ST to cut production at Crolles and Catania

STMicroelectronics has announced production stoppages at manufacturing sites at Crolles and Catania according to the French union UNSA and may soon announce a new business model for the company.

The eight inch plant at Crolles will have seven days of partial unemployment and will stop production from 24 December 2012 to 2 January 2013.

Linear low input converter generates +/- regulated voltage

  Linear Technology's LT3959 is a DC-DC converter for boost, SEPIC and inverting power supply applications. The device operates over an input voltage range of 2.5V to 40V, has an onboard 6A/40V power switch and achieves efficiencies up to 96%. Likely applications are in industrial, automotive, medical and telecoms. The LT3959 can generate either positive or negative regulated output voltage with its two internal voltage feedback error amplifiers and reference voltages. One set is for positive output voltages and the other is for negative output voltages, both off a single feedback pin. The operating frequency is programmable fixed or synchronisable of 100kHz to 1MHz. The LT3959’s current-mode control ..read more

Panasonic latching relays for smart meters

The latching DW relay from Panasonic has been developed for smart meters, in particular the switching of heater circuit-breakers. Available from Assured Electronics, the relays can also be used to minimise standby currents in white goods such as washing machines, dishwashers and driers. Other target applications for the new versatile relay are industrial equipment, security equipment, various power supplies, and building automation. DW relays measure 24mm x 10mm x 18.8mm and low coil power dissipation of 200mW for the 1-coil latching type or 400mW for the 2-coil latching type. The devices can be used in the entire ‘eco market’ when power of up ..read more

PEI-Genesis assembles Deutsch/TE engine connectors

  Connector distributor PEI-Genesis can now assemble EN2997/983 series engine connectors from Deutsch/TE Aerospace. This follows TE Connectivity's acquisition of Deutsch Group SAS in April.  The Deutsch/TE products introduce a new line for PEI-Genesis to support the commercial aviation and MRO industries worldwide. “As the only distributor assembling customised Deutsch/TE Aerospace engine connectors, we are in a unique position to support a worldwide customer base with highly-tailored products very quickly,” said Russel Dorwart, president, PEI-Genesis. “PEI-Genesis will help Deutsch/TE approach the global marketplace in a new way, with quick turnaround on value-added connectors and comprehensive engineering support around the world,” said Fred Scott, distributor manager of Deutsch/TE Aerospace Operations.

Altera offers FPGA cores for 40GbE and 100GbE

Altera has production availability of its 40Gbit/s Ethernet (40GbE) and 100Gbit/s Ethernet (100GbE) intellectual property (IP) cores. These cores can be used for building systems requiring very high throughput-rate standard Ethernet connections, including chip-to-optical module, chip-to-chip, and backplane applications. The media access control (MAC) and physical coding sublayer plus physical media attachment (PCS+PMA) sublayer IP cores are IEEE 802.3ba-2010 standard compliant, reducing design complexity for customers integrating 40GbE and 100GbE connections on Altera’s 28-nm Stratix V FPGAs and 40-nm Stratix IV FPGAs. “As more system designs use Ethernet at high speeds—not only for local-area network attachment but to interconnect within systems—subsystem IP, including 40GbE/100GbE ..read more

TI design modules for C665x DSPs

Texas Instruments has added two new evaluation modules (EVMs) for its KeyStone-based TMS320C665x multicore digital signal processors (DSPs). The TMDSEVM6657L and TMDSEVM6657LE EVMs are designed for processors, the TMS320C6654, TMS320C6655 and TMS320C6657 which offer fixed- and floating-point capabilities for mission critical, industrial automation, testers, embedded vision, imaging, video surveillance, medical, and audio and video infrastructure. TI’s TMDSEVM6657L sells for $349, and the TMDSEVM6657LE sells for $549. Both EVMs include a free Multicore Software Development Kit (MCSDK), TI’s Code Composer Studio integrated development environment and suite of application/demo codes to allow programmers to get started quickly on the new platform. In addition, TI’s TMDSEVM6657L ..read more

Avago 120Gbit/s multichannel optical module

Avago Technologies has a 120Gbit/s multichannel optical transmitter and receiver module and a CXP pluggable transceiver for board-edge, box-to-box and rack-to-rack communications. The stand-alone MiniPODTM transmit and receive modules—the AFBR-81uVxyZ and AFBR-82uVxyZ, respectively, each contain 12 unidirectional channels (lanes) that can each transfer data at 10.3125Gbit/s using 64b/66b encoding for an aggregate data rate of 120Gbit/s for each module. The CXP pluggable edge-mount transceiver module (AFBR-83PDZ) is an integrated solution that contains 12 transmit and 12 receive lanes that operate at the same data transfer rates as the MiniPOD modules. The MiniPOD optical modules and CXP transceiver can transmit data up to 100 ..read more