Editors' Blog

New Intersil RGB Sensor

Intersil has announced a new RGB sensor, and they’ve laid out some of the things that it’s good for. But let’s back up a sec before diving in.

RGB sensors sound pretty straightforward, and their utility seems pretty obvious. But they’re not the only light sensors in town, so first let’s position them with respect to other light sensors on that system that everyone wants a piece of: the smartphone.

There’s already an RGB sensor on your phone: it’s in the … Read More → "New Intersil RGB Sensor"

Smoother IP to SoC Prototyping

by Kevin Morris

Synopsys recently announced their HAPS DX (Developer eXpress) product, and the story surrounding that release spoke to many of the things that Synopsys sees as good in their prototyping solution. But a few questions clarified that many of those things have already been available in the existing HAPS offerings. So what’s the key new thing that HAPS DX enables?

Turns out it has to do with the distinction between designing IP and designing an SoC. And this is actually a theme I’m seeing in other contexts as well.

IP started out … Read More → "Smoother IP to SoC Prototyping"

Tree Frogs Help Graphene Grow

by Kevin Morris

Growing high-quality graphene for use on wafers is hard. Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is the favored approach, but no one has perfected the ability to grow it directly onto the oxide surface of a wafer.

It’s much easier to grow it on a sheet of copper and then transfer it over. But that transfer step can be tricky, and copper isn’t a perfectly uniform, crystalline material either. So defects can easily result.

One obvious trick might be … Read More → "Tree Frogs Help Graphene Grow"

Micro-Windmill Surprise

by Dick Selwood

It’s one of those good problems.

You’ve been doing some exploratory MEMS work. Your main focus is biomedical – implants for dealing with prostate cancer. Silicon is too brittle, so you do some exploration with a foundry to experiment with different structures and materials. A nickel alloy looks interesting – more forgiving than silicon (at the expense of a lower Young’s modulus). And there’s some extra space on the die.

One a whim, you and a co-researcher half-jokingly discuss putting a windmill on there. During the discussion, … Read More → "Micro-Windmill Surprise"

Two New Pointing Mechanisms. Or One?

by Dick Selwood

Some of you may have come to this link already; if you did, you read a piece that voiced some confusion about the positioning of two new products from PointGrab. I had tried to do what I could with the information at the time, but I remained confused. Since then I have gotten much more specific information, and so the questions are removed, and I have redone what follows to explain more clearly what’s going on.

You may recall that my discussion with PointGrab last … Read More → "Two New Pointing Mechanisms. Or One?"

Invensense Microphone Skips a Step

by Kevin Morris

The number of microphone output options just got bigger by one.

Typically, there have been analog microphones, where you get a real-deal audio signal to play with, or digital microphones. The question is, for the digital versions, what does that mean? How are the 1s and 0s to be interpreted?

Says Invensense, up to their latest release, all digital microphones take the audio signal, digitize it, and then run that signal into a codec that creates a PDM signal. For anyone not steeped in this stuff (including yours truly), PDM is “pulse density modulation.& … Read More → "Invensense Microphone Skips a Step"

Ten years and rolling

by Amelia Dalton

Ten years ago today the Mars Rover Opportunity bounced its way on to the surface of Mars, at the start of a three month mission. In that time, as well as driving 24 miles, the little machine has added enormously to our understanding of the history of the planet. If your kids are big science and space fans they’ll love the Best Home Planetarium in 2020 to learn some more.

And this is a huge endorsement of the team who put together the electronics. The development process started nearly twenty years ago, … Read More → "Ten years and rolling"

TSensors Roadmap Takes Shape

by Bryon Moyer

Last fall, an effort was started to drive the MEMS business (or sensors in general) to the point where a trillion sensors are shipped yearly. We covered the TSensors event, and we promised to update.

As a quick recap, the approach here is to identify high-yield applications and then focus in on those to remove barriers (largely, but not exclusively, cost). So the current process is to establish what those applications are going to be, and then have a chairperson for each application driving … Read More → "TSensors Roadmap Takes Shape"

Harvesting Microwaves

by Bryon Moyer

We have just looked at an approach to wireless power transfer using low MHz electromagnetic field oscillations. But such a concept is only “power transfer” if the whole reason for the signal in the first place is to transfer power. If such a signal exists for some other reason – like communications – then doing the exact same thing wouldn’t be power transfer: It would be energy harvesting.

And indeed folks are trying to harvest energy out of all … Read More → "Harvesting Microwaves"

Haptics in a Microcontroller?

by Kevin Morris

TI caught my eye when they released a microcontroller that they said was “haptics-enabled.” A few seconds of thought convinced me that this concept needed some unpacking.

Haptics is all about devices providing feedback through some kind of touch mechanism. It could be as passive as raised bumps telling you that your fingers are in the right place, or it could be through vibrations or other active events that you can feel. It’s a hot topic, one we’ll … Read More → "Haptics in a Microcontroller?"