Author Archives: steve bush

SiFive hones Risc-V cores for more processing power and fewer watts

SiFive, provider of Risc-V processor core intellectual property, has released a suite of upgrades to its products, increasing performance, and reducing power consumption and die area. The release has been dubbed ’20G1′, as the company has switched from ‘year-month’ naming to ‘year-release’ naming: 20G1 being the first ‘general’ release of 2020 “and encapsulates nine months ...

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Harwin allows mix-and-match on Datamate Mix-Tek connectors

Harwin has made its Datamate Mix-Tek connectors more flexible – moving away from compulsory contact combinations. There is a choice of housings, designed to accommodate coaxial and power contacts. “OEMs can now purchase cable housings for these 2.00mm and 4.00mm pitch connectors without contacts fitted, rather than being restricted to a small number of pre-defined ...

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Commercial silicon solar reaches 21.4% efficiency

LG Electronics’ latest commercial solar panel can reach an efficiency of 21.4%. It is the LG370N1C-N5, styled a ‘premium’ product by the company – an n-type monocrystalline panel producing 370W max from its 1.7 x 1m surface (irradiance 1,000W/m2, 25°C, 1.5AM). Open-circuit under the same illumination it delivers 41.8V, and short-circuit the figure is 10.92A. Maximum ...

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Vector network analysis from Rigol

Rigol Technologies has added a vector network analyser mode to a family of spectrum analysers, adding an N suffix to its RSA3000 and RSA5000 instruments. “The RSA5000N and the RSA3000N deliver the same performance and feature set as the current spectrum analyser models, but adds VNA capability as a standard feature,” according to the company. “With ...

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More on: CGD, the UK’s GaN power transistor maker

Last week, it was announced that Cambridge GaN Devices (CGD) will lead a €10.3m European project (‘GaNext’) to develop fast-switching intelligent GaN power modules. But who is this small UK company that has been trusted to lead a consortium that includes semiconductor giant Infineon? The answer is: a fabless GaN power transistor maker built on ...

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MCU has dual Cortex-M4 and Bluetooth LE 5.2

Maxim is aiming its latest MCY at coin cell powered Bluetooth Low Energy 5.2 wireless communication – 27.3μA/MHz operation is available at 3.3V when executing from cache, or 1.2µA at 3.3V in the lowest power mode. Called MAX32666, and part of the company’s Darwin family, it has dual 96MHz Arm Cortex-M4 cores, both with their own ...

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Shortwave infra-red image sensors for industry

Sony has announced two short-wavelength infra-red (SWIR) image sensors with 5μm pixels for industrial equipment, that also image in visible light too – with digital outputs to make them compatible with equipment set-up for visible light CMOS cameras. They are based on the company’s SenSWIR technology, with photodiodes formed in an indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) ...

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1500 pixel linear CCD for automated optical inspection

Toshiba has introduced a pair of linear CCD image sensors for automated optical inspection and  barcode scanning. Both are monochrome and have a 5.25μm (pitch) x 50μm pixels stacked edge-on to form an array ~7.9mm long. TCD1105GFG has 125V/lux-s sensitivity and 90 dynamic range, plus built-in electronic shutter. TCD1106GFG has 600V/lux-s sensitivity and 400 dynamic range. Dynamic ranges ...

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Small fanless Nvidia Arm PC packs a punch for AI

Aaeon is aiming at edge AI with a box PC built around an Nvidia Jetson Xavier NX processor with a 64bit hex-core Arm processor, 384 Cuda cores, 48 Tensor Cores and two Nvdla engines capable of running multiple neural networks in parallel – delivering up to 21Top/s. All this in a rather small box – ...

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Lithium ion cells don’t need cobalt

A cobalt-free high-energy lithium-ion battery is possible, according to the University of Texas at Austin. The cathode is made from 89% nickel, then manganese and aluminium, part of a group of alloys dubbed NMAs. They were compared with high-nickel (both also 89%) cobalt-inclusive alloys from groups called nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) and nickel-cobalt-aluminium (NCA), described as “the cathode materials of ...

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