Archive : 24 October 2015 год

AMD has launched the R Series of SoCs, which it is targeting at embedded applications. According to the company, the x86 based device ‘pushes the boundaries’ for embedded silicon solutions.

Colin Cureton, senior manager with AMD Embedded, said: “There are a lot of things happening which lend themselves to AMD’s technology. Included is more and more rich multimedia content; not only viewing it, but also interacting with it.” Other developments include a greater focus on security and on parallel computing.

The R Series, which has been called Merlin Falcon internally, is said to bring a smaller form factor to applications such as medical imaging and industrial control. AMD’s previous offering required a standalone ‘south bridge’ chip, but this functionality has been integrated into the R Series.

The R series features AMD’s ‘Excavator’ core, which supports up to 15% more instructions per clock, according to Cureton, who noted this is achieved through ‘better caches and better branch prediction’.

Power consumption has been an important design target, said Cureton. “All parts feature a thermal design power ranging from 12W to 35W, configurable by the BIOS and operating system. This allows developers to optimise their products for performance or for power consumption.”

When comparing R Series to the previous generation, Cureton claimed designers can specify the same performance, but with 20W less power consumption or get a 22% performance boost for the same power.

Five parts are available with a choice of dual or quad x86 cores running at up to 3.4GHz. The SoCs can also be supplied with up to eight GPUs and are available in CPU only format. All parts are specified for use in temperatures ranging from 0 to 90°C, but an industrial temperature option of -40 to 105°C is available.

Author
Graham Pitcher

Source:  www.newelectronics.co.uk

Researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) claim to have designed the first on chip metamaterial with a refractive index of zero. The team says this means the phase of light can travel infinitely quickly.

The metamaterial consists of an array of silicon pillars embedded in a polymer matrix and clad in gold film. It can couple to silicon waveguides to interface with standard integrated photonic components and chips.

Professor Eric Mazur said: “Light doesn’t typically like to be squeezed or manipulated, but this metamaterial permits you to manipulate light from one chip to another, to squeeze, bend, twist and reduce the diameter of a beam from the macroscale to the nanoscale. It’s a remarkable new way to manipulate light.”

While nothing travels faster than light, its phase velocity – how quickly the crests of the wave move – increases or decreases, depending on the material it’s moving through. When light passes through water, its phase velocity is reduced. Once it exits the water, its phase velocity increases again. The higher the refraction index, the more the material interferes with the propagation of the wave crests of light. When the refraction index is reduced to zero, ‘really weird and interesting things start to happen’, said the team.

A zero-index material that fits on a chip could have exciting applications, the team noted, especially in the world of quantum computing. Postdoctoral fellow Yang Li added: “This zero-index metamaterial offers a solution for the confinement of electromagnetic energy in different waveguide configurations because its high internal phase velocity produces full transmission, regardless of how the material is configured.”

Author
Graham Pitcher

Source:  www.newelectronics.co.uk