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AMS uses 3D chip technology for smartphone sensors
Austrian chip maker ams is applying through-silicon via (TSV) 3D IC fabrication technology to its ambient light sensor devices. TSV technology is being used to interconnect stacked wafers in FPGAs and memory chips and ams believes it can apply the technology to analogue sensors to very small wafer scale packages. “We have been developing the TSV capability and expect to be in production with first sensors in the middle of the year,” said Thomas Riener, senior v-p marketing communications at ams. The company is planning to develop more highly integrated and smaller ambient light sensors for use in smartphones and cameras. After the acquisition ..read more
Posted on: June 26, 2013Posted by: assuredelectronics
Altera: 14nm Stratix and 20nm Arria FPGA details
Altera has revealed more of its next-generation Stratix FPGAs, made on Intel’s 14nm finfet (‘tri-gate’) process, and 20nm TSMC-fabricated Arria FPGAs. The families will be called Stratix 10 and Arria 10. For the same power, Stratix 10 will deliver 1.4-1.6x performance compared with existing Stratix V parts, and double the performance is available for 1.3x power. “You can port an existing design. To get the full 2x performance, you will have to do some re-designing for the new architecture,” said Altera v-p of corporate strategy Danny Biran, who is not yet revealing details of the architecture changes. The firm also claims the newer Stratix ..read more
Posted on: June 12, 2013Posted by: assuredelectronics
Lumileds LED arrays up to 6,000 lm
Lumileds has announced chip-on-board LED arrays up to 6,000 lm Emphasising what is claims is the small size of the emissive areas, there are versions with illuminated diameters of 9, 13 or 15 mm. Called Luxeon CoB, nominal colour temperature is 3,000K, with 105 lm/W efficacy and CRI >80; all at 36V nominal forward drop. There are four versions, with typical light outputs of 1,150 (9mm), 1,725 (13mm), 2,300 (13mm) and 3,450 lm (15mm) at 300, 450, 600 and 900mA respectively. They are hot tested and specified at 85°C, and are based on metal-core printed circuit boards (MCPCBs). Applications are expected ..read more
Posted on: May 6, 2013Posted by: assuredelectronics
Microchip adds op amps to PIC microcontrollers
Microchip has integrated a dual op amp into its 8-bit PIC microcontrollers. The PIC16F527 and PIC16F570 microcontrollers are designed with on-chip dual op amp module, 8-bit ADC and two comparators. Combining signal conditioning and amplification function, the devices implement a new hardware interrupt capability which allows designers to implement more complex functions without adding software overhead. An integrated Brown-Out Reset (BOR) can detect faults in system power and safely reset the MCU to avoid memory corruption. The two MCUs also feature self-read/write programme flash memory, which allows for high-use data EEPROM functionality. Likely applications are sensor products, such as smoke detectors, ..read more
Posted on: May 1, 2013Posted by: assuredelectronics
Renesas fast waking 32bit micro made on zero wait state flash process
Renesas has introduced fast waking 32bit microcontrollers made on low power zero wait state flash process. Called RX111, the devices include USB 2.0 support for host, device, on-the-go (OTG), and battery charging. There are multiple modes to trade off performance and power. For example, there is a 100µA/MHz run mode, and 350nA software stand-by from which it can wake in 4.8µs. Flash will erase and write down to 1.8V, with 1kbyte erase block size and background operation (BGO). Erase times can be as low as 10ms per block. Clocking is at 32MHz and throughput is up to 1.56Dmips/MHz. "Power consumption ..read more
Posted on: April 19, 2013Posted by: assuredelectronics
Europe the only region with growth
Europe was the only region in the world to report semi sales growth between January and February. European semiconductor sales were up 1.4% in February compared to January, says WSTS. Overall, European semiconductor sales in February 2013 amounted to US$ 2.681 billion. On a year-to-date basis semiconductor sales increased by 2.0% versus the same period in the year 2012. February growth in Europe was driven by increased sales in the discrete, optoelectronics, total analog, total logic, MOS microcontroller and total MOS memory product categories. Looking at sales of application specific chips, both analog circuits and MOS special purpose logic devices designed for ..read more
Posted on: April 8, 2013Posted by: assuredelectronics
Tool vendors support Atmel’s ARM Cortex-A5 family
The third-party tools and software ecosystem is expanding for Atmel's ARM Cortex-A5-based SAMA5D3 microcontrollers. A5 is ARM's baby A-series-compatible core, designed as an up-grade from the ARM926 and ARM1176 with better mW/MHz than both, only slightly more chip area than the smaller 926, and more DMIPS than the more powerful 1176. Early in February, Atmel started shipping its most powerful MCU series yet: the A5-based SAMA5D3, fabbed on a 65nm process and offering up to 850DMIPS at 536MHz. Power is sub-200mW at maximum active speed and below 0.5mW in low-power context-saved mode. Intended applications include: factory automation, building automation, smart grid, medical ..read more
Posted on: March 8, 2013Posted by: assuredelectronics
