Archive : 22 June 2015 год

Freescale has unveiled the first members of the i.MX7 family of application processors. The company claims the parts have been designed with power efficiency in mind and says i.MX7 parts will offer significant power savings.

Ron Martino, vp of applications processors, said there were three important elements to the new range. "Firstly, the choice of technology; These parts will be manufactured on a 28nm ultra low power process. Secondly, IP selection; the Cortex-A7 core is the most power efficient yet from ARM. And, finally, the device's low power architecture."

Freescale has launched two i.MX7 devices – the Solo and the Dual. Both feature a Cortex-M4 secondary CPU running at up to 266MHz and either one or two Cortex-A7 cores. In the Solo, the A7 is clocked at 800MHz, but the two A7s in the Dual can run at up to 1GHz.

"Freescale is the first company to offer an A7/M4 combo," Martino noted. "We have optimised dynamic and static power consumption and believe i.MX7 parts will consume one third of the power needed by an i.MX6 part with the same performance."

Martino added that the Cortex-A7 core consumes 100µW/MHz, while the Cortex-M4 draws 70µW/MHz. This translates to a performance of 15.7DMIPS/mW – three times better than that of the i.MX6 processor.

One of the features of i.MX7 will be the power saving modes. A Freescale architected suspend mode reduces power consumption to 250µW, with a 50ms wake up time. A deep suspend mode reduces power consumption by 'an order of magnitude', but Martino said this involves a trade off against latency.

Applications for i.MX7 processors are expected to range from e-readers and IoT devices to wearables, smart home controls and patient monitoring equipment.

Freescale has also developed a power management companion chip optimised for use with i.MX7 processors. The PF3000, made on a Freescale BiCMOS process, includes up to four buck converters, six linear regulators, a real time clock supply and a coin cell charger.

According to the company, the PF3000 is a fully integrated solution that not only optimises power delivery to the processor, but also to the peripherals and system memory resources.

It features one time programmable memory for controlling startup sequences and output voltages, while supporting a range of user programmable power modes.

Author
Graham Pitcher

Source:  www.newelectronics.co.uk

Excelsys Technologies has appointed Astute Electronics to distribute its products to UK customers in the military, security, communication and defence sectors.

"Astute's successful engineering driven demand creation, coupled with its preferred supplier status at the UK's leading Tier 1 OEMs, will help Excelsys to generate significant new opportunities, particularly for Hi-Rel COT's products," said Conor Duffy, Excelsys' European sales manager. "Astute has a proven track record in developing and maintaining excellent partner based relationships. The expert sales and applications engineering teams at Excelsys will work with Astute to provide additional power options, rapid design-in and applications support, easing system integration and helping customers meet their business needs."

Under the deal, Astute will focus on high reliability COTS power supplies, including Xgen, UltiMod and Xsolo, which are said by Excelsys to deliver best in class efficiencies and power densities. The platforms are designed for use in harsh operating environments, typically in such applications as radar systems, simulators, diagnostics, test and measurement and data processing.

Author
Graham Pitcher

Source:  www.newelectronics.co.uk

Researchers at the University of Southampton's Zepler Institute say they have used ambient pressure chemical vapour deposition to fabricate large area 2D films of molybdenum disulphide (MoS2). The team says the room temperature process, which is scalable to any size wafer, could pave the way for the large-scale manufacture of devices such as flexible and transparent optoelectronics, gas sensors, memory devices and photovoltaics.

MoS2 – which can detect and emit light and which has high carrier mobility – has only been available commercially in small flakes. "Using flakes of MoS2, which are typically only a few hundred square microns in area, to make devices is impractical, time-consuming and inefficient and does not provide a practical route to rapid prototyping and existing semiconductor fabrication protocols, said Dan Hewak, professor of optoelectronics at the Zepler Institute. "For these new materials to be adopted in mainstream electronics, they must be compatible with the semiconductor processing lines used in the mass production of electronic chips.

"Our expertise in novel thin-film fabrication, coupled with our ultra-high purity raw material processing facility, has enabled us to purify and synthesise large area films to a consistency and purity level not available commercially."

By processing initially at room temperature, rather than at the high temperatures typically used, the team says it is possible to deposit MoS2 on a wider range of substrates, including those with low thermal stability like flexible displays. The technique also minimises stress on other previously deposited layers and helps reduce processing costs.

"We have also developed a technique for lifting these large-area films off the substrate they were grown on and depositing them onto a different substrate," said Prof Hewak. "This means the films can be put onto any material, opening up entirely new applications."

Author
Graham Pitcher

Source:  www.newelectronics.co.uk

The Rohde & Schwarz electronics group has extended its partnership agreement with Avnet and EBV Elektronik. The contract enables the distributors to ensure the availability of the electronic components and technical support it requires.

Rohde & Schwarz has worked with Avnet and EBV for more than 40 years. Miguel Fernandez, president EM EMEA at Avnet, said: "Rohde & Schwarz uses our entire range of services, from design to complex logistics programmes. This agreement puts our collaboration on a new footing – an important step towards a genuine strategic partnership on equal terms."

The production of Rohde & Schwarz high-tech products makes complex demands on the company's supply chain, which needs to ensure that the delivery of electronic components and sub-systems is on time, high quality and cost-effective. Peter Schlindwein, vp corporate procurement at Rohde & Schwarz, said: "In order to achieve this, we need flexible and competent suppliers. We have found these in Avnet and EBV Elektronik. Together, we have laid a new foundation which consolidates the current business and provides a legal platform to extend it further."

Pic: Miguel Fernandez and Peter Sclindwein

Author
Tom Austin-Morgan

Source:  www.newelectronics.co.uk