Millimetre wave communications developer SiBeam has released the SB6501 and SB6510 UltraGig network processor and RF transceiver chipset. The IEEE802.11ad compliant chipset delivers up to 7Gbit/s in devices such as smartphones, tablets, ultrabooks, access points and wireless docks.UltraGig is said to take advantage of advanced beam forming tech...

Building on the four standards it published at electronica in November 2014, the Architects of Modern Power (AMP) consortium has announced a further standard aimed at establishing common mechanical and electrical specifications for the development of advanced power conversion technology for distributed power systems.Called teraAMP, the standard...

In order to allow an electric vehicle to travel for hundreds of miles at a time, lithium-ion batteries will have to have to store more energy, but keep the same size. However, according to a researcher, this is a dilemma as, in order to hold enough energy to enable a car to drive for 500 miles before recharging, current lithium-ion batteries become...

A European research project says it has made an important step towards the further miniaturisation of nanoelectronics using silicene, a semiconducting material which combines the properties of silicon and graphene."Electronics are currently embedded in many layers of silicon atoms," explained Dr Athanasios Dimoulas, coordinator of the...

According to newly launched company Semitrex, it typically takes more than 14 different parts to make a power supply. It believes this 'pieces and parts' approach – where numerous semiconductor parts are embedded on several circuit boards – has yielded only marginal increases in energy efficiency to date.In a move which it s...

In a joint presentation at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), imec, Tyndall National Institute, University of Leuven and Ghent University described a 4 x 20Gbit/s wavelength division multiplexing hybrid CMOS silicon photonics transceiver. The development, say the partners, paves the way to cost effective, high density single...

Imec, Holst Centre and Renesas have outlined at this week's ISSCC an ultra low power 2.4GHz short range radio compliant with Bluetooth Low Energy and IEEE802.15.4 (ZigBee). Implemented in 40nm CMOS, the radio is said to reduce power consumption by 25% compared to the previous 90nm RF front-end design.Harmke De Groot, department director at...

In a move which replaces the 9000-X oscilloscope range, Keysight Technologies has launched the Infiniium V-Series, said to provide superior measurement accuracy, enhanced analysis tools and advanced probing systemsAccording to the company, its proprietary indium phosphide technology allows V-Series scopes feature the lowest noise floor, lowest...

Microsoft is using Altera Arria 10 FPGAs to boost performance/Watt in data centre acceleration applications based on convolutional neural network (CNN) algorithms, used for image classification, image recognition, and natural language processing.Engineering samples of Arria 10 FPGAs are said to offer up to 40 GFLOPS/W; more than three times tha...

In a move that significantly broadens its portfolio, Xilinx has unveiled the UltraScale+ family of FPGAs, 3D ICs and MPSoCs. The UltraScale portfolio now spans 20nm and 16nm FPGA, SoC and 3D ICs, with TSMC's 16FF+ 3D transistors said to bring a 'significant' boost in performance/Watt.Giles Peckham, EMEA marketing director, said: &qu...