Company

How Lattice’s MachXO2 Dramatically Cut LED Lighting Control Costs

五月 14, 2012
By

Affordable Innovation Series:

How Lattice’s MachXO2 Dramatically Cut LED Lighting Control Costs

One of the many compelling uses of the Lattice MachXO2 has been in control-oriented applications as a microcontroller (MCU) peripheral.

As an example, a Lattice industrial lighting customer uses the MachXO2 as the control interface to a large number of LED modules, dramatically reducing overall system cost.

  • Affordable Innovation Series Download
  • The MachXO2 integrates the large number of IO-ports required by the design, reducing the cost per port dramatically over a MCU-only solution where additional expensive MCU IOs would be required.
  • The MachXO2 on-chip SPI bus and User Flash memory provides another level of integration that requires no programmable fabric- thus keeping the MachXO2 cost at a minimum.
  • The overall reduction in board space, lower MCU cost, power savings and User Data Flash integration is leveraged over many lighting modules in a typical installation and thus dramatically reduced overall system cost.

Download the "MachXO2 LED Lighting Case Study" to learn about the details of this innovative design approach.

———————————————————————————————————————-

Freescale Design News

五月 11, 2012
By
May 9, 2012
Tower Trivia: Which module has a magnetic personality?

Which Tower System module has a magnetic personality, operates with 3 phases, and can torque with the best of them? Despite its global use, this module wasn’t built in Washington "D.C." or in the "polar" regions. Torqued yet? Answer this week’s question for a shot at winning a Tower System module. More »

eDevice HealthGO platform gets integrated connectivity

Freescale’s Steven Dean recently joined eDevice at the 17th Annual American Telemedicine Association (ATA) exposition where eDevice’s HealthGO product was announced. Developed using Freescale’s Home Health Hub (HHH) reference platform, the HealthGO supports remote patient monitoring. Read more about this fully customizable data aggregation platform that features universal connectivity options such as Bluetooth, USB, cellular, Ethernet and PSTN. More »

Market Solutions

QorIQ P5 family goes quad-core

The QorIQ P5 family of control plane processors has expanded to include the quad-core P5040 and the dual-core P5021. Now supporting frequencies up to 2.4 GHz, this pin-compatible, scalable family targets compute-intensive and power-conscious control plane applications across enterprise networking, datacenter and aerospace and defense markets. More »

New baseband-to-antenna reference design for small cell base stations

The comprehensive baseband-to-antenna reference design combines the VortiQa Qonverge BSC9131 base station SoC with Freescale RF radio boards, and is a multi-protocol solution that scales across a range of cellular bands to ease the development transition from 3G to 4G LTE. The radio card contains the MMZ25332B and MMZ09312B GaAs MMIC power amplifiers and MML09211H/20211H low noise amplifiers. More »

VortiQa software: Improve data center performance and reliability

Tuned for Freescale’s high-performance PXS20, PXS30, PXD10, PXD20, PXN20 and PXR40 platforms, VortiQa intelligent traffic classification and load balancing (ITCL) software intelligently classifies and load balances application traffic to enhance performance and reliability of data center networks, while optimizing resource utilization and extending infrastructure investment. More »

32-bit PX series MCU parts now available

The PX Series provides unmatched performance, comprehensive enablement and ruggedized safety features for the most complex industrial control applications. The series of 32-bit microcontrollers built on Power Architecture® technology includes the PXS20, PXS30, PXD10, PXD20, PXN20 and PXR40 families. More »

———————————————————————————————————

Lattice Website NEWS Subscription (May 08, 2012)

五月 11, 2012
By

Lattice Semiconductor Corporation

Lattice Website NEWS Subscription (May 08, 2012)

Products > Development Kits and Hardware

EB63 MT9M024 NanoVesta Head Board User’s Guide (version 01.1)

Updated: 05/08/12 – MT9M024 NanoVesta Head Board User’s Guide has been updated to support revision 2 of the MT9M024 NanoVesta Head Board.

—————————————————————————

TSMC pushes 28-nm Cortex-A9 to 3.1-GHz

五月 8, 2012
By

TSMC pushes 28-nm Cortex-A9 to 3.1-GHz

Peter Clarke   5/3/2012 5:39 AM EDT

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4372207/TSMC-pushes-Cortex-A9

LONDON – Foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. has announced it has made a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor test chip in its 28-nm high-performance mobile CMOS process that it has run at a 3.1-GHz clock frequency under typical operating conditions.
TSMC (Hsinchu, Taiwan) said that this achievement demonstrates that the 28-nm HPM process is ready for use in a broad range of mobile, consumer and enterprise applications.
For mobile application signoff conditions the 28HPM process delivers clock frequencies in the range 1.5-GHz to 2.0-GHz, TSMC said.

But for high performance requirements it can be run up to 3.1-GHz the company said.

This could either for very short term use or where power consumption is less critical because a system is connected to a main supply of electricity.

The 28HPM implementation runs twice as fast as the 40-nm counterpart made by TSMC under the same operating conditions, according to Cliff Hou, vice president of R&D at TSMC.

Related links and articles:


ARM tips availability of ‘Seahawk’ A15 hard macro
ARM launches processor pack for big-little on TSMC 28-nm
Amlogic offers dual-core Cortex-A9 for consumer SoCs

———————————————————————————————

Microchip to buy SMSC, plotting new expansion

五月 8, 2012
By

Microchip to buy SMSC, plotting new expansion

Junko Yoshida

5/2/2012 1:38 PM EDT

Micochip’s SMSC acquisition deal puts Microchip – long known as a “long-tail” company with 70,000 customers – on a new trajectory. NEW YORK – Microchip Technology has announced its signing of a definitive agreement to acquire Standard Microsystems Corporation (SMSC), a company focused on mixed-signal connectivity solutions, for $37.00 per share in cash, which represents a total equity value of about $939 million. SMSC’s balance sheet consists of cash and investments worth about $173 million, making a total enterprise value of some $766 million, according to Microchip.

The deal puts Microchip – long known as a “long-tail” company with 70,000 customers – on a new trajectory.
With the SMSC acquisition, Microchip will likely be more exposed to the fast-changing, low-margin consumer market it has long avoided. (SMSC has a sizable business in input/output connectivity technologies in computing and consumer products.)

On the other hand, the acquisition will surely help Microchip expand into the automotive “infotainment” market — a key to the company’s growth strategy. Microchip will ride on coattails of MOST (Media Oriented Systems Transport) bus, a high-speed multimedia network technology designed for the automotive industry, of which SMSC is a founding member and market leader, with close connections with automotive OEMs.
In a conference call Wednesday, Steve Sanghi, Microchip’s President and CEO, said of the acquisition, “We have very little product overlap, while we share many common customers.” That gives both companies “cross-selling” opportunities, he said.
Microchip is also attracted to SMSC’s rich IP portfolio and building blocks. Sanghi said that SMSC adds a strong patent portfolio to Microchip’s. Microchip takes over some 300 SMSC patents, in addition to 100 patents pending.

Among various SMSC product lines, Microchip identified two – automotive and wireless audio – as fast-growing segments.
In automotive alone, SMSC has leading positions in four key technologies: MOST bus for high-bandwidth infortainment backbone; Ethernet for diagnostic and software download; USB as consumer port (for mobile device connection); and Kleer, a proprietary standard, that provides low power, uncompressed, high-quality wireless audio and control.
Speaking of MOST, in which SMSC has strong working relationship with leading automotive OEMs, and has supplied USB, Ethernet and other wireless technologies, Sanghi said, “MOST is a dominant standard and I know SMSC has a leading position. We also know that the company has a number of design-wins in the pipeline.”
Sanghi expressed his hope that the deal will open doors for Microchip, allowing it to pitch its own microcontrollers and analog components for next-generation automotive infotainment systems.  “Automotive OEMs are making architectural choices right now,” said Sanghi.
Asked by financial analysts what divisions or product lines of SMSC Microchip might think about pruning, Sanghi declined to comment. Noting SMSC’s annual sales of $412 million (in the fiscal year ending Feb., 29, 2012) and its 54.4 percent non-GAAP gross margin, Sanghi said, “Not a tremendous number of surgeries are needed here.”
In merging the two companies, Sanghi said, the first step is to take SMSC to a horizontal market loaded with 70,000 customers – a strategy familiar to Microchip . Looking back on the time Microchip got into the touch controller business, Sanghi remembered skeptics who said the technology was exclusive to the cell phone market. “But we found a plenty of design wins in industrial and automotive markets for touch.” Sanghi is convinced that Microchip can perform similar magic on some of SMSC’s technologies.
Asked if Microchip might plan to drive its embedded memory into SMSC’s chips used in computers, Sanghi made it clear, “We have no intention to grow our memory business at the expense of margin disciplines.” He added that the company’s mindset for memory strategy is in going for profitability, not for market share.”
All of which comes down to the old refrain: How these two strangers are going to get along together is still, mostly, mystery.

———————————————————————————————-

Vybrid Controller Solutions

四月 27, 2012
By

Vybrid Controller Solutions

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/homepage.jsp?code=VYBRID

Freescale’s Vybrid platform brings to market a family of devices that at the entry level provides, low-power, single-chip solution for application processing, and at the high-end provides customers a way to combine rich applications requiring high-resolution graphical displays and connectivity with real-time determinism.

The Vybrid platform enables customers to create systems that can either run a high level OS like Linux® or MQX™ stand-alone or concurrently on the same device.

This, along with a communication API between the rich domain and the real-time domain and a tool chain that eases debug of such systems, dramatically shortens customer time to revenue.
The devices in the Vybrid family span the entry-level product for customers who want to upgrade from the Kinetis MCU to an MPU with large on-chip SRAM to a highly integrated, heterogeneous dual-core MPU ideal for industrial markets.

Each device in the Vybrid family offers a rich suite of reference designs, app notes, Board Support Packages (BSP) and middleware.

Vybrid Controller Solutions

  • VF3xx: Vybrid VF3xx Single-chip Solution with Dual XiP Quad SPI, Dual Ethernet and L2 Switch 
  • VF4xx: Vybrid VF4xx Single-core Solution with Dual USB and Integrated PHY 
  • VF5xx: Vybrid VF5xx Single-core Solution with Dual Ethernet and L2 Switch 
  • VF6xx: Vybrid VF6xx Dual Heterogeneous Core Solution with XGA Display, Dual USB, Dual Ethernet and L2 Switch 
  • VF7xx: Vybrid VF7xx Dual Heterogeneous Core Solution with Dual XGA Display and GPU

—————————————————————————————-

New controller chips from Freescale for real time control

四月 13, 2012
By

Date:27th Mar 2012

New controller chips from Freescale for real time control

http://www.eeherald.com/section/new-products/nps201203272.html

Freescale Semiconductor has announced its new portfolio of Vybrid controller solutions for applications including building/home automation and control; industrial automation; point-of-sale systems; medical devices, such as patient monitors; smart energy equipment, including energy meters and data concentrators; and appliances. They are also said to be well-suited for many low-power and timing-critical wired and wireless network communication protocols, such as IEEE 1588, Smart Energy 2.0, low-power WiFi, Bluetooth Low Energy and power line communication, and other proprietary interfaces.

"We’ve built our new Vybrid controller solutions to address the enormous challenge of adding advanced user interfaces to applications that traditionally have been focused on real-time control," said Reza Kazerounian, senior vice president and general manager of Freescale’s Automotive, Industrial & Multi-Market Solutions Group. "With the Vybrid platform, Freescale is going beyond silicon to provide a full software-hardware solution, making it easier and faster for our customers to develop systems that need rich apps in real time."

"Asymmetrical multicore systems are well suited to embedded applications that need real-time control and intuitive user interfaces," said Tom R. Halfhill, a senior analyst at The Linley Group and senior editor of Microprocessor Report. "Some example applications are factory automation, medical devices and home appliances. Freescale’s Vybrid controller solutions are a new twist on ARM’s Big.Little strategy. They integrate a Cortex-A5 applications core with a Cortex-M4 microcontroller core and add features for real-time control, communications and user interfaces. A virtual hardware model speeds up software development, which is increasingly the most time-consuming part of a design project. Vybrid devices can reduce the product’s bill of materials and design cycle."

VF series features includes:

· Up to 1.5 MB on-chip SRAM with error correction code (ECC)

· DDR3/LPDDR2 controller with ECC

· Dual quad-SPI with double-data-rate capability and execute-in-place (XIP)

· NAND flash controller with ECC

· Dual Ethernet controllers with level 2 (L2) switch

· Dual USB 2.0 OTG with integrated high-speed PHY

· Dual display controllers with video/camera interface

· Real-time I/O subsystem, including pulse-width modulation (PWM), dual analog-to-digital converters (ADC) and dual digital-to-analog converters (DACs)

· OpenVG graphics processing unit (GPU)

· Multiple audio interfaces

· Secure boot with cryptography algorithm acceleration and tamper detection

"Freescale’s Vybrid controller solutions are well-suited to address the challenge of software diversity and complexity in embedded applications," said David Kleidermacher, chief technology officer for Green Hills Software. "The combination of Green Hills’ scalable INTEGRITY RTOS family, Multivisor secure virtualization, TimeMachine trace debugging and optimizing compilers makes it easier for embedded developers to manage this complexity while building ever more capable electronic products."

Availability:

Alpha samples of the first devices in the Vybrid VF series are planned for Q2 2012.

Broad availability of samples and tools is planned for Q3 from Freescale and its distribution partners.

———————————————————————————————————–

Solid-state drives jump on PCI Express

四月 12, 2012
By

Solid-state drives jump on PCI Express

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4370635/Solid-state-drives-jump-on-PCI-Express

Rick Merritt 4/9/2012 12:22 PM EDT

A coming wave of solid-state drives for the PCI Express bus will continue the SATA vs. SCSI protocol split and accelerate the shift to competition based on software. SAN JOSE, Calif.

– A wide group of vendors is poised to roll solid-state drives for the PCI Express bus, promising improved performance over current flash drives that mainly use serial ATA and Serial-Attached SCSI interfaces.

The wave of new products will continue the current split between SATA- and SCSI-based protocols, and accelerate the shift to competition based on new software features.
As many as 80 companies including Dell, Intel, Micron, Oracle and Stec are part of the trade group that defined the NVMe interface last year.

The first drives using the interface are expected to ship later this year.
Separately, the SCSI Trade Association (STA) recently announced it will adopt the SCSI over PCI Express standard being completed by the ANSI T10 committee. STA will hold a technology showcase in Silicon Valley on May 9 where members may demo some of the first SCSI Express flash drives.
The competing NVMe and SCSI Express drives are expected to continue the same split between SATA and SCSI command sets that exists in today’s SATA and SAS flash and hard-disk drives.
The NVMe and SCSI Express drives represent a challenge to Fusion-IO, a startup that soared to success based on pioneering the move to plugging solid-state drives into the fast PCIe bus, closely linked to system CPUs. Most first-generation solid-state drives used the slower SATA and SAS hard drive interfaces that reside lower in the hierarchy of interconnects on a server.
The performance benefits of PCIe helped Fusion IO tap into sales that soared to $84 million in its most recent quarter. The strong sales supported two successful public offerings in the past two years, raising more than $300 million.
With the advent of many more PCIe flash drives this year, Fusion faces a two-fold challenge. A wider supply of standard drives could help speed price decreases in the sector. In addition, the presence of more solid-state drives will likely narrow Fusion’s performance benefits based on its proprietary approach.
Fusion pioneered a method of giving host CPUs fast access memory stored on flash drives.

The company has a proprietary approach for sharing with the host processors a map that describes where all the data on a flash drive physically resides, enabling write access at latencies of as little as 15 microseconds. Most drives maintain less comprehensive logical-to-physical translation maps on the drive controllers and thus have higher latencies.
The new NVMe and SCSI Express specs will enable vendors to leverage common software stacks for PCIe drives, lowering their costs and time-to-market.
“Today most PCIe flash drives include a proprietary driver and no industry software standard,” said Amber Huffman, a spokeswoman for the NVMe group and a senior principal storage engineer at Intel. 

With NVMe’s consistent feature set, “we expect to see faster time-to-market and broader adoption,” she said.
For its part, Fusion will back the SCSI Express approach because it is based on the work of a recognized standards group, the ANSI T10 committee. Access to the NVMe spec requires signing a legal document managed by Intel Corp., the group’s leader, said Gary Orenstein, vice president of products at Fusion IO.
“Is too early to tell what the shift to NVMe and SCSI Express will mean,” said Orenstein. “Some people think there could be a merging of the two efforts eventually,” he added.
To date, nearly three-quarters of Fusion’s sales have gone to three large customers, likely the top server makers—Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM. Dell has already signaled its support for NVMe in its latest servers, casting a shadow over at least one of Fusion’s big customers.

Shift to software
Value-added software is increasingly the secret sauce for maintaining flash drive prices.

For its part, Fusion says software is now the key focus of its R&D efforts, and it acquired IO Turbine, a developer of storage virtualization software, in August for $65 million. 
Fusion is already shipping the renamed ioTurbine software.

It enables solid-state drives to be used as memory caches on a server running VMWare virtualization software. Fusion sees opportunities to roll software that enables other applications with its flash drives in areas such as database, enterprise search and social gaming.
In this way, Fusion may again be pioneering the direction for the rest of the flash drive market—a move to flash-enabled applications software. Long term, the industry still needs broader standards and support from operating systems for how flash storage can fit into the memory hierarchy.
The good news for all sides is it’s still early days for solid-state drives with plenty of growth seen ahead. International Data Corp. expects the market for PCIe-based flash drives to expand 85 percent on a compound basis from 2010-2015. Even the older market for slower SATA and SAS flash drives will grow a solid 56 percent over that period, IDC predicts.
PCIe-based flash drives came from virtually nowhere in 2009 to sales of 200 to 300 million units in 2011, according to various market researchers.
Long term, PCIe will supplant SATA and perhaps SAS as well, said Huffman.
SATA development ended at the current 6 Gbit/second generation with a SATA/Express merger planned as the next step.

“SAS will have trouble getting beyond 12 Gbit/s—we definitely see PCI Express as the future,” Huffman said.
Interest in the NVMe spec is strong based on engineers adding about 20 errata to the spec to date, a sign products are in development.

“We’re processing lots of clarifications, and that means people are using the spec,” she said.
The group has interoperability test labs set up at the University of New Hampshire and it is working on extensions to the spec. They include options for supporting multiple hosts and power-saving features.

—————————————————————————————

Renesas the RX600 Series

四月 5, 2012
By
RX CPU core:
High-speed, high-performance, and high-code-efficiency

http://sg.renesas.com/products/mpumcu/rx/rx600/index.jsp

The RX600 is the high-speed and high-performance series in the RX Family.
The series is positioned as the upward successor to the H8SX and R32C, the 32-bit families of Renesas MCUs. Already released are the RX610 Group suitable for photocopiers, laser beam printers, home audio systems, and so on, the RX621 Group and RX62N Group suitable for networking equipment with enhanced connectivity and fail-safe functions, and the RX62T Group suitable for energy-saving motor and other inverter control applications.

The RX630 Group suitable for consumer electronics and office equipment, and the RX63N and RX631 Groups suitable for networking and industrial applications, all with 90% reduced power consumption at standby.

The RX63T Group has joined the RX Family. RX63T Group is a part of the smallest pin package lineup and controls small motor with inverter, best suited for consumer/industrial applications.

The RX62G Group has PWM output function which achieves high resolution (max. 312.5 psec).

The combination of high resolution PWM output function and high CPU performance of RX core achieved higher accuracy of inverter/converter control.

Looking forward, Renesas will enhance the RX600 Series by reinforcing the memory, packages, and peripheral functions focusing on a variety of applications.

High speed: 100 MHz;

high performance: 165 DMIPS@100 MHz (1.65 DMIPS/MHz)

Built-in multiply-divide unit, multiply-and-accumulate unit, and single-precision floating point unit (FPU)

Benchmark Test

—————————————————————————————

http://sg.renesas.com/products/mpumcu/rx/rx600/rx63n_631/Documentation.jsp

—————————————————————————————-

瑞薩電子推出適用於微控制器(MCU)之CubeSuite+整合式開發環境

四月 4, 2012
By

瑞薩電子推出適用於微控制器(MCU)之CubeSuite+整合式開發環境

為可提高軟體開發效率之單一整合式開發環境

http://tw.renesas.com/press/news/2011/news20110531.jsp?campaign=mem_rc_cubesuite

TOKYO, May 31, 2011 — 先進半導體解決方案之頂尖供應商瑞薩電子公司(TSE: 6723)今日宣布推出全新的整合式開發環境CubeSuite+，為該公司8至32位元架構的微控制器(MCU)提供一致的支援。

整合式開發環境可有組織地連結MCU的所有工具(編譯器、用於模擬器的除錯器等)，以便在同一主機上執行所有設計、程式碼編寫、評估及檢查作業。

目前，客戶必須依據其開發軟體所適用的MCU類型，選擇使用CubeSuite或High-performance Embedded Workshop整合式開發環境。相對的，新款CubeSuite+將支援今後推出的所有新開發之MCU產品。

首版CubeSuite+將支援原有CubeSuite產品所涵蓋的MCU，

例如V850系列以及低功耗的RL78系列，即NEC電子與瑞薩科技合併後首先推出的MCU產品。

後續版本將擴大所支援的MCU系列範圍，包括中階MCU產品RX系列。

CubeSuite+的主要特色：
  • (1) 容易使用，即使入門者亦可輕鬆上手

    CubeSuite+將客戶開發新軟體所需的基本軟體開發工具，結合為單一軟體套件，安裝後即可使用。此軟體並提供各種教學指南，即使是剛入門的開發人員也能在安裝後立即開始使用CubeSuite+。CubeSuite+可減少學習各種工具所需的時間，因為對於所支援的所有MCU系列而言，這些工具的功能是完全相同的。同時也提供程式產生器功能，可支援透過GUI執行裝置驅動程式設定。由於程式碼將可依照每一項周邊的設定程序簡單地產生出來，因此這個功能對於剛剛接觸瑞薩MCU的系統設計者來說，尤其有用。

  • (2) 更短的建置時間，提供更高的便利性

    CubeSuite+具備Rapid Build(快速建置)功能，可自動開始在背景執行建置程序(build process)以節省時間。如此將可在最短的時間內完成建置，使開發作業更加便利。另外，過去通常會內嵌printf函式以顯示特定變數值，但每次內嵌 printf函式時都需要進行建置，CubeSuite+則提供Action Event函式，在程式中指定的位址執行時即可顯示變數值。使用Action Event函式，可按一下滑鼠右鍵輕鬆使用變數名稱顯示函式。如此將便於進行除錯，無需花費時間進行額外的建置作業。

  • (3) 可供客戶輕鬆使用的多種函式

    為使開發人員能以視覺化的方式進行程式編寫及運作，並藉由可識別造成效能瓶頸的函式，更加輕鬆快速調校軟體效能，客戶對於圖形顯示功能的需求逐漸升高。 CubeSuite+具有Variable Transition Graph函式，能以水平柱狀圖顯示變數值的變動情形，因此可輕鬆檢視多個變數間的關係。另外還有Function Call Graph函式，可顯示函式呼叫關係，因此可檢查哪個函式呼叫了其他函式，並判斷函式執行呼叫的次數頻率等。

Python Console函式使其可撰寫指令碼以執行重複作業，如此可藉由自動執行需要重複執行的作業，以減少發生錯誤的風險例如與下載程式至MCU相關的作業或在中斷(break)後進行的作業。備份功能可供儲存及還原整組工具及專案，在軟體開發至任何階段時，皆可儲存所有狀態，並可輕鬆復原。如此可提高開發程序完成後的安心感。

瑞薩將CubeSuite+定位為「可藉由大幅提升開發效率，

有效協助使用瑞薩MCU的客戶進行軟體開發的工具」，

並已針對需要上述功能的應用領域業者展開積極的行銷活動。

其所支援的MCU系列範圍將逐步穩定增加，並將提供移植功能，

可將以CubeSuite或High-performance Embedded Workshop建立的現有專案移植至CubeSuite+，

以協助客戶輕鬆進行轉移作業。

另外，基本編輯器、建置及除錯功能將更加強大，以提供更優異的簡易性、便利性，完成更便利的軟體開發作業，同時也將提供如測試支援等更多提高軟體品質的功能。

關於CubeSuite+的程式開發畫面，請參見附件。

價格與供貨

瑞薩新推出的CubeSuite+已開始提供購買，價格與瑞薩現有的工具產品相仿。

(價格與供貨如有變動將不另行通知。) 更多有關CubeSuite+的相關資訊，

請造訪：http://www.renesas.com/cubesuite+

——————————————————————————-

Tag cloud