MIPI speeds up M-PHY and aims at in-car links

MIPI interfaces in a mobile device

MIPI interfaces in a mobile device

MIPI Alliance, the group driving the standardisation of mobile phone interfaces, has announced an updated version of its physical layer interface that supports an 11Gbit/s data rate for chip-to-chip within the phone.

MIPI M-PHY specification also widens protocol support to include third-party protocols as well as native MIPI protocols.

This latest release, v4.0, doubles the potential bandwidth per channel compared to the previous specification.

It introduces adaptive receiver equalisation to overcome channel distortion and support a peak transmission rate of 11.6Gbit/s per channel or 46.4Gbit/s aggregate data rate over four channels.

According to Joel Huloux, chairman of the board of MIPI Alliance, this will “dramatically bolster performances and throughput of data transmitted on 2 pins and offers companies new opportunities to enhance the capabilities of protocols that operate on this technology.”

The M-PHY spec now also scales optical media converter data rates up to Gear 4, giving designers the capability to build connections that are meters in length to support MIPI M-PHY’s on automotive systems.

For example cameras that use CSI-3, when based on UniPro enabled by M-PHY v4.0, will be able to transmit 4K video with 60 frames per second and 12 bits per pixel on a single differential pair.

Support for M-PHY v4.0 will be included in the next versions of MIPI UniProSM and MIPI CSI-3SM, which will undergo development later in 2015.

Standards that have adopted MIPI M-PHY include Mobile PCI Express (M-PCIe) and SuperSpeed USB Inter Chip (SSIC).

MIPI M-PHY has also been adopted by Google, along with the MIPI UniPro transport layer in the MIPI UniPort-MSM interface, to serve the modular needs of the Project Ara smartphone platform.

 

 

Richard Wilson

MIPI speeds up M-PHY and aims at in-car links

MIPI interfaces in a mobile device

MIPI interfaces in a mobile device

MIPI Alliance, the group driving the standardisation of mobile phone interfaces, has announced an updated version of its physical layer interface that supports an 11Gbit/s data rate for chip-to-chip within the phone.

MIPI M-PHY specification also widens protocol support to include third-party protocols as well as native MIPI protocols.

This latest release, v4.0, doubles the potential bandwidth per channel compared to the previous specification.

It introduces adaptive receiver equalisation to overcome channel distortion and support a peak transmission rate of 11.6Gbit/s per channel or 46.4Gbit/s aggregate data rate over four channels.

According to Joel Huloux, chairman of the board of MIPI Alliance, this will “dramatically bolster performances and throughput of data transmitted on 2 pins and offers companies new opportunities to enhance the capabilities of protocols that operate on this technology.”

The M-PHY spec now also scales optical media converter data rates up to Gear 4, giving designers the capability to build connections that are meters in length to support MIPI M-PHY’s on automotive systems.

For example cameras that use CSI-3, when based on UniPro enabled by M-PHY v4.0, will be able to transmit 4K video with 60 frames per second and 12 bits per pixel on a single differential pair.

Support for M-PHY v4.0 will be included in the next versions of MIPI UniProSM and MIPI CSI-3SM, which will undergo development later in 2015.

Standards that have adopted MIPI M-PHY include Mobile PCI Express (M-PCIe) and SuperSpeed USB Inter Chip (SSIC).

MIPI M-PHY has also been adopted by Google, along with the MIPI UniPro transport layer in the MIPI UniPort-MSM interface, to serve the modular needs of the Project Ara smartphone platform.

 

 

Richard Wilson

Flash-based storage start-up Pure going for IPO

Flash-based storage start-up Pure going for IPO

Flash-based storage start-up Pure going for IPO

Loss-making flash-based storage company Pure Storage has filed for an IPO.

Last year the company lost $182 million on sales of $174 million.

According to IDC, Pure is the second largest supplier of flash-based storage behind EMC and ahead of IBM and HP.

The market for all-flash storage systems was $1.6 billion last year and will be $2.24 billion this year, says IDC.

Pure’s losses were $23.4 million in 2013, $78.6 million in 2014 and $183.2 million in 2015. For the three months to April 2025, it lost $49.1 million.

Revenues were $6.1 million in 2013, $42.7 million in 2014 and $174.5 million in 2015. For the three months to April 30, 2015, revenues were $74.1 million.

Pure has had $531 million in investment capital. It wants to raise $300 million in the IPO, valuing the company at $3 billion.

The overall storage market, dominated by hard disk, is worth $26.5 billion.

Top Seven Flash-based Storage players are:

  • EMC
  • Pure
  • IBM
  • NetApp
  • HP
  • SoldFire
  • Nimbus

Source: IDC

 

david manners

UK first to test on-the-move electric car charging

Highways England motorway charging

The trial of on-the-move wireless power charging for electric vehicles will start this year

The UK’s largest trial of on-the-move wireless power charging for electric and hybrid vehicles will start later this year.

The UK government has announced plans for trials of what it calls “off-road” power technology to investigate the introduction wireless charging on the country’s motorways and major A roads. This would involve charging vehicles on the move, without the need to stop and charge the car’s battery.

The trials follow the completion of the feasibility study commissioned by Highways England into ‘dynamic wireless power transfer’ technologies.

Transport Minister Andrew Jones said:

“The potential to recharge low emission vehicles on the move offers exciting possibilities. The government is already committing £500m over the next five years to keep Britain at the forefront of this technology.”

The trials, which are expected to begin later this year following a procurement process, will involve fitting vehicles with wireless technology and testing the equipment, installed underneath the road, to replicate motorway conditions.

The government has yet to appoint a prime contractor for the project.

The trials are expected to last for approximately 18 months and, subject to the results, could be followed by on road trials.

A longer-term plan is to also install plug-in charging points every 20 miles on the motorway network as part of the government’s Road Investment Strategy.

 

Richard Wilson

Infineon Aurix MCUs get free Tasking RTOS and tools

Infineon's TriCore Aurix MCUs have free software development tools

Infineon’s TriCore Aurix MCUs have free software development tools

Infineon’s TriCore Aurix microcontrollers now have free software development tools courtesy of Altium.

The Lite Edition of the Tasking VX-toolset for TriCore includes a one year license and can be requested now on the Infineon or Tasking websites.

Harm-Andre, Tasking product manager, writes:

“We were often asked about the availability of a quick and easy way to explore the advantages of Tasking compiler technology for Infineon Aurix microcontrollers and our partnership with Infineon has allowed us to develop a free toolset that provides the embedded software developers around the world with the complete TASKING TriCore compiler experience with no compromises to features and performance.”

This toolset features the Aurix configuration tools, which include:

  • Integrated Pin Mapper, which can be used to assign the peripheral module signals to physical pins on the chip.
  • Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) for TriCore. This has a real-time, multitasking kernel designed specifically for time-critical embedded applications that require a high degree of modularity and configuration.
  • Software Platform Builder provides a graphics editor and code generator which can configure low-level drives, C files, header files, and the RTOS.

Additional information can be found in the Lite Edition v1.0r1 Release Notes.

 

Richard Wilson

STM32F7 gets safety-critical system design tools

ThunderBench screenshot

ThunderBench screenshot

Phaedrus Systems, the UK-based supplier of development tools for safety-critical embedded systems, has announced that its Emprog ThunderBench C/C++ development tool suite supports the STM32F7 discovery kit (STM32F746NGH6, to be precise), which includes the STM32F7 ARM Cortex-M7 based MCU.

The kit is typically used for applications such as audio and video players, audio recorders, and home intruder alarms. The kit also supports audio, video and colour touchscreen design features.

Chris Hills, CTO of Phaedrus Systems, writes:

“Emprog ThunderBench provides development support for the entire ARM Cortex-M family. ThunderBench provides the most comprehensive integration of C/C++ compiler, debugger, IDE within an Eclipse platform.”

Options include static code analysis, JTAG probes and a Segger RTOS. ThunderBench also has many Board Support packages for the ARM Cortex family.

According to the supplier, there is support from third-party vendors for ThunderBench via Eclipse plug-in capabilities.

 

 

 

Richard Wilson

Wireless network design adapts to change

TE 2If you are considering building a distributed antenna system (DAS) for your next wireless network, John Spindler, director of product management at TE Connectivity makes suggestions about how to configure your system.  

Distributed antenna systems have evolved over the years, there have been several technology bandwagons onto which vendors have climbed.

At first, a distributed antenna system (DAS) consisted of an RF source, like a repeater, and half-inch (or thicker) coaxial cabling in both vertical and horizontal runs that distributed the signal to passive antennas throughout a building, inside of a tunnel or along a roadway. So the system was completely passive, having no active electronics.

The upside to this approach was that the coax, being a broadband medium, could carry any signal, but the downsides were that the coax was costly and often difficult and expensive to install, and the signal attenuated with distance, so the proximity of the antenna to the RF source determined the strength of its signal.

Also it’s not a solution that’s been able to maintain performance with 3G and 4G technology and broad spectrum or multi-operator network demands.

Coax-based systems are popular in countries that still predominantly use 2G or 3G, and with relatively low labour costs, where the added cost of pulling heavy coax through ceilings or walls isn’t an issue or where only voice service is needed.

As technology evolved, DAS manufacturers adopted one of two approaches. They either used low-power amplifiers in the building’s ceilings, close to the distributed antennas, or they used high-power amplifiers in the wiring closet to feed remote antennas via half-inch coax (a sort of hybrid approach to what we now know as active and passive DAS).

The high-power adherents insisted that amplifiers didn’t belong in ceilings, where they would be hard to service, while the low-power adherents insisted that the best system performance (particularly for data) was obtained by putting the amplifier as close as possible to the antenna.

For years, this difference amounted to somewhat of a war among DAS vendors, mobile operators and system integrators, but as the market developed, it became clear that each approach was suited for different use cases.

In a hotel, for example, the ceilings are often high and made of plaster or sheetrock, and it’s difficult to gain access for placing ceiling-mounted remote amplifiers. In these cases, the use of closet-mounted, high-power amplifiers is a better fit for the application.

TE 1In offices and enterprises, ceiling-mounted amplifiers are easier to deploy because of the drop ceilings. Ceiling-mounted amplifiers are also important in use cases where you need to ensure high data rates and/or to create a very “hot” dominant signal in the structure because of interference from outside sources – buildings in central London are an example of such a case.

Most vendors have introduced both high-power and low-power versions of their products, so you can have it your way when it comes to matching the DAS architecture to the specific needs of the venue or environment.

So the important factors to consider are the link budget (how “hot” a signal you need), performance requirements (especially in multi-band and multi-technology systems), and the total cost (for the product, installation, and support of the system). DAS is no longer a one-size-fits-all proposition, and the beneficiary is the end user.

 

Richard Wilson

Samsung starts production of 48-layer V-NAND

Samsung begins mass production of 48-layer three-bit-per-cell 256Gbit V-NAND

Samsung begins mass production of 48-layer three-bit-per-cell 256Gbit V-NAND

Samsung says it has begun mass production of 48-layer three-bit-per-cell 256Gbit V-NAND.

Last week Toshiba said it was beginning pilot production of a 48-layer 256Gbit 3 bit-per-cell V-NAND, which it calls BiCS Flash.

In March, Intel/Micron said they were starting to ship a 32-layer V-NAND using floating point flash technology which delivered a 256Gbit memory.

Since then Intel/Micron have also announced their mystery memory technology 3D XPoint which may sample later this year.

Samsung’s 48-layer memory uses charge trap technology. The chip has 85.3 billion cells, which can store three bits each.

The 48-layer device uses 30% less power than the 32-layer, 128Gb V-NAND device when storing the same amount of data, and is 40% cheaper to make in terms of cost per storage bit.

See more Samsung Electronics stories on Electronics Weekly »

david manners

Electronic DC load returns 94% of load test energy to the grid

imageIntepro Systems has brought out electronic DC loads with an integral, grid-synchronized inverter designed to return up to 94% of the load test energy back to the grid.

The rack-mounted unit has output ratings of 3.5 kW, 7 kW and 10.5 kW — scalable to 105 kW. It costs $8000 and is available on an 8-12 week lead-time.

The ELR9000 Series offers four common regulation modes: constant voltage, constant current, constant resistance and constant power. The FPGA-based operational controls include a function generator and a table-based regulation circuit for the simulation of non-linear internal resistances.

Intepro’s PowerStar 6 software package enables the creation of test routines using a drag-and-drop menu where coding can be performed without programming.

“Our ELR9000 Series of electronic DC loads offers all the necessary features of today’s electronic loads — plus the added benefit of energy recovery to mains,” says Intepro CTO Gerard Sheehan, ‘recovering the load energy reduces energy costs. It also offers a cost-effective alternative to the expensive cooling systems used by conventional air- and water-cooled loads to dissipate energy as heat.”

david manners

Maker move sees Windows 10 IoT Core run fast on Raspberry Pi

microsoftMicrosoft has jumped into the maker community with the public release of Windows 10 IoT Core which will run on the Raspberry Pi 2.

Microsoft has designed in support for Python and Node.js, including a new Express Node.js project template. It also claims that GPIO performance on the Raspberry Pi 2 has improved by x8 to x10.

Analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) and pulse-width modulation (PWM) are now supported via breakout boards and ICs.

Microsoft is aiming to tap into the maker community by supporting frameworks they prefer to build apps with. So there is support for the standard UWP languages like C++, C#, JS and VB, but it also means bringing support – including full tools, debugging, and project systems – for Node.js and Python.

There is also support for Arduino boards from Windows and so they can talk to Windows devices as if they were virtual shields.

This release of Windows 10 IoT Core requires a development machine running the 7/29/2015 release of Windows 10 (Build 10240) and Visual Studio 2015.

“The project templates for the standard UWP languages create projects that look like standard UWP projects, but for Node.js and Python we’ve worked hard to make these apps look and feel just like they do on other platforms,” said Microsoft.

A guide to Windows 10 on Raspberry Pi 2 on the element 14 website which includes community-created guides and design projects.

Richard Wilson