By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Blimey! Cypress and Spansion are to merge in a $4bn deal that will change the landscape of the embedded market and potentially mark more consolidation. The key area for this deal is of course memory - Spansion was the spin off of AMD's flash memory business, while Cypress started out making SRAMs and has since moved into other controller-based devices.
As a result the combined company will have annual turnover of $2bn and be the leader in SRAM and in NOR flash, and be a major player in microcontrollers - Cypress is well established in ARM-based microcontroller designs alongside its PSoC capacitative touch screen controller, while Spansion has recently been adding ARM cores to its memory devices.
Although the deal is pitched as 50/50 - which is itself often a problem for deciding the direction going forward - it actually looks like a Cypress takeover. Cypress founder and long term CEO TJ Rodgers will be CEO of the merged company while Ray Bingham of Spansion will be non-executive chairman and the company will be called - wait for it - Cypress Semiconductor.
“This merger represents the combination of two smart, profitable, passionately entrepreneurial companies that are No. 1 in their respective memory markets and have successfully diversified into embedded processing,” said Rodgers, Cypress’s founding president and CEO. “Our combined company will be a leading provider of embedded MCUs and specialized memories. We will also have extraordinary opportunities for EPS accretion due to the synergy in virtually every area of our enterprises.”
The merger is expected to achieve more than $135 million in cost synergies on an annualized basis within three years and to be accretive to non-GAAP earnings within the first full year after the transaction closes. The combined company will continue to pay $0.11 per share in quarterly dividends to shareholders.
“Bringing together these high-performing organizations creates operating efficiencies and economies of scale, and will deliver maximum value for our shareholders, new opportunities for employees and an improved experience for our customers,” said John Kispert, CEO of Spansion. “With unparalleled expertise, global reach in markets like Japan and market-leading products for automotive, IoT, industrial and communications markets, the new company is well positioned to deliver best-of-breed solutions and execute on our long-term vision of adding value through embedded system-on-chip solutions.”
The closing of the transaction is subject to customary conditions, including approval by Cypress and Spansion stockholders and review by regulators in the U.S., Germany and China. The transaction has been unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both companies. Cypress and Spansion expect the deal to close in the first half of 2015.
What other consolidation will happen remains to be seen but memory companies particularly will be vulnerable - the most notable recent deal was Global Foundries being paid to take on IBM's semiconductor business. I expect to see some other 'mergers' based around the Internet of Things as companies position themselves for growth i the next few years.
Tuesday, December 02, 2014
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Fake Chip Furor Challenges Counterfeiters
Fake Chip Furor Challenges Counterfeiters | EE Times:
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Glasgow-based USB chip designer FTDI is facing a storm of criticism after a new driver was released for its FT232R USB-to-UART bridge chip, but the problem was not with FTDI's chip.
Instead it was with counterfeit devices that people had bought over the Internet thinking they were genuine FTDI parts. The driver did not work with fake chips, effectively "bricking" people's USB interfaces, and highlighting the problem that many embedded chip maker face with counterfeit parts.
FTDI has responded well. "We have temporarily suspended the driver from being downloaded. We will investigate what is happening in the current driver and, in the fullness of time, reinstate the driver download, and if there's something we need to alter in the driver, we will do that," said Gordon Lunn, global customer engineer support manager at FTDI.
He points out that mainstream customers haven't had a problem and that this becomes an opportunity to remove fake devices from the supply chain and replace them with genuine parts. "We want to take the positives from this and work with people that want to buy genuine parts, and we are sorry if we have inconvenienced people who thought they were buying genuine parts, and we'd like to work with people to stop it at the source," he said. "We take each case on an individual basis. If a customer is willing to work with us and help us track down the source, then perhaps we would enter negotiations on a goodwill basis. I can't rule out working with individuals. It has to be considered."
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Glasgow-based USB chip designer FTDI is facing a storm of criticism after a new driver was released for its FT232R USB-to-UART bridge chip, but the problem was not with FTDI's chip.
Instead it was with counterfeit devices that people had bought over the Internet thinking they were genuine FTDI parts. The driver did not work with fake chips, effectively "bricking" people's USB interfaces, and highlighting the problem that many embedded chip maker face with counterfeit parts.
FTDI has responded well. "We have temporarily suspended the driver from being downloaded. We will investigate what is happening in the current driver and, in the fullness of time, reinstate the driver download, and if there's something we need to alter in the driver, we will do that," said Gordon Lunn, global customer engineer support manager at FTDI.
He points out that mainstream customers haven't had a problem and that this becomes an opportunity to remove fake devices from the supply chain and replace them with genuine parts. "We want to take the positives from this and work with people that want to buy genuine parts, and we are sorry if we have inconvenienced people who thought they were buying genuine parts, and we'd like to work with people to stop it at the source," he said. "We take each case on an individual basis. If a customer is willing to work with us and help us track down the source, then perhaps we would enter negotiations on a goodwill basis. I can't rule out working with individuals. It has to be considered."
"Ultimately, we are challenging the counterfeiters," Lunn said. "We want to maintain the quality and supply chain. Our distributors all have an investment in FTDI, which we are trying to protect, and we test our parts so that we produce the best output with genuine devices."
The company doesn't want its products to be compatible with "nongenuine devices," he said. "They've not had to invest in IP or driver development. There's no marketing collateral. There's no certification test, so they save a lot of expense." However, the company has specifically said there is no "fake detection" algorithm in the driver.
There is also a potential security issue (highlighted last month at EETimes) with microcontroller-based USB devices being reprogrammed with malware. "Our understanding is we think they are microcontroller based, so they are potentially more vulnerable," Lunn said. "You can't change what a genuine device actually does."
This is also important to FTDI's brand. "The reliability of these unknown devices is also unknown, so you can't guarantee how long they will last," he said. "But people still come back and think it's the FTDI parts failing, so we have to try to weed them out if we can."
Friday, May 23, 2014
Apps move into IoT design
 |
| English: Comparison of an Overo COM and a coin (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
It is making its innovative FlowCloud technology available via an Android and iOS app to developers, including the maker community, hobbyists and students, to speed application development for the IoT. FlowCloud support will be available on several low-cost development boards with MIPS CPUs across
a range of operating systems, starting with a Microchip-based chipKIT WiFire board from Digilent.
a range of operating systems, starting with a Microchip-based chipKIT WiFire board from Digilent.
The chipKIT WiFire board is a development platform that uses Microchip’s 32-bit PIC32MZ microcontroller with a MIPS microAptiv CPU. Imagination and partners will deploy FlowCloud support for other MIPS-based Android/Linux development boards in the near future.
The board is accessed and configured via the FlowCloud Getting Started app through an intuitive user interface that is intended to make embedded IoT development easier. A user’s FlowCloud account is free-of-charge and allows up to five connected devices.
FlowCloud provides an application-independent underlying platform that enables rapid construction and management of machine-to-machine and man-to-machine connected services through a set of modular infrastructure capabilities and underlying services that provide building blocks to accelerate deployment of cloud based applications. The infrastructure also provides secure asynchronous messaging and end-to-end connection establishment. The baseline FlowCloud service includes registration, authentication, association, security, notifications, updates and remote control. Optional plug-ins to accelerate time to market include FlowTalk (VoIP), FlowFunds (payments), and others.
This allows users to build a wide range of applications, including security, personal and professional health monitoring, energy management, and cloud-based systems for content delivery as FlowCloud technology minimizes the resources required to make a product fully connected, bringing together people, devices and services in a platform for easily building connected applications and businesses.
“Imagination provides complete IP solutions and comprehensive platforms that speed development time for our customers, their customers and developers,” said Tony King-Smith, EVP marketing at Imagination. “FlowCloud is a unique and powerful offering for developers and the industry, and is proven and mature, having already deployed in volume. The new work we are doing with low-cost MIPS-based development boards extends the FlowCloud ecosystem and makes the platform far more accessible to developers.”
Most chipKIT platforms are hardware compatible with many existing Arduino shields, and existing code examples and reference materials are easily migrated. This gives the user a large base of options they can
utilize in the development process. The chipKIT WiFire is only available through Digilent and builds on the previous chipKIT development boards with a significant processor performance increase over the previous generation.
utilize in the development process. The chipKIT WiFire is only available through Digilent and builds on the previous chipKIT development boards with a significant processor performance increase over the previous generation.
“Every day, more and more embedded systems are adding Internet connectivity, and the new chipKIT WiFire with our latest high-performance PIC32MZ MCU, which uses the microAptiv core, provides an ideal platform for IoT development,” said Rod Drake, director of Microchip’s MCU32 Division. “The
PIC32MZ and MPLAB Harmony software framework were designed for high-end, next-generation embedded applications that require high levels of performance, memory and advanced-peripheral integration. The addition of FlowCloud provides even more value for IoT and cloud applications.”
PIC32MZ and MPLAB Harmony software framework were designed for high-end, next-generation embedded applications that require high levels of performance, memory and advanced-peripheral integration. The addition of FlowCloud provides even more value for IoT and cloud applications.”
Users can get started with FlowCloud for the chipKIT WiFire at http://flow.imgtec.com/wifire. The chipKIT WiFire is priced at $79 (U.S.), and can be ordered today from Digilent at www.digilentinc.com/wifire.
Thursday, May 01, 2014
Startup Thalia DA uses ant algorithms to improve analogue and power designs
The key is that the Amalia and Emera tools use algorithms borrowed from
natural processes such as ant movements to optimize placement and routing in
these designs. This is traditionally regarded as a black art, needing highly
skilled and scarce engineering resource, relatively long design cycles and
often multiple design iterations to get to a production product, so using
natural algorithms is a way to automate the design process further.
Optimizations which typically took several days to weeks to complete can now be
performed in a matter of hours says the company.
“Analogue design
methodology has remained unchanged for a long time,” said founder and CEO
Sowmyan Rajagopalan. “I have seen the technical and time consuming efforts
analogue designers have had to live with in order to design and optimise their
circuits. Thalia’s tools will enable users to meet more challenging design
requirements within shorter time frames. Custom chip design companies will
benefit from reduced design times, shortened redesign cycles, better performing
parts and more effective use of scarce skilled design resource.”
A further benefit is that the toolsets can be used to
rapidly retarget existing designs to alternative silicon foundries for cost
reduction and sourcing flexibility.
Thalia has now completed its initial equity funding round
with Mercia Fund Management and Finance Wales. In addition the company has
secured grant support from the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) and the Welsh
Government.
“We are extremely pleased to have invested in a company that
has developed solutions that not only address a technical challenge but also bring
productivity gains for customers,” said Everard Mascarenhas, Investment Manager
at Mercia Fund Management. “Thalia has developed a truly disruptive technology
in a multi-billion dollar worldwide market where the incumbents grow and expand
their offer through acquisition.”
Thalia provides two suites of EDA design tools; AMALIA, an
intelligent analogue design optimisation & automation toolset and EMERA, a
unique power device optimiser, schematic and layout generator. As well as
offering these tools on a time-based software license, Thalia will also offer a
design optimisation service directly and through partners.
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Heartbleed challenges the Internet of Things
"The Heartbleed security bug is a key example of the fundamental security challenge for the Internet of Things says Green Hills Software as it launches a new security group."
Heartbleed challenges the Internet of Things
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Heartbleed challenges the Internet of Things
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Wednesday, April 09, 2014
ARM moves to LLVM open source for future compilers
ARM is moving its future compilers to open source under the LLVM license in a fundamental shift away from proprietary technology.
ARM Compiler 6 supports the coming 64bit ARMv8 architecture and will be integrated into future versions of the DS-5 development suite for high and system on chip development. This will also become the basis of the compiler for microcontroller projects.
"The benefit for our users is greater feature velocity from open source," said Daniel Owens, product manager for software development tools at ARM. "The ARM v8 backend is in open source today as it goes into open source first, then we pull it back in for integration and testing in DS-5. V8 will be supported out of the gate and then V7A and R and that will happen by the end of this year and then following on is V7M and that's probably 2015 so Keil will stay with V7 through that time, he said.
More on this story at ARM moves to LLVM open source for future compilers - Electronics Eetimes
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
"The benefit for our users is greater feature velocity from open source," said Daniel Owens, product manager for software development tools at ARM. "The ARM v8 backend is in open source today as it goes into open source first, then we pull it back in for integration and testing in DS-5. V8 will be supported out of the gate and then V7A and R and that will happen by the end of this year and then following on is V7M and that's probably 2015 so Keil will stay with V7 through that time, he said.
More on this story at ARM moves to LLVM open source for future compilers - Electronics Eetimes
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Tuesday, March 04, 2014
Bristol startup slashes memory power with standard logic process
Bristol startup slashes memory power with standard logic process:
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
A Bristol startup has developed an entirely new way of building static memory on a standard logic process that cuts the power in half without paying a penalty in area or speed.
Rob Beat (L) and Mark de Souza
Silicon Basis is based at the EngineShed and is developing the tools to help chip designers add memory to their devices in a way that uses less power, reduces the number of extra chips they need and gives them flexibility to move to different process technologies.
“Fundamentally memory has some real problems everyone does it the same way,” said Mark de Souza, chief executive at Silicon Basis and formerly at memory IP supplier Virage Logic. “They all take the TSMC arrays and put them together.” These arrays are specifically designed on a particular process.
Silicon Basis sees two key advantages for its technology it can save up to 50% of the power consumption and it can go below the bit cell voltage of the foundry memories. This lower voltage allows the memories to be powered by the same voltage source as the logic and so eliminates the need for a second DC-DC converter which adds cost and complexity to a design.
This also makes the technology foundry independent and scalable to new technologies such as FinFet, says de Souza. The company has produced all the models needed and is now working on 28nm silicon to prove the implementation.”We use our own bit cell so we are not restricted to the foundry’s Vmin which is a huge advantage,” said de Souza. “Dropping the voltage makes a huge difference.”
All of this comes from a new way of looking at the design of the cell which is currently being patented. “No one has seen this way of designing SRAM before,” he said. “We are talking to the experts in memory design and no one has seen this way of putting memory together. Its all using standard rules and standard CMOS. Its an architectural difference that means we don’t need to use sense amps and because we are using logic rules we can go down to the logic voltage floor and possibly below that.”
“Our cell size is about the same as the high speed cell from the foundry,” said Rob Beat, founder and chief technology officer of Silicon Basis and designer of the new cell. “There’s a compromise on area in the array but because the periphery is more efficient we are competitive in area especially on the smaller RAMs.”
The architecture brings advantages with the compiler that are not to be underestimated, he says. “Our single port compiler also outputs a one port register file,” he said. “Because of the way the bit cell is designed we can use the same bit cell for dual port so the dual port compiler will do the dual port register file and asynchronous dual port memory.” This avoids the problems of having up to five different compilers for each process technology with a significant support burden
The technology has been developed for the TSMC 40nm node and outperforms the high speed bit cell, says de Souza. “This took us a little bit by surprise as we didnt design for speed,” he said. “We did a lot of work at 40nm but what we are seeing from customers is that 28nm HPM is going to be a major node and we think there will be more new designs starting on 28nm than on 40nm.”
The technology is also fully compatible with FinFet vertical structures being used in TSMCs 16nm process node. “Our technology will work very nicely with FinFet right out of the box,” he said.
The technology has previously been used by Beat to develop low power FPGA fabric but has attracted more interest for the SRAM compiler. “For me, Silicon Basis starts here,” said de Souza.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
New 32bit architecture takes on ARM in home automation
New 32bit architecture takes on ARM in home automation
The FT32 core was developed for the FT900 family of controllers and at 2.93 MIPS/MHz FTDI claims this provides higher performance and ARM's A8 and A9 cores.
The RISC architecture provides true zero wait state operation up to 100MHz and supports 256k Flash with 256k Shadow RAM and 64k Data RAM. The FT900 chip also includes 10/100 Ethernet, two CAN 2.0 controllers, USB2.0 Hi-Speed support, SD host controller, parallel camera interface, IS master / slave interface, 10 bit DAC (2) and 10 bit ADC, integrated hardware debugger and USB DFU boot-loader.
"We saw an opportunity to do not just a microcontroller for performance but one that had the right connectivity for the markets that we see developing," said Dave Sroka, global product director at FTDI. The company has a range of USB interfaces based around an 8051 core and last year launched its FT800 EVE video processor.
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
The FT32 core was developed for the FT900 family of controllers and at 2.93 MIPS/MHz FTDI claims this provides higher performance and ARM's A8 and A9 cores.
The RISC architecture provides true zero wait state operation up to 100MHz and supports 256k Flash with 256k Shadow RAM and 64k Data RAM. The FT900 chip also includes 10/100 Ethernet, two CAN 2.0 controllers, USB2.0 Hi-Speed support, SD host controller, parallel camera interface, IS master / slave interface, 10 bit DAC (2) and 10 bit ADC, integrated hardware debugger and USB DFU boot-loader.
"We saw an opportunity to do not just a microcontroller for performance but one that had the right connectivity for the markets that we see developing," said Dave Sroka, global product director at FTDI. The company has a range of USB interfaces based around an 8051 core and last year launched its FT800 EVE video processor.
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Ada comes to ARM Linux
Ada comes to ARM Linux
AdaCore has developed a cross-development environment for the latest 2012 version of the Ada language for ARM processors running Linux.
GNAT Pro 7.2 provides a complete Ada development environment oriented towards embedded systems that require the flexibility and services provided by Linux. Developers of such systems can now exploit the software engineering benefits of the Ada language, including reliability, maintainability, and portability.
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
AdaCore has developed a cross-development environment for the latest 2012 version of the Ada language for ARM processors running Linux.
GNAT Pro 7.2 provides a complete Ada development environment oriented towards embedded systems that require the flexibility and services provided by Linux. Developers of such systems can now exploit the software engineering benefits of the Ada language, including reliability, maintainability, and portability.
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Thursday, February 06, 2014
Apple extends deal for Imagination video and graphics cores
Imagination Technology is relaxed about ARM as Apple extends its multi-year agreement to use its graphics and video cores.
The deal gives Apple access to Imagination's wide range of current and future PowerVR graphics and video IP cores that sit alongside the ARM processor cores. ARM this week also revealed it now owns nearly 500 patents covering the MIPS technology that Imagination acquired last year.
Apple extends deal for Imagination IP By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
The deal gives Apple access to Imagination's wide range of current and future PowerVR graphics and video IP cores that sit alongside the ARM processor cores. ARM this week also revealed it now owns nearly 500 patents covering the MIPS technology that Imagination acquired last year.
"This deal is very important," said John Metcalfe, chief operating officer of Imagination. "Clearly we have had tremendous success with Apple with multiple generations of their devices and we feel its very significant that they have extended the current agreement. This is a multi-year agreement across multiple IP, both existing and future IP."
Under the terms of the above licensing arrangement, Imagination will receive on-going license fees, and royalty revenues on shipment of SoCs (Systems on Chip) incorporating Imagination's IP.
With the acquisition of the MIPS processor cores last year Imagination is now a major competitor to ARM, whose cores are also used in Apple designs. "What we do as a matter of course is offer our customers a range of bus interfaces, whether that an internal bus, AXI or OCP," said Metcalfe. "Many people will look to AXI as the hardware interface and we support all our licensees with the interfaces to MIPS, Intel or ARM. ON the software side we deliver device drivers to our licensees that are targeting these three processor families."
This week it emerged that ARM has acquired 498 patents from the MIPS acquisition. "There was nothing too surprising in the ARM results this week except the write off on the patent pool," said Metcalfe. "We think its neutral. Obviously that was one of the key areas to assure ourselves of when we acquired MIPS that we had the freedom to develop the architecture without being bound by legacy patents."
Under the terms of the above licensing arrangement, Imagination will receive on-going license fees, and royalty revenues on shipment of SoCs (Systems on Chip) incorporating Imagination's IP.
With the acquisition of the MIPS processor cores last year Imagination is now a major competitor to ARM, whose cores are also used in Apple designs. "What we do as a matter of course is offer our customers a range of bus interfaces, whether that an internal bus, AXI or OCP," said Metcalfe. "Many people will look to AXI as the hardware interface and we support all our licensees with the interfaces to MIPS, Intel or ARM. ON the software side we deliver device drivers to our licensees that are targeting these three processor families."
This week it emerged that ARM has acquired 498 patents from the MIPS acquisition. "There was nothing too surprising in the ARM results this week except the write off on the patent pool," said Metcalfe. "We think its neutral. Obviously that was one of the key areas to assure ourselves of when we acquired MIPS that we had the freedom to develop the architecture without being bound by legacy patents."
Apple extends deal for Imagination IP By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Tuesday, February 04, 2014
ARM tops $1bn - analysis
If you thought ARM had exhausted most of the potential licensees for its processor cores, think again - with revenues over $1bn, over $1bn cash to hand and a pool of 3,500 patents, the company is continuing to sign up new companies.
Over half the 22 companies that signed licenses with ARM in the last quarter were new customers, with 15 taking the Cortex-M embedded cores. ARM has now signed more than 200 Cortex‐M licences with over 150 companies, making it the largest product line in the company with 30% of unit shipments. Half of the 10bn devices shipped last year were outside of its traditional mobile market as microcontrollers and the Internet of Things starts to take off and its high end smartphone business slows. Embedded now makes up 32% of the business, compared to 46% for mobile.
The fallout from the splitting up of MIPS Technologies last year is also apparent.
AMR has bought the MIPS pool of 498 patents for $4m from the Bridge Crossing consortium, creating a library of 3,500 patents. ARM had originally paid $167m to form the consortium with Allied Security Trust to license the patents to third parties but the consortium decided not to go ahead with that licensing. ARM is now taking a £59.5m charge as a result. Imagination Technologies acquired the remaining 80 patents relating directly to the MIPS processors.
The fallout from the splitting up of MIPS Technologies last year is also apparent.
AMR has bought the MIPS pool of 498 patents for $4m from the Bridge Crossing consortium, creating a library of 3,500 patents. ARM had originally paid $167m to form the consortium with Allied Security Trust to license the patents to third parties but the consortium decided not to go ahead with that licensing. ARM is now taking a £59.5m charge as a result. Imagination Technologies acquired the remaining 80 patents relating directly to the MIPS processors.
ARM tops $1bn By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Five lessons from Lenovo’s Motorola deal
Lenovo’s $2.9bn acquisition of Motorola Mobility from Google highlights some key lessons in the industry:
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
- Manufacturing still matters
- The consumer market is not enough for smartphones
- Watch out Nest
- Partners are as important as patents
- Google is an information company
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
TI claims industry's fastest 16bit DAC
Texas Instruments has unveiled the industry’s fastest 16-bit digital-to-analogue converter (DAC) running at 2.5Gsamples per second with a four channel version providing 2GHz of information bandwidth for basestation and signal processing applications.
The DAC38J84 and DAC38J82 provide the bandwidth, performance, small footprint and low power consumption needed for multi-mode 2G/3G/4G cellular base stations to migrate to more advanced technologies, such as LTE-Advanced and carrier aggregation on multiple antennas. The DACs support up to 2 GHz of information bandwidth for wideband power amplifier digital pre-distortion, millimeter wave backhaul infrastructure, signal jamming, radar and test equipment.
more at TI claims industry's fastest 16bit DAC By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
The DAC38J84 and DAC38J82 provide the bandwidth, performance, small footprint and low power consumption needed for multi-mode 2G/3G/4G cellular base stations to migrate to more advanced technologies, such as LTE-Advanced and carrier aggregation on multiple antennas. The DACs support up to 2 GHz of information bandwidth for wideband power amplifier digital pre-distortion, millimeter wave backhaul infrastructure, signal jamming, radar and test equipment.
more at TI claims industry's fastest 16bit DAC By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Tool debugs deeply embedded multicore SoC devices
Debugging multicore devices in deeply embedded systems is a key problem for designers. PLS Programmierbare Logik & Systeme has launched the latest version of its Universal Debug Engine (UDE) 4.2 with enhanced control and test methods for a wide range of 32bit multicore System on Chip (SoC) targets and optimized visualisation options during system level testing.
Individual cores can be specifically selected and also synchronized for control by the debugger. This also includes the extensive use of existing on-chip trigger and synchronization options of various device manufacturers. With the UDE 4.2, the consistent user interface ensures the greatest possible flexibility when controlling a multicore target, without the need to know the underlying on-chip logic in detail.
The trace framework of the Universal Debug Engine 4.2 has also been equipped with numerous new features. For example, relocation of the data processing in a separate process not only increases the speed of the evaluation, but also allows persistent storage of trace sessions for analysis at a later time without direct access to the target. Furthermore, comprehensive filters and the possibility to individually color recorded events of various trace sources simplify a clear presentation of the results.
An enhancement of the proven Universal Emulation Configurator (UEC) of the Universal Debug Engine (UDE) ensures an even more efficient use of the emulation devices offered by Infineon, Freescale and STMicroelectronics for some SoCs. Programming of the additional trigger logic contained on the emulation devices is performed by a graphical configuration of trace tasks, by which signals and actions are linked via a state machine.
See more at Tool debugs deeply embedded multicore system-on-chip devices By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Individual cores can be specifically selected and also synchronized for control by the debugger. This also includes the extensive use of existing on-chip trigger and synchronization options of various device manufacturers. With the UDE 4.2, the consistent user interface ensures the greatest possible flexibility when controlling a multicore target, without the need to know the underlying on-chip logic in detail.
The trace framework of the Universal Debug Engine 4.2 has also been equipped with numerous new features. For example, relocation of the data processing in a separate process not only increases the speed of the evaluation, but also allows persistent storage of trace sessions for analysis at a later time without direct access to the target. Furthermore, comprehensive filters and the possibility to individually color recorded events of various trace sources simplify a clear presentation of the results.
An enhancement of the proven Universal Emulation Configurator (UEC) of the Universal Debug Engine (UDE) ensures an even more efficient use of the emulation devices offered by Infineon, Freescale and STMicroelectronics for some SoCs. Programming of the additional trigger logic contained on the emulation devices is performed by a graphical configuration of trace tasks, by which signals and actions are linked via a state machine.
See more at Tool debugs deeply embedded multicore system-on-chip devices By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Ultrasonics slash cost of gas sensors
Ultrasonics slash cost of gas sensors: A gas sensor using ultrasonic measurements is set to slash the cost of medical monitoring.
The new ultrasonic sensor uses patent-pending technology developed by TTP in Cambridge to precisely measure the speed of sound in a gas to determine its composition. While current infrared gas sensing devices for carbon dioxide can cost over £240 and paramagnetic systems for oxygen around £120, TTP believes that its new SonicSense devices will cost between £3 and £6 each in volume production. Potential medical applications include respiratory monitoring, anaesthesia and heart monitoring.
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Related Ultrasonic stories:
Ultrasound array provides touch feedback in mid-air
Oxford spin-out raises £2.7m for ultrasound-based cancer treatment
3D ultrasonic camera for non-destructive testing of aircraft
Non-invasive ultrasonic sensors allow continuous liquid level monitoring
Wolfson to use bat-like sonar for gesture recognition
The new ultrasonic sensor uses patent-pending technology developed by TTP in Cambridge to precisely measure the speed of sound in a gas to determine its composition. While current infrared gas sensing devices for carbon dioxide can cost over £240 and paramagnetic systems for oxygen around £120, TTP believes that its new SonicSense devices will cost between £3 and £6 each in volume production. Potential medical applications include respiratory monitoring, anaesthesia and heart monitoring.
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Related Ultrasonic stories:
Ultrasound array provides touch feedback in mid-air
Oxford spin-out raises £2.7m for ultrasound-based cancer treatment
3D ultrasonic camera for non-destructive testing of aircraft
Non-invasive ultrasonic sensors allow continuous liquid level monitoring
Wolfson to use bat-like sonar for gesture recognition
Five technology trends for 2014
Five technology trends for 2014: National Instruments is highlighting five key trends for engineers in 2014, from control systems to RF and user interfaces:
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Related stories:
Interesting wearable applications to watch or in the making
Global video surveillance booming in 2014 with more analytical solutions
Emerging technology in LED lighting to shape the outlook for 2014
Related articles
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Related stories:
Interesting wearable applications to watch or in the making
Global video surveillance booming in 2014 with more analytical solutions
Emerging technology in LED lighting to shape the outlook for 2014
Related articles
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
UK tech sector records best growth performance for almost a decade
UK tech sector records best growth performance for almost a decade: The UK tech sector has seen its best performance in almost a decade according to a new report from KPMG/Markit Tech Monitor.
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Peer-to-peer database gives smart data discovery for embedded systems and devices
Peer-to-peer database gives smart data discovery for embedded systems and devices - Electronics Eetimes:
ITTIA has introduced version 6.0 of its flagship database software, ITTIA DB SQL, which brings new intelligence to data management on embedded systems and devices with true peer-to-peer replication.
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
ITTIA has introduced version 6.0 of its flagship database software, ITTIA DB SQL, which brings new intelligence to data management on embedded systems and devices with true peer-to-peer replication.
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Friday, October 11, 2013
Excessive security will kill the Internet of Things - Electronics Eetimes
Excessive security will kill the emerging Internet of Things warns the author of a new report.
“There’s a certain amount of panic around the Internet of Things, that you need maximum security or not do it at all,” said Prof. Jon Howes, Technology Director at Cambridge-based Beecham Research and author of a new report on machine to machine (M2M) security. “The problem with M2M is the business model is always tight so as we put tighter and tighter security in place it will kill the business model and make it uneconomic.”
The key is the end-to-end architecture, he says. This is even more important with the recent launch of low cost microcontrollers such as Silicon Labs’ 49¢ Zero Gecko that include an AES encryption engine to support security applications. "
More at Excessive security will kill the Internet of Things - Electronics Eetimes:
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
“There’s a certain amount of panic around the Internet of Things, that you need maximum security or not do it at all,” said Prof. Jon Howes, Technology Director at Cambridge-based Beecham Research and author of a new report on machine to machine (M2M) security. “The problem with M2M is the business model is always tight so as we put tighter and tighter security in place it will kill the business model and make it uneconomic.”
The key is the end-to-end architecture, he says. This is even more important with the recent launch of low cost microcontrollers such as Silicon Labs’ 49¢ Zero Gecko that include an AES encryption engine to support security applications. "
More at Excessive security will kill the Internet of Things - Electronics Eetimes:
5MP camera bundles boost Raspberry Pi multimedia - Electronics Eetimes
5MP camera bundles boost Raspberry Pi multimedia - Electronics Eetimes: "RS Components has released two new product bundles featuring the Raspberry Pi Model A board and the Raspberry Pi camera module."
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
First details on Intel’s Quark IoT processor
First details on Intel’s Quark IoT processor
Quark, Intel's new Pentium-based architecture, is aimed head on at ARM in applications such as the Internet of the Things (IoT), and there's been a lot of interest in quite what it means.
The fact that it uses ARM's AMBA bus interconnect underscores the vital importance of the ecosystem. It runs alongside a legacy serial bus to blocks such as the GPIO and real-time clock, separate from PCI Express and other serial interfaces.
The first instantiation of the core is used in the X1000 SoC. The specification, which was released at the end of last week, raises more questions than it answers for the SoC business, especially when you bring the IoT into the equation.
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Quark, Intel's new Pentium-based architecture, is aimed head on at ARM in applications such as the Internet of the Things (IoT), and there's been a lot of interest in quite what it means.
The fact that it uses ARM's AMBA bus interconnect underscores the vital importance of the ecosystem. It runs alongside a legacy serial bus to blocks such as the GPIO and real-time clock, separate from PCI Express and other serial interfaces.
The first instantiation of the core is used in the X1000 SoC. The specification, which was released at the end of last week, raises more questions than it answers for the SoC business, especially when you bring the IoT into the equation.
The way Intel has addressed the software ecosystem, with ports of Linux and VxWorks from Intel-owned Wind River and security from Intel-owned McAfee, highlights part of the challenge. Some SoC designers will welcome a ready-made software ecosystem, but this is primarily for Intel's customers buying the chip, rather than the core. Intel has said it will be a good long while before the IP is available on TSMC's technology.
Even then, there are key questions: How does this work as a multi-core device, both in homogeneous and heterogeneous systems? Exactly how the interfaces to graphics and security co-processors that need to be tightly coupled will work is not clear.
Having a synthesizable core helps with this. But creating an effective, multi-core IP solution for third-party SoC designers could take a signiifcant amount of work, and both ARM and Imagination Technologies are well ahead. Of course, a multi-core-enabled device (perhaps the X2000), could be in the roadmap.
Another issue is where this new architecture will actually compete. SoCs based on ARM's M0+ Flycatcher core will not run Linux, although they do hit the sub-50-cent price point for the IoT, including security engines and targeted peripherals.
With cache, wait states, legacy bus, and a larger area, Quark is unlikely to compete on area, price, and power. And with such price pressure, coupled with the memory and power issues, these are not going to be on the leading-edge 20nm and 14nm processes.
Atom is firmly aimed at the IoT gateway devices, and if Quark cannot get down to the silicon dust price point, it's not going to make a significant dent in the IoT market.
It seems Intel has a few large customers, including itself, lined up for Quark for wearable devices. But as exciting as it is to have a new architecture in the embedded SoC market, the opportunities for the wider market appear to be quite limited.
A smartwatch running Linux (which should really mean WindRiver Android) is interesting, but are we likely to take the hit of Android for a sensor controller in the IoT? That's unlikely, since the space between the ultra-low-cost sensor/controller and gateway is not really clear, while a heterogeneous multicore version will play well in low-cost smartphones and smart devices, alongside Intel's wireless IP.
This first part is an exploratory device with lots of options. The dedicated, optimized SoCs will come when Intel actually gets to focus on its end applications.
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Implantable 'lab on a chip' monitors health via Bluetooth
Implantable 'lab on a chip' monitors health via Bluetooth
Researchers in Switzerland have developed a tiny personal blood testing laboratory on a chip that gives an immediate analysis of substances in the body and transmits the results over a mobile phone.
The device integrates five sensors for different proteins, a radio transmitter and a power delivery system into a few cubic millimetres so the device can be implanted under the skin of the patient. Outside the body, a battery patch provides 1/10 watt of power, through the patient’s skin so that there’s no need to operate every time the battery needs changing.
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Researchers in Switzerland have developed a tiny personal blood testing laboratory on a chip that gives an immediate analysis of substances in the body and transmits the results over a mobile phone.
The device integrates five sensors for different proteins, a radio transmitter and a power delivery system into a few cubic millimetres so the device can be implanted under the skin of the patient. Outside the body, a battery patch provides 1/10 watt of power, through the patient’s skin so that there’s no need to operate every time the battery needs changing.
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Lime wants a Raspberry Pi for RF - Electronics Eetimes
Lime wants a Raspberry Pi for RF - Electronics Eetimes:
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
RF chip developer Lime Microsystems wants to make its configurable RF hardware as ubiquitous as the Raspberry Pi low cost computer by making it open source.
The company, based in Fleet, has provided all the schematics and documentation for the board for an open source project called Myriad-RF, and is looking for partners to make more boards to bring the cost down. The board is currently made by Taiwanese distribution partner Azio but costs $300.
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Monday, January 14, 2013
Search Engine Project Finds Internet-Facing Critical Infrastructure Devices
Two US researchers have identified over 7,000 critical control devices that are accessible via the Internet and so may be vulnerable to attack.
The researchers from Infracritical built a suite of scripts that includes 600 search terms for equipment built and managed by close to seven dozen manufacturers of SCADA equipment and support systems for SCADA. The pair found not only devices used for critical infrastructure such as energy, water and other utilities, but also SCADA devices for HVAC systems, building automation control systems, large mining trucks, traffic control systems, red-light cameras and even crematoriums. They initially approached the US Department of Homeland Security with a list of close to 500,000 devices; DHS helped pare the list down to search terms for 50 critical systems it believed were relevant. That eventually shrunk the list of devices to 7,200.
Shodan Search Engine Project Enumerates Internet-Facing Critical Infrastructure Devices
'via Blog this'
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
The researchers from Infracritical built a suite of scripts that includes 600 search terms for equipment built and managed by close to seven dozen manufacturers of SCADA equipment and support systems for SCADA. The pair found not only devices used for critical infrastructure such as energy, water and other utilities, but also SCADA devices for HVAC systems, building automation control systems, large mining trucks, traffic control systems, red-light cameras and even crematoriums. They initially approached the US Department of Homeland Security with a list of close to 500,000 devices; DHS helped pare the list down to search terms for 50 critical systems it believed were relevant. That eventually shrunk the list of devices to 7,200.
Shodan Search Engine Project Enumerates Internet-Facing Critical Infrastructure Devices
'via Blog this'
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Point of Sale equipment targetted by hacking malware
A security firm has found that point of sale equipment around the world has been targetted by malware to skim off credit card numbers, a deeply embedded security attack.
"Custom-made malware that has been used over the past 2-3 months to infect hundreds POS systems," said the Seculert Blog: Dexter - Draining blood out of Point of Sales. "Some of the targeted POS systems include big-name retailers, hotels, restaurants and even private parking providers. The name Dexter comes from a string found in one of the malware related files and its Track 1 / Track 2 online parsing tool "
Over 30 percent of the targeted POS systems were using Windows Servers, which may acocunt for how this is happening.
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
"Custom-made malware that has been used over the past 2-3 months to infect hundreds POS systems," said the Seculert Blog: Dexter - Draining blood out of Point of Sales. "Some of the targeted POS systems include big-name retailers, hotels, restaurants and even private parking providers. The name Dexter comes from a string found in one of the malware related files and its Track 1 / Track 2 online parsing tool "
Over 30 percent of the targeted POS systems were using Windows Servers, which may acocunt for how this is happening.
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Friday, November 30, 2012
Researcher Finds 23 SCADA Security Flaws in One Morning
This is the reason I bang on about security for embedded systems, particularly for the Internet of Things:
Researcher Aaron Portnoy found a remote code execution bug and a denial-of-service (DoS) flaw in Rockwell Automation SCADA products; three remote execution flaws and one DoS bug in Schneider Electric products; a DoS flaw in Indusoft SCADA products; eight DoS flaws in Realflex SCADA products; and three remote code execution bugs, two DoS, and three file vulnerabilities in Eaton products, a total of 23 from a simple scan. And if he can do it, so can hackers.
It also didn't take long - the first exploitable zero day bug took a mere 7 minutes to discover from the time the software was installed. For someone who has spent a lot of time auditing software used in the enterprise and consumer space, SCADA was absurdly simple in comparison he said.
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Ten... technology FAILS • The Register
Ten... technology FAILS from The Register:
Nokia's N-Gage, Palm's Foleo, Motorola's Atrix, Apple's Newton MessagePad, HD DVD, Sony's Rolly, Sony's Mylo, Philips' CD-i, Commodore's CD-TV, IBM's PCJr, the Camputer's Lynx, Gizmondo, the Phantom, Atari's Jaguar, MySpace, Beenz - behind every iPad there are dozens and dozens of technology products that aspired to greatness but were successful only in their distinct lack of commercial success.
Some were simply beaten by better rivals, others were just released too early or too late, still more were just plain wrong. Not all were specific products - entire categories of goods and services have been hailed as the Next Big Thing only to disappear with nothing but a handful of miserable early adopters to show they were ever there.
Here, then, are some of our favourite tech fails - products, technologies, concepts and trends - from the past 30-odd years.
Great piece from the Register - how many do you remember? (Sadly, all of them for me!)
Monday, August 06, 2012
Wednesday, August 01, 2012
Adding a '3D print' button to animation software
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk
A group of graphics experts led by computer scientists at Harvard have created an add-on software tool that translates video game characters—or any other three-dimensional software animations—into fully articulated action figures, with the help of a 3D printer.
The project is described in detail in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Transactions on Graphics and will be presented at the ACMSIGGRAPH conference on August 7.
Besides its obvious consumer appeal, the tool constitutes a remarkable piece of code and an unusual conceptual exploration of the virtual and physical worlds.
"In animation you're not necessarily trying to model the physical world perfectly; the model only has to be good enough to convince your eye," said lead author Moritz Bächer, a graduate student in computer science at SEAS. "In a virtual world, you have all this freedom that you don't have in the physical world. You can make a character so anatomically skewed that it would never be able to stand up in real life, and you can make deformations that aren't physically possible. You could even have a head that isn't attached to its body, or legs that occasionally intersect each other instead of colliding."
Returning a virtual character to the physical world therefore turns the traditional animation process on its head, in a sort of reverse rendering, as the image that's on the screen must be adapted to accommodate real-world constraints.
Bächer and his coauthors demonstrated their new method using characters from Spore, an evolution-simulation video game. Spore allows players to create a vast range of creatures with numerous limbs, eyes, and body segments in almost any configuration, using a technique called procedural animation to quickly and automatically animate whatever body plan it receives.
As with most types of computer animation, the characters themselves are just "skins"—meshes of polygons—that are manipulated like marionettes by an invisible skeleton.
"As an animator, you can move the skeletons and create weight relationships with the surface points," says Bächer, "but the skeletons inside are non-physical with zero-dimensional joints; they're not useful to our fabrication process at all. In fact, the skeleton frequently protrudes outside the body entirely."
The team of computer graphics experts developed a software tool that achieves two things: it identifies the ideal locations for the action figure's joints, based on the character's virtual articulation behaviour, and then it optimizes the size and location of those joints for the physical world. For instance, a spindly arm might be too thin to hold a robust joint, and the joints in a curving spine might collide with each other if they are too close.
The software uses a series of optimization techniques to generate the best possible model, incorporating both hinges and ball-and-socket joints. It also builds some friction into these surfaces so that the printed figure will be able to hold its poses.
The tool also perfects the model's skin texture. Procedurally animated characters tend to have a very roughly defined, low-resolution skin to enable rendering in real time. Details and textures are typically added through a type of virtual optical illusion: manipulating the normals that determine how light reflects off the surface. In order to have these details show up in the 3D print, the software analyzes that map of normals and translates it into a realistic surface texture.
Then the 3D printer sets to work, and out comes a fully assembled, robust, articulated action figure.
Before and after. (Image courtesy of Moritz Bächer.)
"With an animation, you always have to view it on a two-dimensional screen, but this allows you to just print it and take an actual look at it in 3D," says Bächer. "I think that’s helpful to the artists and animators, to see how it actually feels in reality and get some feedback. Right now, perhaps they can print a static scene, just a character in one stance, but they can’t see how it really moves. If you print one of these articulated figures, you can experiment with different stances and movements in a natural way, as with an artist’s mannequin."
Bächer's model does not allow deformations beyond the joints, so squishy, stretchable bodies are not yet captured in this process. But that type of printed character might be possible by incorporating other existing techniques.
"Perhaps in the future someone will invent a 3D printer that prints the body and the electronics in one piece," Bächer muses. "Then you could create the complete animated character at the push of a button and have it run around on your desk."
Harvard’s Office of Technology Development has filed a patent application and is working with the Pfister Lab to commercialize the new technology by licensing it to an existing company or by forming a start-up. Their near-term areas of interest include cloud-based services for creating highly customized, user-generated products, such as toys, and enhancing existing animation and 3D printer software with these capabilities.
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