for all critical subsystems.” This makes RTI’s DDS software a pick for us, too.

Jungo and Wisair have collaborated on a complete Wireless USB solution for Linux-based and embedded platforms used in consumer electronics devices. One of the many products that debuted during the Consumer Electronics Show in January, this solution combines Jungo’s USBware protocol software stack with Wisair’s single chip-basd Wireless USB reference designs. The new offeing enables OEMs to embed Wireless USB into non-Windows consumer electronics devices such as set-top boxes, TV sets, smart phones, and DVRs, providing more options for consumers to connect external devices with a higher throughput delivered.

Programmability is increasingly becoming an imperative requirement for electronic manufacturers to keep their innovative edge in challenging business and technological environments. The new high-performance Virtex-6 and low-cost Spartan-6 FPGAs from Xilinx and its network of third parties lay the foundation for a new generation of targeted design platforms that can enable system designers to increase productivity and minimize development costs. These FPGA families will provide system designers with simpler, smarter, and more strategically viable methodologies for creating FPGA-based System-on-Chip (SoC) solutions targeting a wide variety of markets and applications.

CEVA, Inc. recently introduced its configurable and programmable CEVA-HD-Audio platform that addresses the demanding audio requirements of home entertainment and consumer products including Blu-ray DVDs, DTVs, set-top boxes, and other A/V devices.

CEVA-HD-Audio combines a proven, high-performance DSP engine with customized audio implementation capabilities in a single-core system, helping product developers implement advanced audio functions in their next-generation products more efficiently. A Software Development Kit (SDK) including software development tools, development boards, system drivers, and a Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) allows licensees to develop and integrate their systems quickly and easily. Extensive algorithms and applications from the third-party development community are part of the platform.

Embedded developers face constant pressure to do more with less - enhance application performance and connectivity, reduce costs, and speed time to market. To help developers successfully meet their design challenges, Freescale Semiconductor offers an industrial connectivity solution that combines its highly integrated 32-bit ColdFire MCF5225x MCU family with the MQX RTOS.

With on-chip USB, Ethernet, CAN, and encryption, the combined silicon and software solution gives developers exceptional design flexibility, connectivity options, and fast time to market backed by a full-featured, scalable RTOS platform. To ease the development process, Freescale provides a comprehensive ecosystem of software development tools, evaluation boards, reference designs, software examples, and webinars.

Renesas Technology America, Inc. earlier this year announced the SH7776 (SH-Navi3), a dual-core SoC device with enhanced graphics functions and a high-performance image recognition processing function for next-generation car information terminals.

The device integrates two high-performance SH-4A 32-bit CPU cores that deliver processing performance up to 1,920 MIPS. On-chip peripheral modules required by car navigation systems include a serial ATA interface, an audio encoder and other sound interfaces, a USB 2.0 host/function interface, a TS interface for receiving terrestrial DTV broadcasts, and a GPS baseband processing module. This complement of peripheral functions makes it possible to reduce the total number of components in these types of systems.

Jungo and Wisair have collaborated on a complete Wireless USB solution for Linux-based and embedded platforms used in consumer electronics devices. One of the many products that debuted during the Consumer Electronics Show in January, this solution combines Jungo’s USBware protocol software stack with Wisair’s single chip-basd Wireless USB reference designs. The new offeing enables OEMs to embed Wireless USB into non-Windows consumer electronics devices such as set-top boxes, TV sets, smart phones, and DVRs, providing more options for consumers to connect external devices with a higher throughput delivered.

Broadcom Corporation has extended its chip portfolio with a highly integrated GPS, Bluetooth, and FM radio IC that delivers location-based services and advanced multimedia in a single-chip platform. With its InConcert coexistence technology, the BCM2075 allows these radios to operate simultaneously with minimal interference.

This connectivity processor significantly reduces host and application processing, enabling greater adoption in mass market handsets, portable media players, and personal navigation devices. The BCM2075 includes network support for accurate indoor and outdoor positioning, enabling advanced location-based services regardless of user location.

Normally, semiconductors dont start up at voltages less than the typical turn-on voltage of a transistor – about 0.7 V for silicon technology – without some type of outside assistance. This limits the options designers have in applications involving ultra-low voltage.

New DC-to-DC converter technology just introduced by Freescale Semiconductor takes the startup threshold down to 0.32 V with nearly 90 percent efficiency. This means that applications like single-cell solar power, thermoelectric, and mechanical energy harvesting systems suddenly can do a lot more things with a lot less power.

Also on the topic of better DC-to-DC converters, Texas Instruments has introduced a $299 Resonant DC/DC Developers Kit (TMDRESDCKIT) and a $349 Renewable Energy Developers Kit (TMDSENRGYKIT). Both are based on the TMS320F2808 controlCARD, a small form factor carrying a 100 MHz MCU on a 9 cm x 2.5 cm DIMM. These kits contain different hardware and ideas to support energy-efficient designs such as transformers, sensing circuits, and battery management circuits. Both contain a limited version of Code Composer Studio integrated development environment to aid in software development. ### Best of both MCU and RF worlds It’s a given that wireless communication between embedded devices is here to stay. However, dealing with RF is pretty much black magic to most designers. Wouldn’t it be great if general-purpose Systems-on-Chip (SoCs) and microcontrollers had RF transceivers built into them? Texas Instruments’ new CC430 technology makes this concept a reality by offering the industry’s lowest-power, single-chip RF platform for microcontroller-based applications. Solutions like the CC430 platform that combine low lower and high functionality help bridge the gap between MCU and RF technology. By reducing system complexity, shrinking package and PCB size by 50 percent, and simplifying RF design, the CC430 platform advances applications including RF networking, energy harvesting, industrial monitoring and tamper detection, personal wireless networks, and automatic metering infrastructure. The combination of TI’s MSP430F5xx MCU and low-power RF transceiver offers a blend of low-power/performance and high integration in addition to extensive RF knowledge and support. These features help break down barriers to RF implementation such as stringent power, performance, size, and cost requirements as well as design complexity and ease-of-development issues, bringing wireless connectivity to a variety of products.

The “last inch” in I/O can be one of the toughest problems to solve. In many cases, a system needs to do more than one thing with several different types of I/O interfaces involved. Technobox’s Micro Mezzanine System tackles these challenges head on using tiny Electrical Conversion Modules (ECMs) placed on a PMC or other carrier along with FPGA-based IP to provide the needed interface logic. Each ECM presents 16 pins to the carrier for I/O, and several different functions are available to mix and match.

The Automotive infotainment space is exploding, as demonstrated by Freescale’s introduction of its latest device, the i.MX35 application processor, at the recent SAE Convergence 2008. With an ARM1136JF-S core running at up to 532 MHz, the processor features an advanced image processing unit with optional OpenVG graphics acceleration, enabling vector graphics apps like Adobe Flash. The i.MX35 also features other improvements including a DDR2 memory interface, an Enhanced Serial Audio Interface and sample rate conversion, USB host and On-The-Go interfaces, a media local bus (per MOST), Ethernet, and MMC/SD/SDIO and CE-ATA/SDIO interfaces.

One of USB’s hallmarks is that it can connect to many different devices. But sometimes, what you need to connect to is a long ways away or requires some type of electronic isolation - exactly the type of job a fiber interface excels at.

The 4166 from Electro Standards Laboratories converts USB 2.0 data to a serial asynchronous interface over fiber at user-selectable rates up to 3 Mbps. It has ESD protection at the USB connector as well as 3 KVDC isolation and runs on a 9-36 VDC supply. The unit is also available in a packaged system, the 4165.

NVIDIA Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are reportedly contributing more than 1.25 petaflops of processing power equaling about 42 percent of the total processing power for the Stanford University Folding@home distributed computing project (http://folding.stanford.edu), which models proteins and their effects on the human body. Stanford University teams developed the Folding@home client using NVIDIA CUDA in C. This application researches cures to life-threatening illnesses such as cancer, cystic fibrosis, and Parkinson’s disease by combining the computing horsepower of millions of processors to simulate protein folding.

Designers have a lot of options for 32-bit microcontrollers, but Texas Instruments’ recently announced Piccolo F2802x and F2803x family shakes things up a bit at a price point starting around $2 in volume. Besides a choice of package sizes and integrated peripherals, higher-end Piccolo devices feature a Control Law Accelerator (CLA) unit, which offloads 32-bit floating-point operations and runs independently from the main CPU core. According to TI, CLA use is achieving a 5x performance increase in some applications. The microcontroller family’s integration, performance, and package size target lower system cost and better control with more energy efficiency.

In-vehicle electronics have made huge leaps in the past few years to the point where we can now economically put substantial computing power in our vehicles. These infotainment platforms provide navigation systems, audio and video players, and wireless connectivity, making the driving experience more pleasurable.

American Portwell Technology, Inc. recently announced its PCS-8230, a low-power in-vehicle embedded PC infotainment system. Utilizing the Intel Embedded Compact Extended (ECX) form factor SBC, Portwell’s PCS-8230 is based on the Intel Atom Z510 series processor with an Intel System Controller Hub US15W chipset, delivering an excellent performance-per-watt ratio. Its fanless design, low-power output, and compact size make it suitable for in-vehicle infotainment as well as Point-Of-Sale (POS), medical, entry-level gaming, and digital signage applications.

The PCS-8230 has all the necessary features for today’s infotainment systems: DVB-T/FM tuner, Wi-Fi, two USB ports, three integrated SDIO sockets, support for dual-display (optional VGA or LVDS), standard multimedia audio and video functions, optional Trusted Platform Module (TPM) and USB-Disk Module (UDM), 5.1 channel audio, and open architecture for easy customization.

Having a solid migration path with significant performance and functionality improvements in each successive generation of products is essential for embedded computing systems. In a move that fulfilled this requirement, Freescale Semiconductor recently introduced QorIQ, a new brand of communications platforms designed to enable the next era of networking and promote embedded multicore adoption.

The PowerQUICC series of communications processors has long been a successful product line for Freescale, with roots going back to the 68K processors. As the next-generation evolution of the PowerQUICC processor line, Freescale’s QorIQ platforms are designed to help developers migrate to multicore with confidence.

QorIQ platforms include single, dual, and many-core processors based on Freescale’s e500 Power Architecture technology. The platforms start with P1 and P2 levels, which consist of five package, pin, and software-compatible processors that can ease the transition from single to dual-core processing. The P3 and P4 platforms allow developers to move into the many-core arena and address more advanced processing. This is an impressive-looking roadmap with product families that promise to have something for everyone.

Apple never ceases to amaze with how much they can put into one small package and still have a human-machine interface unmatched by anyone in the industry The iPhone 3G delivers UMTS, HSDPA, GSM, Wi-Fi, EDGE, GPS, and Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR (10 radios total!) in one compact device using only two antennas. Clever iPhone engineering integrates those antennas into a few unexpected places: the metal ring around the camera, audio jack, metal screen bezel, and the iPhone circuitry itself. Intelligent power management technology provides up to five hours of talk time over 3G networks. The GPS unit powers on and off quickly so it won’t adversely affect battery life. An ambient light sensor automatically brightens the display in sunlight or a bright room and dims it in darker places. The proximity sensor immediately turns off the display to save power and prevent inadvertent touches. Apple accomplishes this with only four external buttons. All but the basic user interface is handled through a multitouch display that adapts to the particular application in use.

Gaming, digital signage, and other multimedia-intensive embedded applications demand high-performance processors with maximum power efficiency.

Boasting a performance-per-watt ratio that purportedly outperforms other products by as much as 30 percent, the S3 Graphics 4300E is a discrete HD video and graphics processor specifically tailored to handle the embedded industry’s rigid thermal requirements. Designed for DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 2.1, the 4300E helps system developers create an immersive 3D experience. The programmable video engine has media acceleration for H.264, VC-1, AVS, DivX, and MPEG-2 HD, plus display connectivity for HDMI with HDCP, dual-channel LVDS, and dual-link DVI.

Using low-leakage 65 nm process technology with an energy-efficient architecture that scales from 300 MHz to 600 MHz, the 4300E has graphics and HD video cores that can be coupled with the latest DDR2 and DDR3 memories supporting up to 256 MB of local graphics memory. The multimedia processor also has a high-speed serial link PCI Express 2.0-compliant bus supporting x1, x4, x8, and x16 lane widths.

Anything that reduces overall system power requirements and improves response times is bound to gain attention from the design community.

The new STMPE811 from STMicroelectronics is a four-wire resistive touch-screen controller featuring autonomous functionality to decrease demands on the host processor. For embedded designers, this frees valuable CPU cycles to relieve pressures on performance, power consumption, and response times.

Built-in features include an internal 12-bit ADC for high resolution and 128 x 32-bit FIFO data buffers for smooth position tracking. The controller is also equipped with accurate position identification and a window-masking function to support multiple sense windows. Special low-power design features achieve active current below 1 mA, idle current less than 1 microampere, and an ultra-low-power 150 nA hibernation mode. By combining these capabilities into a compact 3 mm x 3 mm QFN-16 package, the STMPE811 saves footprint and extends battery lifetime in portable applications such as PDAs, mobile phones, GPS receivers, game consoles, and Point-Of-Service (POS) terminals.

Touch interfaces are becoming more popular on many embedded devices as they eliminate the need for confusing buttons and complex manuals. Technology that improves the human experience is always welcome.

Synaptics’ ClearTouch product portfolio includes ClearPad and ClearArray sensors available for consumer electronics requiring transparent, touch-sensitive user interfaces. These sensors are designed for durability, low power consumption, and easy integration and can operate under glass or plastic, resulting in robust devices with slim form factors and sleek industrial designs.

ClearPad provides an intuitive, high-resolution touch-screen interface for today’s mobile devices, including cell phones, portable music players, and handheld GPS devices. The sensor can detect gestures such as single-finger tap, double tap, tap & hold/tap & slide, press, flick, and two-finger pinch.

ClearArray supports scrolling in fixed locations over a display and can be used in monitors and kiosk-style devices as alternatives to mechanical buttons. These transparent sensors enable manufacturers to differentiate their products according to their target price points, industrial design requirements, and desired end-user experiences.

With frequency scaling limited by power constraints, using multicore processors traditionally was one of the best ways to improve processor performance and manage a reasonable power consumption budget. But when designers made their own chipsets, they had no other options for multicore processor IP – until now. MIPS Technologies, Inc. has introduced the MIPS32R 1004KT coherent processing system, purportedly the industry’s first embedded multithreaded multiprocessor licensable IP core. The new multicore offering provides performance efficiency and configurability in a multiprocessing system – up to four single or multithreaded processors integrated with advanced system coherency. The 1004KT core optimizes CPU performance on a shared memory system, enabling multiple functions to be implemented in a single product running concurrently under symmetric multiprocessing-based operating systems. The multicore Coherence Manager serves as the foundation block for intelligent system coherency, with an I/O Coherence Unit that provides optional hardware coherence for I/O peripherals. Several vertical applications, including digital home entertainment, home networking, and office automation can benefit from coherent multiprocessing using multithreading

Organic Light-Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) represent the next evolution in lighting products. Their widespread design capabilities may deliver significantly improved levels of efficiency and environmental performance with the same quality of illumination found in traditional products.

GE Global Research, General Electric’s centralized research organization, has successfully demonstrated roll-to-roll manufactured OLED lighting devices, a key step toward making OLEDs and other high-performance organic electronics products at lower costs than possible today. The demonstration leads the way to a possible cost-effective system for mass-producing organic electronics products, such as flexible electronic paper displays, portable TV screens the size of posters, solar-powered cells, and high-efficiency lighting devices.

The few organic electronics products available today are relatively high cost and made with more conventional batch processes. A roll-to-roll manufacturing infrastructure for creating high-performance, low-cost devices would allow more widespread adoption of organic electronics products. GE’s research program aims to introduce OLED lighting products to the market by 2010.

Designers are constantly trying to find smaller devices that can be squeezed into the nooks and crannies of their designs. Mass storage is no exception to the usual space limitations. SiliconSystems, Inc. and Samtec have collaborated to provide a turnkey embedded storage solution – the SiliconDrive II USB Blade and associated SiliconBlade Socket. The combination of innovative storage technology in the SiliconDrive II USB Blade and SiliconBlade Socket enables OEMs to easily incorporate advanced storage into space-constrained designs. SiliconDrive II USB Blade is an ultra-small form factor that complements SiliconBlade Socket’s robustness and locking mechanism. The postage stamp-sized USB solid-state drive is an ideal alternative to SD and MMC cards in telecommunication, embedded, industrial, military, and medical applications. Available in capacities of 512 MB, 1 GB, and 2 GB, SiliconDrive II USB Blade is designed for applications where board space, shock, vibration, temperature, and multiyear product life cycles are mandatory design considerations

Designers are constantly trying to find smaller devices that can be squeezed into the nooks and crannies of their designs. Mass storage is no exception to the usual space limitations.

SiliconSystems, Inc. and Samtec have collaborated to provide a turnkey embedded storage solution – the SiliconDrive II USB Blade and associated SiliconBlade Socket. The combination of innovative storage technology in the SiliconDrive II USB Blade and SiliconBlade Socket enables OEMs to easily incorporate advanced storage into space-constrained designs. SiliconDrive II USB Blade is an ultra-small form factor that complements SiliconBlade Socket’s robustness and locking mechanism. The postage stamp-sized USB solid-state drive is an ideal alternative to SD and MMC cards in telecommunication, embedded, industrial, military, and medical applications.

Available in capacities of 512 MB, 1 GB, and 2 GB, SiliconDrive II USB Blade is designed for applications where board space, shock, vibration, temperature, and multiyear product life cycles are mandatory design considerations.

With file storage and communications bandwidth becoming cheaper and more readily available, lossless audio formats – bit-perfect representations of original master sources – are gaining popularity as users clamor for ways to maintain permanent archives of their high-quality audio files.

To realize these consumer demands in the mobile phone environment, the AS3532 from austriamicrosystems offers full lossless audio format support. This innovative music player subsystem is based on an audio engine and audio postprocessor that act as coprocessors to an ARM central programmable unit. In a fully hardwired context, the audio engine decompresses and plays back most popular compressed audio formats using the least amount of power consumption with zero CPU load.

The audio postprocessor implements an asynchronous sample rate converter, multichannel mixer, and 10 band graphics equalizer and supports 192 KHz sample rates at 24 bits dynamic range. The audio subsystem also includes a stereo pulse density modulated digital microphone input, fulfilling all audio requirements for next-generation mobile phones.

While graphics chipset supplier ATI concentrated on PC desktops and gaming rigs, ATI-owned-by-AMD is looking a bit deeper into the embedded space. Long a player in embedded systems, AMD is targeting the ATI Radeon E2400 graphics processor at test and instrumentation, point-of-sale terminals, kiosks, ATMs, gaming consoles, and yes – even defense applications. Even better, similar to Intel’s embedded plans, AMD will back up their embedded support with a five-year availability promise, extra reliability, and other long-term support so essential in purpose-built embedded platforms.

On the technology side, the E2400 is a 65 nm device that supports Microsoft’s DirectX 10, 2D and 3D graphics, and multimedia loading. There’s 128 MB of on-chip GDDR3, which saves precious board real estate by eliminating external memory. There’s even a graphics PCB module called the MXM-II with 256 MB of GDDR3 DRAM that can either be used as a lab mule, or deployed in end-user applications.

Virtualization within the firmware layer on an embedded PC promises to enable enhanced security features in systems using a Windows operating system.

Phoenix Technologies Ltd. has announced Phoenix HyperSpace, a platform that could ignite a PC revolution by transforming the mobile PC experience. Using Intel processor technology, HyperSpace provides a unique computing environment that PC designers, security innovators, and content providers can use to create instant-on applications available before, during, and after Windows bootup and shutdown. Next-generation PC users will benefit from one-click remote system maintenance, repair, lower battery consumption, and embedded security. Possible applications and content include multimedia players, IP soft phones, e-mail, instant messaging, Web 2.0 browsing, and safe shopping.

The HyperSpace platform is enabled by an efficient hypervisor from Phoenix called HyperCore, which is embedded within the core system firmware or BIOS. HyperCore is a lightweight zoned virtual machine monitor that runs specialized core services side by side with Windows.

Historically, many designers have dismissed USB-based storage solutions because they associated USB with the retail-grade thumb drive form factor, which falls short of rigorous embedded systems applications requirements. With the introduction of the SiliconDrive USB Blade from SiliconSystems, OEMs now have a USB-based advanced storage solution that meets their next-generation application requirements.

SiliconDrive USB Blade is ideally suited for space-constrained designs and as a boot drive for operating system storage or in event and data logging applications. An innovative edge connector has spring-loaded snaps at either end of the slot to ensure the SiliconDrive USB Blade is held securely in place, allowing installation vertically or at a right angle.

Other features include PowerArmor, which delivers enhanced protection from host system voltage and power anomalies, and SiSMART, a precise monitoring system that accurately forecasts storage system usable life. SiliconDrive USB Blade’s comprehensive suite of integrated security technologies can protect data from unauthorized access or IP theft.

The behavior of fluids at the microscale can differ from macroscale behavior in that factors such as surface tension, energy dissipation, and fluidic resistance start to dominate the system.

Dolomite has released a new microfluidic connector that enables engineers and scientists to interface to microfluidic chips, easing microfluidic-based fluid control systems development.

The new Dolomite microfluidic connector eliminates the need to drill expensive holes into the chip by incorporating holes into the actual chip fabrication process. Using this connector improves fluid flow, as the fluid paths are straight rather than perpendicular. The standard version of the new connector is a fluidic bus with four fluid I/O ports on a single integrated connector to make chip connection and disconnection simple and fast.

Microfluidic devices are developed using microfabrication techniques capable of creating microchannels and complex structures in glass. These devices are now being used in patient care systems, DNA testing, air pollution monitoring, fuel cell technology, and drug development.

Adding WiMAX to a system is now even easier with the Wavesat NP7256 WiMAX Mini PCI design, supporting advanced WiMAX features such as support for UL subchannelization, which significantly improves performance for indoor modems. Based on Wavesat’s latest Evolutive NP7256 AISC, the NP7256 has been redesigned with fewer parts and advanced RF chipsets to substantially reduce overall size and bill of materials costs. Combined with Wavesat’s MAC software, it enables ODMs and OEMs to build small and extremely low-cost subscriber units. The Mini PCI’s flexible architecture will offer easy design upgradeability to WiMAX 802.16e.

Adding a touich sensor to a system can be ... well, touchy. Touch sensors are often a black box with two wires hanging out and some documentation. Microchip Technology has tackled this problem with the mTouch solution, an integrated kit with a PIC microcontroller, touch sensor platform, and software.

The heart of the sensor uses a 2x comparator and frequency shift encoding. The touch sensor panel is completely sealed with no moving parts and can sense based on proximity, pressure, coverage, and movement. The kit ships with Microchip’s open source software to aid sensing routine development.

A hummingbird requires about 1 W to fly. The 500 MHz VIA Eden Ultra Low Voltage processor consumes no more than that under full load. Designed to meet the low-power requirements of industrial, commercial, and mobile applications, the fanless processor achieves unprecedented speed for an x86 processor in a 1 W power envelope. Within the 21 mm x 21 mm NanoBGA2 package, the VIA Eden ULV processor can squeeze into a small, light chassis.

Based on the VIA CoolStream Architecture, the processor is manufactured using an advanced 90 nm process, enabling speeds of up to 500 MHz with 1 W peak power and as low as 100 mW idle power consumption. Integrated into the processor is the VIA StepAhead Technology Suite, which boasts performance-enhancing features including the VIA V4 bus at 400 MHz, 16 pipeline stages, sophisticated branch prediction, and 128 KB full-speed exclusive L2 cache, ensuring the processor’s low power consumption doesn’t come at the expense of performance.

Global warming is reportedly providing us with plenty of extra heat. Imagine being able to turn that into power to run our embedded computing devices! Nextreme has developed a miniature, thin-film Thermoelectric Generator (TEG) that converts heat directly into electricity. Ideal for waste heat conversion applications, the solid-state TEG delivers power-generation densities > 3 W/cm2 and is optimized to provide power in a form factor that can be as much as 20x thinner than bulk material alternatives. Manufactured using semiconductor fabrication techniques, TEG can be utilized in applications including Automotive, military/aerospace, thermal batteries, medical implants, and wireless sensor networks.

“In environments where a lot of heat is available, we have demonstrated power levels of up to 300 mW with devices that are not much bigger than a piece of confetti,” said Nextreme CTO Dr. Seri Lee.

Nextreme’s TEG devices generate electricity via the Seebeck Effect, where electricity is produced from a temperature differential applied across the device.

Functional density makes cooling a challenge, and solutions that aren’t cost prohibitive or don’t lead to excessively engineered products are sometimes hard to find. Virtium Technology has introduced DDR2 SODIMM, SO-RDIMM, and SO-CDIMM memory modules furnished with heat spreaders to remove heat more effectively than conventional air-cooled SODIMMs. The new heat spreader is available for all SODIMM product variants using mainstream 512 Mb and 1 Gb devices.

“With these new heat spreaders, Virtium directly addresses an industry-wide problem to control excessive or less-than-optimal operating temperatures in demanding embedded environments,” said Phan Hoang, Virtium Technology’s director of R&D. “This approach to heat removal offers multiple benefits including better thermal performance and improved reliability in adverse thermal environments with fewer single bit errors.”

Virtium’s heat-sink-equipped modules are intended for use in extended temperature ranges, thus solving thermal issues critical to system performance, and are ideal as AdvancedTCA, AdvancedMC, MicroTCA, and PicoTCA memory for blade applications and PICMG SBCs.

The typical image of patients in hospitals with wires running from them to monitoring equipment may be a thing of the past now that wireless is gaining acceptance in health care. Toumaz Technology’s Sensium Platform Integrated Development Environment Resource (SPIDER) allows customers to rapidly create and test end-to-end Sensium-based solutions. The development kit contains two Sensium hardware development boards (one for the sensor transmitter and one for the receiver base station) and a Keil 8051 compiler and JTAG debugger.

The Sensium sensor interface and transceiver platform enables intelligent, ultra-low-power wireless monitoring of multiple vital signs – for example, ECG, heart rate, body temperature, respiration, and physical activity – in real time via standard handheld devices.

Each SPIDER board contains one Sensium TZ1030 and a patchwork area for user-supplied sensor transducers. The TZ1030 includes reconfigurable sensor interfaces, a digital block with an 8051 processor and hardware MAC/network controller, and an RF transceiver. Powered by a battery or from USB/SD supplies, the board includes all the necessary RF circuitry to simplify system development.

This announcement isn’t about a specific product, but it is welcome news for designers: Altera has chosen to license the MIPS32 architecture, which is the first time MIPS architecture processor cores have been in the FPGA channel. This gives designers another choice for performance with optimized power when looking at cores for FPGAs, and is a big win for MIPS Technologies.

According to Joseph Byrne, senior analyst for The Linley Group and coauthor of A Guide to CPU Cores and Processor IP, “MIPS Technologies’ processor cores have long been known for their high performance for a wide range of consumer multimedia, networking, and communications applications. The company’s technology is already an industry standard for ASICs used in these applications. By joining forces with Altera, a leader in the FPGA market, there is great potential for much more widespread adoption.”

Speaking of networking, often the performance of the network is only as good as the cable used. A quality cable can provide better signal integrity and span longer distances. A new solution for Double Data Rate (DDR) InfiniBand cables combines conductor technology with tiny active analog signal drivers to allow cables three times longer than previously possible.

GORE Extended Reach DDR CAble Assemblies utilize the patented self-equalizing GORE EYE-OPENER+ Conductor Technology combined with Q:Active ultra small low-power analog semiconductors from Quellan to deliver exceptional signal fidelity over longer distances in the smallest cross-sectional area. Fitting application needs in between passive copper and optical cables, these cables offer lower crosstalk, less latency, and increased airflow in sizes ranging from 24 to 30 gauge and lengths ranging from 5 to 50 meters.

With more and more compute power and software being designed into Automotive environments, developers need better tools to get their complex ideas implemented and to market faster than ever. The AUTOSAR (AUTomotive Open System ARchitecture) specifications provide an open standard architecture for developing vehicular software, user interfaces, and management. The Rhapsody AUTOSAR pack delivers an AUTOSAR modeling environment based on UML and SysML that allows users to capture AUTOSAR system models using AUTOSAR specific diagrams, notations, and terminology. This is achieved with five new AUTOSAR diagrams: . Systems Diagram captures the overall. AUTOSAR system . Software Component Diagram defines the software architecture . Internal Behavior Diagram specifies the interface between the AUTOSAR System and standard AUTOSAR Run-Time Environment with which it will integrate . ECU Diagram defines the Electronic Controll Unit (ECU) types and their communication ports . Topology diagram defines the physical topology or physical architecture of the system including all the ECUs in the automobile and how they are connected.

Adding a USB hub and multiple ports to a system can be a bit of a challenge for designers. IPextreme and Cypress Semiconductor have teamed up to offer a low-power USB 2.0 hub core in an IP format for adding to third-party products using Cypress’ proven technology from the EZ-USB HX2LP and other products.

IPexteme’s USB20hub is configurable to accommodate two to seven ports. Customers can choose one transaction translator for all ports to minimize production cost or one transaction translator per port to maximize throughput. The USB20Hub design has very low power consumption and runs easily on USB bus power. Once implemented, the USB20Hub has externally configurable options such as the number of active ports, power management, port indicators, and remote wake-up. The USB20Hub IP core is fully synthesizable and comes packaged in an IPextreme XPack to maximize ease of integration through a simple IP configuration user interface with support for common EDA tools. The USB20Hub IP subsystem has received USB-IF compliance certification.

It’s hard to imagine it has been 10 years since Microsoft announced an embedded Windows strategy at the last Las Vegas COMEX. it was not clear at the time what might result from the news and everyone was skeptical of Microsoft, but today the strategy is well established and many embedded applications now use either Embedded Windows or Windows CE. The latest announcement regarding Windows CE 6.0 further establishes Microsoft’s position in the embedded computing industry.

In conjunction with the 10-year anniversary of Windows Embedded, 100 percent of the Windows Embedded CE 6.0 kernel is now available through the Microsoft Shared Source program. By providing access to certain parts of the Windows Embedded CE source code such as the file systems, device drivers, and other core components, embedded developers can choose the code they need, compile it, and build their own unique operating systems, quickly bringing their devices to market.

Windows Embedded CE 6.0 boasts a reengineered kernel with capabilities such as capacity for 32,000 simultaneous processes and 2 GB of virtual memory address space per process while maintaining the software’s real-time capabilities. This enables developers to incorporate more robust applications into more intelligent, complex devices used on the road, at work, and in the home.

Does your embedded application involve significant decision-making capability? Expert systems based on rules can be more appropriate than a compute-intensive algorithm. Rules engines have been around for many years, yet they have not truly established themselves in embedded applications. However, for many embedded applications, a rules engine is the way to go. Jess 7.0, a rule engine created by Sandia National Laboratories that enables software developers to embed intelligence in the form of business rules directly into their Java applications, is now available for licensing.

“Programming with rules allows software to express real-world conceptsiin a natural expressive way that helps business and IT says Craig Smith, software licensing.

Among Jess’ new features is an integrated Development Environment (IDE) for rules that increases programmer productivity and enhances collaboration. The IDE is based on the Eclipse platform and features tools for creating, editing, visualizing, monitoring, and debugging rules. Sandia offers Jess licenses to commercial, academic, and government institutions.

Systems-on-chip (SOCs) often have a significant impact on the bill-of-material cost for embedded designs. Complete subsystems, components and boards can be replaced with an SoC that has the required functionality integrated into the chip.

The Connect One iChipSec C02 128 is a secure IP communication controller chip that reduces the cost and speeds the design of new IP-enabled Point-Of-Sale (POS) terminals. The chip also includes many hardware enhancements that ensure high throughput by offloading IP and network security protocols from the hose processor.

The C)2128’s integrated ARM7 core processor, RTOS, security and networking protocal stack ensure efficient and secure high-speed transaction processing. For high bandwidth applications like video streaming, C02128’s high-speed parallel interface supports 32 Mbps with UDP/IP hardware acceleration. Data encryption/decryption also is accelerated in hardware, which reduces SSL3 transaction processing. The C02128 includes a 10/100BASE-T Ethernet media access controller and USB v2.0 full-speed host and device interfaces, enabling the use of the newest Wi-Fi chipsets and other USB peripherals.

iChipSec can act as a router among LAN, Wi-Fi, and modem platforms, as it includes a network address translation and port-forwarding functionality. This allows a payment terminal to serve as an access point or gateway for other terminals connected to it. helping to reduce infrastructure cost and enhance network security.

MultiWise Connector provides a new dynamic to satisfy the need for increased power density in small spaces. Configurations utilizing pins, contacts, and blades allow greater simplicity and flexibility in designs by offering engineers more options for lowering contact resistance while maintaining the necessary power/signal mix • OEM design engineers once restricted to packaging multiple Connectors and circuitry together in an assembly can now combine the required connector features and circuitry together on one MultiWise Connector • With the introduction of blade pins, designers can take advantage of greater conductivity available in more rugged copper and brass alloy blades • Because these materials carry more current, the MultiWise Connector frees up precious space for additional components. Moreover, Onanon’s manufacturing processes can place SMT devices such as decoupling capacitors, resistors, and ICs directly on the connector.

Imagine getting 32-bit microcontroller performance at the price of an 8- or 16-bit microcontroller. Now picture getting this same microcontroller within similar power budgets, one of the largest barriers to entry for 32-bit processors into 16-bit applications. Deeply embedded applications could have compute processing power only found in previously more expensive and power-hungry microcontrollers. Luminary Micro, a fabless semiconductor company that designs, markets, and sells ARM Cortex-M3 processor-based microcontrollers, is the first to bring embedded developers ARM for $1. Their Stellaris family of 32-bit microcontrollers (MCUs) offers features such as an analog-to-digital converter and a sophisticated motion control unit, as well as large on-chip memories. The entire Stellaris line of MCUs brings high-performance 32-bit computing to embedded microcontroller applications at a cost equivalent to legacy 8- and 16-bit devices. All of the Stellaris MCUs are targeted at embedded and industrial applications, such as building and home automation, factory automation, motor control, and industrial power control devices. Luminary Micro www.LuminaryMicro.com Stellaris MCUs RSC# 30712

Today, using FPGAs or ASICs provides the easiest way to add custom features to a microprocessor. Developers design the functions needed, then program the features into these additional parts. Wouldn’t it be great if the microcode within the processor could be modified to create application-targeted microcode solutions for specific customer needs? Freescale Semiconductor has introduced the Open QUICC Engine developer program for third-party developers and customers that want to optimize the communications functionality of applications that leverage Freescale’s QUICC Engine technology. The program allows developers to customize Freescale microcode that runs on QUICC Engine technology to support industry-standard communications interfaces and protocols without having to add ASIC or FPGA devices to their applications. Customized microcode developed through the Open QUICC Engine program will be portable and scalable across QUICC Engine technology-based processor platforms and applications. Freescale Semiconductor www.freescale.com/quiccengine Open QUICC Engine RSC# 30710

With network connections now everywhere, designers need easy ways to add interfaces to existing hardware For just $99, a new kit provides a simple method of adding Ethernet to a design. The NetBurner Eclipse Ethernet Development Kit offers a complete set of powerful developer hardware, software, and tools that enable rapid development of embedded network-enabled products.

The included NetBurner Mod5270 Ethernet Core Module features a 32-bit 147 MHz Freescale ColdFire processor with a 10/100 Ethernet port, 47 digital I/O lines, three UARTs, and 12C and SPI ports. The kit also includes NetBurner’s Eclipse Integrated Development Environment delivering time-saving features such as single-click compile and load capability, intellligent code completion, and integrated graphical debuger. This enables developers to interact with external devices by writing code in ANSE C/C++ within the Eclipse environment and compile and loat it into a NetBurner Ethernet Core Module in seconds.