What’s New?

03/29/2023

Synopsys.ai Unveiled as Industry’s First Full-Stack, AI-Driven EDA Suite for Chipmakers

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03/23/2023

Siemens named a Leader in Product Lifecycle Management for Discrete Manufacturers Q1 2023 report

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03/07/2023

ABB’s DLynx III DC/DC converters provide flexible, power-dense solutions for data-hungry applications

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02/07/2023

Toshiba Releases Intelligent Power Devices That Help Reduce Mounting Areas

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01/31/2023

Toshiba Releases Automotive 40V N-channel Power MOSFETs with New High Heat Dissipation Package that Supports Larger Currents for Automotive Equipment

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01/24/2023

Molex Elevates Electrical Safety in Harsh Environments with Launch of First Portable, IP69K-Rated Super-Safeway Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter (GFCI)

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01/20/2023

ABB sells Power Conversion division to AcBel Polytech Inc. for $505 million

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01/19/2023

Siemens & Deloitte demonstrate Industry 4.0 innovation at The Smart Factory @ Wichita

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12/18/2022

Toshiba to Expand Power Semiconductor Production Capacity with New Production Facility

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12/06/2022

Software Quality Issues in the U.S. Cost an Estimated $2.41 Trillion in 2022

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11/30/2022

Synopsys Posts Financial Results for Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2022

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11/11/2022

Arm technology is defining the future of computing: Record royalties highlight increasing diversity of products and market segment growth

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11/09/2022

ABB Helps Energize 5G Rollout with Small Cell Repeater Power Solution

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11/07/2022

Arm continues to accelerate IoT software development with new partnerships

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11/01/2022

Siemens expands access to advanced simulation with Simcenter Cloud HPC

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10/25/2022

More than 50 members join SOAFEE to enable the software-defined vehicle of the future

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10/24/2022

Synopsys Advances Designs on TSMC N3E Process with Production-Proven EDA Flows and Broadest IP Portfolio for AI, Mobile and HPC Applications

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10/20/2022

ABB Q3 2022 Results

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10/11/2022

Sharp’s New 64-color Memory LCD is Perfect for Wearable Product Designs

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9/14/2022

Redefining the global computing infrastructure with next-generation Arm Neoverse platforms

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9/13/2022

FIA selects Siemens as Official Sustainability PLM Software Supplier

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9/07/2022

Molex Introduces First-to-Market Hybrid Optical-Electrical Interconnects for Co-Packaged Optics

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8/30/2022

Toshiba Launches its 3rd Generation SiC MOSFETs that Contribute to the Higher Efficiency of Industrial Equipment

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8/17/2022

Synopsys Posts Financial Results for Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2022

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8/9/2022

New Research Finds 73% of Organizations Have Significantly Increased Their Software Supply Chain Security Efforts as a Result of Log4Shell, SolarWinds, and Kaseya

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8/9/2022

Siemens selected by Microsoft for Rapid Assured Microelectronics Prototypes (RAMP) Program

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8/8/2022

Arm achieves record revenue and shipments in Q1 FY 2022

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7/22/2022

Toshiba’s New SiC MOSFETs Delivers Low On-Resistance and Significantly Reduced Switching Loss

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7/19/2022

Smaller Class 2 combiners make 5G, fiber broadband, and security more accessible

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7/13/2022

ABB Formula E bites into e-mobility myths in the Big Apple

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6/29/2022

Siemens takes Xcelerator beyond software to connect the real and the digital worlds

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6/28/2022

Synopsys and Arm Strengthen Partnership to Advance Next-Gen Mobile SoCs for Arm’s Total Compute Solutions

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6/22/2022

Synopsys Completes Acquisition of WhiteHat Security

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6/7/2022

Toshiba Adds Five New MOSFET Gate Driver ICs that Will Help Reduce Device Footprints

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5/16/2022

Major milestones for Arm SystemReady in driving ecosystem standards

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5/16/2022

Smart Gate Driver Photocoupler with 2.5 A Output Current Whose Output Type is Widely Used in Industrial Equipment

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4/28/2022

Defending America’s Cup champions select Siemens Xcelerator to fast-track yacht development

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4/26/2022

Arm expands Total Solutions for IoT portfolio to continue delivering transformative innovation to ecosystem

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4/26/2022

Molex Announces Results of Global Design Engineering Innovations Survey

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3/17/2022

ABB’s small cell solutions provide reliability, efficiency needed to power the 5G transition

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3/8/2022

Toshiba Unveils Pro Series N300 and X300 – Enhanced Performance & Reliability for Professionals and Gaming Enthusiasts

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2/24/2022

The age of end-to-end 5G networks built on Arm is now

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2/15/2022

Daimler Truck adopts Siemens’ Xcelerator to shape the future of CO₂-neutral transport

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2/9/2022

Lineup Expansion of Power MOSFETs of SOP Advance(WF) Packages That Contribute to Lower Power Consumption for Automotive Equipment

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2/9/2022

Synopsys Introduces Code Sight Standard Edition to Enable Secure Software Development

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2/8/2022

Toshiba Unveils Path to 30TB by FY23

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2/8/2022

Arm appoints Rene Haas as Chief Executive Officer

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2/4/2022

Toshiba to Expand Power Semiconductor Production Capacity with 300-millimeter Wafer Fabrication Facility

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1/25/2022

Lockheed Martin Aeronautics adopts Siemens’ Xcelerator portfolio to support digital engineering transformation

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1/20/2022

Toshiba Releases High Voltage 1500V Automotive Photorelay

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1/20/2022

Morello research program hits major milestone with hardware now available for testing

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1/11/2022

Siemens extends mechanical performance prediction leadership with Simcenter 3D 2022.1

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1/7/2022

Toshiba Achieves World’s First Demonstration of Substantial Improvements in HDD Recording Performance with Microwave Assisted Switching – Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording (MAS-MAMR)

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11/2/2021

Siemens named a “Leader” in Industrial Internet-of-Things Software Platforms Q3 2021 Report

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10/19/2021

The journey to cloud-native edge: Project Cassini doubles participation in 2021

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10/18/2021

Arm transforms the economics of IoT with Virtual Hardware and a new solutions-led offering

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9/16/2021

PAC INNOVATION RADAR names Siemens “Best in Class” in Open Digital Platforms for Cloud-centric Industrial IoT

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9/15/2021

New Arm technologies to transform the software-defined future for the automotive industry

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9/8/2021

Toshiba Releases New M4G Group of Arm® Cortex®-M4 Microcontrollers for High-speed Data Processing in the TXZ+TM Family Advanced Class

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8/10/2021

Defining the future of MBSE: SysML v2

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8/9/2021

Toshiba Nearline HDD Shipment & Capacity Sets New Company Record In 2CQ21

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7/29/2021

Toshiba Releases Arm® Cortex®-M4 Microcontrollers for Motor Control as First Products in the TXZ+TM Family Advanced Class

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7/29/2021

Siemens extends Xcelerator portfolio with new functions for efficient electrical and automation design of industrial equipment

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7/27/2021

Synopsys Advances Application Security Testing for Developers with Rapid Scan

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7/27/2021

Molex Accelerates Path to Industry 4.0 with Expanded Industrial Automation Solutions (IAS4.0) and New Flexible Automation Modules (FAMs)

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7/8/2021

“We’re seeing the preparation for the massive upswing in EV growth” – ABB’s Bob Stojanovic on the ongoing electrification journey in the US

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6/30/2021

Enabling the dynamic 5G infrastructure with Arm-based solutions

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6/30/2021

Cybersecurity Research Endowment Named for Synopsys VP of Market Development, Anita D’Amico

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6/29/2021

ABB Power Conversion Expands Mission-Critical Services Training

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6/29/2021

Siemens’ MindSphere has been selected by TotalEnergies for IoT monitoring of its NGV stations

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6/24/2021

Siemens to accelerate high-value growth as a focused technology company

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6/23/2021

Toshiba’s New Device Structure Improves SiC MOSFET High Temperature Reliability and Reduces Power Loss

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6/8/2021

Smartsheet Introduces New Innovations and Partnerships at ENGAGE Event, Significantly Unlocking Customer Value in the Platform

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6/3/2021

Siemens acquires Nextflow Software to speed simulations with advanced meshless technology

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6/2/2021

Toshiba’s Triple-Gate IGBT Power Semiconductors Cut Switching Power Losses by 40.5%

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5/26/2021

Surf Loch leverages Siemens’ Digital Enterprise portfolio to create the perfect wave

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5/17/2021

Toshiba Ships Record Nearline HDD Volume & Capacity in 1CQ21 Yields Largest Q-Q and Y-Y Growth Rate in the Industry

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5/1/2021

Kastus® and Dawar Technologies launch touchscreen partnership

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4/29/2021

iENSO announces the launch of an Ambarella-based platform ecosystem for embedded vision data applications

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4/19/2021

ABB Delivers High Current and Power Density for Compact IT Equipment with MicroDLynx II

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3/9/2021

iENSO and Firedome announce a partnership to bring real-time cybersecurity to IoT brands

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12/17/2020

Arm Moves Production-Level EDA to the Cloud with the Help of AWS

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12/10/2020

Delivery Hero Selects Smartsheet to Drive Efficiencies and Visibility Across its Global Operations

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12/7/2020

Neoverse expands further into cloud with new network-optimized instances at AWS re:Invent

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12/4/2020

Sharp Develops 8K Real-time VVC Decoder, a World First

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12/2/2020

ABB’s 1,000th fast charger in Norway marks key e-mobility milestone

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11/19/2020

ABB Capital Markets Day 2020

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11/18/2020

Smartsheet Named a Leader in Collaborative Work Management Tools Report by Independent Research Firm

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10/30/2020

Toshiba Launches High Ripple-Rejection Ratio, Low-Noise LDO Regulators with Enhanced Power-Line Stabilization

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10/28/2020

Industry leader joins iENSO executive team

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10/26/2020

Toshiba Announces Updated 4TB, 6TB and 8TB Enterprise Capacity HDD Models

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09/17/2020

iENSO announces the launch of Allwinner V3 SOC-based platform ecosystem for off-the-shelf integration of video-related embedded vision applications

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09/3/2020

Dawar Offers New Touchless Technologies

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08/17/2020

Toshiba’s New Photorelays with Low Trigger LED Current Contribute to Low Power Consumption in Battery-Powered Equipment

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07/10/2020

The Journey of Motor Control

 

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07/09/2020

Appian Announces Acquisition Requirements Management Solution to Modernize Federal Systems

 

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07/07/2020

Advanced Light-Receiving Technology from Toshiba EnablesSolid-State LiDAR Free from Reliance on Mechanical Components

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06/30/2020

Sharp Builds Mega Solar Power Plantin Ninh Thuan Province, Vietnam

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06/29/2020

Toshiba Releases Industry’s First Photocouplers for High-Speed Communications that can Operate from 2.2V

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06/22/2020

Arm Technology Powers the World’s Fastest Supercomputer

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06/17/2020

Smartsheet Partners with 451 Research to Help Organizations Understand Employee Productivity

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06/10/2020

Announcing the Latest Version of the Appian Low-code Automation Platform

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06/09/2020

ABB collaborates with HPE to reduce energy consumption of supercomputers

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05/26/2020

New Arm IP delivers true digital immersion for the 5G era

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04/27/2020

Survey Uncovers Over 90% of Young Workforce Having Difficulty Working Remote

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04/20/2020

Toshiba Celebrates Sustainability with Recycling & Reforesting Efforts

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04/15/2020

Arm enables global IoT proliferation through Pelion IoT platform ecosystem expansion

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04/10/2020

5 Sharp Products Win 2020 Red Dot Design Award

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03/31/2020

CTS Releases New Series 292 Optical Ring Encoder

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02/10/2020

New AI technology from Arm delivers unprecedented on-device intelligence for IoT

 

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01/09/2020

ABB to deliver the power supply for Europe’s largest battery factory

 

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12/04/2019

Dawar Technologies Releases New Line of Standard Products

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11/31/2019

IoT DeviceManagement – How To Achieve Trusted Factory Provisioning

Removing Complexity and Instilling Security and Scalability in IoT Devices

11/07/2019

Toshiba’s Nearline HDD Exabytes Balloon with Helium

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Since the introduction of its 9-disk helium-sealed nearline HDD (MG07) in late 2017, Toshiba’s nearline-class HDD exabyte shipments have nearly tripled. The remarkable growth in exabytes shipped is attributable to Toshiba’s time to market on leading-edge capacity nearline HDDs. In 2CQ ’19, helium-based nearline HDD exabytes surpassed that of air-based nearline HDDs, and this delta will become increasingly larger as time progresses.

Nearline Exabytes Shipped

During this same period, Toshiba’s total nearline average capacity has more than doubled. Moreover, the projected rise in higher-capacity nearline HDD volumes will fuel this projected upward momentum in average capacity through 2020 and beyond.

Avg Capacity Shipped

The success of the helium-based HDD designs has contributed to the steady rise in Toshiba’s overall market share. Based on TRENDFOCUS, Inc. preliminary 3CQ19 report, Toshiba has more than doubled its market share within three years, closing the gap on the competition. All of this have been accomplished during extremely challenging market conditions – a testament to Toshiba’s approach to product design and acceptance Toshiba’s product portfolio has received from major customers.

The result is that Toshiba is leading the charge in the high-capacity nearline HDD market. Hard disk drives have been and remain the most cost-effective random-access storage medium available in the market. At roughly 12 times less expensive than solid state memory (according to various publicly published reports), the cost competitive advantage will help Toshiba keep up the insatiable storage demand of the cloud datacenter companies.

10/29/2019

Toshiba’s New Three-Phase Brushless Motor Control Pre-Driver IC Features Intelligent Phase Control and Closed Loop Speed Control

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 Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. (“Toshiba”) has launched the “TC78B027FTG,” a three-phase brushless motor control pre-driver IC with Intelligent Phase Control (InPAC) technology that enables optimum operating efficiency in applications such as high-velocity server fans, blowers and pumps.

In recent years, advances in server capacity and performance require larger and higher velocity fans for cooling the excess heat generated by the equipment.

Similarly, small blowers, vacuums and pumps also operate with high-speed impellers that require high power capability. TC78B027FTG is a brushless motor controller with pre-driver that can drive a wide range of external MOSFETs to meet such challenges.

TC78B027FTG features Intelligent Phase Control (InPAC) and Closed Loop Speed Control technologies. InPAC offers high-efficiency drive by synchronizing the phases of the driving voltage and current, thereby delivering maximum real power to the loads. This operation is usually not possible without some kind of compensation, which generally requires significant motor characterizations upfront and operation adjustments in real time to achieve the optimum efficiency throughout the speed range. InPAC, on the other hand, is an automatic function that requires initialization during design and therefore minimizes adjustment burdens and speeds up the development time.

A closed loop speed control function regulates and maintains the motor rotational speed under dynamic power fluctuations and load variations, a valuable feature for mission-critical applications such as server fans and other cooling applications. Precise setting of a speed profile is done by the built-in non-volatile memory (NVM) in the TC78B027FTG which eliminates the need for an external MCU for a closed loop speed control.

TC78B027FTG solutions also simplify motor selections—TC78B027FTG requires only one Hall sensor input that can be used either with a single Hall sensor motor or the conventional 3 Hall sensors motors. The IC also employs either a Hall sensor analog or Hall IC digital signal for rotor position detection, which truly simplifies users’ motor selection tasks.

For low power applications, designers can also consider TC78B027FTG fully integrated driver version, TC78B025FTG, which covers 16V/3.5A applications.


Main features

  • Intelligent phase control optimizes efficiency over a wide operating range.
    InPAC, a technology developed by Toshiba, realizes an automatically optimized high-efficiency drive in a wide range of rotational speeds. Adjustment burden is also reduced.
  • Stable rotational speed under disturbances
    A closed loop speed control function regulates motor rotational speed fluctuations caused by changes in power supply voltage and load. An external MCU is not required because the IC has an internal NVM for speed profile setting.
  • Flexible in various power applications with appropriate external FETs
    Various FETs can be used, and TC78B027FTG solutions cover a wide range of low-to-medium power applications.


Applications

Cooling fans for servers, blowers.

 

Main Specifications

Product name TC78B027FTG
Supply voltage (operating range) 5 to 16V
Drive mode Sine-wave drive
Features Intelligent Phase Control (InPAC)
Selectable closed loop or open loop speed control
Standby function
FET gate current configuration for Slew Rate Control
Soft start function
Supports speed control by PWM signal input and analog voltage input
Requires only 1 Hall sensor
Supports Hall element analog or Hall IC digital position signal
Package VQFN24 (4mm×4mm×0.9mm)

09/30/2019

Toshiba today announced the launch of “TB67B000AHG,” a new three-phase brushless motor driver for home appliances such as air-conditioners, air-purifiers, dehumidifiers, and ceiling fans.

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TOKYO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation (“Toshiba”) today announced the launch of “TB67B000AHG,” a new three-phase brushless motor driver for home appliances such as air-conditioners, air-purifiers, dehumidifiers, and ceiling fans. The new driver is a high-voltage addition to the “TB67B000 series,” which realizes highly efficient brushless motor drive and noise reduction in a single package.

Demand is growing, particularly in emerging economies, for high-efficiency three-phase brushless fan motors that can reduce energy consumption and can manage fluctuations in power voltage. Such motors require higher-voltage PWM driver ICs to maintain high product reliability.

Toshiba’s newly developed 600V TB67B000AHG driver IC is pin-compatible with the current 500V TB67B000HG and can easily replace it. Toshiba is also developing the more compact version “TB67B000AFG” in a small 34-pin HSSOP [1] package which will be available in November 2019.

Main Features

  • 600V rating boosts product reliability
    Ensures products with greater resilience to voltage fluctuations than the current 500V TB67B000HG. Pin compatibility realizes easy replacement of the current IC.
  • Realizing sine-wave PWM drive with a rating of 600V/2A in a single package
    Sine-wave motor control IC and IGBT (rating of 600V/2A) are integrated in a single package. This reduces the size of mounting area and board layout, and contributes to overall system cost reduction.
  • Low noise and low vibration
    Use of a sine-wave drive system with a smooth current waveform reduces noise, and achieves less vibration than motors with a rectangular wave drive system.

Applications
Home appliances such as air-conditioners and air-purifiers, dehumidifiers, ceiling fans, and other industrial equipment.

Main Specifications

Product name New product

TB67B000AHG

Under development

TB67B000AFG

Current product

TB67B000HG

Current product

TB67B000FG

Power supply voltage

(absolute maximum ratings)

For motor operation: 600V For motor operation: 500V
For controller: 18V
Package HDIP30
(Mounting area:
32.8 × 13.5mm)
HSSOP34
(Mounting area:
17.5 × 11.93mm)
HDIP30
(Mounting area:
32.8 × 13.5mm)
HSSOP34
(Mounting area:
17.5 × 11.93mm)
Power supply voltage

(operation range)

For motor operation: 50 to 450V
For controller: 13.5 to 16.5V
Output current

(operation range)

2A
Driving method Sine-wave PWM drive/Trapezoidal commutation
PWM frequency 14kHz to 23kHz
Lead angle control Sine-wave PWM drive: 0 to 58°/32 steps
Trapezoidal commutation: 0 to 28°/16 steps
Input voltage for
rotational speed command
Motor operation: 2.1V to 5.4V
Features • Built-in IGBT three-phase bridge

• Built-in oscillation circuit (resistor connected externally.)

• Built-in bootstrap diode

• Built-in error detection functions: current limiter, thermal shutdown, under voltage lock out, and motor lock detection

• Built-in regulator circuit

(5V/35mA , 5V/30mA)

• Built-in regulator circuit

(5V/35mA , 7V/30mA)

 

Stock Check &

Purchase

 

Buy Online Buy Online Buy Online

[1]: Shrink Small Outline Package with Heat Sink

For more information about the new product and other line-up, please visit:
TB67B000AHG
https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/info/lookup.jsp?pid=TB67B000AHG&lang=en
TB67B000HG
https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/info/lookup.jsp?pid=TB67B000HG&lang=en
TB67B000FG
https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/info/lookup.jsp?pid=TB67B000FG&lang=en

To check the availability of the new product at online distributors, please visit:
TB67B000AHG
https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/ap-en/buy/stockcheck.TB67B000AHG.html
TB67B000HG
https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/ap-en/buy/stockcheck.TB67B000HG.html
TB67B000FG
https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/ap-en/buy/stockcheck.TB67B000FG.html

09/30/2019

Introducing InPAC: Toshiba’s next-generation brushless motor control technology for BLDC sensor-based motors

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Intelligent Phase Control (InPAC) technology optimizes brushless motor performance by capitalizing the brushless motors’ efficiency to the maximum.

Brushless motors are used in many applications, powering a wide range of high-speed equipment ranging from home vacuum cleaners to industrial machinery to data center server cooling fans.

A major challenge facing designers is ensuring that the motors they select operate reliably and efficiently. To help achieve these goals, Toshiba has developed its new InPAC motor controller series.

Intelligent phase control
To meet a growing demand for improved energy efficiency and lower noise, equipment designers are increasingly turning to inverters to control brushless motors. With conventional technology, in order to obtain high-level efficiency, it’s necessary to adjust the phase, or lead angle, of the motor voltage and motor current for individual motors.

A lead angle is the angle of timing at which voltage is advanced to apply to the coil.

It takes some time to apply voltage to the coil until current increases to the maximum value. In a high-speed rotation, a rotor may pass through the next turn-on point before the magnetic drive reaches maximum power. In this case, the rotor power will not be the maximum. To avoid this situation and improve the drive efficiency, a rotor is advanced to a certain angle from the calculated angle. This advanced angle is called a lead angle. A lead angle varies depending on characteristics, rotational speeds, and load conditions of the brushless motors.

Achieving optimal efficiency over a wide range of rotational speeds—from almost zero rotations per minute (rpm) at start-up to high speeds of thousands rpm—requires many characterizations for phase adjustment and can usually optimize at a limited range. InPAC’s advantage lies in intelligent phase control, a technology that allows brushless motors to rotate efficiently at high speeds with uniform accuracy.

Toshiba’s approach marks a distinct departure from conventional motor controllers. With previous-generation technologies, it was necessary to adjust a phase difference between the voltage and current of a motor at several points in its operating rpm range. Toshiba’s Intelligent Phase Control (InPAC) technology eliminates this need, and speeds development, by automatically adjusting the phases of a motor’s voltage and current, thereby achieving the highest possible efficiency across the entire operating rpm range only through initialization. Also, Toshiba’s solution achieves flexible rotation speed control by hard logic without the microcontroller, thereby saving additional development efforts.

How it works
When a brushless motor is driven with a sine wave, changes in its rpm resulting from its impedance create a phase difference between its voltage and current, decreasing drive efficiency. To provide the phase adjustment necessary to improve efficiency, InPAC compares the relationship between the current phase (current information) and the voltage phase (Hall-effect signal) and provides feedback to the motor current control signal in order to adjust their phase relationship automatically, leading to higher efficiency.

InPAC instantly detects the motor current phase and feeds back information for auto lead angle control. In sensor-based motor applications, the Hall signal phase is automatically adjusted to match that of the motor drive current. High efficiency is achieved regardless of the motor’s rpm, load torque or power supply voltage. InPAC also helps reduce the number of external parts required for lead angle adjustment.

To achieve the highest possible efficiency with conventional motor control technology, it’s necessary to adjust a phase difference between the voltage and current of a motor at several points in its operating rpm range. InPAC does away with this requirement, enabling designers to automatically adjust motor voltage and current phases to achieve the highest possible efficiency across the entire operating rpm range only through initialization, reducing the development workload.

For example, at 3,000 rpm, InPAC reduces supply current by approximately 10%, compared with conventional fixed lead angle control.

Optimization and efficiency
To achieve optimal motor efficiency, the lead angle must be adjusted with real-world equipment, although it is controlled based on the information on rotor positions provided by Hall sensors. The lead angle must also be adjusted according to the motor’s constants, including rpm and several other factors, even when a motor controller/driver has an auto lead angle control function. Given these critical limitations, a need has emerged over the past several years for an improved control method that reduces designer burden.

InPAC addresses this issue by rapidly detecting the motor current phase and instantly feeding the information back for automatic lead angle control. When a motor application is equipped with a sensor, the phase of the Hall signal is automatically adjusted to match that of the motor drive current. High efficiency is achieved regardless of a motor’s rpm, load torque or power supply voltage. InPAC also helps reduce the number of external parts necessary for lead angle adjustment and eliminates the need for any programming related to a motor’s changing operating states.

The use of a sine wave drive system with a smooth current waveform also offers the benefit of generating less noise and vibration than motors with a rectangular wave drive system.

Requirements versions and specifications
InPAC devices are available in several versions, each developed to meet a specific design need. The TC78B016FTG is a fully integrated motor control driver rated 40V/3A maximum. This IC requires a power supply operating anywhere in the range of 6 to 36 volts and provides a sine wave drive. Designers can also take advantage of the low ON resistance of 0.24 ohms (total of high and low sides) typical, which reduces the device’s self-heating during operation, thereby allowing the IC to generally support 1.0-1.5A applications. Speed is controlled by a simple pulse width modulation (PWM) signal or an analog voltage input. Built-in protections include thermal shutdown, over-current protection and motor lock detection. The part is offered in a compact VQFN32 5x5mm2 package.

The TC78B041FNG and TC78B042FTG are flexible controller products that allow users to tailor the application power requirement and use the proper gate driver and MOSFET for the designs. The TC78B041FNG adopts a SSOP30 type package and the TC78B042FTG adopts a VQFN32 5x5mm2 package.

The TC78B027FTG is a controller with a gate driver where users can select the right MOSFETs for the applications. It also incorporates a one-Hall drive system that allows users to employ a less costly one-sensor brushless motor. The device is housed in a VQFN24 4x4mm2 package.

For more information

Toshiba has over 35 years of experience in the fabrication of motor drivers and offers an extensive portfolio of brushless motor drive controllers with InPAC technology, suitable for various needs. To evaluate your product plan for using a brushless motor incorporating InPAC, reference designs are available to download.

08/24/2019

RF Design Challenges for PCB: Are you ready for 5G for IoT?

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In this webinar we will provide tool requirements and design techniques that will help you on your path to designing your next-generation wireless product.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is not a new topic to many; however, the rapidly changing wireless technology used in IoT devices may be. Billions of new IoT devices will be coming online in the next few years, and 5G technologies will be the foundation for the design of devices like smartphones, tablets, laptops, and wearables. This presents new design challenges: What do I need to use for board materials? What type of antenna do I need to use? What are the requirements for PCB design? All these and many more are concerns you will need to start investigating and finding solutions to in order to successfully design your first- or next-generation wireless device.

You may be thinking PCB materials will be your biggest concern. Depending on the device you’re creating and communication protocol you will be using, the carrier frequency you’ll need to use could range from 6 GHz up to 80 GHz. This means that how you define your board stack-up, place components, route traces, and where you place vias will pose as much of a challenge as choosing materials if you want your design to work properly.

During this webinar, we will provide tool requirements and design techniques that will help you on your path to designing your next-generation wireless product.


What You Will Learn

  • RF design practices for first-pass success
  • Tools required to make the design process less painful
  • Modern layout techniques for 5G wireless

Click HERE to View On-Demand Web Seminar!

08/07/2019

CTS Releases IoT Enhanced Crystal Designs

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[pdf-embedder url=”https://electrosource.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/CTS-Releases-IoT-Enhanced-Crystal-Designs.pdf”]

07/18/2019

Toshiba Memory Corp to Rebrand as Kioxia in October

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Unleashing the Potential of “Memory” to Create New Value

Toshiba Memory Announcement: After we successfully completed Toshiba Memory Corporation’s separation from Toshiba Corporation in April 2017, we dedicated our efforts to developing and selling memory and solid-state drives (SSD). In June 2018, we launched as a fully independent company.
As the next step in our corporate journey, we will rebrand under a new corporate name effective on October 1, 2019.

New corporate name : Kioxia Holdings Corporation
The name Kioxia (pronunciation : kee-ox-ee-uh) is a combination of the Japanese word kioku meaning “memory” and the Greek word axiameaning “value” – which forms the foundation of the company’s vision.
As a global leader in flash memory and SSD, Kioxia will cultivate a new era of memory and grow sustainably as a leading flash memory producer over the long term.
To learn more, please visit: https://global.toshiba-memory.com/tmchd_e.html

 

07/16/2019

Arm Flexible Access Gives Chip Designers The Freedom To Experiment and Test before They Invest

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  • New Arm Flexible Access empowers SoC design teams to experiment, evaluate and undertake full projects with a wide range of Arm IP
  • Provides partners with unlimited design access for custom silicon designs and they pay only for what is used at production
  • Expands silicon design opportunities for established Arm partners and new market entrants such as system providers, OEMs and start-ups.

 

Cambridge, UK – Arm announced today it is expanding the ways existing and new partners can access and license its technology for semiconductor design. Arm Flexible Access is a new engagement model enabling SoC design teams to initiate projects before they license IP and pay only for what they use at production. Through Arm Flexible Access, businesses will enable their design teams with more freedom to experiment, evaluate and innovate.

“Arm Flexible Access was created to address the opportunities presented by a world of one trillion securely connected devices,” said Rene Haas, president, Intellectual Property Group, Arm. “By converging unlimited design access with no up-front licensing commitment, we are empowering existing partners and new market players to address new growth opportunities in IoT, machine learning, self-driving cars and 5G.”

Several partners, including AlphaICs, Invecas and Nordic Semiconductor, have signed on to this new Arm engagement model and already have access to a wide range of IP products, support tools and training. Arm Flexible Access complements standard Arm licensing which will continue to be the best option for partners seeking access to Arm’s full product portfolio and most advanced IP. A detailed comparison of the latest Arm engagement models can be found here.

Typically, partners license individual components from Arm and pay a license fee upfront before they can access the technology. With Arm Flexible Access they pay a modest fee for immediate access to a broad portfolio of technology, then paying a license fee only when they commit to manufacturing, followed by royalties for each unit shipped. This portfolio includes all the essential Intellectual Property (IP) and tools needed for an SoC design, making it easier to evaluate or prototype with multiple IP blocks before committing to licenses.

IP available through Arm Flexible Access includes the majority of Arm-based processors within the Arm® Cortex®-A, -R and -M families. These CPUs accounted for 75 percent of all Cortex CPU licenses signed over the last two years. It also includes Arm TrustZone and CryptoCell security IP, select Mali GPUs, system IP alongside tools and models for SoC design and early software development. Access to Arm’s global support and training services are also included.

A full list of the Arm IP available through Arm Flexible Access can be found here.

You can read more about Arm Flexible Access in this blog from Dipti Vachani, senior vice president and general manager of Arm’s automotive and IoT business.

07/09/2019

Siemens accelerates electromagnetics simulation processes with latest release of Simcenter 3D

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Siemens Digital Industries Software announces today the latest version of Simcenter™ 3D software, with major enhancements for low- and high-frequency electromagnetic solutions to help accelerate electromagnetics simulation processes. The latest version advances simulation capabilities with increased multidisciplinary integration capabilities, faster CAE process, increased openness and scalability, and enhanced capabilities to integrate with the digital thread.
As more electronics are included in products, it is extremely important for engineers to understand how electromagnetic performance can potentially affect and interfere with product performance. Electrical motors, sensors and antennas are all examples of common products or components where electromagnetic simulation plays a big part in the development process. The latest release of Simcenter 3D introduces a new physics discipline for low- and high-frequency electromagnetics simulation to the Simcenter 3D environment. By including electromagnetic simulation into Simcenter 3D, engineers can take advantage of the integrated environment to perform electromagnetic simulation faster than with traditional simulation tools and streamline multiphysics workflows between electromagnetic and other physical simulations.
“Leading companies today realize the value simulation can bring to the product development process in terms of cost, speed, and impact to innovation,” said Jan Leuridan, Senior Vice President, Simulation and Test Solutions, Siemens Digital Industries Software. “The latest enhancements to Simcenter 3D continue to expand the capabilities for predicting product performance and simulating more complex solutions to offer expanded value to our customers.”
Additional enhancements to Simcenter 3D include:
  • Faster CAE Processes : A new immersed boundary method helps engineers spend less time modeling for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis. Engineers can also now instantaneously compute new configurations for flexible hoses and pipes after a design configuration change.
  • Open and Scalable Environment : Engineers can now use calculated vibrations from common third-party finite element (FE) solvers, ANSYS and Abaqus, and apply those vibrations as loading in a structural or vibro-acoustic solution in Simcenter 3D, which can lead to a better understanding of how vibrations will impact perceived sound by end-customers.
  • Tied to the Digital Thread : A new enhanced interface between Simcenter 3D and Simcenter™ Testlab™ software helps engineers better collaborate with colleagues in the test group, which can keep analyses correlated with physical test results.  New capabilities available in Teamcenter Simulation help engineers quickly identify which simulations are impacted after a design change, which helps save time when working with large assemblies and projects.
For more information on the latest Simcenter 3D release, please see our related community post.

07/09/2019

Bluetooth SIG Names Telink Co-Founder As Associate Member Director

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Haipeng Jin from Telink Semiconductor (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., Appointed to Bluetooth SIG Board of Directors

KIRKLAND, Wash.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Today, the Bluetooth® Special Interest Group (SIG) announced that Haipeng Jin, co-founder of Telink Semiconductor in Shanghai, joins the board of directors of the Bluetooth SIG as an Associate Member Director to serve a two-year term starting in July 2019. The Bluetooth SIG Board of Directors is responsible for the governance of the organization and plays a vital role in driving the expansion of Bluetooth technology to address the needs of a growing number of consumer and commercial markets.

“The addition of Haipeng Jin from Telink to the Bluetooth SIG Board of Directors is an honor and we look forward to Haipeng’s expertise and creativity,” said Mark Powell, executive director of the Bluetooth SIG. “With the rapid growth of Bluetooth to provide commercial and industrial solutions such as connected lighting, asset tracking, and access control, the expertise Telink provides will be beneficial as Bluetooth continues to add capabilities and enhance the technology to meet market demands.”

Haipeng Jin is the co-founder and engineering vice president of Telink Semiconductor, currently leading the daily operations of Telink’s research and development (R&D) and product team. An integral and important part of Telink’s success in diversified System-on-Chip (SoC) offerings, Haipeng brings years of experience in developing and commercializing innovative low power wireless IoT technologies. Haipeng has numerous patents in his name worldwide and is an expert in wireless communications from the physical layer to application layer.

With this appointment, the Bluetooth SIG board now consists of individuals from the following member companies: Apple, Bose, Ericsson, Intel, Lenovo, Microsoft, Nokia, Telink Semiconductor and Toshiba.

For information, visit the board of directors landing page on the Bluetooth site.

06/21/2019

CTS Releases New VR Series Panel Potentiometers

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Lisle, IL – CTS Corporation (NYSE: CTS) has announced the release of the new VR Series family of panel potentiometers for use in a variety of applications in a wide variety of markets from industrial to medical to consumer products.  As equipment platforms continue to evolve, CTS continues to expand its portfolio of potentiometer products to offer customers options and value-added solutions.

The VR Series family of panel potentiometers offers a variety of sizes ranging from 9mm to 14mm packages.  All models are available with and without bushing, horizontal and vertical mount styles, various standard resistance values and a variety of tapers.  Rotational life ranges from 5,000 cycles to 30,000 cycles, and have a wide operating temperature range of -10°C to +70°C.  Select models offering the dual output option have excellent tracking performance at ±2dB.  Shaft length and trim options are available.  In addition, Series 12VR offers backlit illuminated shafts for those applications requiring an illuminated control in dim or dark spaces.  LEDs are available in single, dual and three-color options in a variety of colors. Applications can be found in many market segments including industrial, medical, communications, audio, and consumer.  A few of the applications include:

  • Medical
    • Ultrasound Scanner
    • Portable Vitals Monitor
    • Portable EKG
  • Communications
    • SW Radio
    • Base Stations
  • Electronic Test Equipment
    • Oscilloscopes
    • Power Supplies
    • Frequency Generators
  • Audio Equipment
    • Mixing Boards
    • Sound Processors
    • Guitar Effect Boxes
    • Instrument Amplifiers
  • Consumer Appliances
    • Blenders
    • Toaster Ovens
    • Juicers
    • Food Processors

Custom modifications required to fit specific applications are available on request.  Please contact your local CTS Sales Representative for details.  Complete product listings and data sheets can be found on the CTS website at: https://www.ctscorp.com/products/controls.

06/12/2019

IEI & Halza Announce the Joint Venture of IEI Halza HealthIntelligence Co., and Strategically Adopt QNAP’s Medical Data Management Solution

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IEIXHALZA_BANNER

Taipei, Taiwan, June 12, 2019 – IEI Integration Corp. (IEI) and Halza Pte. Ltd. (Halza) today announce the joint venture of IEI Halza HealthIntelligence Co. and a development partnership for the Halza application. QNAP® Systems, Inc. (QNAP), as a strategic solution provider for the partnership, will be offering its medical data management solutions to facilitate an intuitive and secure health management application for the public.

Halza stores, tracks and shares medical records and allows you to communicate privately with doctors, family and friends. As a subscription-based healthcare app, Halza aimed at providing international medical services. People around the world can get instant access to their complete medical data anywhere, anytime, directly through the Halza mobile app. Halza offers health-related push notifications, medicine reminders, and registry for organ donation in 26 languages. Data can be easily shared between patients, their family, and medical professionals.

To support a secure, private medical data management for Halza, QNAP NAS complies with the HIPAA audit protocol and provides versatile integrated solutions to make possible a reliable health management application. The MediQPACS app also provides centralized management for DICOM files which helps in facilitating high-quality diagnosis by physicians.

“IEI as a leading industrial computer provider with QNAP, Smart Hospital AI strategy and Halza, the powerful Social-Medical consumer app, the combined forces will allow medical tourists visiting Taiwan to better keep track of their medical history and communicate this with their doctors, family members and friends in private and closed environment.” said Richard Nijkerk, co-founder of IEI Halza HealthIntelligence Co..

For more information about the joint venture, please visit: https://www.ieiworld.com/en/news/con_show.php?op=showone&cid=1071

06/12/2019

Low Jitter Differential Clock Oscillator – Product Expansion

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[pdf-embedder url=”https://electrosource.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Low-Jitter-Expansion-Announcement_a-June-11-2019.pdf” title=”Low-Jitter-Expansion-Announcement_a June 11 2019″]

06/11/2019

Mentor expands unique Valor NPI automated technology solution to streamline PCB design for manufacturing

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  • The Valor New Product Introduction (NPI) release from Mentor completes an automated printed circuit board design-for-manufacturing flow, replacing traditional, manual error-prone processes.
  • Design for manufacturing (DFM) rules’ set-up time can be reduced from weeks to days.
  • Using the award-winning Valor NPI technology, critical design data is automatically extracted to derive PCB technology classifications for appropriate manufacturing process constraints.
  • The new Xpedition DFM application, driven by Valor NPI, empowers PCB designers to benefit from best-in-class DFM software tools without having to learn another application, enabling true concurrent DFM.

Mentor, a Siemens business, today announced the release of the final phase of the Valor™ software NPI design-for-manufacturing (DFM) technology that automates printed circuit board (PCB) design reviews where the PCB technology and manufacturing processes are employed. This latest release completes the realization of the Valor intelligent, manufacturing process-driven DFM solution, adding assembly DFM checks to the new process flow.

This new technology was developed in response to the customers’ need for an easier way to get accurate, meaningful DFM analysis without having every user be a DFM expert. To accomplish this, Mentor began a program three years ago to re-architect the Valor DFM solution to: make it easier to set up and maintain DFM rules so that the results are relevant, simplify the execution of the DFM application, and integrate DFM into Mentor’s Xpedition™ software layout application so that designers are aware of manufacturing concerns during the concurrent design process.

“Having implemented Valor NPI 11.0 as a beta program participant, we are eagerly anticipating the production release,” commented Chris Smith, senior engineering services group manager at National Instruments. “The ability to incorporate DFM assembly analysis upstream in development should allow us insight on potential manufacturability issues before release. This will build on the first phase of our DFM upstream initiative where designers benefited from fabrication DFM analysis being run during design. The modular stages and integration with Xpedition Layout simplifies the results and allows us to scale the process to empower designers and engineers to access DFM results on demand.”

This new release provides easy set-up and maintenance of the DFM rules for PCB assembly. The Valor NPI release works with all major PCB layout tools:  Xpedition and PADS™ software suites, Cadence Allegro, Zuken Board Designer, and Altium products. The integrated Xpedition DFM offering is only available with Mentor’s Xpedition.

“We aim to help our customers accelerate innovation,” said Dan Hoz, general manager of Mentor’s Valor Division. “We already know that DFM analysis is a critical element in helping reduce time to market and aiding in first-time-right production, and with the latest release of Valor NPI, we are making this cutting-edge technology accessible to PCB designers without requiring prior knowledge of PCB manufacturing. Designers can focus on their task, knowing that their designs can make it to market faster, on budget, and at higher yield.”

Product Availability
The new Valor NPI release is now available. For additional product information visit:  www.mentor.com/npi.

06/11/2019

Toyota Alphard/Vellfire With Toshiba’s Advanced Image Recognition Processor Wins Japan’s Highest Award for Preventive Safety Performance

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(“Toshiba”) today announced that its ViscontiTM4 image recognition processor was a key component in the driver assistance systems of the Toyota Motor Corporation (“Toyota”) vehicles that recorded industry-leading scores in the 2018 Japan New Car Assessment Program (JNCAP), the government program that assesses the road safety of new vehicles. The Toyota Alphard/Vellfire was declared the winner of the Grand Prix Award for preventive safety performance, and the Toyota Crown and Corolla Sport were both evaluated as ASV[1]+++, the highest level for advanced safety vehicles.

Advances in driver assistance systems are bringing autonomous vehicles ever closer, but also raising concerns for ensuring safe roads and reducing traffic accidents. Toshiba is contributing to a future of safe vehicles by channeling its know-how in deep neural networks and sensor and imaging technologies into the ViscontiTM series of image processor LSIs for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).

JNCAP was initiated by the Japanese government in 1995 to promote the safety of new cars launched in Japan by domestic and overseas makers. The program brings together results of vehicle safety tests carried out by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT), and the National Agency for Automotive Safety and Victims’ Aid (NASVA). Tests cover preventive safety performance, collision safety performance, and pedestrian protection performance. The Preventive Safety Performance Assessment evaluates advanced safety technologies such as damage mitigation braking.

Toshiba supplies ViscontiTM4 to the Toyota vehicles as an integral part of DENSO Corporation’s Front-Camera-Based Active Safety System. The LSI’s ability to process luminance differences between objects and their backgrounds, realizing better detection of pedestrians at night and in low light conditions, helped the Toyota vehicles win high scores in assessment of collision avoidance braking for pedestrians. The Alphard/Vellfire integrating the system received a high score of 126 points and took the Grand Prix Award for preventive safety performance assessment, and all of the Toyota models integrating ViscontiTM4 were evaluated as ASV+++.

Toshiba continues to channel resources into ViscontiTM, and into other innovative automotive devices that will contribute to ADAS. The company is now developing ViscontiTM5, which will deliver advanced Deep Neural Network IP, and expects to start sample shipments in September this year.

Note
[1] ASV: Advanced Safety Vehicle

* ViscontiTM is a trademark of Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation.
* All other company names, product names and service names may be trademarks of their respective companies.

06/10/2019

Arm Treasure Data survey finds nearly half of companies lack visibility into their customer journey due to siloed data

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Arm Treasure Data report reveals nearly half of organizations could be sending the wrong marketing messages to their customers. For more information, read the report attached here.

https://blog.treasuredata.com/blog/2019/06/10/2019-state-of-the-customer-journey/

05/31/2019

Toshiba Launches Low Power Consumption Brushed DC Motor Driver IC with Popular Pin-assignment HSOP8 Package

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IRVINE, Calif. Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. (“Toshiba”) has launched “TB67H450FNG,” the latest addition to its line-up of brushed DC motor driver ICs. The new product with a maximum rating of 50V/3.5A1 drives motors with a wide range of operating voltage. It also offers a small HSOP8 surface mount package with a popular pin-assignment that enhances the product sourcing possibility. Mass production starts today.

The new IC can drive brushed motors with a power supply ranging from 4.5V to 44V. It supports wide range of applications that includes, USB powered, battery powered, and industrial 12-36V devices. TB67H450FNG also has 3.5A current driving capability that can be used in applications such as robot vacuum cleaners, refrigerators and other home appliances actuators, office equipment, ATM machines, and many others.

To meet demand for lower power consumption, Toshiba has also optimized the TB67H450FNG standby current consumption by newly developed power supply circuit, which allows the stop mode moving to the standby mode automatically and turns off VCC regulator for the internal circuit operation. That helps OA equipment and home appliances to cut energy consumption and improves the battery life of battery powered devices.

Housed in a small surface-mount type HSOP8 pin package, the IC achieves space saving and yet good heat dissipation through the package thermal pad design.

Key Features

  • Wide range of operating voltages: from 4.5V to 44V for large-current drive devices
  • Low standby current consumption: 1 μA (max) @VM=24V, Ta=25°C
  • Small 8-pin surface mount package HSOP8 with a popular pin assignment and with bottom side E-pad to enhance thermal dissipation.


Applications

Industrial equipment, including OA equipment and banking terminals; home appliances, including robot vacuum cleaners; battery powered devices (electronic locks and small household robots); and devices using 5V USB power supplies.

For more information about the new product, please visit: https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/us/product/linear/motordriver/detail.TB67H450FNG.html

05/24/2019

IEI Releases PICMG 1.3 Full-Size CPU Card – SPCIE-C246

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SPCIE-C246 Full-size CPU card
dot Features dot Specifications dot Dimensions
dot Ordering Information dot Packing List

Features
SPCIE-CPU-Card-features
Four 288-pin DDR4 SDRAM Supported SATA 6Gb/s HDMI M.2 M Key
Four 288-pin DDR4
SDRAM Supported
RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 function compatible with six ports
of SATA 6Gb/s
HDMI M.2 M Key
SPCIE-C246-Full-size-CPU-card-features-icon
dot PICMG 1.3 full-size CPU card
dot LGA1151 Intel® Xeon® E3, 8th generation Core™ i7/i5/i3, Celeron® and Pentium® processor supported
dot Dual-channel DDR4 2666MHz
dot Support HDMI and internal DP display
dot Intel® PCIe GbE with Intel® AMT 11.0 supported
dot Support M.2 M key for storage (PCIe x4)
dot Supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 function via SATA 6Gb/s

Specifications
Model SPCIE-C246
CPU LGA1151 socket supports Intel® Xeon® E3, 8th generation Core™ i7/i5/i3, Pentium® or Celeron® processor
Chipset Intel® C246
Memory Four 288-pin 2666MHz dual-channel DDR4 SDRAM unbuffered DIMMs support up to 64GB ECC & non-ECC (C246)
BIOS AMI UEFI BIOS
Graphic Engine Intel® HD Graphics Gen 9 Engines with Low power 16 execution unit, supports DX2015, OpenGL 5.X and OpenCL2.x, ES 2.0
Display Output Dual display supported
1 x HDMI (up to 4096 x [email protected])
1 x Internal DisplayPort (up to 4096 x [email protected])
Ethernet LAN1: Intel® I219LM PHY
LAN2: Intel® I211-AT PCIe controller (Co-lay I210-AT)
External I/O Interface 2 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 (5Gb/s) (Rear IO type A)
1 x USB 2.0 (Type A 180°)
Internal I/O Interface 1 x KB/MS (1×6 pin)
1 x RS-422/485 (1×4 pin, P=2.0)
2 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 (5Gb/s) (2×10 pin)
3 x RS-232 (2×5 pin, P=2.54)
6 x SATA 6Gb/s (RAID 0/1/5/10 supported)
6 x USB 2.0 (2×4 pin, P=2.54)
Audio Support 7.1 channel HD audio by IEI AC-KIT-892HD kit
Front Panel 1 x Front panel (Power LED, HDD LED, Speaker, Power Button, Reset Button)
LAN LED 2 x LAN LED (1×2 pin)
TPM 1 x TPM (2×10 pin)
SMBus 1 x SMBus (1×4 pin)
I²C 1 x I²C (1×4 pin)
Expansion 1 x M.2 M key
1 x PCIe x16 & 4 x PCIe x1 signal via golden finger
4 x PCI signal via golden finger
Watchdog Timer Software programmable support 1~255 sec. system reset
Digital I/O 8-bit digital I/O (2×5 pin)
FAN Connector 1 x CPU smart fan (1×4 pin)
1 x System smart fan (1×3 pin)
Power Supply AT/ATX power supply
Support AT/ATX mode
ErP/EuP Compliant
Power Consumption [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
(4.0 GHz Intel® Core™ i7-8700K CPU with four 16 GB 2666 MHz DDR4 memory)
Operating Temperature -20°C ~ 60°C
Operating Humidity 5% ~ 95%, non-condensing
Dimensions 338 mm x 126 mm
Weight GW: 1000g / NW: 500g
CE/FCC compliant

Dimensions
SPCIE-C246_SPCIE-C246-Full-size-CPU-card_Dimensions

Ordering Information
Part No. Description
SPCIE-C246-R11 Full-size PICMG 1.3 CPU Card supports LGA1151 Intel® Xeon® E3, Core™ i7/i5/i3/ Pentium®/Celeron® CPU per Intel® C246, ECC & non-ECC DDR4, HDMI, DP, Dual Intel® PCIe GbE, M.2, USB 3.1 Gen 1 (5Gb/s), SATA 6Gb/s, HD Audio, iAMT and RoHS
19800-000075-RS PS/2 KB/MS cable with bracket, 220mm, P=2.0
32102-000100-200-RS SATA power cable, MOLEX 5264-4P to SATA15P
AC-KIT-892HD-R10 7.1 channel HD Audio kit with Realtek ALC892 support dual audio streams
CF-1150SA-R10 Special cooler kit for LGA1150, High-performance compatible, 95W
CF-1150SB-R11 Special cooler kit for LGA1150, High-performance compatible, 65W
CF-1150SC-R20 Special cooler kit for LGA1150, 1U chassis compatible, 65W
CF-1150SE-R11 Special cooler kit for LGA1150, high-performance compatible, 95W
CF-1150SF-R10 Special cooler kit for LGA1150, 1U chassis compatible, 54W
SAIDE-KIT01-R10 SATA to IDE/CF Converter board

Packing List
1 x SPCIE-C246 single board computer 1 x Mini jumper pack
1 x SATA cable 1 x QIG (Quick Installation Guide)

For more information about the new product, please visit: https://www.ieiworld.com/en/news/con_show.php?op=showone&cid=1070

05/21/2019

The 7 Aspects of Making Awesome IoT PCB Design

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[pdf-embedder url=”https://electrosource.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/IoT-PCB-Design-mentorpaper_104447-2.pdf” title=”IoT PCB Design mentorpaper_104447″]

05/16/2019

Mentor: PCB Shift-Left Forum 2019

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Establishing an effective PCB systems design validation process reduces design spins and increases product quality.

Increasing performance requirements coupled with a pressure to improve product quality are driving engineering teams to consider alternatives to their current validation approach. Best-practice design processes validate the digital twin (a model of your design) early and often to minimize re-spins and actually shorten the overall design cycle. This ‘shift-left’ approach enables design engineers and layout designers to validate within their native environment, minimizing the bottleneck waiting for specialist reviews, and freeing the specialists to resolve the remaining critical issues. This process allows engineering teams to better cope with increasing complexity and focus their efforts on product innovation.

This event will cover research on best-practice process strategies (as well as implications of avoiding them). Case studies will show how engineering teams have deployed an ‘optimal’ automated validation process to accelerate sign-off. Analysis technologies that could be deployed within any ECAD flow will be discussed, including multi-board schematic, signal and power integrity, analog/mixed signal, thermal, vibration and manufacturability.

Solutions Covered

  • Automated multi-board schematic analysis – Full inspection of all schematic nets to increase design quality and reduce re-spins
  • Rule based error identification enabling checks for potential issues early and often during the layout implementation. Quickly layout and routing issues that could lead to SI, PI, EMI and other problems
  • Design to manufacturing optimization with comprehensive DFM analysis, incorporated into your PCB design process
  • Signal integrity analysis (pre and post layout)
  • Power integrity (DC and AC) analysis for correct implementation of the power distribution network
  • 3D, broadband, full-wave electromagnetic field solver for SI, PI, and EMI
  • Integrated testability analysis – Reduce overall cost of test by addressing testability considerations in schematic capture and layout
  • Analog / mixed-signal simulation (inclusive of PCB material effects through automated parasitic extraction)
  • Design exploration to automatically vary actual parameters in a design concept and identify high performing design options

For more information, visit mentor.com.

05/15/2019

Shimadzu Corporation selects Mentor’s Xpedition PCB design-through-manufacturing flow as its global standard

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Mentor, a Siemens business, today announced that Shimadzu Corporation, a leading manufacturer of analytical instruments and medical equipment based in Kyoto, Japan, selected Mentor’s Xpedition® design flow software as the company standard. Shimadzu selected the Xpedition tool suite for the corporation’s entire electronic design process, from concept design to schematic design, and for their printed circuit board (PCB) design-through-manufacturing flow.

Shimadzu Corporation had been using a competitive tool suite but re-evaluated its needs and selected Mentor’s Xpedition suite of technologies, including Valor® NPI software and MSS suites, and Mentor’s HyperLynx® software for high-speed design analysis. Shimadzu selected Mentor’s Xpedition technologies for the following capabilities and advantages:

  • Improved design quality and IP design reuse across Shimadzu divisions by leveraging shared data with the Xpedition EDM data management technology.
  • Eliminating team-specific process customization and helping reduce rework risks to create strong design and manufacturing team collaboration, and to help realize optimized designs due to efficient integrations.
  • Direct access to the verification functionality of Mentor’s HyperLynx tool, which is now integrated with Xpedition flow. The HyperLynx solution allows for improved design quality and early correction of electrical issues that are often difficult to detect during the design phase.

“We are committed to developing market-leading analytical instruments and medical equipment, and expecting by standardizing on Mentor’s Xpedition flow would allow us to greatly improve our design processes. In particular, collaboration with the manufacturing process is highly appreciated, and has strong support from our management,” said Taro Osumi, general manager, Corporate Product Design Center, Shimadzu Corporation. “The productivity gains using Mentor’s technologies will help us develop innovative and advanced technologies with the highest confidence.”

Shimadzu has adopted a broad range of Mentor products for its design flow, including tools for signal and power integrity analysis, schematic design analysis, FPGA design optimization, design rule checking, library and data management, and PCB manufacturing, as well as functional verification with Mentor’s Questa® software and ModelSim® software.

“As one of the industry’s leading PCB electronic design software companies, we are honored that Shimadzu has standardized on Mentor’s robust portfolio of proven technologies,” said A.J. Incorvaia, senior vice president, Mentor EDA Electronic Board Systems. “Our partnerships with leading customers such as Shimadzu validate our solutions, and our powerful technology can help them develop new and innovative products with time-to-market advantages and reduced risk.”

For more information about the Xpedition flow, visit the website: www.mentor.com/pcb/xpedition.com

04/18/2019

Arm China selects Mentor’s Questa Verification Solution to enhance power efficiency and speed development of MCU designs

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Continuing to expand its functional verification footprint across high-growth markets and applications, Mentor, a Siemens business, today announced that Arm China has selected Mentor’s Questa™ Simulation with Power Aware verification solution to handle critical tasks in the development of next-generation, low-power microcontroller (MCU) cores.

Arm China selected the Mentor Questa solution after a thorough evaluation, during which Questa demonstrated smooth bring-up and delivered a 100 percent pass rate against all target designs.

“Mentor has been an Arm partner for years, and we are pleased to extend this collaboration to our design teams at Arm China,” said William Liu, vice president of Product Development, Arm China. “We are satisfied with the compatibility and performance of Questa in complex verification environments, and we look forward to leveraging Questa solutions to develop highly successful designs for a range of fast-growing markets.”

Engineered to reduce risks associated with validating complex FPGA and SoC designs, the Questa Advanced Simulator works together with Mentor’s Questa® Power Aware Simulation solution, helping customers to implement low power silicon designs by accurately modeling low power silicon behavior early in the design cycle. With Questa Power Aware Simulator, Arm China’s design teams can verify active power management functionality at the register-transfer level (RTL) stage, enabling the exploration of alternative approaches before implementation begins, to achieve the greatest power reduction at the least cost.

“Mentor’s Questa verification tools have established a long track record of helping the world’s foremost chip designers unleash innovation and get to market faster and with greater confidence,” said Ravi Subramanian, general manager and vice president of Mentor’s IC Verification Solutions. “Mentor is honored to add Arm China to our long and growing list of industry leaders who rely on Questa verification solutions to differentiate and win in highly competitive markets.”

04/16/2019

Using CFD for Cleaner Fireplace Design

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Nothing beats the pleasant crackling and gentle warmth of a dancing wood-fueled flame. As you settle into your hearthside armchair at the end of a long day, the last thing you want to worry about is the amount of particulate matter being emitted by your wood-burning fireplace. Is the smoke rising from your chimney as clean as it should be?

Worry not, because wood-fueled appliance manufacturers like Stove Builder International (SBI) worry for you. SBI manufactures wood and pellet fueled fireplaces, stoves and furnaces for the international market. We spoke with Guillaume Thibodeau-Fortin, a mechanical engineer and designer for SBI, to talk about how the company uses computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software to ensure its products are as clean as possible.

Minimizing Particulate Matter

SBI’s range of solid-fuel burning appliances produce heat by burning either wood or pellets made of compressed organic matter. However, heat isn’t the only product of this reaction. The smoke from wood- and pellet-burning stoves and fireplaces contains gases like carbon dioxide and monoxide, as well as solid or liquid particulate matter, tiny particles just 2.5 to 10 microns in size.

Particulate matter (PM) ranges from 2.5 to 10 microns in size, much smaller than a human hair or grain of sand. (Image courtesy of EPA.)

Particulate matter (PM) ranges from 2.5 to 10 microns in size, much smaller than a human hair or grain of sand. (Image courtesy of EPA.)

Particulate matter is not particularly healthy to have in one’s lungs, so it won’t come as much of a surprise that there are regulations surrounding its emission. In the United States, particulate matter emissions are currently limited to no more than 4.5 grams per hour. However, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is tightening those restrictions to just 2.5 grams per hour in 2020.

To cope with the regulatory changes, SBI needed to revamp its considerable product line, and the company only had five years to do so. Though that sounds like plenty of time, as Thibodeau-Fortin explained, it could have been a close call.

“In the past, in order to do five fireboxes [the part of the fireplace or stove where the fire burns], it took probably five years. It was maybe three to four prototypes before the certification. Now we’re able to do one or two prototypes before being able to run a certification test,” he said.

So what changed? SBI turned to simulation to accelerate the design process. The company used Siemens’ FloEFD for Solid Edge, a CFD analysis tool integrated within its design software, to better analyze and optimize their designs.

Refining Design with FloEFD

One option to help reduce harmful emission in wood-burning products is to include a device called a catalytic combustor, which helps reduce the temperature necessary for gases to burn. However, according to Thibodeau-Fortin, catalytic combustors are fragile and difficult for end users to maintain, so SBI doesn’t use them. In order to reduce the particulate matter emissions of its appliances, SBI had no choice but to tweak its designs into compliance.

This tweaking was accomplished through the use of FloEFD. Though the CFD software doesn’t offer a direct method of determining the particulate matter emissions of a design, it can offer insight into emission quantity. Thibodeau-Fortin used data for wood gas flow to run a combustion simulation on SBI’s firebox designs. Though the simulations were intensive—10 hours of simulation for five minutes of real-time combustion—the analysis revealed the amount of residuals left in the chimney. The amount of residuals is an indicator of the amount of particulate matter emissions, with more residuals indicating more emissions.

SBI used FloEFD to simulate and optimize their stove and fireplace designs. (Image courtesy of SBI.)

SBI used FloEFD to simulate and optimize their stove and fireplace designs. (Image courtesy of SBI.)

With this feedback, Thibodeau-Fortin was able to tune the design in the direction of less residuals and, hence, less emissions.

“The combustion alters depending on how I tune my primary and secondary air intakes, the pilot and all those type of air intakes,” he said. “I looked at plenty of parameters in the flue pipe, and that’s how I compared a wood stove that was quite dirty to one that was pretty clean. I got closer and closer to what a clean stove should be. At the end, I could do maybe 20 or 30 modifications without having to weld anything. So it helped a lot on the prototyping.”

Since starting to use FloEFD to modify designs, SBI has certified five new fireboxes in line with the 2020 requirements, which encompass three models of wood stoves, two models of fireplaces and two models of pellet stoves. Only a few fireboxes remain to be certified to complete SBI’s product portfolio.

Integrated CFD Analysis

Siemens acquired FloEFD in 2016 with the company’s acquisition of Mentor Graphics, allowing for even tighter integration with Siemens’ CAD applications Solid Edge and NX. FloEFD is embedded directly within the application, meaning there’s no need to transfer CAD models into a standalone CFD solver. That said, FloEFD is available in a standalone version to those who need it.

The tight integration of FloEFD within CAD programs encourages engineers to frontload their CFD analysis. FloEFD wants users to take advantage of CFD early on in the design process, rather than sending a nearly finished model to a CFD analyst late in the game. This means CFD can take a guiding role in the design, as it did for SBI. To the same end, FloEFD is designed to be user friendly, accessible even to users lacking a PhD in turbulence modeling.

“It’s quite user-friendly software,” Thibodeau-Fortin said. “It’s made for a non-expert of CFD, and that helps a lot.”

For his own training, Thibodeau-Fortin went through the tutorials that come packaged with FloEFD. He had also taken a few CFD and finite element analysis (FEA) classes during his undergraduate degree, which gave him some familiarity with the process. However, he found little information on simulating combustion, which is what he needed to do for SBI. He was fortunate that a former professor of his happened to be working on combustion simulations and was able to guide Thibodeau-Fortin.

Naturally, there’s always more to learn. Thibodeau-Fortin plans to complete further training with a company specializing in combustion and heat transfer simulations. The additional training will help him tackle even more wood-burning fireplace designs, as SBI, pleased with the benefits of FloEFD, will continue to simulate its appliances for a more detailed understanding of their performance.

In the meantime, you can rest easy knowing that there’s a little less particulate matter floating around out there, thanks to FloEFD and Thibodeau-Fortin’s design efforts.

You can learn more about Solid Edge FloEFD on Siemens’ website.

03/27/2019

DAIKIN adopts Mentor’s Xpedition PCB design platform for global design and data management

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Mentor, a Siemens business, today announced that DAIKIN, one of the world’s leading air conditioning manufacturers, selected Mentor’s Xpedition® printed circuit board (PCB) design flow software as their global design environment.

Although DAIKIN had an established PCB design process, the company needed to share CAD library and design data across its globally dispersed locations in order to increase design efficiency and quality. To address this need, the company evaluated and selected Mentor’s Xpedition flow based on its powerful integrated data management and collaboration capabilities. The Xpedition data management solution provides efficient design collaboration and project management within a single environment to reduce design cycle time and cost.

“We wanted a PCB design solution to improve our operational efficiency and productivity worldwide,” stated Masafumi Hashimoto, group leader, Device Technology Group, Air Conditioning Manufacturing Division, DAIKIN. “Mentor’s Xpedition platform had world-leading market share and numerous features to meet our needs. With cooperation from Mentor’s domestic development base, we can have a smooth transition from our existing CAD system to the new system. Mentor’s Xpedition solution creates a global data management system that is scalable, seamless and reliable, helping result in reduced design cycles with improved product quality.”

With cooling and heating products sold in over 150 countries, DAIKIN maintains development sites in multiple regions around the world. The company sought a solution that could be easily migrated from their existing CAD system, which lacked the ability to provide performance functions for global design development. By choosing Mentor’s Xpedition flow, DAIKIN expects to realize a concurrent design flow across multiple regions. In addition, applying a unified design data management solution is expected to enable web-based collaboration using shared libraries. Xpedition flow can also help eliminate manual processes and allow DAIKIN teams to implement customized functions, resulting in higher productivity, shortened product development cycles, and enhanced product designs.

“We strive to develop innovative technologies that provide our customers with a competitive advantage, and we are proud that DAIKIN selected our Xpedition solution to meet their specific needs, since their previous CAD tool was insufficient,” said A.J. Incorvaia, senior vice president, Mentor EDA Electronic Board Systems. “Adopting the Xpedition flow globally can help DAIKIN realize a solid return on investment, creating the potential for enhanced productivity, improved product design, and faster time-to-market.”

For more information about the Xpedition flow, visit the website: www.mentor.com/pcb/xpedition/

02/26/2019

LDRA Partners with Siemens to Boost Traceability and Verification for Critical Embedded Systems

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WIRRAL, England–(BUSINESS WIRE)–LDRA, software quality experts in the areas of functional safety, security, and standards compliance, has partnered with Siemens PLM Software to enhance traceability and validation for customers developing critical embedded systems leveraging Polarion ALM™ software. The LDRA tool suite integration with Polarion ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) provides a full lifecycle traceability and software quality solution for embedded markets with a deep dive into automated verification testing, and thus helps reduce the cost of compliance in safety- and security-critical embedded systems.

The Polarion™ portfolio is a leading market solution for enterprise software lifecycle management, including software development planning, requirements management, quality engineering, delivery and release management. It allows project managers and executives to create custom reports and use these simplified and automated reports to make decisions in real-time. The LDRA tool suite for software analysis and verification activities imports Polarion requirements and test cases with complete traceability links, and then exports test execution status and results to Polarion’s web-based interface.

“LDRA’s tool suite integration greatly complements our Polarion ALM offering by providing end-to-end traceability to test execution in support of regulated requirements based testing and comprehensive analysis of test coverage,” said Pascal Vera, Product Management Director at Siemens PLM Software. “Along with providing transparency into their overall software development process and improving customers’ operational efficiency, this bidirectional traceability helps simplify, automate, and reduce the cost of compliance with safety- and security-critical standards.”

Polarion ALM software focuses on cross-platform enterprise applications to enable effective product and application lifecycle management in a wide array of embedded markets ranging from automotive to medical to Internet of Things (IoT). Example industry standards supported through this integration with LDRA’s tool suite include DO-178B/C for avionics, ISO 26262 for automotive, IEC 62304 for medical, and EN 50128 for rail transportation.

“LDRA continues to work with industry leaders in Application Lifecycle Management to provide the best solution to our customers for lifecycle traceability, standards compliance, and software quality analysis and testing automation,” said Ian Hennell, Operations Director, LDRA. “The software integration with Siemens’ Polarion leverages LDRA’s automated static review and dynamic coverage analysis as well as automated test case generation, execution, and results capture. LDRA’s integration is unique in that it spans from traceability requirements through verification activities.”

Visit the LDRA stand (Hall 4-509) at Embedded World 2019, 26-28 February 2019 in Nürnberg, Germany, to learn more about LDRA tool suite’s comprehensive integration into Siemens’ Polarion ALM enterprise software at www.ldra.com/polarion.

Note: Polarion and Polarion ALM are trademarks or registered trademarks of Polarion Software AG.

02/25/2019

Mentor delivers the most comprehensive Enterprise Verification Platform™

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Mentor delivers the most comprehensive Enterprise Verification Platform™ (EVP), delivering performance and productivity improvements ranging from 400X to 10,000X. Tightly integrated combining Questa® for high performance simulation, verification management and coverage closure, Portable Stimulus, Low-power, CDC & Formal Verification, Veloce® for hardware emulation and HW/SW system verification, Catapult® for High-Level Synthesis, PowerPro® for RTL Low-Power unified with the Visualizer™ debug environment.

12/18/2018

New Arm technology will strengthen driver trust on the road to safe mass autonomous deployment

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News highlights:

  • Arm introduces latest addition to the Arm Safety Ready program, a new “Automotive Enhanced” processor designed to help enable safe next generation driver experiences
  • Optimized for 7nm: Cortex-A65AE is Arm’s first multithreaded processor with integrated safety for handling sensor data in autonomous and high throughput needs in IVI/cockpit systems
  • Simultaneous multithreading optimized for high throughput workloads and offers best performance efficiency

According to recent data from AAA, 73% of American drivers are too afraid to ride in fully self-driving vehicles and 63% of US adults feel less safe sharing the road with self-driving vehicles while walking or cycling. Human acceptance of new advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and increasingly autonomous technologies will only happen if drivers and passengers feel safe relying on them.

Winning the trust of consumers is critical, and to deliver these trusted experiences carmakers need solutions that achieve the right balance of innovation and safety while being deployable, scalable and ready for mass production. In my regular conversations with leading OEMs and tier ones, it’s clear that a broad range of compute is required to meet the needs of tomorrow’s vehicles, and one size will not fit all when it comes to the compute powering these vehicles.

Earlier this year Arm demonstrated its commitment to accelerating the deployment of safe fully autonomous vehicles for OEMs and tier ones with the launch of our Safety Ready program and a dedicated range of Automotive Enhanced IP, including the Cortex-A76AE, which delivers the processing performance required for autonomous applications while changing the game with integrated safety. Today, to further expand our Automotive Enhanced IP portfolio, we are announcing the release of Arm Cortex-A65AE, formerly known as Helios-AE on our product roadmap.

Cortex-A65AE: First multithreaded processor with integrated safety

The Arm Cortex-A65AE (Automotive Enhanced) is the latest addition to Arm’s Automotive Enhanced portfolio of IP, designed for more efficient processing of the multiple streams of sensor data being generated in next generation vehicles, and to help enable innovative new driver experiences safely. It does this by delivering enhanced multithreading capability combined with integrated safety through our innovative Split-Lock technology.

In order to achieve higher levels of autonomy, there will be a large increase in the number of sensors monitoring the surroundings of the vehicle, including cameras, LiDAR and radar, resulting in a significant increase in throughput and compute requirements to safely process this data. Multiple sensor inputs allow cars to view their environment, perceive what is happening, plan possible paths ahead, and deliver commands to actuators on the determined path.

With so much data being collected at different points of the vehicle, high data throughput capability is a key part of the heterogeneous processing mix required to enable ADAS and autonomous applications. It’s also critical that safety is at the heart of these systems. The Cortex-A65AE is ideal for managing the high throughput requirement for gathering sensor data and can be used in lock-step mode connected to accelerators, such as ML or computer vision, to help process the data efficiently. But what’s most critical, is that it does this with a high level of safety capability.

Alongside the increase in sensor inputs, more autonomy and advancing driver aids will dramatically change the human automotive experience. As part of this transition, there will be many more screens in our cars delivering enhanced experiences. Drivers will be informed through augmented reality head-up-displays, alerts and improved maps. Passengers will be immersed by rich video entertainment delivered by many screens throughout the car, but trust, reliability and safety are all critical to the acceptance of these new cabin experiences. Sensors will not only be sensing out, but will be sensing in, monitoring drivers. They will be able to monitor eyelid movement to detect tiredness, body temperature, vital signs and behavioural patterns to personalise the in-car experience. These capabilities require high throughput, ML processing and a lot of heterogeneous compute.

To deliver rich, immersive in-vehicle experiences efficiently, a heterogeneous compute cluster is necessary. Cortex-A65AE is Arm’s first throughput focused application class core with Split-Lock. Together with Cortex-A76AE (also with Split-Lock), these cores enable the highest safety integrity level with leading performance and power efficiency.

The addition of the multithreaded Cortex-A65AE processor to the Arm automotive platform further cements Arm’s bumper-to-bumper automotive leadership, and the Arm software ecosystem is ready for Cortex-A65AE, with support from Arm Safety Ready developer tools and Linux patches already up-streamed.

Accelerating a safer path to fully-autonomous driving

Per year, 5.3 trillion miles are driven in cars and light vehicles depending on Arm processors. Looking ahead, the Arm automotive roadmap includes Hercules-AE optimized for 7nm in 2019 as well as future Cortex-R solutions. Arm is transforming what’s possible by extending our portfolio to deliver the broadest range of functional safety capable IP products in the industry. The entire platform is supported by the Arm Safety Ready program, drawing on our extensive experience in safety for the faster delivery of safer automotive solutions by OEMs, automotive tier ones and silicon partners.

For more information on our commitment to vehicle safety, please visit our Safety Ready page.

https://www.mentor.com/events/dvcon

11/27/2018

Arm and AWS: Working together to “Re:Invent” the cloud

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By: Drew Henry, senior vice president and general manager, Infrastructure Line of Business, Arm

Last night was a seminal moment for the entire Arm ecosystem, a moment that many people have worked tirelessly towards for a long time.  At their annual Re:Invent conference, and during Peter Desantis’ “Monday Night Live” keynote, AWS announced the immediate availability of Arm® Neoverse™-based application servers!

Before I go into more detail, let me recap the announcement we made last month at Arm Techcon.  Arm Neoverse is our new brand for the architectures, products, and solutions we specifically design for the rapidly transforming cloud to edge internet infrastructure needed to enable a world of a trillion intelligent devices. For years we have been developing technologies for the networking, storage, and compute platforms needed for the internet infrastructure and integrating those technologies into our existing Arm Cortex® products, but Cortex is best known as the leading processor architecture for smartphones and the emerging world of IoT devices, so we’ve segmented our product line and Neoverse is the result. During Techcon we shared our new Neoverse roadmap, building off our current “Cosmos” platform, followed annually by “Ares”, “Zeus”, and “Poseidon” platforms.

To date, Arm powered infrastructure solutions are doing very well. During Techcon we shared that Arm is now the leading processor architecture powering these solutions, and that Arm processors are being rapidly adopted into a new class of cloud servers that manage the networking, storage, and security workloads in modern cloud datacenters. What you may not realize is that these workloads, until recently, only ran on x86-based application servers. The Arm ecosystem will ship well over 1M of these servers this year!

Yet despite the success we are having, we are constantly asked when Arm-based application processors will be deployed in volume. Well, today is that day! AWS announced that they are running application workloads on Arm. These servers are powered by AWS Graviton, a world-class processor built by Annapurna Labs, a wholly owned AWS subsidiary, based on the Arm Neoverse “Cosmos” platform, and specifically built to run customer application workloads. The Arm-based Graviton processors are powering all new Amazon EC2 A1 instances.  The new instances will lower costs by up to 45%, and are being targeted for scale-out workloads, including containerized microservices, web servers, development environments, and caching fleets.

If you don’t know who Annapurna Labs is, then you need to know their story. Bilik “Billy” Hrvoye and Nafea Bshara co-founded the company in Israel with a vision to build great products for the cloud. They chose Arm as their base architecture and we were an early investor in their start up. Billy and Nafea put together a world-class team and started designing storage and networking processors. AWS was an early customer and in 2015 they acquired Annapurna Labs since they knew that building their own silicon would allow them the control and design flexibility needed to rapidly expand the AWS cloud. James Hamilton, an AWS fellow and vice president, teased this vision in his 2016 Re:Invent keynote and in each subsequent year more of this vision was unveiled as new Annapurna designed processors were powering more of the core infrastructure within AWS.

Last night the Annapurna team proved how talented they truly are with the announcement of Graviton.

I am incredibly excited about this announcement and very proud of all the work the Arm Neoverse ecosystem has put in to make this happen.  From close collaboration with the most cutting-edge foundries in the world, through to a robust set of software offerings, the Arm Neoverse ecosystem is transforming the infrastructure.  The deployment of Arm Neoverse application processors by a hyperscaler is validation of our architectural choices, software maturity, and investment decisions.   For the Arm Neoverse ecosystem, yesterday’s announcement is proof of the broad applicability of the Arm architecture.  It means growth in the market for products within the Arm Neoverse ecosystem is accelerating.

We are particularly excited for Billy and Nafea and the entire team at Annapurna and the rest of AWS who built an amazing Arm-based application processor powering some innovative AWS solutions. Congratulations!

11/20/2018

Siemens PLM Software drives Feihe Dairy in strategic business digitalization journey

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  • Feihe Dairy to digitalize their complete value chain with the Siemens PLM Software digital innovation platform
  • Digitalization can help Feihe Dairy achieve greater operational efficiency and transparency in the complete production line

Siemens PLM Software and Heilongjiang Feihe Dairy Co., Ltd. have signed a strategic agreement focusing on the digitalization of Feihe Dairy’s research and development, simulation and testing, as well as quality monitoring, supply chain management and production execution. With Siemens’ leading digital innovation platform and industry expertise, this cooperation can help Feihe Dairy to realize its digitalization strategy and set a benchmark for digital innovation in the Chinese dairy industry.

“Siemens PLM Software is a trusted leader in the field of digital manufacturing. In fact, our Kedong factory started cooperating with Siemens PLM Software last year in the deployment of a manufacturing execution system.” said Feng Hailong, CIO of Feihe Dairy Group. “Siemens PLM Software has a forward-looking strategy and global experience that best supports our goals and vision, as well as those of the entire Chinese dairy industry. We trust Siemens PLM Software to help us overcome the challenges in the journey to digital transformation.”

Founded in 1962 with its headquarters in Qiqihar, Heilongjiang Province, Feihe Dairy is one of the earliest milk powder producers in China. It created milk powder formula more suitable for Chinese consumers, especially for babies and infants. However, with the decades-long growth of the Chinese market and increased global competition in recent years, Feihe Dairy found itself in need of upgrading from a traditional dairy manufacturer to a modern digital enterprise; a consistent issue across the entire Chinese dairy industry.

Feihe Dairy faces many challenges in looking to transform their business model, including the areas of new product research and development, quality control, data transparency, production efficiency, and overseas acquisitions management. To address these, Feihe Dairy has achieved the whole process of control from pasture planting, large scale dairy farming, to production and processing, logistics and warehousing, channel management, and even after-sales service. It can further improve the ability of product research and development control, strengthening the construction of enterprise digital capability. After careful consideration, Feihe Dairy has selected Siemens PLM Software for its end-to-end digital innovation strategy, and its ability to integrate multiple aspects and systems to fully support the transformation to digitalization, including enterprise resource planning, product lifecycle management, manufacturing execution systems and automation. In addition, the embedded quality (LIMS) and advanced planning and scheduling (APS) functionality of Siemens’ offering were also seen as key differentiators.

Siemens’ digital innovation platform can create comprehensive and precise digital models of products and production operations as a means to manage the complexity and simulate the performance of smart products and smart production operations, helping manage data and processes within the value chain to maintain a high level of quality. It also helps to streamline and digitalize business processes within the group, which can improve efficiency in production chains. With this integrated solution, the manual process and paper files will be replaced by an automated process and digital files, which can enhance efficiency within Feihe Dairy. Meanwhile, customers can also access the information about products and orders in the process and system so that production information can be truly traceable, which can help drive Feihe Dairy’s business model toward make-to-order (MTO) and gain great competitive advantages on the market. Feihe Diary plans to first implement these solutions in its plant in Kedong.

“We are honored to be selected by and work with Feihe Dairy in their digital transformation,” said Leo Liang, senior vice president and managing director of Siemens PLM Software for Greater China. “Feihe Dairy is a leading brand in the industry and the nation, and the dairy industry is a key aspect of people’s wellness. Siemens PLM Software is committed to help not only Feihe Dairy but the whole Chinese dairy industry to upgrade and transform.”

Follow us on Twitter at: www.twitter.com/siemens_press

Siemens PLM Software, a business unit of the Siemens Digital Factory Division, is a leading global provider of software solutions to drive the digital transformation of industry, creating new opportunities for manufacturers to realize innovation. With headquarters in Plano, Texas, and over 140,000 customers worldwide, Siemens PLM Software works with companies of all sizes to transform the way ideas come to life, the way products are realized, and the way products and assets in operation are used and understood. For more information on Siemens PLM Software products and services, visit www.siemens.com/plm.

Siemens AG (Berlin and Munich) is a global technology powerhouse that has stood for engineering excellence, innovation, quality, reliability and internationality for more than 170 years. The company is active around the globe, focusing on the areas of electrification, automation and digitalization. One of the largest producers of energy-efficient, resource-saving technologies, Siemens is a leading supplier of efficient power generation and power transmission solutions and a pioneer in infrastructure solutions as well as automation, drive and software solutions for industry. With its publicly listed subsidiary Siemens Healthineers AG, the company is also a leading provider of medical imaging equipment – such as computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging systems – and a leader in laboratory diagnostics as well as clinical IT. In fiscal 2018, which ended on September 30, 2018, Siemens generated revenue of €83.0 billion and net income of €6.1 billion. At the end of September 2018, the company had around 379,000 employees worldwide. Further information is available on the Internet at www.siemens.com.

Note: Siemens and the Siemens logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Siemens AG. All other trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks belong to their respective holders.

11/20/2018

Dean on hybrid cloud bursting EDA flows with IC Manage PeerCache

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Cooley: Cloud is hot this year clearly.  Dean this seems to be your year.  
           Dean you just announced a tool that helps get EDA flows into the
           cloud.  (ESNUG 582 #8)  Does that put you in trouble?
           I mean with Cadence going full hog into the cloud, too?

     Dean: No.

   Cooley: Ok, thanks.  (laughter)

     Dean: What we announced was IC Manage PeerCache.  Which is a high 
           performance, scale-out I/O solution.  So that you can get the
           I/O that you need to run the compute jobs in the cloud.  

           What that gives you is the ability to run your existing 
           workflows, your existing tools, and your existing designs using a
           cloud burst -- so you can expand into the cloud and run without 
           having to change your stuff.

           When you look at what Cadence is focused on, they're working on 
           getting the licensing model sorted out so that you can get 
           licenses to the tools in the cloud and get them on-demand.  And 
           they're working on making the tools available in the cloud, okay,
           so that you can get them, and they're compatible with the various
           cloud providers.

 

 

           But they're not doing a system like PeerCache which dynamically 
           determines which files are needed for which job and then quickly
           transmits them up to the cloud -- and only use the ones that are 
           needed, providing a massive peer-to-peer I/O system so that you
           can run ten thousand jobs in the cloud.

           It's a very different focus, and in fact, totally complementary. 
           So, we're kind of cheering Cadence, on because we want more stuff
           available in the cloud, so that more people will want to use
           PeerCache to get their existing workflows into the cloud.

           The customers want to move into the cloud for the cost savings, 
           the benefits; if you look at the investment that the cloud 
           providers have done in data centers and the amount of technology
           they have developed, their cost advantages and their scale far 
           surpasses what any single semiconductor company could possibly 
           ever do, because the scale is so huge.  

           We have no choice.  You have no choice, you're going to have to 
           use cloud-based systems for design to be competitive in the long
           run.  And so, we've got to figure out how to get there.

 

 

           But there's such a huge investment that the design teams have 
           made in their workflows.  I mean the workflows are like the DNA
           of the organization.  You can't change them.  There's so much 
           history and you're using old designs, and you're re-porting 
           designs, and you're using old stuff and new stuff and merging it.  

           It's complicated, and to just say 'Oh I'm going to flip it into 
           the cloud' when the cloud has no real shared file system doesn't
           really work.  You need some kind of shared file system to make it
           work.

           And that's what PeerCache provides.  It's a cool product that 
           solves a key problem for our customers.

   Cooley: Okay.

11/14/2018

5G: The Future is Now, Murray Slovick is Editorial Director of Intelligent TechContent

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5G cellular telephony is rapidly approaching.  Industry watchers predict that mobile routers, home routers and other initial 5G products will be launched by the end of this year. It is expected that the first 5G-capable phones will start to appear early next year. AT&T has announced that it will launch 5G wireless service in 12 cities by the end of 2018, Verizon is bringing fixed 5G to homes in Sacramento, California, and four additional markets by year’s end and T-Mobile is aiming for a 2019 launch followed by nationwide 5G coverage in 2020.

5G infrastructure will address the speed, latency and bandwidth issues that restrain today’s 4G networks. The advantages of 5G are significant: it is intended to offer huge increases in data rates-in excess of 10GBps-extremely low latency, and uniform coverage over a wide area, as well as a thousand-fold increase in capacity.

5G will enable simultaneous ultra-high-speed wireless transmission (even in crowded environments) by opening new radio spectrum like millimeter wave (mmWave) bands over 20 GHz. The mmWave frequencies will first be utilized in Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) applications used by wireless carriers to provide Gbit FWA to residential customers. The next step will be using 5G mmWave to deliver Gbit mobile, such as live streaming of 4k video to smart devices and for the use of AR and VR applications.

In many respects, however, 5G will be a two-edged sword in that customer demand for new 5G mobile phones in 2019/20 is going to put additional strain on capacity within the electronic components supply network as components manufacturers and their distributors struggle to keep up with demand.

Here’s why: smartphones are the largest application market for multilayer ceramic chip capacitors (MLCCs) and at a time when major MLCC manufacturers are trying to increase production capacity to alleviating the current shortage, the dawning of the 5G era will rapidly increase the amount of MLCC s used. The average MLCC usage of 4G + (LTE-advanced) smartphones is estimated to be in the range of 550 to around 900, and it is predicted that each device in the 5G era will boost this number to more than 1,000.

To support the high data rates enabled by 5G systems will require mmW frequencies, namely, 24/26 GHz, 28 GHz/ and 37/39 GHz bands. In addition, active antenna ICs will be required to control gain, phase control and beam forming in the frequency bands.

Among the engineering challenges involved in using mmW frequencies are range limitations brought about by propagation losses; the higher the frequency the more the signal will degrade over distance. However recent advances in mmWave systems have turned some of the perceived disadvantages into system architecture enablers (think turning lemons into lemonade). For example, short transmission paths and increased propagation loss allow for spectrum re-use. And the established ability of mmWave in point to point communications to be tightly focused into beams allows signal strength to be directed exactly where it needs to go, reducing interference, and allowing multiple beams to be combined, resulting in increased range.

Deploying 5G on mmW frequencies presents great challenges to smartphone antenna and RF engineers. For example, to enable higher data rates 5G specifications mandate that handsets must support two uplink and four (4 x4 MIMO) downlink carriers in the bands above 1 GHz. This requires multiple antennas and independent RF pathways.

But as more antennas are packed into a smartphone, the average space that must be allotted to each antenna decreases. Making life even more difficult for the designer is the trend in smartphones to have a high screen to body ratio. Some of today’s 4G LTE phones achieve a 90% screen to body ratio. The gap in the bezel around the display is where the antennas reside. As the bezel shrinks, it squeezes antenna volume even further. As a result, a likely implementation is one where the antenna array is integrated into the same package containing the active transmitter and receiver circuits operating at the mmWave frequencies.

These compact electronically-steered antenna arrays will accommodate frequencies from hundreds of megahertz to tens of gigahertz and employ phased arrays, which have been used for many years in the aerospace and defense industries but are relatively new to the mass market world. New chips will support multiple radiating elements, and include gain and phase controls for analog RF beam steering.

Still another challenges that engineers now face is how to implement high-performance RF filtering in mmWave applications. There will be an increasing number of filters per device; the increase in RF paths within the device from multiple antennas and spectrum proliferation will require this larger number of filters. Unlike the power amplifier (PA), where a single device can be used for multiple frequency bands and technologies, a single filter will most likely be required for each individual frequency band.

RF filtering will be a vital technical point of a successful RF solution. One reason is that filters in the RF chain contribute to loss, which impacts Tx efficiency and will determine power-amplifier current draw as well as battery life. Maximizing PA efficiency on the uplink and receiver sensitivity on the downlink will require optimization of the entire RF chain.

Traditionally, passive RF/microwave components have been somewhat large, at least in package sizes to support the use of coaxial connectors. As the push toward 5G wireless networks requires the use of components in the mmWave frequency range, suppliers are preparing products that offer high performance and a high degree of flexibility, and perhaps even at lower cost.

Manufacturers of 5G-ready cables, connectors, filters and other components are now stepping up to the task ahead with some initial product scheduled to be revealed at Electronica in Munich, which opens as this is being written.

10/30/2018

Toshiba Releases Bluetooth® 5 IC for Automotive Applications.

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Highly expandable and integrated device will be fully AEC-Q100 qualified

TOKYO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation (“Toshiba”) has added “TC35681IFTG”, a new IC for automotive applications, to its line-up of ICs compliant with Bluetooth® low energy (LE)[1] core specification v5.0. The new device is suited to use in demanding automotive environments, as it delivers a wide operating temperature range, high RF transmission power and high RF reception sensitivity (a link budget of 113dB @125kbps at long range transmission). The mixed-signal TC35681IFTG contains both analog RF and baseband digital parts to provide a complete solution on a single chip.

In addition to the basic functions of Host Controller Interface (HCI) profile and GATT profile functions, TC35681IFTG adds the new functions defined by Bluetooth® core specification 5.0[2], including 2Mbps throughput, Long Range and Advertising Extension functions, stored in internal mask ROM. It also integrates a high gain power amplifier and realizes +8dBm for long distance communication.

When used in conjunction with an external non-volatile memory, the new IC becomes a fully-fledged application processor that temporarily loads applications and stores in internal RAM (76KB). It can also be combined with an external host processor.

The integration of 18 General Purpose IO (GPIO) lines and multiple communications options including SPI, I2C and a 921.6kbps, two-channel UART, gives TC35681IFTG the ability to form part of sophisticated systems. The GPIO lines offer access to a range of on-chip features including a wake-up interface, four-channel PWM interface and 5-channel AD converter. An on-chip DC-DC converter or LDO circuits adjust the external voltage supply to the required values on chip.

As it is designed to be compliant with AEC-Q100[3], the low energy IC is primarily intended to be used in automotive applications. The wettable flank package simplifies automatic visual inspection needed to deliver the high levels of soldering quality required to withstand the vibration experienced in automotive applications.

Current applications include Remote Keyless Entry, On-Board Diagnostics to collect sensor data, Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems, and other contributors to improved vehicle comfort and safety.

Key Features

– Low power consumption: 

– 6.0mA (transmitter operation @3.0V, output power: 0dBm, 1Mbps mode)

– 6.5mA (transmitter operation @3.0V, output power: 0dBm, 2Mbps mode)

– 11.0mA (transmitter operation @3.0V, output power: 8dbm, 1Mbps mode)

– 11.5mA (transmitter operation @3.0V, output power: 8dBm, 2Mbps mode)

– 5.1mA (receiver operation @3.0V, 1Mbps mode)

– 5.5mA (receiver operation @3.0V, 2Mbps mode)

– 50nA in deep sleep (@3.0V)

– High receiver sensitivity: 

– 95.6dBm (1Mbps mode)

– 93.2dBm (2Mbps mode)

– 101.2dBm (500kbps mode (S=2))

– 105.2dBm (125kbps mode (S=8))

– Supports Bluetooth® LE v5.0 central and peripheral devices

– Built-in GATT (Generic Attribute Profile)

– Supports servers and client functions defined by GATT

– Additional features as defined by Bluetooth® LE v5.0[2]

– 2Mbps

– Long Range (Coded PHY)

– Advertising Extension

– Supports automotive reliability

– Compliant with AEC-Q100[3]

– Operation in wide temperature range

– Wettable flank package

– Applications

– Bluetooth® low energy communication devices for automotive and industrial applications.

 

For more information about the new product, please visit:
https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/info/lookup.jsp?pid=TC35681IFTG-002&region=apc&lang=en

For more information about the line-up of Bluetooth® wireless communication ICs, please visit:
https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/ap-en/product/wireless-communication/bluetooth.html

10/25/2018

Mentor CFD delivers fluid flow and heat transfer simulation solutions that are used to optimize a design created with CAD

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Mentor CFD

Mentor CFD delivers fluid flow and heat transfer simulation solutions that are used to optimize a design created with CAD.

CFD in FloEFD for Creo

Mentor CFD Solutions

Mentor’s extensive portfolio of CFD software delivers fast, accurate and design centric simulation to global players in many industries, including automotive, electronics, power, process and manufacturing.

Full-featured Frontloading CFD

FloEFD

By frontloading CFD simulation early in the design process, you can uncover problems faster, speed time-to-market and significantly reduce product development overhead. Easy to learn and use, FloEFD reduces overall simulation time by as much as 65-75 percent and can be used as a CFD plugin for Creo, CATIA V5, Siemens NX, Solid Edge, and SolidWorks or tightly integrated with systems such as Autodesk Inventor.

What is Frontloading CFD with FloEFD?

Video 7:16

The standard CFD for Electronics Cooling

FloTHERM

FloTHERM’s advanced CFD techniques helps engineers predict airflow, temperature, and heat transfer for components, boards, racks and data centers, and other electronic components. Optimize heatsinks, perform transient analysis, calibrate detailed thermal models, and more.

CAD-centric Thermal Analysis

FloTHERM XT

FloTHERM XT combines the electronics cooling DNA of FloTHERM with the CAD-centric design flow of FloEFD to enable thermal simulation at all stages of the electronics design process – from design to manufacturing.

Streamlined PCB Thermal Design

FloTHERM PCB

Reduce or eliminate PCB re-spins with FloTHERM PCB, a specialized tool for PCB designers that allows them to perform fast, reliable thermal verification in a third of the time needed by standard tools and processes.


Fast, Web-based IC Thermal Model Generation

FloTHERM PACK

Generate reliable, accurate thermal models of IC components, test boards, standard test harnesses and other associated parts 20 times faster on the cloud than conventional approaches.

Web-based Thermal Characterization Technology for Semiconductors

FloTHERM IC

Built around FloTHERM PACK SmartParts and FloTHERM CFD technology, FloTHERM IC offers engineers an intuitive web-based semiconductor package thermal characterization tool.

Flexible CFD Options

FloTHERM Flexx

FloTHERM Flexx gives engineering teams an easy way to have the best of both worlds: FloTHERM’s industry-leading thermal modeling and simulation tools as well as the CAD-centric FloTHERM XT.

10/17/2018

Arm goes higher up the stack for device-to-data IoT security

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Arm goes higher up the stack for device-to-data IoT security

October 17, 2018

By Paul Williamson, vice president and general manager, IoT device IP Line of Business, Arm

News highlights:

  • Arm is building the industry’s broadest IoT security offering with secure device IP and the Pelion IoT Platform guided by PSA design principles
  • Arm celebrates the first year of PSA with new APIs and API test kits to accelerate PSA development
  • Pelion IoT Platform to integrate Cybereason AI hunting engine for ongoing security of IoT devices

This week at Arm TechCon, Arm CEO Simon Segars shared details in his keynote address on version 2.0 of the Arm security manifesto. Within the manifesto, I look at the risks to IoT devices and how even a small-scale disruption of a company’s infrastructure will immediately compromise the integrity of the data, but also have a damaging long-term impact to the trust from businesses and consumers in data-driven insights.

Trust is ultimately the key to widespread adoption of any emerging technology. The same approach holds true for IoT silicon, systems and data. Security cannot be an afterthought in IoT devices because the confidence in any data-driven insight they provide is only as strong as the trust businesses and consumers can place in them.

One year later, PSA is an essential part of building trusted connected devices

As a starting point in building that trust, a year ago Arm introduced the Platform Security Architecture (PSA), a common framework for securing a trillion connected devices. Since that time, PSA has grown, gathering more industry support and offering deliverables on all areas of the three-stage pipeline; threat modeling documentation, specifications and reference software through the open source Trusted Firmware project (TF-M). Today, I’m announcing the latest PSA milestone – a series of APIs and accompanying test kits that will accelerate the development and delivery of robust PSA implementations.

PSA

We are releasing new PSA APIs and API compliance test kits to support three key areas of design, including:

  • PSA Developer APIs for RTOS vendors and software developers
  • PSA Firmware Framework APIs for security experts making custom secure functions
  • For chip vendors, the Trusted Base System Architecture (TBSA-M) Architecture Test Kit, checks for compliance of chip hardware to the PSA TBSA-M specification.

PSA is a reality today and already seen as essential for building trusted IoT devices. For example, In a research note earlier this year, leading industry analyst firm Gartner said “Technology product management leaders need to look into partnerships with security software companies, as well as prioritize semiconductor vendors that are planning to incorporate Arm’s PSA.”[i]

Building on our ongoing PSA investment, we recognize the need to equip our partners with full solutions and a system-wide approach for building secure SoCs faster. To address this, we’re also unveiling a new umbrella design solution at TechCon. The Arm secure foundation consists of Corstone foundation IP, pre-integrated with the processor and security IP; development tools (including FPGA/test chip boards) and open source Corstone ready software.

Of course, while PSA and secure IP such as Corstone, Arm TrustZone and Arm CryptoCell, are critical in designing secure IoT devices, Arm recognizes more needs to be done. We are committed to going higher up the solution stack to ensure IoT devices are secure as evidenced by the Arm Pelion IoT Platform. Pelion already integrates PSA principles and delivers unified device-to-data security across both IoT devices and data. The solution offers state-of-the-art PKI-based device security, trusted TLS security communication, data encryption, and other services such as secure firmware updates and in-field device access control.

Pelion gets a new hunting partner

However, the complexities associated with securing the vast attack surface of billions of connected devices requires industry collaboration to build an ecosystem dedicated to security from device-to-data. In the coming weeks, months and years you will see plenty of Arm partner collaborations focused on securing devices, but the one we’re announcing today with Cybereason brings an entirely new dimension for monitoring IoT device security to Pelion Device Management.

The Cybereason AI hunting engine is a shield for helping to safeguard all future Arm-based IoT devices tied into the Pelion IoT Platform. Cybereason’s technology can analyze 8 million events per second, and each one of events incidents could signal the start of an attack or that a device was failing. The joint solution will add visibility and attack response capabilities to the already strong protection offered by Pelion Device Management. The combined offering will include a comprehensive cybersecurity solution designed to operate at an IoT scale of billions of devices.

If you’re attending TechCon this week, stop by the Arm booth to see a joint demo with Cybereason that simulates an attack on a single smart meter and how it could compromise an entire utility provider’s data. If something like that were to happen, then it would ultimately create an immediate lack of consumer trust in those smart meters and the bills they are responsible for generating. This of course would have implications for an entire industry building connected devices.

Therefore, the industry must now think differently about how IoT systems are built and how they will be secured from device-to-data. Since our ecosystem has shipped more than 130 billion chips with your architecture, we are expected to think differently about how to get in front of future threats. It is why Arm is uniquely positioned to deliver the industry’s most scalable device-to-data security solution stack, starting with PSA as the common security framework for designing IoT devices, supporting those devices with a robust suite of security IP and ultimately securing and managing the devices and data generated with the Pelion IoT Platform.

08/04/2018

Confidence in the Use of Software Tools per ISO 26262

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Arm goes higher up the stack for device-to-data IoT security

October 17, 2018

By Paul Williamson, vice president and general manager, IoT device IP Line of Business, Arm

News highlights:

  • Arm is building the industry’s broadest IoT security offering with secure device IP and the Pelion IoT Platform guided by PSA design principles
  • Arm celebrates the first year of PSA with new APIs and API test kits to accelerate PSA development
  • Pelion IoT Platform to integrate Cybereason AI hunting engine for ongoing security of IoT devices

This week at Arm TechCon, Arm CEO Simon Segars shared details in his keynote address on version 2.0 of the Arm security manifesto. Within the manifesto, I look at the risks to IoT devices and how even a small-scale disruption of a company’s infrastructure will immediately compromise the integrity of the data, but also have a damaging long-term impact to the trust from businesses and consumers in data-driven insights.

Trust is ultimately the key to widespread adoption of any emerging technology. The same approach holds true for IoT silicon, systems and data. Security cannot be an afterthought in IoT devices because the confidence in any data-driven insight they provide is only as strong as the trust businesses and consumers can place in them.

One year later, PSA is an essential part of building trusted connected devices

As a starting point in building that trust, a year ago Arm introduced the Platform Security Architecture (PSA), a common framework for securing a trillion connected devices. Since that time, PSA has grown, gathering more industry support and offering deliverables on all areas of the three-stage pipeline; threat modeling documentation, specifications and reference software through the open source Trusted Firmware project (TF-M). Today, I’m announcing the latest PSA milestone – a series of APIs and accompanying test kits that will accelerate the development and delivery of robust PSA implementations.

PSA

We are releasing new PSA APIs and API compliance test kits to support three key areas of design, including:

  • PSA Developer APIs for RTOS vendors and software developers
  • PSA Firmware Framework APIs for security experts making custom secure functions
  • For chip vendors, the Trusted Base System Architecture (TBSA-M) Architecture Test Kit, checks for compliance of chip hardware to the PSA TBSA-M specification.

PSA is a reality today and already seen as essential for building trusted IoT devices. For example, In a research note earlier this year, leading industry analyst firm Gartner said “Technology product management leaders need to look into partnerships with security software companies, as well as prioritize semiconductor vendors that are planning to incorporate Arm’s PSA.”[i]

Building on our ongoing PSA investment, we recognize the need to equip our partners with full solutions and a system-wide approach for building secure SoCs faster. To address this, we’re also unveiling a new umbrella design solution at TechCon. The Arm secure foundation consists of Corstone foundation IP, pre-integrated with the processor and security IP; development tools (including FPGA/test chip boards) and open source Corstone ready software.

Of course, while PSA and secure IP such as Corstone, Arm TrustZone and Arm CryptoCell, are critical in designing secure IoT devices, Arm recognizes more needs to be done. We are committed to going higher up the solution stack to ensure IoT devices are secure as evidenced by the Arm Pelion IoT Platform. Pelion already integrates PSA principles and delivers unified device-to-data security across both IoT devices and data. The solution offers state-of-the-art PKI-based device security, trusted TLS security communication, data encryption, and other services such as secure firmware updates and in-field device access control.

Pelion gets a new hunting partner

However, the complexities associated with securing the vast attack surface of billions of connected devices requires industry collaboration to build an ecosystem dedicated to security from device-to-data. In the coming weeks, months and years you will see plenty of Arm partner collaborations focused on securing devices, but the one we’re announcing today with Cybereason brings an entirely new dimension for monitoring IoT device security to Pelion Device Management.

The Cybereason AI hunting engine is a shield for helping to safeguard all future Arm-based IoT devices tied into the Pelion IoT Platform. Cybereason’s technology can analyze 8 million events per second, and each one of events incidents could signal the start of an attack or that a device was failing. The joint solution will add visibility and attack response capabilities to the already strong protection offered by Pelion Device Management. The combined offering will include a comprehensive cybersecurity solution designed to operate at an IoT scale of billions of devices.

If you’re attending TechCon this week, stop by the Arm booth to see a joint demo with Cybereason that simulates an attack on a single smart meter and how it could compromise an entire utility provider’s data. If something like that were to happen, then it would ultimately create an immediate lack of consumer trust in those smart meters and the bills they are responsible for generating. This of course would have implications for an entire industry building connected devices.

Therefore, the industry must now think differently about how IoT systems are built and how they will be secured from device-to-data. Since our ecosystem has shipped more than 130 billion chips with your architecture, we are expected to think differently about how to get in front of future threats. It is why Arm is uniquely positioned to deliver the industry’s most scalable device-to-data security solution stack, starting with PSA as the common security framework for designing IoT devices, supporting those devices with a robust suite of security IP and ultimately securing and managing the devices and data generated with the Pelion IoT Platform.

07/24/2018

Polarion Synchronization Connector for DOORS

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Building on top of the Import Wizard for IBM DOORS released in Polarion 17.1 and to provide users with flexibility and choice, a brand new bi-directional synchronization connector is available to all DOORS 9.x users on Windows. Note, Polarion can be used on Linux, but must connect to an IBM DOORS client on Windows. The connector is part of core Polarion functionality. No additional software needs to be downloaded.

 

With this new connector, now IBM DOORS can easily co-exist with Polarion allowing IBM DOORS users to take advantage of all the great capabilities and features offered in a modern web ALM application. The new Polarion synchronization connector for DOORS supports many different use cases, workflows and supports a rich set of functionality. Perhaps you’re a DOORS user that wants to leverage ALM but still needs to maintain a legacy DOORS database for historical reasons. Perhaps you work with another team that still works in IBM DOORS, but you want to leverage the power of Polarion ALM? In either situation, the new Polarion synchronization connector for IBM DOORS can help you.

 

The new connector is designed for Polarion administrators to set up sync-pairs between DOORS modules and a Polarion live doc. The connector is highly customizable, so administrators simply decide what information should be synchronized between DOORS and Polarion (and vice-versa), how that information should be mapped, taking into consideration direction and priority. Once the sync-pair is set up, the administrator can decide to either run the sync manually or automate the process. This means, users can continue working in DOORS and Polarion as normal with no constraints, and in the background the connector keeps information synchronized. Administrators can set up as many sync pairs as they need for the DOORS modules they wish to synchronize with Polarion.

 

The connector is packed with capability supporting a wide range of different requirements definition styles in DOORS including custom attributes and enumerations.

The connector supports:

 

  • Connection to multiple DOORS installations
  • No limit on the number of DOORS modules you wish to synchronize.
  • Simple DOORS requirements definitions
  • Complex DOORS requirements definitions using custom attributes and enumerations allowing mapping to different work-item types.
  • All requirements in the module respecting the hierarchy.
  • All links between requirements in the same or different modules.
  • Rich text and attachments, including OLE objects. These can be images, for example.
  • Attributes and custom attributes.

Once a synchronization starts, administrators can view its progress and status in real time using the Polarion monitor. The connector provides detailed log files should administrators need to better understand the synchronization behavior.

 

Note: DOORS is a registered trademark of IBM.

03/27/2018

Labforge situational awareness platform will use AI to protect the Royal Canadian Air Force

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Intruders are at the fence, and before you can react, your security is compromised. That is a scenario that Velocity company, Labforge, wants to prevent using their artificial intelligence situational awareness platform. They have now announced a partnership with the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) to protect the physical security of personnel and equipment on Canadian soil. This high tech network of sensors uses AI to understand the objects they see and visually display their movements on a map.

02/20/2018

PRO DESIGN Introduces Zynq™ UltraScale+™ Based FPGA SoC and IP Prototyping Platform

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PRO DESIGN, a leading supplier of FPGA-based Prototyping systems, today announced the launch of its three new proFPGA Zynq™ UltraScale+™ FPGA modules, which offer a complete embedded processing platform for the efficient development and verification of SoC and IP designs.

The proFPGA product family is a complete, scalable, and modular multi-FPGA Prototyping solution, which fulfills highest needs in the area of FPGA-based ASIC Prototyping. The new members of this flexible system concept are the proFPGA Zynq™ UltraScale+™ ZU11EG, ZU17EG and ZU19EG FPGA modules, which can easily be mounted on the proFPGA uno, duo or quad motherboards and mixed with other proFPGA FPGA modules like Virtex®-7, Virtex® UltraScale™, Virtex® UltraScale+™ or Kintex® UltraScale™ modules. The proFPGA Zynq™ UltraScale+™ FPGA modules address customers who require a complete embedded processing platform for high performance SoC Prototyping, IP verification and early software development. The innovative system concept and technologies offer highest flexi¬bility and reusability for several projects, which guarantees the best return on investment.

Equipped with the latest Xilinx Zynq™ UltraScale+™ ZU11EG, ZU17EG or ZU19EG FPGAs which combine FPGA logic with two ARM® Multi-Core Processors (Quad-core ARM® Cortex™-A53 and Dual-core ARM® Cortex™-R5) and several on-board interfaces like USB 3.0, Gigabit Ethernet, SATA, Display Port and debug interface, the new FPGA modules offer a complete embedded processing platform. Further, the boards already include an on-board DDR4 SODIMM module and a single quad SPI flash.

Nearly all SoC and ASIC designs contain some types of ARM® processors. Instead of implementing these ARM® cores into the FPGA and occupying important FPGA resources the user can take the proFPGA ZynqTM UltraScale+™ module which already has two embedded ARM® multi-core processors with verified interfaces and memory. In addition, the new FPGA module offers a direct ARM debug interface from which the user can benefit by using the proven ARM® debug environment in combination with the proFPGA prototyping system and by putting the focus on the actual verification of his design.

The new proFPGA ZynqTM UltraScale+™ modules offer a total of up to 5 extension sites with 531 standard I/Os and 16 multi-gigabit transceivers (MGTs) for extending the board with standard or user specific extension boards, or for easily connecting it to other proFPGA FPGA modules to expand the capacity. The well-designed board is optimized and trimmed to guarantee best signal integrity and highest performance. It allows a maximum point-to-point speed of up to 1.2 Gbps over the standard FPGA I/Os and up to 16.3 Gbps over the MGTs.

“In today’s ASIC and SoC designs you almost find always multi-core processors. The verification of these in combination with user designs and required firmware becomes essential and extremely complex. We are proud that with our new proFPGA Zynq™ UltraScale+™ FPGA modules we can provide a complete embedded processing platform at an early stage of the development process which helps our customers to master this challenging task”, said Gunnar Scholl, CEO of PRO DESIGN.

The proFPGA Zynq™ UltraScale+™ embedded processing platform comes with the proFPGA Builder software, which provides an extensive set of features, like advanced clock management, integrated self- and performance tests, automatic board detection, I/O voltage programming, system scan and safety mechanism and remote system configuration which only takes seconds, features which simplify the usage of the proFPGA system tremendously.

Availability

The proFPGA Zynq™ UltraScale+™ ZU11EG, ZU17EG and ZU19EG FPGA Modules are available since February 2018.

Demonstration
PRO DESIGN will demonstrate the proFPGA Zynq™ UltraScale+™ based FPGA Modules in San Jose, California at booth #1001 at the DVCon, from February 26 to 28, 2018.

About PRO DESIGN
The privately-held company was founded in 1982 and has about 100 employees, with various facilities in Germany, France and USA. PRO DESIGN has more than 35 years of experience in the EDA market, and as a provider in the E²MS market. PRO DESIGN has built-up extensive knowledge in the areas of electronic engineering, FPGA board development, FPGA design, high performance PCB design, production, assembly and testing.

About proFPGA
The proFPGA product family is a complete, scalable, and modular multi-FPGA prototyping solution, which fulfills the highest needs in the areas of ASIC and IP Prototyping and pre-silicon software development. The proFPGA product series consists of different types of motherboards, various Xilinx Virtex®-7, Virtex® UltraScale™, Virtex® UltraScale+™, Kintex® UltraScale™, Zynq™-7000 and UltraScale+™, and Intel® Stratix®-10 FPGA modules, a set of interconnection boards/cables and a large range of daughter boards like DDR3/4 memory boards or high-speed interface boards (PCIe Gen1/2/3/4, USB 3.0, Gigabit Ethernet, SATA, DVI, etc.). It addresses customers who need a scalable and flexible high-performance FPGA-based prototyping solution for early software development and IP/ASIC verification. The innovative system concept and technology offers best-in-class reusability across projects, guaranteeing the best return on investment.

Intel, the Intel logo, and Stratix® are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and/or other countries. *Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

02/13/2018

Arm’s Project Trillium Offers the Industry’s Most Scalable, Versatile ML Compute Platform

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News Highlights:

  • A new suite of Arm® IP brings machine learning (ML) to edge devices
  • With architectures built for high-performance and efficiency; Arm ML and Object Detection (OD) processors will deliver the best user experiences across the broadest range of applications
  • The new products will enable trillions of ML operations per second on mobile devices

Cambridge, UK – February 13, 2018 – Arm today announced Project Trillium, a suite of Arm IP including new highly scalable processors that will deliver enhanced machine learning (ML) and neural network (NN) functionality. The current technologies are focused on the mobile market and will enable a new class of ML-equipped devices with advanced compute capabilities, including state-of-the-art object detection.

Machine Learning

“The rapid acceleration of artificial intelligence into edge devices is placing increased requirements for innovation to address compute while maintaining a power efficient footprint. To meet this demand, Arm is announcing its new ML platform, Project Trillium,” said Rene Haas, president, IP Products Group, Arm. “New devices will require the high-performance ML and AI capabilities these new processors deliver. Combined with the high degree of flexibility and scalability that our platform provides, our partners can push the boundaries of what will be possible across a broad range of devices.”

ML technologies today tend to focus on specific device classes or the needs of individual sectors. Arm’s Project Trillium changes that by offering ultimate scalability. While the initial launch focuses on mobile processors, future Arm ML products will deliver the ability to move up or down the performance curve – from sensors and smart speakers, to mobile, home entertainment, and beyond.

Performance

Arm’s new ML and object detection processors not only provide a massive efficiency uplift from standalone CPUs, GPUs and accelerators, but they far exceed traditional programmable logic from DSPs.

The Arm ML processor is built from the ground-up, specifically for ML. It is based on the highly scalable Arm ML architecture and achieves the highest performance and efficiency for ML applications:

  • For mobile computing, the processor delivers more than 4.6 trillion operations per second (TOPs) with a further uplift of 2x-4x in effective throughput in real-world uses through intelligent data management.
  • Unmatched performance in thermal and cost-constrained environments with an efficiency of over three trillion operations per second per watt (TOPs/W). More details on the Arm ML processor are available on our website.

The Arm OD processor has been designed specifically to efficiently identify people and other objects with virtually unlimited objects per frame:

  • Real-time detection with Full HD processing at 60 frames per second
  • Up to 80x the performance of a traditional DSP, and a significant improvement in detection quality relative to previous Arm technologies. More details on the Arm OD processor are available on our website.

In combination, the Arm ML and OD processors perform even better, delivering a high-performance, power-efficient people detection and recognition solution. Users will enjoy high-resolution, real-time, detailed face recognition on their smart devices delivered in a battery-friendly way.

Arm NN software, when used alongside the Arm Compute Library and CMSIS-NN, is optimized for NNs and bridges the gap between NN frameworks such as TensorFlow, Caffe, and Android NN and the full range of Arm Cortex® CPUs, Arm Mali™ GPUs, and ML processors. Developers get the highest performance from ML applications by being able to fully-utilize underlying Arm hardware capabilities and performance. More details on Arm NN software are available on our website.

The new suite of Arm ML IP will be available for early preview in April of this year, with general availability in mid-2018.

Resources:

11/20/2017

Model Based Design (MBD) with Polarion ALM

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MBD or model based design is a popular approach in system engineering and software development circles. As engineers work with product requirements, they use model based design tools to better understand those requirements, often refining or even developing new requirements. In some cases, MBD is used for low level design, such as developing complex algorithms, understanding modal/ logical behaviors or designing the software architecture. As companies embark on a digital twin strategy, MBD plays an important role as often these models can be executed or simulated. Depending on the type of model, through simulation, engineers can validate early product requirements or even find potential pitfalls or bugs early on in the product development lifecycle when those issues costs less to resolve and fix. Even better, when products are actually connected to a network, through the use of the internet of things (IoT), engineers can use the products telematics and operational product data and feed this information back into engineering. Now these digital twin models can be used to either troubleshoot the product, drive improvements or provide the foundation to create new iterations of the product.

This all sounds very exciting, but what options are available to customers that are leveraging MBD and using Polarion? How does Polarion ALM work with MBD tools? Let’s explore the options in more detail.

Whether you using MBD for system engineering, software engineering or algorithm development, there are a wide range of Polarion integrations available to support MBD. Currently, Matlab Simulink, Sparx Enterprise Architect, IBM Rhapsody and Siemens own Teamcenter modeling are all available.

The integrations allow engineering teams working with models to ensure that their work is tightly coupled to the software engineering lifecycle being managed by Polarion. Modeler’s can create traceability links between the model artifacts and the product requirements, thus ensuring the requirements have appropriate coverage. Now when product requirements are either updated, deleted or changed inside of Polarion, engineers can quickly determine what impact this will have on the low level design – now represented by digital models. The opposite is also true, when the model might not be able to meet the design requirements, we can quickly determine what impact this will have on the total product requirements.

For some integrations, engineers can view the visual model representations inside of Polarion. In other cases, a hyperlink is provided allowing you to quickly navigate back to the modeling tool to view the model.

Modeling teams can also take advantage of Polarion ALMs comprehensive task and planning management ensuring that their modeling activities are kept to plan and within budget. Other Polarion features can also be leveraged by modeling teams such as Polarion extensive test management capabilities.

 

12EADiagramTraceInPolarion.png EA Artifacts viewed inside of Polarion ALM

Be sure to browse our Extensions Portal for yourself with hundreds of extensions for Polarion ALM that work with your existing toolchains. To learn more about Polarion ALM and how it can help to modernize your MBD toolchain through Collaboration, Traceability and Reuse contact your Polarion sales advisor or better yet Test Drive Polarion ALM Today!

Below are direct links to the MBD integrations currently available on the Polarion extension site:

  • Siemens Teamcenter link
  • Matlab Simulink link
  • Sparx Enterprise Architect link
  • IBM Rhapsody link
  • Sparx Enterprise Architect (Willert Connector) link