Consumer

January 2020
Modular Switches Allow for Homes Pre-Wired for Upgrades
Deako has expanded its suite of modular and scalable home lighting products and solutions, announcing the launch of the Deako Simple Rocker Switch, Simple Dimmer, Simple Motion Sensor, Smart Switch and Smart Dimmer. The new products paired with their existing backplate can be quickly installed into a standard ju
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Date:
01/27/2020
Ride Through the MLCC Shortage

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Figure 1. Increases in worldwide MLCC use in electric automobiles (a) and cell phones (b), without commensurate increases in production, have led to shortages.

The worldwide supply of multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) is not keeping up with demand. This is due in no small part to increased electronic complexity of cell phones, increased sales of electric cars, and a worldwide expansion of electronic content across industries. Some smartphones have doubled MLCC us
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Date:
01/26/2020
The Government's Role in Developing Automated Vehicles
If any market sector is the perfect microcosm of the American political dichotomy, it’s the automotive space. More specifically, autonomous vehicles.  And at CES 2020, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao dropped the Grand Canyon of political fissures. In Sin City’s not-so-hallowed halls, Chao’s de
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Date:
01/26/2020
The Versatile Inductor
Traditionally, off-the-shelf power inductors have offered the capability to perform a variety of functions and serve many different applications. The same inductor might have served one circuit as a ripple-smoothing element in an LC output filter and as an EMI suppression choke in another. By contrast, a device
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Date:
01/23/2020
PCIe 3.0/SATA3 Combo ReDriver Offers Linear Equalization
Diodes Incorporated announced PI3EQX12904A PCIe 3.0/SATA3 combo ReDriver with linear equalization that supports speeds up to 8Gbps. The PI3EQX12904A provides laptop, notebook, industrial PC, and embedded system developers with a robust, multiprotocol linear ReDriver that offers a flexible interface while also mee
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Date:
01/23/2020
All-Metal Current-Sense Chip Resistors
Many of today's consumer electronic devices operate at lower currents than previous generations of these products. This allows the use of slightly higher resistance values for current sensing and allows for the use of very small current sensing resistors. For applications that require current sense resisto
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Date:
01/21/2020
Growing Developments in LED Horticultural Lighting

Figure 1: Average plant response to PAR

The horticultural lighting industry is in the middle of a disruptive change – growers are now getting to grips with the LED ‘solid-state’ artificial light alternative, traditionally provided by high-pressure sodium lamps (HPS). HPS lamps are relatively efficient at 100-150 lumens per watt, actually similar to
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Date:
01/20/2020
AI in the Data Center

Figure 1. Powering Artificial Intelligence

In a recent New York Times article, Mark Hung, a VP at Gartner, said that “almost everything Google is announcing these days is AI-related.” He said, “Google has a lead on artificial intelligence over many of its competitors, and it’s going to use that as a weapon to advance their products.” Although
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Date:
01/20/2020
3W ACDC Converter with Transient Output Power Up to 12W
In some applications where high transient communication or drive power is required, such as electrical control systems, automatic meter reading, anti-theft alarms, and access electric lock applications, large amounts of power are outputted in a short time at transmitting and receiving data or driving relays. Therefore,
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Date:
01/17/2020
Industry's Smallest Ultra-thin Bus Switches Save Board Space
Diodes Incorporated announced that its family of quad- and dual-channel 4:1 and 2:1 bus switches are now available in an ultra-thin QFN (UQFN) package. The UQFN package makes it easier for OEMs to increase PCB density and reduce product dimensions when developing PC notebooks and tablets as well as networking an
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Date:
01/17/2020
33W and 65W Integrated Active Clamp Flyback Controllers
Silanna Semiconductor announced that its SZ1101 and SZ1105 fully integrated active clamp flyback (ACF) controllers for designing high-power-density AC/DC power adapters are now fully qualified and in production. The SZ1101 33W version is suited for designing mobile phone travel adapters, while the SZ1105 65W versi
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Date:
01/15/2020
Proximity Sensors w/ Power Consumption Down to 6 Microamps
The Optoelectronics Group of Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. introduced two new fully integrated proximity sensors designed to increase efficiency and performance in consumer and industrial applications. Featuring an IR emitter and a vertical cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL), respectively, the Vishay Semiconductors VC
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Date:
01/15/2020
Optimizing Precision Cell Measurement Accuracy in Automotive Battery Management Systems

Figure 1. Simplified block diagram of the ISL78714 multi-cell Li-ion battery manager

BMS designers have learned how to optimize BMS measurements and achieve high performance in an electrically and environmentally hostile automotive setting. The designers focus is still on cell measurement requiring millivolt and milliamp accuracy, and time-synchronizing these voltage and current measurements to
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Date:
01/11/2020
Industry's Widest Dynamic Range PDM Microphone
TDK Corporation announces the T5818 Pulse Density Modulation (PDM) microphone with a dynamic range of 107dB at 590µA, the widest dynamic range in the industry at the lowest power. This allows for excellent acoustic performance in environments that shift from very quiet to very loud, such as far field voice picku
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Date:
01/09/2020
Shrink Power Footprint by up to 80% in True Wireless Earbuds
Designers of ultra-low-power portables and wearables can shrink the size of a power and communication interface to the charging dock by up to 80 percent with the MAX20340, the industry’s smallest 2-pin bi-directional DC powerline communications (PLC) device from Maxim Integrated Products, Inc. With power and co
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Date:
01/09/2020
TAIYO YUDEN’s All-Solid-State Lithium-Ion Secondary Batteries
TAIYO YUDEN announced today the development of all-solid state lithium-ion secondary batteries (hereinafter referred to as “all-solid-state batteries”) in which various technologies including the process technology of multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) are capitalized. All-solid-state batteries are s
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Date:
01/08/2020
MEMS-Based

The CH-101

TDK Corporation announces the immediate availability to select OEMs of the Chirp CH-201 MEMS-based ultrasonic Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensor with extended sensing range. This ToF sensor utilizes a tiny ultrasonic transducer chip that sends a pulse of ultrasound and then listens for echoes returning from targets in the
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Date:
01/07/2020
Power Management IC Adopted in Google Coral AI Products
Renesas Electronics Corporation announced its ISL91301B Power Management IC (PMIC) is designed into the latest Google Coral products. They include the Mini PCIe Accelerator, M.2 Accelerator A+E Key, M.2 Accelerator B+M Key, and System-on-Module (SoM). Google Coral integrates seamlessly into processes at any sc
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Date:
01/07/2020
Mophie Debuts Powerstation Go Universal Battery at CES 2020
Mophie unveiled the powerstation go universal battery at CES 2020. The portable jump starter for any SUV or full-sized car additionally features two USB-A ports, an AC power outlet, and Qi wireless charging for mobile devices and laptops. Lightweight and portable, the powerstation go easily fits inside a bag or
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Date:
01/06/2020
Applications Processor with Dedicated Neural Processing Unit
NXP Semiconductors N.V. expanded its industry-leading EdgeVerse portfolio with the i.MX 8M Plus application processor – the first i.MX family to integrate a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for advanced machine learning inference at the industrial and IoT (Internet-of-Things) edge.  The i.MX 8M P
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Date:
01/06/2020
Stadium and Sports Lights Produce up to 179 Lumens per watt
Access Fixtures has announced  a new LED sports light - the versatile and powerful STAD. STAD is an LED sports lighter with a twist. While STAD is a superior choice for new sports lighting projects, STAD is designed to be a perfect one-for-one replacement of outdated metal halide and PSMH sports lighte
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Date:
01/02/2020
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