Consumer

April 2014
Isolation has been considered a necessary burden by designers.  It is necessary because it makes electronics safe for anyone to use.  It is a burden because it limits communication speed and consumes a lot of power and board space.  Old-technology optocouplers and even many, newer digital isolators co
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Date:
04/30/2014
In this episode of PSDtv STMicroelectronics demonstrates their latest wireless power transmission solution for battery charging for Power Systems Design. The Qi-standard system also enables data transmission through the power interface. STMicroelectronics
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Date:
04/30/2014
ARM announced an enhanced suite of higher performance and more energy-efficient products specifically designed for the rapidly growing mid-range mobile and consumer electronics markets. The suite, comprised of processor, graphics processor and physical IP, is an update to ARM’s mid-range IP offering targeting de
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Date:
04/30/2014
Investing in product areas where a company has distinct competitive technological advantages only makes sense in markets where there are also large, sustainable opportunities. Power management has evolved from simple regulation and power control to increasingly sophisticated power management devices providing mo
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Date:
04/30/2014
Miniaturization and a low profile are demanded of the semiconductors and electronic components used in portable devices such as smartphones and tablets. Accompanying the lower voltages and larger currents used in semiconductors in devices, DC/DC converters, which have a higher conversion efficiency than linear reg
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Date:
04/29/2014
High voltage normally-off GaN transistors are being introduced into the marketplace, and most of these devices will have low threshold voltages of below 2.5 Volts. This presents a severe challenge to conventional drivers, particularly when these very large GaN devices are used to provide 100 - 400A of switching cu
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Date:
04/29/2014
Econais claims smallest, smartest and most integrated Wi-Fi module

EC19W01 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi SiP module

Econais, a technology leader in smart ultra low power miniature Wi-Fi module solutions for the Internet of Things, announced the EC19W01, world’s smallest, smartest and most integrated 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi System In Package (SiP) module. The EC19W01 offers low power drain and features fully integrated MCU, Wi-Fi, clou
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Date:
04/28/2014
Power Integration's 8W reference design for appliance PSUs achieves zero standby power rating

Reference design for an 8 W, universal-input auxiliary power supply

Power Integrations, a leader in high-voltage integrated circuits for energy-efficient power conversion, released a reference design for an 8 W, universal-input auxiliary power supply that achieves zero standby power consumption** for appliance applications. Based on a member of Power Integrations’ LinkZero™-LP fa
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Date:
04/28/2014
Nanogenerator empowers acoustic energy harvesting

Triboelectrification-based thin-film nanogenerator

As a vastly available energy source in our daily life, acoustic vibrations are usually taken as noise pollution with little use as a power source. Now scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Chongqing University and Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems we have developed a triboelectrification-based th
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Date:
04/28/2014
Toshiba starts first mass production of 15nm NAND flash memories

15-nanometer (nm) process technology will apply to 2-bit-per-cell 128-gigabit NAND flash memories

Toshiba has acheived 15-nanometer (nm) process technology, which will apply to 2-bit-per-cell 128-gigabit (16 gigabytes) NAND flash memories. Mass production with the technology will start at the end of April at Fab 5 Yokkaichi Operations, Toshiba’s NAND flash fabrication facility (fab), replacing second generation 19
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Date:
04/23/2014
Very compact low-power GPS module has integrated patch antenna

Quectel L80 ultra-compact POT GPS module

MSC Technologies is presenting the L80 module from Quectel, an ultra-compact POT GPS module measuring just 16 mm x 16 mm x 6.45 mm including integrated patch antenna. Based on the MTK3339 platform from Mediatek it is supporting 66 acquisition and 22 tracking channels. The module is characterized not only by i
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Date:
04/23/2014
Indium Corporation to feature Heat-Spring thermal Interface material at PCIM 2014

Heat-Spring thermal interface material

Indium will feature its Heat-Spring® thermal interface material at PCIM 2014, May 20-22 in Nuremberg, Germany. Heat-Spring is a patented technology designed to deliver superior performance compared to thermal greases or other metal TIMs. Heat-Springs offer uniform thermal resistance at lower applied stresses in
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Date:
04/23/2014
Progea expands multitouch functionality in Movicon 11.4

Progea’s Movicon has been updated with version 11.4

Progea’s Movicon™ 11 – a solution allowing businesses to develop software applications for supervising, operator interfacing, data acquisition and monitoring – has been updated with version 11.4. This new edition is fully compatible with the previous solution and boasts optimized performance as well as
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Date:
04/22/2014
Novel Printoo platform empowers printed electronics development

Printoo is a platform created to make today’s printed electronics technologies and components easy to prototype with

Printoo is an Arduino™-compatible platform that brings previously unavailable printed, low power, and flexible electronics technologies directly to anyone interested in developing interactive objects and projects. The goal is to make printed electronics more accessible to a wider group of product designers an
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Date:
04/22/2014
“Solar Justice” movement lights lives for Earth Day

MPOWERD’s Solar Justice campaign highlights the environmental – and social – ramifications of energy poverty

MPOWERD announced the launch of a campaign aimed at raising awareness about energy poverty, delivering solar lights to communities living off-the-grid, and inspiring an international, grassroots Solar Justice movement as a call-to-action to provide clean energy to the 1.5 billion living without access to electricity. Coinciding with Eart
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Date:
04/21/2014
CamSemi launches ‘fast start’ controllers for 8W & 10W phone chargers

CamSemi’s C2173 and C2174 ‘fast start’ PSS controllers target low cost ‘universal’ USB smartphone chargers and other applications rated at 8W & 10W

CamSemi released two ‘fast start’ Primary Side Sensing (PSS) controllers to extend the target applications for the company’s latest generation C2170 family into higher powers. The C2173 and C2174 controllers target low-cost MoU-compliant, USB smartphone charger and other universal input applications typically ra
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Date:
04/18/2014
The U.S. Department of Energy will hold a public meeting to present and receive comments on overall program direction and in anticipation of its future residential code development activities. Date & Time: Thursday, April 24, 2014 (8:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.) Location: DoubleTree Hotel – Crystal City, 3
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Date:
04/15/2014
STMicro's STM32F4 microcontrollers launch new generation of devices

STMicroelectronics STM32F401 microcontroller

STMicroelectronics’ latest STM32F401 microcontrollers are the first in a new line of STM32 Dynamic Efficiency™ devices that combine multiple technologies to offer the best balance of dynamic power consumption and execution performance, while boosting feature integration. Combining high energy efficienc
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Date:
04/11/2014
In this episode of PSDtv Atmel explains how their latest WiFi-enabled touchscreen control solution for cloud-based devices in the Internet of Things for Power Systems Design. Atmel low-power Wi-Fi solutions cover a wide range of applications requiring support for legacy Wi-Fi, as well as Wi-Fi Direct. Wi-Fi
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Date:
04/10/2014
A battery tester the size of a credit card produced live at a trade show? The LOPEC Demo Line makes it possible. From May 27th to 28th, eleven companies and two research institutes will demonstrate all the steps that it takes to produce a fully functional printed battery tester. The LOPEC Demo Line will give
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Date:
04/10/2014
As the consumer, industrial and automotive infotainment markets evolve rapidly to meet the demands of increasingly discerning end-users, systems designers need processors with the performance to run rich user interfaces without sacrificing real-time responsiveness or power efficiency. To achieve this, systems de
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Date:
04/10/2014
Alpha and Omega Semiconductor expands its 600V AlphaMOS portfolio with rugged solutions for lighting

600V AlphaMOS MOSFET for lighting apps

Alpha and Omega Semiconductor, a designer, developer, and supplier of power semiconductors and power ICs announced the release of their AOD4C60, AOD3C60, and AOD2HC60, additions to the 600V AlphaMOS portfolio, which combines features such as robustness, controlled switching and low on-resistance for high-performing de
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Date:
04/10/2014
Wireless intellectual property (IP) company Sunrise Micro Devices (SMD), has partnered with Wicentric, a leader in Bluetooth software solutions, to develop powerful and efficient protocol stack software optimized for CORDIO™ BT4 radio core, SMD’s first radio core offering from the CORDIO family of sub-volt wi
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Date:
04/09/2014
Freescale Semiconductor announced it is launching the next generation of its flagship Kinetis K series microcontrollers (MCUs) with the expansion of its existing Kinetis K1x, K2x and K6x MCU families, and the introduction of the Kinetis K0x MCU family. In addition, Freescale has dramatically expanded its enablement so
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Date:
04/09/2014
Microchip introduces power monitoring IC offering signal acquisition and power calculation

MCP39F501 highly integrated, single-phase power-monitoring IC

Microchip Technology, a leading provider of microcontroller, mixed-signal, analog and Flash-IP solutions, announced a power monitoring IC, the MCP39F501. This device is a highly integrated, single-phase power-monitoring IC designed for real-time measurement of AC power. It includes two 24-bit delta-sigma ADCs, a
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Date:
04/09/2014
Nordic Semiconductor announces major release of its Bluetooth low energy protocol stack for nRF51 Series

The latest version of Nordic's nRF51 Series Bluetooth low energy stack includes over-the-air firmware upgrade capability

Ultra low power (ULP) RF specialist Nordic Semiconductor released S110 SoftDevice v7.0, the next major release of its Bluetooth® low energy stack, for the nRF51822 Bluetooth low energy and 2.4GHz proprietary System-on-Chip (SoC) and the nRF51422 ANT™ and ANT/Bluetooth low energy multiprotocol SoCs. (A SoftDevice is
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Date:
04/08/2014
Nujira, a leader in Envelope Tracking (ET) technology, will be speaking at the 2014 LTE Innovation Summit, a technical leadership event hosted by Rohde & Schwarz, April 9-10, San Diego, California. Highlighting the key role that ET will play in the future of 4G devices, Ben Bartram, Staff RF Systems Eng
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Date:
04/08/2014
Dialog Semiconductor, a provider of highly integrated power management, AC/DC, solid state lighting and Bluetooth® Smart wireless technology, announced the use of its SmartBond™ DA14580 System on Chip (SoC) in the Cateye Strada Smart Cyclocomputer. The DA14580 meets the demanding requirements fuelled by the gro
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Date:
04/08/2014
Intersil claims first falf- and full-bridge drivers that extend life of multi-cell Li-ion-powered products

The HIP2103_4MBEVAL1Z is an evaluation tool for the HIP2103 and HIP2104 half bridge MOSFET drivers.

Intersil, a leading provider of innovative power management and precision analog solutions, announced the industry’s first small form factor half-/full-bridge drivers that significantly extend power usage and overall product life of multi-cell lithium ion (Li) battery devices operating from 5V to 50V. The new
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Date:
04/07/2014
element14 has announced the launch of the Inductive Sensing Challenge, a global design competition which will encourage participating engineers to design and develop innovative products. The initiative will use the Texas Instruments LDC1000, the first inductance-to-digital converter. Inductive sensing is a cont
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Date:
04/07/2014
In this third article about power supply failures, the magnetics are examined for their contribution to the failure rate. These are usually the least understood of all components, and poor magnetics design can lead to many different failure mechanisms in power supplies. Power Supply Failure Survey The LinkedIn sit
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Date:
04/06/2014
The portable power application space is both broad and diverse. Products range from wireless sensor nodes (WSNs) that consume average power measured in microwatts to cart-based medical or data acquisition systems with multi-hundred Watt-hour battery packs. However, despite this variety, a few trends emerge – de
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Date:
04/05/2014
There have been numerous changes to the EU’s directives and regulations concerning the efficiency of electronic devices in recent years, particularly concerning standby power. The Eco Design directive, 2009/125/EC, is the all-embracing directive intended to improve the energy efficiency of all energy related prod
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Date:
04/04/2014
Sunrise Micro Devices, an expert in sub-volt wireless design, is now a wireless intellectual property (IP) company delivering complete radio solutions to help accelerate the deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Standards-based wireless technologies offer interoperability and enable low-power wireless se
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Date:
04/04/2014
The flyback is the simplest and most commonly used isolated power-converter topology, able to step voltage up or down while providing galvanic isolation from the ac mains in off-line applications.  It is the most cost-effective topology for powering many kinds of electronic equipment, having acceptable ef
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Date:
04/04/2014
Linear's 80V synchronous SEPIC/inverting/boost DC/DC controller delivers up to 10A

LT8710 synchronous SEPIC, inverting, boost and flyback multi-topology DC/DC controller

Linear Technology announced the LT8710, their first synchronous SEPIC, inverting, boost and flyback multi-topology DC/DC controller. This synchronous device replaces the output diode with a high efficiency P-channel MOSFET, increasing efficiency, maximum output current (up to 10A) and eliminating the heat sink typ
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Date:
04/03/2014
A novel IGBT structure was developed with reverse-blocking capabilities comparable to the forward voltage rating of the IGBT. This new device, known as the RB-IGBT, was used to create a 3 level advanced neutral point clamping power converter that shows better loss characteristics than standard 3 level converters. The results o
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Date:
04/03/2014
In this episode of PSDtv Freescale explains their smart-home solution demonstration to Power Systems Design at embedded world 2014. Freescale Semiconductor and Oracle created a secured service platform to help standardize and consolidate the delivery and management of IoT services for the home automation
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Date:
04/03/2014
Typical switched-mode power converters today include circuitry for monitoring the current flowing through a switching power MOSFET or IGBT for regulating or limiting peak current levels. This is necessary to protect the switch against high peak currents that can damage components or saturate inductors. A low-ohmic re
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Date:
04/01/2014
DSP Group, a leading global provider of wireless chipset solutions for converged communications, and Crow Electronic Engineering, a leading provider of advanced security and control solutions for the worldwide integrated security market, announced that Crow has started manufacturing of a full range of ULE-ena
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Date:
04/01/2014
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