Even as we talk about the Common Platform Alliance’s 14-nm plans, others are also out there putting 14 nm into play. In March, imec announced delivery of what they claim to be the industry’s first process development kit (PDK) for 14 nm. Synopsys announced TCAD models for 14 nm about a week later.
These are actually rather different beasts; the imec delivery suggests the process is ready for … Read More → "14 nm Waking Up"
Not long ago we covered a set of inspection tools announced by KLA-Tencor. They have recently announced yet another inspection tool, which they call CIRCL. The idea is that it’s actually three or four tools in one, with stations for frontside, backside, and edge inspection as well as one for spot check and review all integrated into one cluster, with loaders for up to three lots at a time.
(And yes, apparently backside matters. Years ago when I worked in the fab, … Read More → "Ready for More Inspection"
Given all of the effort that goes into building internet capabilities into embedded systems, I was intrigued by a claim to the “world’s smallest device server” from Lantronix, a single-chip solution. After all, why is everyone going through all this effort if there’s already a single chip that does it all?
Well, as might be expected, it’s not everything to everyone – it’s what they call a serial-to-Ethernet converter, although just saying it goes to Ethernet is not really giving it enough credit, since it has full … Read More → "World’s Smallest Server?"
Used to be that there were processors (of the “regular” kind) and there were DSPs. It’s no longer enough to be a DSP: you have to be the right kind. At least that’s how CEVA has rolled out their offering, with one family for communications, one for video and imaging, and one for audio and voice.
They recently announced the latest version of the latter, their TeakLite family. As in other areas that used to seem so … Read More → "Audio Upgrade"
We took a look at PolyCore’s tools away back when MCAPI had first been approved as a standard for low-level multicore communication in embedded systems.
They’ve just announced an upgrade, and they continue with their goal of abstracting away a lot of the fiddly bits that are necessary to get different processes talking to each other in a multicore setup. In particular, they have structured … Read More → "PolyCore Updates Multicore Tools"
There was another company at DesignWest doing something similar, but not exactly competitive. Nabto puts a tiny webserver into your mobile device or onto your chip that places it behind the corporate firewall. So rather than have to upgrade multiple devices, you just upgrade the primary firewall. If I were a small business with multiple devices, I might prefer Icon Labs, but for a large enterprise, Nabto might be a better choice… or a combination of both.
… Read More → "There was another company at Des"We’re all still getting calibrated on sensors, and we can sometimes get tripped up on terminology. In discussions about their sensor fusion IP, Movea explicitly included some definitions to make sure we were aligned.
Most prominent is their finessing of the mythical 9-axis or 9-DoF sensor. They do this by distinguishing between true degrees of freedom and axes. Spatial motion involves only six true degrees of freedom: 3 dimensions linear and three dimensional rotational. That’s all there is. The problem is that when accelerometers ( … Read More → "What’s In a Name"
In touting their sensor fusion product offering, Movea announced their MotionCore IP in a manner that sounded like they were developing hardware. While that’s not strictly true, they are packaging up their IP in ways that intentionally make it easier for hardware developers to implement hardened versions of the cores. They target three implementations:
– software only, optimized for time to market; this is the primary implementation at present;
We’ve talked about Atmel’s touch activities before, both with respect to their controllers and their stylus venture (which also features their controllers). To date, they haven’t been overtly participating in the business of creating actual touchscreens.
But, behind the scenes, they’ve spent the last couple years developing a new projected capacitance (P-CAP) technology</ … Read More → "Atmel Takes On the Actual Screen"
On the heels of their Verdi3 announcement, Springsoft continues its triplication, now with Laker3. They position Laker as the “best established interoperable custom design flow.” As with all carefully-crafted positioning statements, the key qualifier they use here is “interoperable.” This refers both to the fact that they use the OpenAccess database and to their ability to integrate with Mentor’s RealTime engine for on-the-fly … Read More → "Another 3 from Springsoft"
