The south of France is a haven for start ups and its success can be measured by a continuous stream of new ventures and the sustained growth of earlier launches.
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Custom analogue/mixed signal asics are economical at comparatively low volumes, with affordable non recoverable engineering (NRE) costs, meaning a custom chip design can be considered more readily than previously.
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With standby power consumption representing a significant proportion of electricity consumed around the world, standards for no load performance are tightening. For example, the European Commission's Energy-related Products (ErP) Directive Tier 1, which permitted a no load consumption of 0.5W for products manufactured in 2010, was tightened in ...
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Merchant chips that address 100Gbit Ethernet and optical transport are finally coming to market. Cortina Systems claims its CS605x family of transport processors is the first to address the 100Gbit Ethernet and Optical Transport Network (OTN) markets.
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Electrophoretic displays have been developed by companies such as E Ink to replicate, as closely as possible, the appearance of text on paper. Not surprisingly, these displays have been the enabling technology for e-readers such as Amazon's Kindle and Kobo's Touch.
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Towards the end of 2012, a tiny satellite the shape of a cd rack will be blasted into space on top of a converted intercontinental ballistic missile, then be hurled into orbit by a spring-loaded pod. Although dwarfed by communications and military satellites, the launch of the UK Space Agency's first nanosatellite will mark a milestone: kicking ...
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Sensors transmitters are commonly used in process industries to help control parameters such as temperature, pressure and flow. Temperature transmitters (TT), for example, can be found in food and beverage, pharmaceutical and environmental control processes. In the chemical industry, the TT will be used to ensure the solution in a chemical reactor ...
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As cmos transistors continue to get smaller and smaller, it becomes increasingly difficult to make them behave in a similar fashion. With more and more transistors being packed into smaller areas of silicon, the consequence is that more devices are likely to fail to meet design requirements.
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Releasing a product with bugs is potentially very expensive, especially when the cost of field upgrades, recalls and repairs are considered. Less quantifiable – but at least as important – is the damage done to reputation and consequent loss of customer goodwill.
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High performance computing systems by necessity pack as many boards in an enclosure as possible. But the fact they are high performance means they generate a lot of heat. Cooling them becomes an important design issue.
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The exceptional mechanical and piezoelectric properties of quartz crystal oscillators have, for decades, ensured their success for frequency generation in a range of consumer, computing and communication applications.
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The 21st Century is experiencing a data avalanche. Not long ago, a terabyte (1012byte) was seen as a vast amount of data. Today, you can have a 1Tbyte hard drive in your desktop pc for less than £50. Soon, much the same will happen at the petabyte (1015byte) level. And plans are well underway for the exabyte, or 1018byte generation.
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There is an amazing amount of fundamental technology research undertaken in UK universities. But getting that work into the hands of entrepreneurs and small companies so it can be exploited has been a struggle. As such, facilitating this kind of technology transfer has been on the industry's 'to do' list for some years, with little sign of ...
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The perceived wisdom is that diamonds are a girl's best friend. But the highly coveted allotrope of carbon is beginning to find friends amongst those developing technologies for the electronics industry.
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Gallium nitride has long been known to have useful properties when it comes to electronic components. Even so, its application has largely been confined to more exotic areas of the industry, particularly rf transistors.
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The market for rf identification (rfid) devices is exploding. Active and passive tags are appearing in our cars, clothes, food packaging and luxury goods – even on our bodies – as well as being used throughout the manufacturing, processing, transport and logistics sectors.
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Since product design and development consultancy Triteq was established in 1992, its reputation has grown to the extent that 35% of new business is won through customer referral. But what exactly are its customers' expectations and how are these met?
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The increasing imperative is for engineers to operate across a variety of technological sectors and to incorporate ever more advanced technology into their designs – and this makes getting to grips with the latest products and techniques crucial.
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It seems the world is unable to function without wireless communications, whatever the format. Yet only a few years ago, wireless communications was a strange world inhabited by very few people. Things have changed dramatically and the change could be put down to one person.
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The impression given by a range of national media is that UK manufacturing, in general, is on the ropes. But when it comes to the electronics sector, nothing could be farther from the truth; certainly in the opinion of Phil Inness, chairman of the Electronic Manufacturing Services Association (EMSA) group within trade association Intellect and ...
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For hybrid (HEV) and full electric vehicles (EVs), Li-Ion batteries offer the best trade off of power, energy density, efficiency and environmental impact. But Li-Ion batteries can be delicate and dangerous, while automobiles can be cruel and unforgiving. The challenge is to bridge the gap between the two environments.
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Using an oscilloscope to analyse and debug a low speed serial link is standard fare and today's general purpose digital oscilloscopes contain a variety of features that allow the user to quickly verify a link or to troubleshoot a faulty system.
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Packet based networking has become the standard way to deliver communication services. But the very success of packet networking is challenging telecom operators in how they support the varied requirements of the services carried over their networks. Indeed, some industry voices question whether the internet economy is sustainable, given the rate ...
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New generations of embedded computing systems based on the VPX standard reflect the growing significance of high speed serial switched fabric interconnects. These are replacing traditional parallel communications bus architectures for local communications because of their increased performance.
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Leading edge semiconductor technology is enabling the development of smaller and more powerful medical devices for use inside the human body.
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