New Electronics Technology Articles

Efficient GPGPU programming with OpenCL

Today's graphics processors are highly programmable, massively parallel compute engines. In this role, they are commonly called general purpose graphics processing units, or GPGPUs. You can program them with the open and standard based OpenCL framework, distributing compute chores to CPUs, GPUs, and DSPs to optimise a system's overall performance.

Always connected, always safe: Technology provides a guiding hand for car drivers

It's a somewhat chilling statistic; 1.2million people will die on the world's roads this year. By the time you have finished reading this sentence, another person will have been killed or have suffered serious injury.

Are we set to move beyond 3d tv into another viewing dimension?

The next generation of television viewing seems set to escape the screen one way or another – either through 3d effects or by exploring the notion of what a screen actually is. Breaking down barriers between users and the content they enjoy seems to be the key theme, and with OLED just around the corner, these technologies may soon merge.

Countering complexity: How graphical techniques are being applied to radio system design

Mobile has embraced increasingly complex technologies to boost data rates towards 100Mbit/s. The emerging Long Term Evolution (LTE) cellular standard supports a range of spectrum bands using complex time and frequency division transmission schemes and even multiple antenna techniques known as MIMO (multiple input, multiple output, see box).

Expert panel: Innovation, collaboration and competition are hot topics for semiconductor developers

You might think that a roundtable at a meeting of the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA) charged with discussing the future of the semiconductor industry would have addressed technology issues; the future for Moore's Law, for example. Instead, the discussion addressed complementary topics.

Intelligent debug tools becoming a commercial necessity

When developers start a new microprocessor based project, they are faced with a critical choice – which debug solution should they use? This article seeks to explain why many developers are choosing a new generation of intelligent trace analysis tools and why, in many instances, these tools have become a commercial necessity.

IP advice: What is the Patent Box?

New Electronics has partnered with leading intellectual property law firm D Young & Co LLP to offer advice and information to help companies understand, use and protect their IP.

New WEEE reuse specification aims to reduce the number of illegal exports

In March 2011, a new publicly available standard was established to reduce the amount of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) ending up either in landfill or being incinerated.

As analogue tv switches off, innovative applications are set to switch on

As the last elements of the UK's analogue television network are switched off, attention is turning to what industry might be able to do with the vacated spectrum, which is being referred to generically as 'white space'.

Balanced approach matches analogue design requirements

Despite its continuing – and, in many cases, increasing – importance in modern chips, analogue and mixed signal (AMS) design has proved difficult to automate. While digital design automation has seen rapid advancement during the last 30 years, the only major step forward for AMS designers has been the introduction of foundry verified cells, termed by various eda vendors as T-Cells, PCells, Mcells, Flexcells or Pycells. Beyond this, remarkably little has changed: it is not uncommon to find AMS designers relying on their expertise, experience and 'feel' to perform polygon based layout by hand. But, as design complexity has increased, this approach is becoming increasingly untenable.

E-waste: How industry associations are helping engineers design for reuse and recycling

Electronic waste is a huge global problem and one whose impact on our environment is not expected to lessen any time in the near future.

Extensions to FreeRTOS bring productivity gains to embedded design engineers

Operating systems can be a major source of stress for embedded design engineers. Factors such as size, cost and support all contribute to make the development process more complex. The process can become even more fraught when engineers look to develop products with real time operating systems. An off the shelf operating system can play an important role in keeping costs and development time as low as possible.

Large scale fuel cells near commercial application

"Fuel cells are the most promising new form of energy generation – and always will be!" That is the unkind jibe sometimes levelled at this technology, originally invented back in 1839 by Sir William Grove. However, developments in fuel cell technology mean the waiting may be over sooner than many might think.

Testing efficiently an increasing challenge for design engineers

When thinking about product testing, most people focus on the area of most interest to them. A software engineer might want to test firmware before a new release, whilst a compliance engineer might want to examine the regulatory hurdles to a product release in a target country. It could be argued that it is important to have an overall picture of the entire gamut of test areas as they become more interdependent.

All electric racing car utilises breakthrough technology

The sheer amount of technology transferred from the motorsport sector is hard to beat. From advanced materials to sensor technology, innovations developed for the track often end up in everyday road cars, as well as in applications radically different than intended. Indeed, only the aerospace and defence industries can compete in terms of technology transfer.

Behavioural modelling helps develop systems which span the digital/analogue divide

Despite the trend towards digital electronics, the world remains stubbornly analogue. No matter what you are designing, chances are that you'll need interfaces at the very least. And the larger the system being developed, the more complex the relationship between the digital and analogue worlds becomes.

Enclosure specifiers explore colour, shape and texture

Henry Ford once said the Model T was available in any colour you wanted, so long as it was black. Until recently, a similar approach could have been applied to enclosures, except the colour would have been grey.

Integrated device addresses HART communications

The humble 4 to 20mA current loop has been a faithful servant of process control systems for decades, largely down to its reliability and simplicity.

Prototyping development platform allows IP to be tested in advance of silicon

Infineon has recently announced a multicore architecture which will be the foundation for its next generation mcu families for automotive powertrain and safety applications. The architecture features up to three processor cores, lockstep cores and enhanced safety mechanisms to support applications designed to ISO 26262 ASIL-D.

Adapting to ever changing standards helps consultancy improve efficiency

Just a stone's throw away from the River Mersey, specialist consultancy LDRA provides automated analysis and testing tools for software applications – a service it has offered for nearly 40 years. In recent times, as well as asking for software verification tools, its engineering management customers are calling for clearer defined verification techniques. This increase in the need for traceability has forced LDRA to change the way in which it works.

Affordable imaging technology could help to unlock the brain's secrets

Medical imaging is one of the underrated miracles of modern medicine. Only a few decades ago, the field consisted of little more than X rays; today, electronic and other advances have created a whole series of techniques that have transformed our ability to see what is happening inside the body and, in particular, the brain.

Can tweaking the analogue properties of digital circuits help to combat the effects of variability?

As semiconductor process technologies get ever smaller, the effects of stochastic variability become more pronounced. It's no surprise: because there are fewer atoms involved, the presence or absence of a small number of dopants can have large effects on device properties. Where variability was predictable at earlier process nodes, it is more random – or stochastic – at the leading edge.

Creating frequency scalable nonlinear transmission line based vector network analysers

High frequency vector network analysers (VNAs) make use of harmonic samplers, or mixers, to down convert measurement signals to intermediate frequencies (IF) before digitising them. Such components play a critical role in VNAs because they set the bounds on important parameters like conversion efficiency, receiver compression, isolation between measurement channels and spurious generation at the ports of a device under test (DUT).

DO-178 specification gets upgrade to take account of model based design

Software has developed a reputation for being inherently bug ridden and there's one place where the last thing you need is unpredictable software – in an aeroplane. Yet software written for aerospace applications is complex, with a liberal sprinkling of decision points that might make it work in ways completely unexpected by those who wrote it. No surprise, then, the authorities are keen to see software written and tested in such a way that safety is at the top of the requirements list.

Hardware processing blocks give highest video performance yet from Blackfin device

When digital signal processors first appeared commercially in the early 1980s, they took the electronics world by storm, eventually enabling the mobile phone revolution – and lots besides.