Automotive chips lead semi growth, says IC Insights

AEC - automotive electronics councilAuto is the fastest growing IC market, reports IC Insights, with a CAGR of 10.8% between 2013 and 2018.

The CAGR for the total IC market will be 5.5% over that  period.

Second fastest is comms with 6.8% growth.

“The strong CAGR for automotive ICs is partly due to the fact that this market is growing from a smaller base compared to the communications, computer, and consumer segments and partly because a steady and significant increase in IC content is expected onboard all new cars—luxury level to base models—throughout the forecast period,” says IC Insights.

“Vehicle-to-vehicle communications, mandatory backup cameras, and various driver assist systems will keep the automotive IC market dynamic through 2018,” it says.

CAGR 2013-8

  • Auto 10.8,
  • Comms 6.8,
  • Ind/Med 5.7
  • All ICs 5.5
  • Mil/Gov 4.1
  • Consumer 4.1
  • Computer 3.3

IC Insights - automotiveThe total automotive IC market is expected to grow 15% to $21.7 billion in 2014, compared to a 1% increase registered in 2013.

Asia-Pacific is forecast to surpass Europe as the largest market for automotive ICs beginning in 2016 and is forecast to be the strongest region for automotive IC market growth through 2018 (20.0% CAGR).

Analogue ICs and MCUs remain the two largest IC product categories within the automotive IC market.

The automotive memory IC market is forecast to more than double from an estimated $2 billion in 2014 to $4.2 billion in 2018.

david manners

Magnetic angle sensors for cars have on-chip processing

Allegro Hall Effect Aimed at 360° angle sensing, two Hall-effect chips have been introduced for steering and other automotive applications.

Made by Allegro, both have considerable on-chip processing.

A1332 has an on-board 32-bit processor and EEPROM for factory and customer programmability. It includes segmented and Fourier linearisation for off-axis/side-shaft and on-axis/end-of-shaft magnetic sensing configurations found in electronic power steering and transmissions.

32µs output refresh is available over a 2-wire I²C bus. Diagnostics are available for ASIL automotive safety requirements.

“The A1332 linearisation schemes were designed with challenging off-axis applications in mind,” said Allegro.

Allegro A1332A1334, has on-board DSP and EEPROM and is designed specifically for on-axis/end-of-shaft applications that require higher output refresh rates (25µs period). The bus is a four-wire 10MHz SPI with 60µs nominal signal-path latency. It can work straight off a vehicle battery and supports 4.5-14.5V operation. Consumption is 10mA and once again signal-path and I/O diagnostics are available for ASIL safety requirements.

Automotive applications also include sensing motor position, throttle/pedal position, and other parameters that require the accurate measurement of angles.

Both devices have a low-RPM mode to support up to 12bits of output resolution in lower angular velocity applications.

Various air gaps can be tolerated, as can fields from 300 to 1,000Gs.

A1332 and A1334 operate over -40 to 85°C and -40° to 150°C respectively.

Packaging is 1mm thick 14pin TSSOP for single die. For ISO26262 ASIL D safety critical systems A1334 will also be supplied in a dual die TSSOP-24.

steve bush

UK-made Plessey LEDs hit 120 lm/W

Plessey die artist impressionPlessey has achieved 120 lm/W efficacy and 50% efficiency (power in/out) from its GaN-on-Silicon technology.

“Having developed and put into production the first of our LEDs in 2013, the next step was to demonstrate that the GaN on silicon technology could deliver output performance levels comparable with other LED technologies,” said Plessey CTO Dr Keith Strickland. “Whilst 120 lm/W for an LED may be considered ‘acceptable’ to industry, we must remember that we have doubled our LED light output in the past six months. I see no reason why we cannot reach state of the art in LED die output performance within the next six months.”

“A sustained period of light output performance improvement in the core LED material is due to our holistic approach to LED development; our in-house experts in epitaxy growth, process development and die design all working together,” said operations director Mike Snaith. “Achieving greater than 50% light output efficiency is a superb achievement for the team here in Plymouth.”

The firm’s first 5630 PLCC2 package engineering samples are now shipping, with other package variants available on demand. Blue die with a wavelength of 455nm are also being shipped.

Plessey’s lighting product range will be on show at LuxLive (ExCel London, 19-20 November).

steve bush

Data-driven discovery investigators set up by Moore Foundation

Gordan Betty MooreThe Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has set up a $60mn programme for data-driven discovery research which seeks to find ways to make sense of the vast amounts of data which are being routinely collected.

The foundation seeks ways to “create positive change for future generations”. It has an endowment of $5.8bn.

The five year data-iriven discovery initiative has given awards to fourteen investigators in fields ranging from astronomy to statistics, computer science and biology.

The investigators typically receive an unrestricted grant worth $1.5m over five years.

A recent award went to Kimberley Reynolds of the University of Texas, who works on on evolutionary ‘design principles’ for use in cellular systems, using statistical analyses of protein sequences and genomic data. Reynolds aims to create a new method of understanding genomic information, which may provide new insights into the function of biological systems.

david manners

National Gallery gets LEDs

National Gallery ledsLast month it was the Sistine Chapel, and now the UK’s National Gallery has LED lighting.

“A combination of efficient LEDs and a digital control system has achieved 85% energy savings on lighting. The system’s ability to respond to the changing environment allows the Gallery to make use of available daylight and adjust lighting levels around visiting hours,” said Open Technology, which makes the LiGO control system used to dim the LEDs.

Throughout the day, LEDs and external roof blinds automatically adjust according to the amount and angle of sunlight.

Estimated annual energy saving is 765,000kWh, or £53,600 – the Gallery is attempting to reducing carbon emissions by 43% by 2015. Reduced maintenance is said to save a further £36,000.

LEDs are efficient, and don’t produce UV which can fade paintings, but their bumpy spectrum means lighting art with LEDs is not straightforward.

steve bush

Tabor intros a 1GHz generator on PXIe

Tabor-pxieTabor Electronics has introduced a 1GHz IQ arbitary waveform generator (AWG) in a dual slot PXI Express (PXIe) module.

Jonathan Netzer, Tabor Electronics product marketing manager claims it is “the fastest PXIe based IQ AWG”.

Equipped with 2.3GS/s, 14 bit clock (typically 2.5GS/s) and 1GHz output stage, the 52592 is designed for high bandwidth IQ applications.

For applications needing only one IF signal, the new design also can be order in a single channel version, under the model number 52591.

The generator has 32M of arbitrary memory, a choice of sampling modes including NRZ and RZ and 5ps skew control between channels.
 

richard wilson

Cray looks at ARM64 for supercomputing

Cortex-A57-chip-diagram-LGCray is evaluating 64bit ARM processors alongside Intel products for its supercomputers, partly under a US Government program called FastForward 2 which asks the firm to explore 64bit ARMs for high performance computing (HPC).

Cray is also working with 64bit ARM chip company Cavium to build processing clusters based on Cavium’s 48 ARM core ThunderX processors to test ARM architectures for supercomputing.

“Our adaptive supercomputing vision centres on system designs that integrate diverse processing technologies into a unified architecture,” said Cray CTO Steve Scott. “We see alternatives such as 64bit ARM, custom ASICs and low-power Intel processors as enabling technologies for certain HPC and analytics workloads.

Cavium has been demonstrating ThunderX silicon at SC14 in New Orleans this week, including it running Red Hat Linux and Canonical Ubuntu Server Distribution operating systems, and Java 8 and Apache Web Server applications.

 

steve bush

Drone legislation needed, Met tells House of Lords

3d robotics droneDrones need legislation, the House of Lords Internal Market, Infrastructure and Employment Committee was told by chief inspector Nick Aldworth of the Metropolitan Police yesterday.

“We are seeing this technology being used for criminal conduct,” Aldworth told the Lords. “We have positively seen it flown in controlled airspace, we have positively seen it used to harass people, and we have seen it flown in transgression of air navigation orders, so I think that concern arises by the fact that there is clearly a means of offending that we do not seem to be necessarily able to address quickly.”

Baroness O’Cathain, chair of the House of Lords committee, said there were concerns about invasion of privacy but Aldworth pointed out that, in the absence of a criminal offence of invasion of privacy, invasion of privacy was not a police matter.

Aldworth said there were cases of drones snooping on bedroom windows and that Angela Merkel had been harassed by a drone. He said that the usual way that drone harassment came to light was that video was posted on the internet of what the drone had seen.

Aldworth is working with a unit set up to look into issues surrounding drones.

david manners

Cavendish Kinetics raises $7m

Cavendish antenna tuning - Devices with MIPI RFFE Interface

Cavendish antenna tuning – Devices with MIPI RFFE Interface

Thirteen years after it raised its first funding, Cavendish Kinetics, the RF MEMS antenna tuner specialist, has raised $7m.

The company’s first funding round was in 2001 when it raised $6.5m. In 2006, it raised $15.5m.

The company has changed its product plans along the way. Originally it set out to make a MEMS-based memory. Now it is making RF MEMS antenna tuners and it recently announced its first success with a design-in at ZTE.

Qualcomm Ventures participated in the new funding round, along with Tallwood Venture Capital, Wellington Partners and other existing investors.

The company describes its product as ‘a precise, reliable, lossless, small, variable capacitor for antenna tuning’.

The company’s thesis is that, by the time a signal gets to the chip-set for processing, it has been degraded by the antenna, the switch and the filter to 25% of its original strength, and 60% of that  degradation is caused by the antenna.

Antenna size and LTE spectrum are critical elements to this. A small antenna means a drop in efficiency and, with LTE deployed in 40 different bands, the antenna has to cover a wider bandwidth.

Antennas have the best performance at the frequency for which they were designed. So you need to change the characteristics of the antenna to match the change in frequency.

The tuning is done with a MEMS capacitor: 32 capacitor stages pick the best settings to maximise antenna performance with ‘near zero’ loss.

Cavendish claims its technology doubles data rates and delivers up to 40% longer battery life with fewer dropped calls while avoiding the need to increase the size of the antenna.

david manners

X-Fab and Korea’s Silicon Works combine on auto

xfabX-FAB and Silicon Works of Korea have produced their first automotive device – a signal processing IC – under a co-development programme aimed at import substitution for Korea car makers.

The chip is being made at X-FAB’s 200mm facility in Kuching, Malaysia.

This product for non-magnetic position or displacement sensors, suitable for automotive and industrial applications, is fully qualified according to AECQ100 standards.

X-FAB derives over half its revenues from automotive devices.

Further devices are already in the prototyping phase, deepening the relationship of both companies and laying the foundation for market success.

“The combination of Silicon Works’ design excellence and our manufacturing excellence produced tangible results within a remarkably short timeframe,” says X-Fab CEO, Rudi de Winter.

david manners