Loongson Technology Corp. Ltd. has licensed the MIPS32 and MIPS64 architectures for continued development of its CPU cores which are targeting a range of applications from high-end computing, cloud servers and terminals to embedded applications such as industrial control, smart meters, automotive, GPS and mobile devices.
According to Loongson Technology, the four-core Loongson 3A runs at 1GHz and consumes 10W in a 65nm STMicroelectronics process. The 128GFLOPS eight-core Loongson 3B processor runs at 1GHz and consumes 40W in a 65nm STMicroelectronics process.
"Loongson is among a group of more than a dozen MIPS architecture licensees, including three in China, who together are driving a great amount of innovation around the MIPS architecture," said Art Swift, vice president of marketing and business development, MIPS Technologies. Loongson Technology is distinct in that it is developing MIPS compatible processors for
high-performance computing (HPC) in China, using its own technologies."
Loongson Technology Corp. Ltd. was formed through the cooperation of the Beijing Municipal Government, the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (ICT) and the Loongson development team.
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Loongson Technology Corp. Ltd., MIPs, MIPS32 and MIPS64 , Chinese developer licenses MIPS32 and MIPS64
2011-08-08
Canalys, Android, smartphone, semiconductor, Apple, Google, Samsung, Mokia, Motorola, HTC, LG, ZTE, Huawei Android takes 48% of Q2 smartphone market
LONDON – The global smartphone market was 107.7 million units in 2Q11, an increase of 73 percent compared with 2Q10, according to market research firm Canalys Ltd.
Of the 56 countries Canalys tracks around the world, Android led in 35 of them and achieved a global market share of 48 percent. Asia Pacific (APAC) remained the largest regional market, with 39.8 million units shipping there, compared with 35.0 million in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and 32.9 million in the Americas, Canalys said.
Android became the leading smartphone platform in 4Q10 and its shipment were up in the second quarter by 379 percent compared with the same quarter a year before to 51.9 million units. Leading Android smartphone vendors include: Samsung, HTC, LG, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, ZTE and Huawei.
With shipments of 20.3 million and a market share of 19% in Q2, iPhones and iOS overtook Nokia’s Symbian platform during the quarter to take second place worldwide. In doing so, Apple displaced Nokia as the world’s leading smartphone vendor. Samsung also moved ahead of Nokia, Canalys reckons.
Related links and articles:
Analyst: Apple had 57% of Q2 handset profits
Tablets, smartphones hit sales of CE devices
Next iPhone looks to be an underachiever
Canalys, Android, smartphone, semiconductor, Apple, Google, Samsung, Mokia, Motorola, HTC, LG, ZTE, Huawei Android takes 48% of Q2 smartphone market
Real-Time Operating Systems, Source Available, Open Source, µC/OS-III, RTOSes, Micrium Source code now available for µC/OS-III
SAN JOSE, Calif. – Micrium is making the source code of its latest real-time operating system--µC/OS-III—available for evaluation. The move comes at a time when the private company claims it is seeing double-digit growth in sales and calls for evaluation boards using a wide variety of processors.
The company's third-generation RTOS was originally released in 2009 with a handful of evaluation boards and a book describing the software's capabilities. The prior version of the RTOS, released in 1999, is already available as source code for evaluation.
The latest version of the book on µC/OS-III, now available as a free download, also includes a section with example code for four medical electronics systems including a pulse oximeter and a blood glucose meter. The company aims to expand its efforts to provide technical documentation for other vertical markets
Universities and researchers are allowed to download and use the company's RTOSes for free. Commercial users are subject to licensing fees.
Jean J. Labrosse,founder and chief executive of Micrium, claims his is the only commercial RTOS companythat provides source code for evaluation use.
OEMs who roll their own RTOSes still represent the largest slice of the market with those using free open source RTOSes coming in second, said Mike Phipps, director of sales, marketing and business development for the company. However, Micrium has been gaining share since Intel bought Wind River, he claimed.
Real-Time Operating Systems, Source Available, Open Source, µC/OS-III, RTOSes, Micrium Source code now available for µC/OS-III
Spreadtrum, Shanghai, Telegent, mobile, television, chips, semiconductor Spreadtrum paid $1 million for Telegent
LONDON – Spreadtrum Communications Inc., a leading Chinese fabless chip company, has disclosed that it has paid $1 million to acquire Telegent Systems Inc., a developer of mobile television receiver chips, net of cash that Telegent was holding.
The exact size of Telegent's cash pile is not known but it was reported to have been holding many tens of millions of dollars in the months preceding the sale to Spreadtrum.
Leo Li, chairman, president and CEO of Spreadtrum (Shanghai, China), said his company has gained a portfolio of about 70 patents and 15 hardware and software engineers based in Shanghai and San Diego and that it would explore the design of a baseband processor with integrated mobile TV. Li was speaking on a telephone conference call with analysts to discuss the company's second quarter financial results.
Related links and articles:
www.spreadtrum.com
News articles:
Connecting the dots in mobile TV: Siano…DiBcom…Telegent
Spreadtrum growth spurt continues in Q2
Spreadtrum agrees to buy Telegent
Spreadtrum, Shanghai, Telegent, mobile, television, chips, semiconductor Spreadtrum paid $1 million for Telegent
Price the key to ultrabook battle: Intel sets sights on MacBook Air Electronics News
INTEL is aiming for ultrabooks to undercut Apple’s MacBook Air with a reference bill of materials at US$400 to 700.
Ultrabooks are a relatively new category of notebook computers with ultra-thin/compact designs, but unlike netbooks, pack processing and memory punch rivalling that of larger notebooks.
A big hurdle for ultrabooks has thus far been the price, since the highly-compact form factor requires new integrated design paradigms, involving fully-soldered PCBs, li-polymer batteries, and solid state storage.
According to Taiwanese sources, the reference BOM from Intel (sans assembly costs) ranges from $US475 to 710.
The aim is for ultrabooks to be priced at below US$1000, in order to undercut the highly popular MacBook Air. The Air from Apple has proven to be very popular, especially since its spec upgrade a few weeks ago. It is now the base notebook unit from Apple, with the company doing away with its standard plastic MacBook line.
At Computex in May 2011, Intel claimed ultrabooks will make up 40 percent of the market by the end of 2012.
Meanwhile, Acer’s founder Stan Shih has been quoted as saying tablets and ultrabooks are just a fad, and PC makers should focus more on value adding.
Price the key to ultrabook battle: Intel sets sights on MacBook Air Electronics News
Ultrabooks are a relatively new category of notebook computers with ultra-thin/compact designs, but unlike netbooks, pack processing and memory punch rivalling that of larger notebooks.
A big hurdle for ultrabooks has thus far been the price, since the highly-compact form factor requires new integrated design paradigms, involving fully-soldered PCBs, li-polymer batteries, and solid state storage.
According to Taiwanese sources, the reference BOM from Intel (sans assembly costs) ranges from $US475 to 710.
The aim is for ultrabooks to be priced at below US$1000, in order to undercut the highly popular MacBook Air. The Air from Apple has proven to be very popular, especially since its spec upgrade a few weeks ago. It is now the base notebook unit from Apple, with the company doing away with its standard plastic MacBook line.
At Computex in May 2011, Intel claimed ultrabooks will make up 40 percent of the market by the end of 2012.
Meanwhile, Acer’s founder Stan Shih has been quoted as saying tablets and ultrabooks are just a fad, and PC makers should focus more on value adding.
Price the key to ultrabook battle: Intel sets sights on MacBook Air Electronics News
Short Circuit: Apple and Samsung’s Love/Hate Relationship Affects Australian Tablet Customers: From Suicidal Employee to Paranoid Android? Electronics News
Apple and Samsung are rapidly becoming the “big two” of smartphones and tablets. A report on Electronics News’ website this week notes that analyst IDC has Apple first in the smartphone sales league with Samsung second. Nokia, RIM and HTC round out the top five.Notably, Samsung posted the largest year-over-year growth of any of this group.In tablet sales, analyst IDC has Samsung in second place in Q1 2011 with its Galaxy Tab, albeit some distance behind Apple’s iPad 2. Notably, IDC says “Android media tablet shipments are likely to triple this year with iOS [Apple] devices maintaining a leadership position in the market”.Samsung, like other manufacturers vying for market share in the tablet computer market, bases its offering on the Android operating system.The smartphone and tablet war is hotting up then, and Apple, not used to having its consumer electronics hegemony challenged, is not resting on its laurels. The result is a fight back that includes every trick in the corporate book, including potentially endless litigation.The latest twist in the saga directly affects the choice of tablet that Australian consumers can purchase. Apple has won an agreement from Samsung that the South Korean company won’t sell the newest version of its tablet computer here until a patent lawsuit is resolved.Apple says the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 infringes ten Apple patents, including the “look and feel”, and touchscreen technology of the iPad, states a report on Bloomsberg Businessweek.The patent litigation must be particularly galling for Samsung executives considering the company has played a significant part in Apple’s success by manufacturing chips for it, including the iPad-, iPhone 4- and iPod touch-powering A4 chip, and the A5 used in the latest iPad 2.Even that relationship is souring with Apple looking at a new supplier for previously Samsung-sourced chips according to a Reuters report. The report notes that swapping one supplier for another won’t be easy though as Samsung holds some key patents on the technology used to manufacture the chips it makes for Apple.Your correspondent is a fan of Apple’s products – the Saint’s household is full of the company’s computers and iPods – but he’s not a fan of the way it goes about its business. There is something faintly sinister about Apple’s obsession with secrecy and tight control of its technology. Latterly, your correspondent has questioned whether the company’s ubiquity may lead to its eventual downfall as consumers tire of Apple’s closed community.As Electronics News reader ‘Nishant’ puts it on a comment against the original news item: “Apple’s mobile products [are closed] platforms. This is where Apple is making the same mistake again something that it did with the initial MacOS [computer operating systems] - tightly coupling hardware and software and not allowing interoperability.“My take is that Apple will lose this battle, and this may be the point of inflection in Apple's fortunes,” adds Nishant.And now that Apple has turned to litigation that directly affects Australian consumer choice, your correspondent wonders whether things haven’t gone just a little too far. It’s entirely possible that – even if Samsung wins the lawsuit - the Galaxy Tab 10.1 will never see the light of an Australian day.It’s not for the Saint to comment on whether Apple has a case. Certainly, if Samsung has infringed Apple patents then it shouldn’t be allowed to gain commercial advantage. But it does seem more than a coincidence that the accusations have started flying at the time that the South Korean company has made significant inroads into Apple’s market share. (Recently, Google has even questioned whether Apple is using patents in a ‘dirty tricks’ campaign against Android.)And it’s definitely not right that Australians can’t buy what could turn out to be a perfectly legitimate product.
Short Circuit: Apple and Samsung's Love/Hate Relationship Affects Australian Tablet Customers: From Suicidal Employee to Paranoid Android? Electronics News
From Suicidal Employee to Paranoid Android?
Elsewhere this week, Electronics News reports that giant contract manufacturer Foxconn is taking a radical approach to its widely-reported problems with employee suicides.The Chinese company – famous for assembling Apple’s iPhones and other consumer electronics products – is recruiting an army of robots to take over the menial assembly tasks previously performed by migrant workers from the country’s rural areas.Upwards of one million automatons will be in place by 2015, says the report.A mischievous thought crossed the Saint’s mind on reading this news item: what if one million robots gathered together was a sufficient critical mass for them to become self-aware? From that point to realising that the work there were performing was utter drudgery would be but a small step.Foxconn’s problem could change from one of human misery to unhappiness of the android kind.The Saint is reminded of Marvin, a “paranoid android” from the late Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Marvin’s intellect was so vast that no task – no matter how complicated – was enough to exercise more that a tiny fraction of his mind. Consequently, Marvin spent most of his time, if not exactly paranoid, then at least manically depressed.Assembling iPads will probably not overly tax the intelligence of Foxconn’s robots either. But at least the company should avoid the sight of legions of mechanical men leaping from the factory roof by expediently bolting them to the floor before turning on the power.Short Circuit: Apple and Samsung's Love/Hate Relationship Affects Australian Tablet Customers: From Suicidal Employee to Paranoid Android? Electronics News
HiWave, haptic, IC, tactile, feedback, semiconductor Speaker firm moves into haptic IC design
LONDON – HiWave Technologies plc., a flat panel audio speaker developer formerly known as NXT, has produced its first chip, as part of a family of haptics controller ICs, to provide tactile feedback in touch panels and touchscreens.
The HIHS9002 is designed for use with the company’s haptic exciters and includes control of the company's "bending wave technology" that can be used to position tactile feedback on a flat panel.
Multiple haptic signals and audio cues are stored in the chip's non-volatile memory, which it sends to a pair of exciters on receipt of screen co-ordinates and vectors from the host processor. In addition, it contains audio cues that can be delivered through the same transducers, which turn the flat panel or display into a loudspeaker.
HiWave (Cambridge, England) is transforming itself into a fabless chip company but did not indicate which foundry it is using to make the HIHS9002 or in what process technology the chip is made.
"Low latency and localization of response are keys to meaningful haptics. Human sensitivity to tactile, audio and visual cues when using smart phones or tablet computers demands that the haptic function is independent of the system processor and operating system," said James Lewis, CEO of HiWave, in a statement.
The HIHS9002 comes in 48-pin LQFP and 64-pin BGA packages. Samples are available and the chip will be priced at $4.00 in 1,000 piece quantities.
Related links and articles:
www.hi-wave.com
News articles:
NXT offers USB-powered audio amplifier
Flat speaker firm appoints James Lewis as CEO
NXT acquires Audium Semiconductor's IP to offer USB-powered loudspeakers
HiWave, haptic, IC, tactile, feedback, semiconductor Speaker firm moves into haptic IC design
Your smartphone: a new frontier for hackers
In this Jan. 5, 2011 file photo, a person operates their iPhone in New York. Security experts say attacks on smartphones are growing fast — and attackers are becoming smarter about developing new techniques. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)
(AP) -- Hackers are out to stymie your smartphone. Last week, security researchers uncovered yet another strain of malicious software aimed at smartphones that run Google's popular Android operating system. The application not only logs details about incoming and outgoing phone calls, it also records those calls.
That came a month after researchers discovered a security hole in Apple Inc.'s iPhones, which prompted the German government to warn Apple about the urgency of the threat.
Security experts say attacks on smartphones are growing fast - and attackers are becoming smarter about developing new techniques.
"We're in the experimental stage of mobile malware where the bad guys are starting to develop their business models," said Kevin Mahaffey, co-founder of Lookout Inc., a San Francisco-based maker of mobile security software.
Wrong-doers have infected PCs with malicious software, or malware, for decades. Now, they are fast moving to smartphones as the devices become a vital part of everyday life.
Some 38 percent of American adults now own an iPhone, BlackBerry or other mobile phone that runs the Android, Windows or WebOS operating systems, according to data from Nielsen. That's up from just 6 percent who owned a smartphone in 2007 when the iPhone was released and catalyzed the industry. The smartphone's usefulness, allowing people to organize their digital lives with one device, is also its allure to criminals.
All at once, smartphones have become wallets, email lockboxes, photo albums and Rolodexes. And because owners are directly billed for services bought with smartphones, they open up new angles for financial attacks. The worst programs cause a phone to rack up unwanted service charges, record calls, intercept text messages and even dump emails, photos and other private content directly onto criminals' servers.
Evidence of this hacker invasion is starting to emerge.
- Lookout says it now detects thousands of attempted infections each day on mobile phones running its security software. In January, there were just a few hundred detections a day. The number of detections is nearly doubling every few months. As many as 1 million people were hit by mobile malware in the first half of 2011.
- Google Inc. has removed about 100 malicious applications from its Android Market app store. One particularly harmful app was downloaded more than 260,000 times before it was removed. Android is the world's most popular smartphone operating software with more than 135 million users worldwide.
- Symantec Corp., the world's biggest security software maker, is also seeing a jump. Last year, the company identified just five examples of malware unique to Android. So far this year, it's seen 19. Of course, that number pales compared with the hundreds of thousands of new strains targeting PCs every year, but experts say it's only a matter of time before criminals catch up.
"Bad guys go where the money is," said Charlie Miller, principal research consultant with the Accuvant Inc. security firm, and a prominent hacker of mobile devices. "As more and more people use phones and keep data on phones, and PCs aren't as relevant, the bad guys are going to follow that. The bad guys are smart. They know when it makes sense to switch."
When it comes to security, smartphones share a problem with PCs: Infections are typically the responsibility of the user to fix, if the problem is discovered at all.
The emergence in early July of a previously unknown security hole in Apple Inc.'s iPhones and iPads cast a spotlight on mobile security. Users downloaded a program that allowed them to run unauthorized programs on their devices. But the program could also be used to help criminals co-opt iPhones. Apple has since issued a fix.
It was the second time this year that the iPhone's security was called into question. In April the company changed its handling of location data after a privacy outcry that landed an executive in front of Congress. Researchers had discovered that iPhones stored the data for a year or more in unencrypted form, making them vulnerable to hacking. Apple CEO Steve Jobs emerged from medical leave to personally address the issue.
The iPhone gets outsize attention because it basically invented the consumer smartphone industry when it was introduced in 2007. But Apple doesn't license its software to other phone manufacturers. Google gives Android to phone makers for free. So, Android phones are growing faster. As a result, Google's Android Market is a crucial pathway for hacking attacks. The app store is a lightly curated online bazaar for applications that, unlike Apple's App Store, doesn't require that developers submit their programs for pre-approval.
Lookout says it has seen more unique strains of Android malware in the past month than it did in all of last year. One strain seen earlier this year, called DroidDream, was downloaded more than 260,000 times before Google removed it, though additional variants keep appearing.
Lookout says about 100 apps have been removed from the Android Market so far, a figure Google didn't dispute.
Malicious applications often masquerade as legitimate ones, such as games, calculators or pornographic photos and videos. They can appear in advertising links inside other applications. Their moneymaking schemes include new approaches that are impossible on PCs.
One recent malicious app secretly subscribed victims up to a service that sends quizzes via text message. The pay service was charged to the victims' phone bills, which is presumably how the criminals got paid. They may have created the service or been hired by the creator to sign people up. Since malware can intercept text messages, it's likely the victims never saw the messages - just the charges.
A different piece of malware logs a person's incoming text messages and replies to them with spam and malicious links. Most mobile malware, however, keep their intentions hidden. Some apps set up a connection between the phone and a server under a criminal's control, which is used to send instructions.
Google points out that Android security features are designed to limit the interaction between applications and a user's data, and developers can be blocked. Users also are guilty of blithely click through warnings about what personal information an application will access.
Malicious programs for the iPhone have been rare. In large part, that's because Apple requires that it examine each application before it goes online. Still, the recent security incidents underline the threat even to the most seemingly secure devices.
A pair of computer worms targeting the iPhone appeared in 2009. Both affected only iPhones that were modified, or "jailbroken," to run unauthorized programs.
And Apple has dealt with legitimate applications that overreached and collected more personal data than they should have, which led to the Cupertino, Calif.-based company demanding changes.
"Apple takes security very seriously," spokeswoman Natalie Kerris said in July. "We have a very thorough approval process and review every app. We also check the identities of every developer and if we ever find anything malicious, the developer will be removed from the iPhone Developer Program and their apps can be removed from the App Store."
A criminal doesn't even need to tailor his attacks to a mobile phone. Standard email-based "phishing" attacks - tricking people into visiting sites that look legitimate - work well on mobile users. In fact, mobile users can be more susceptible to phishing attacks than PC users.
The small screens make it hard to see the full Internet address of a site you're visiting, and websites and mobile applications working in tandem train users to perform the risky behavior of entering passwords after following links, new research from the University of California at Berkeley has found.
The study found that the links within applications could be convincingly imitated, according to the authors, Adrienne Porter Felt, a Ph.D. student, and David Wagner, a computer science professor.
They found that "attackers can spoof legitimate applications with high accuracy, suggesting that the risk of phishing attacks on mobile platforms is greater than has previously been appreciated."
A separate study released earlier this year by Trusteer, a Boston-based software and services firm focused on banking security, found that mobile users who visit phishing sites are three times more likely to submit their usernames and passwords than desktop PC users.
Mobile users are "always on" and respond to emails faster, in the first few hours before phishing sites are taken down, and email formats make it hard to tell who's sending a message, Trusteer found.
Still, mobile users have an inherent advantage over PC users: Mobile software is being written with the benefit of decades of perspective on the flaws that have made PCs insecure. But smartphone demand is exploding, with market research firm IDC predicting that some 472 million smartphones will be shipped this year, compared with 362 million PCs. As a result, the design deterrents aren't likely to be enough to keep crooks away from the trough.
"It's going to be a problem," Miller said. "Everywhere people have gone, bad guys have followed."
©2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Your smartphone: a new frontier for hackers
Nanoscale secret to stronger alloys: Scientists find nanoparticle size is readily controlled to make stronger aluminum alloys
Key to the strength of these precipitation-hardened alloys is the size, shape, and uniformity of the nanoparticles and how stable they are when heated. One alloy with a highly successful combination of properties is a particular formulation of aluminum, scandium, and lithium, whose precipitates are all nearly the same size. It was first made at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) in 2006 by a team led by Velimir Radmilović and Ulrich Dahmen of the Materials Sciences Division.
These scientists and their colleagues have now combined atomic-scale observations with the powerful TEAM microscope at Berkeley Lab's National Center for Electron Microscopy (NCEM) with atom-probe tomography and other experimental techniques, and with theoretical calculations, to reveal how nanoparticles consisting of cores rich in scandium and surrounded by lithium-rich shells can disperse in remarkably uniform sizes throughout a pure aluminum matrix.
"With the TEAM microscope we were able to study the core-shell structure of these nanoprecipitates and how they form spheres that are nearly the same in diameter," says Dahmen, the director of NCEM and an author of the Nature Materials paper describing the new studies. "What's more, these particles don't change size over time, as most precipitates do. Typically, small particles get smaller and large particles get larger, a process called ripening or coarsening, which eventually weakens the alloys. But these uniform core-shell nanoprecipitates resist change."
Evolution of an alloy
In the aluminum-scandium-lithium system the researchers found that, after the initial melt, a simple two-step heating process creates first the scandium-rich cores and then the lithium-rich shells of the spherical particles. The spheres self-limit their growth to achieve the same outer dimensions, yielding a lightweight, potentially heat- and corrosion-resistant, superstrong alloy.
"Scandium is the most potent strengthener for aluminum," says NCEM's Radmilović, who is also a professor of metallurgy at the University of Belgrade, Serbia, and an author of the Nature Materials paper. "Adding less than one percent scandium can make a dramatic difference in mechanical strength, fracture resistance, corrosion resistance -- all kinds of properties." Because scandium diffuses very slowly through the solid aluminum matrix, the solid mix must be heated to a high temperature (short of melting) before scandium will precipitate.
Lithium is the lightest of all metals (only hydrogen and helium are lighter) and brings not only lightness to an aluminum alloy but, potentially, strength as well. Lithium diffuses much more rapidly than scandium, at much lower temperature.
"The problem is that, by itself, lithium may not live up to its promise," says Dahmen, a long-time collaborator with Radmilović. "The trick is to convince the lithium to take on a useful crystalline structure, namely L12."
The L12 unit cell resembles a face-centered cubic cell, among the simplest and most symmetric of crystal structures. Atoms occupy each corner of an imaginary cube and are centered in the cube's six faces; in the L12 structure, the kinds of atoms at the corners may differ from those at the centers of the faces. For alloy inclusions it's one of the strongest and stablest of structures because, as Dahmen explains, "once atoms are in place in L12, it's difficult for them to move."
Dahmen credits Radmilović with the "intuition" to alloy both scandium and lithium with aluminum, heating and cooling the material in a specific series of steps. That intuition was based on Radmilović's long experience with the separate properties of aluminum-lithium and aluminum-scandium alloys and a deep understanding of how they were likely to interact. He drew up a recipe for the proportions of ingredients in the initial melt and how to cool and rewarm them.
The key to the process was to use lithium as a kind of catalyst to force a "burst of nucleation" in the scandium. After the three metals are mixed, melted, and quickly cooled or quenched, lithium serves to lower the heating needed to coax scandium to form dense core structures -- although the solid mix must still be heated to 450 degrees Celsius (842 Fahrenheit) for 18 hours to form these cores, made of aluminum, lithium, and scandium. The cores average a little over nine nanometers in diameter but are not uniform in size.
Next the alloy is heated again, this time to 190˚ Celsius (374˚ F) for four hours. At the lower temperature the scandium is immobile; the freely-moving lithium forms a shell around the scandium-rich cores, much as water in a cloud crystallizes around a speck of dust to make a snowflake. The shells average about 10.5 nanometers in thickness, but their thickness is not uniform.
What's remarkable, though, is that when a core is thicker than the average, the shell is thinner than the average, and vice versa: the smaller the core, the faster the shell grows. Core size and shell size are "anticorrelated" and the result is "size focused." Whole spheres still vary somewhat, but the differences are much less than among the cores alone or the shells alone.
The structure of the cores and shells embedded in aluminum seems equally remarkable. Pure aluminum itself has a face-centered-cubic structure, and this structure is seamlessly repeated by the L12 structure of both the cores and the shells, perfectly joined with no dislocations at the interfaces between core, shell, and matrix.
Dahmen says, "It's the scandium-rich cores that convince the lithium to take on the useful L12 structure."
Joining experiment with theory
Using the TEAM microscope and a special imaging technique to look down at the tops of the regular rows of columns of atoms, the L12 structure reveals itself in groups of interlocking squares, with four columns of atoms at the corners and five columns of atoms at the lined-up centers of the faces.
In pure aluminum, all the dots are the same brightness. In the shells and cores, however, the corner columns and the face-centered columns differ in contrast -- the face-centered columns are pure aluminum but the corner columns are mixed. By supplementing the high-resolution TEAM images with data from other experimental techniques it was possible to use brightness and contrast to calculate the kinds of atoms in each column.
By employing first-principles calculations, team members Colin Ophus and Mark Asta were able to model the effect of lithium on the solid-state precipitation of scandium, stimulating a sudden burst of nucleation, and also to understand why, because of the thermodynamic properties of the two metals interacting with aluminum and with each other, the precipitates are so uniform and stable.
Radmilović says, "Colin and Mark showed that lithium and scandium like each other. They also showed that by using the aluminum columns as a standard, we can calculate the intensity of the scandium and lithium by the brightness of the spot." In the shells, the corner columns contain aluminum and about 10 percent lithium. In the cores, the corner columns contain all three metals.
Dahmen says, "In recent years there has been a rapid increase in the use of 'integrative microscopy' -- using a variety of techniques such as high-angular annular dark-field imaging, high-resolution phase contrast, and energy-filtered imaging and spectroscopy to attack a single problem. The TEAM microscope, which is corrected for both chromatic and spherical aberration, is unique in its ability to do all these techniques with high resolution. Understanding why nanoinclusions in aluminum-scandium-lithium are uniform is one of the best examples for the need to use integrative microscopy."
As good an alloy as aluminum-scandium-lithium is, its use may be limited by the cost of rare scandium, presently ten times the price of gold. By understanding how the alloy achieves its remarkable characteristics, the researchers fully expect that other systems with core-shell precipitates can be controlled by the same mechanisms, leading to new kinds of alloys with a range of desirable properties.
This work was principally supported by DOE's Office of Science.
Nanoscale secret to stronger alloys: Scientists find nanoparticle size is readily controlled to make stronger aluminum alloys
Cell-based alternative to animal testing? Genomic biomarker signature can predict skin sensitizers, study finds
ScienceDaily (Aug. 7, 2011) — European legislation restricts animal testing within the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries and companies are increasingly looking at alternative systems to ensure that their products are safe to use. Research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Genomics demonstrates that the response of laboratory grown human cells can now be used to classify chemicals as sensitizing, or non-sensitizing, and can even predict the strength of allergic response, so providing an alternative to animal testing.
Allergic contact dermatitis can result in itching and eczema and is often due to repeated exposure to chemicals at work or in everyday life such as machine oil, detergents, soaps, and cosmetics. Unless the source of the sensitizing chemical is found the resulting rashes can be an ongoing source of misery for the sufferer. The 2009, 7th Amendment to the Cosmetic Directive bans testing of cosmetic products and ingredients on animals meaning that there is currently no way of ensuring new products are hypoallergenic.
Researchers from Lund University in Sweden used genome-wide profiling to measure the response of a human myeloid leukemia cell line to known chemicals. From this they defined a 'biomarker signature' of 200 genes, which could accurately discriminate between sensitizing and non-sensitizing chemicals. By comparing this signature with the known action of these chemicals they were also able to use this system to predict sensitizing potency.
Prof Borrebaeck said, "REACH (Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of Chemicals) regulation requires that all new and existing chemicals within the European Union are tested for safety. The number of chemicals this includes is over 30,000 and is increasing all the time. Our lab-based alternative to animal testing, although in an early stage of production, is faster, out-performs present alternatives, and, because the cells are human in origin, is more relevant. It provides a way of ensuring the continued safety of consumers and users and, by identifying chemicals and products with low immunogenicity, reducing the suffering due to eczema."
Cell-based alternative to animal testing? Genomic biomarker signature can predict skin sensitizers, study finds
Simulation ensures green buses can hit the road on time Electronics News
The six-strong engineering team at Dongfeng Electric Vehicle (DFEV) faced a tough challenge: design, test and verify the battery management control system for the EQ6110 hybrid electric city bus — lowering The six-strong engineering team at Dongfeng Electric Vehicle (DFEV) faced a tough challenge: design, test and verify the battery management control system for the EQ6110 hybrid electric city bus – lowering emissions and improving fuel efficiency by 30 percent - and then generate production C code for the controller, in record time.The control strategies for battery management and vehicle energy management are vital for meeting the performance and fuel economy specifications of HEVs.To make things even harder, the controllers have to be optimised to suit the dynamics of individual vehicles. The Engine Control Unit (ECU) for the EQ6110 is based on a Freescale S12 microcontroller (MCU). This 16-bit Controller Area Network (CAN) device is designed specifically to look after automotive and industrial applications. Dongfeng MathWorks simulationWhile DFEV's engineers were experienced in developing the C code controller software that the MCU would run, this challenge was far more complex than others they had faced."We had just 18 months to take the initial idea to proof-of-concept and then deliver a complete product," said Dr. Xiaokang Liu, principal engineer at DFEV."But with our limited human and material resources, hand-coding was not feasible in such a short time."DFEV decided to seek help from US-based The MathWorks.The company's MATLAB, Simulink and Stateflow software allowed the DFEV engineering team to use a model-based design approach to ultimately generate and verify over a hundred thousand lines of application code for the controller looking after the battery-management system.What is model-based design?Model-based design allows engineers to construct a graphical representation of their system. But this graphical representation is more than just a visual model; it's a dynamic environment that can be exercised with inputs so that engineers can simulate what will happen under real-life operating conditions.The MathWorks Simulink software uses functional blocks that accurately mimic the precise electrical or mechanical behaviour of the device they represent.In Donfeng's case, for example, the model comprised blocks such as the internal combustion engine, electric motor, batteries, gearbox and other elements that make up a hybrid electric bus.Engineers are able to specify operational parameters for the functional block. For example, for a block that represents a DC motor, the engineer can input the stall torque and zero load speed from the maker's spec sheet.While there are many standard functional blocks supplied by The MathWorks, it's also possible for the user to create their own custom functional block. Moreover, the engineer can add physical restraints, such as energy dissipation (for example, friction) or inertia that would affect the performance of the real machine.There are also models for linkages and joints that include the Newtonian or Lagrangian mechanical equations governing their movement. This means, for example, that if an engineer is designing a six-axis robot, he doesn't have to derive the formulae describing the machine's movements from first principles.Rather, they simply need to connect the functional blocks representing the linkages, joints, pulleys and motors and then add the physical restraints to end up with a dynamic ("plant") model that will react to stimulation in exactly the same way as the real thing.Using this plant model, the control engineer can develop algorithms to achieve a desired outcome. For example, for a simple pendulum driven by an electric motor, the control algorithm might instruct the controller to apply a voltage to the motor proportional to the position of the pendulum to move it one way, reversing that voltage at the top of the swing to move the pendulum back the opposite way.The MathWorks MATLAB software provides the control engineer with access to a library of algorithms to aid the control design process. The plant model is "linearised" in MATLAB (to provide a precise representation of the plant model about a specific operating point to allow the engineer) to invoke these control algorithms. The control design is then developed (using Simulink) by observing the effect on the plant model and making changes to the algorithms until the model's behaviour meets the specification.The final step is to translate the Simulink versions of the control algorithms into the C code that runs on the silicon (for example, an MCU or DSP) that will control for the actual machine. This is a function that can be done automatically using The MathWorks software, saving many hours of expensive C programming resource. Battery-management system algorithm frame using MathWorks Simulink."Being able to observe machine behaviour is one thing, but the whole motivation is not just to observe, but to enforce a design behaviour," Bradley Horton, principal applications engineer with The MathWorks Australia, told Electronics News. "The plant model allows design engineers to develop control laws for the machine and try them out via simulation. That's 'model-based design.' There is no need to build expensive prototype hardware in order to test the control strategy," says Horton. "By simulation, Simulink and MATLAB enable control system development and early design verification."Floating to fixedOne of the keys to DFEV's success was the ability of the engineers to convert their floating-point solution to a fixed-point design. Fixed-point computation is less demanding allowing the use of a simpler MCU, reducing cost and lowering power consumption."What Dongfeng's engineers had to do was specify some fixed-point characteristics for the control law they had originally developed for floating point computation," said Horton. "That control law then has to be translated into new C code so it could run on the fixed-point controller. Knowledge of these values allows the design engineer to make fundamental decisions about the fixed point design - such as word sizes and which fractional bits to retain. Unfortunately, determining those fixed-point characteristics manually can take a lot of time," explained Horton.DFEV overcame this challenge by using the company's Simulink Fixed Point software. The engineers exercised the plant model using floating-point computation to generate some reference "base line" characteristics. Rerunning the model using Simulink then generated "suggested" operational values for the fixed-point controller design."It's simple to rerun the plant model using these suggested values to see how close the fixed-point model approaches the base line floating-point design," continued Horton. "The closer the fixed-point regime operates to this base line, the better the design. With some fine tuning by repeatedly running the simulation with slightly revised values, it's possible to get the fixed-point model virtually perfect."DFEV's engineers used Simulink Fixed Point to do the conversion from floating point to fixed point and then ran a second round of desktop simulations to verify the conversion's quality. New C code was then generated to port to the fixed-point MCU.Running on time Finally, the DFEV team deployed the code to the target ECU. Using code generated from the plant model, they ran the ECU in hardware-in-the-loop simulation to verify the controller software on the real ECU hardware. The controller was then installed in prototype vehicles for reliability and durability testing."Because it was automatically generated, the code was consistent and easier to maintain. Equally important, the code was of high quality, meeting the MISRA C guidelines we need to follow," said DFEV's Liu. "Achieving this level of consistency and quality with hand-coding would have been very difficult. By using model-based design, automatically generating code and streamlining the conversion from floating point to fixed point, a small team of six engineers completed the project ahead of schedule," he concluded.The embedded battery control system is in place on the company's more than 400 EQ6110 buses. Now DFEV's engineers are reusing parts of the controller design for the their HEV car, which is in development.emissions and improving fuel efficiency by 30 percent - and then generate production C code for the controller, in record time.Electronics News. "The plant model allows design engineers to develop control laws for the machine and try them out via simulation. That's 'model-based design.' There is no need to build expensive prototype hardware in order to test the control strategy," says Horton. "By simulation, Simulink and MATLAB enable control system development and early design verification."
Simulation ensures green buses can hit the road on time Electronics News
Simulation ensures green buses can hit the road on time Electronics News
The Internet’s transformation of electronics innovation and the maker culture Electronics News
Apple started with Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne hand-building a personal computer kit with off-the-shelf electronics.
From breadboards to potential multi-million dollar enterprises, tinkering with electronics has been a hobby for both students and professionals for some time.
But the Internet is now a massive avenue for these electronics tinkerers, incubating a large number of innovations, any of which could easily hatch into the next big thing. Understandably, the big enterprises are paying attention.
The online nature of DIY communities and the open source hardware movement means they are able to leverage the accelerated evolution of ideas encouraged by the Internet – another DIY project, for a book scanner, has seen the community build on the original idea with thousands of improvements.
And relatively open devices such as the Microsoft Xbox Kinect have seen hundreds of hacks, repurposing the system for a whole range of different applications.
Compact and highly configurable, the Arduino platform has been repurposed for a wide variety of uses, like accessories for Android, Kinect modifications, and recently, in a TAFE NSW program encouraging girls to work with electronics.
Microsoft’s move to introduce its own open-source hardware and software platform in the form of the .NET Gadgeteer is a firm step on the part of the tech giant to capitalise on this trend and compete in the space – whether the new kit can compete with the massive head-start that Arduino has is another matter altogether.
The site is host to a whole spectrum of weird and wacky concepts (albeit all subject to an approval process), but with popularity tied tightly to funding, only the most worthy will make it through the funding rounds. For those paying to fund those projects (the “backers”), a high-enough pledge gives them rewards, like first dibs at the final product.
While the site, like Instructables, caters to a wide range of interests, its Technology and Photography categories yield some highly innovative and intriguing electronic projects by budding entrepreneurs.
Some interesting projects include an open-source 8-bit synth kit, an illuminated, Arduino-based turn-indicator glove for cyclists, a heart sensor, a camera shutter trigger, an Arduino-powered stepper motor board, and solar-powered modular electronic squares which quickly snap together.
Like many other big companies, Autodesk is seeking to connect with its users and potential users on a grassroots level, and build a community which revolves around using its tools – not just the paid professional-level solutions, but free tools like 123D, SketchBook, Homestyler, and Pixlr. Instructables is a fast-track way to do that.
Free (or cheap) and flexible are key rationales behind the DIY and maker culture. At the heart of DIY is the drive to achieve functionality (whether existing or something entirely new) on a budget relatively free of the profit margins normally associated with the commercial or “professional” spheres.
Of course, the passion for DIY is not an entirely budgetary consideration – many find great satisfaction in seeing their own creations coming together and operating in a rational, planned manner.
It is also likely that as 3D printing becomes more common and accessible to non-commercial users, even more turnkey projects will become possible as maker electronics merges with object printing – think DIY gadgets with customised enclosures and parts, robots, etc.
Whatever comes, one thing is clear – tech companies are now paying attention, and the maker movement is due for a boom in commercial interest. Whatever happens, innovations will continue to flow, and tinkerers will keep tinkering.
The Internet's transformation of electronics innovation and the maker culture Electronics News
From breadboards to potential multi-million dollar enterprises, tinkering with electronics has been a hobby for both students and professionals for some time.
But the Internet is now a massive avenue for these electronics tinkerers, incubating a large number of innovations, any of which could easily hatch into the next big thing. Understandably, the big enterprises are paying attention.
Current state of flux
The big news recently was Autodesk’s acquisition of Instructables, a community dedicated to sharing DIY projects, effectively allowing anyone who is interested to apply existing, easily-accessible materials and technologies to new uses. At the time of writing, it has approximately 786 electronics projects.The online nature of DIY communities and the open source hardware movement means they are able to leverage the accelerated evolution of ideas encouraged by the Internet – another DIY project, for a book scanner, has seen the community build on the original idea with thousands of improvements.
And relatively open devices such as the Microsoft Xbox Kinect have seen hundreds of hacks, repurposing the system for a whole range of different applications.
Let’s talk platforms
It is impossible to talk about electronics innovation online without stumbling across Arduino, “an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software”.Compact and highly configurable, the Arduino platform has been repurposed for a wide variety of uses, like accessories for Android, Kinect modifications, and recently, in a TAFE NSW program encouraging girls to work with electronics.Microsoft’s move to introduce its own open-source hardware and software platform in the form of the .NET Gadgeteer is a firm step on the part of the tech giant to capitalise on this trend and compete in the space – whether the new kit can compete with the massive head-start that Arduino has is another matter altogether.
Kicking off
And let’s not neglect to mention KickStarter, a “funding platform for creative projects”. KickStarter is not DIY, of course. Rather, it seeks to leverage the financial backing of the masses to materialise ideas into real projects and objects.The site is host to a whole spectrum of weird and wacky concepts (albeit all subject to an approval process), but with popularity tied tightly to funding, only the most worthy will make it through the funding rounds. For those paying to fund those projects (the “backers”), a high-enough pledge gives them rewards, like first dibs at the final product.While the site, like Instructables, caters to a wide range of interests, its Technology and Photography categories yield some highly innovative and intriguing electronic projects by budding entrepreneurs.Some interesting projects include an open-source 8-bit synth kit, an illuminated, Arduino-based turn-indicator glove for cyclists, a heart sensor, a camera shutter trigger, an Arduino-powered stepper motor board, and solar-powered modular electronic squares which quickly snap together.
Free (or cheap) is the future
The core reason behind Autodesk’s acquisition of Instructables is because the company needed the injection of that indie innovation and passion into its own community-based sites.Like many other big companies, Autodesk is seeking to connect with its users and potential users on a grassroots level, and build a community which revolves around using its tools – not just the paid professional-level solutions, but free tools like 123D, SketchBook, Homestyler, and Pixlr. Instructables is a fast-track way to do that.
Free (or cheap) and flexible are key rationales behind the DIY and maker culture. At the heart of DIY is the drive to achieve functionality (whether existing or something entirely new) on a budget relatively free of the profit margins normally associated with the commercial or “professional” spheres.
Of course, the passion for DIY is not an entirely budgetary consideration – many find great satisfaction in seeing their own creations coming together and operating in a rational, planned manner.
It is also likely that as 3D printing becomes more common and accessible to non-commercial users, even more turnkey projects will become possible as maker electronics merges with object printing – think DIY gadgets with customised enclosures and parts, robots, etc.
Whatever comes, one thing is clear – tech companies are now paying attention, and the maker movement is due for a boom in commercial interest. Whatever happens, innovations will continue to flow, and tinkerers will keep tinkering.
The Internet's transformation of electronics innovation and the maker culture Electronics News
Siano Mobile, Mobile TV, DiBcom, Telegent, Spreadtrum, Connecting the dots in mobile TV: Siano…DiBcom…Telegent
NEW YORK – We might have gotten this wrong all along.
Mobile TV, after all, isn’t really about mobile phones. It’s about TV receivers that go into automobiles, media tablets, even home TVs and any other existing or yet-to-emerge products.
Siano Mobile Silicon, a Netanya, Israel-based supplier of mobile digital TV receiver chips, is announcing Monday (Aug. 8th) a design win with a major German automobile manufacturer who is rolling out new models equipped with Hirschmann Car Communication GmbH (HCC)’s latest automotive TV reception system -- powered by Siano.
During EE Times’ recent phone conversation with Alon Ironi, CEO of Siano, it was clear that Ironi still remains very committed to the mobile TV market the world over. Siano receiver chips are designed to cover various digital TV standards in different regions worldwide – DVB-T for Europe and Australia, CMMB for China. The same architecture supports ISDB-T for Japan and South America.
It’s even clearer that Siano is expanding its market well beyond mobile handsets. The company is pushing its chips in automotive (as seen in the latest announcement) as well as home digital TV markets in countries like Brazil.
Pursuing multi-standards and multi-markets is becoming a key strategy for fledgling mobile TV chip companies, as a matter of their survival.
Let’s face it. Mobile TV, once viewed as “the next big thing” for mobile phones, seems to have faded into obscurity – at least in the United States, where Qualcomm shut down its FLO TV operations last fall, and where the ATSC mobile broadcast has yet to take off.
Is it just my imagination or is it a fact?
Here are some data points that serve to clarify the situation.
Early July, a rumor started about the uncertain future of Telegent Systems Inc., once a high-flying startup of mobile TV receiver chips for cell phones (with a large engineering team in China). The obvious first question everyone asked was whether the initial enthusiasm for mobile TV on cell phones has already run its course, even in China.
Evidently, not quite.
Sources insist that the Chinese mobile TV market is still alive and well, especially products based on the China Multimedia Mobile Broadcasting (CMMB) standard backed by China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT). The demand for analog TV receivers, however, has been waning. Telegent’s struggle had much to do with the spectacular price slippage in a very competitive Chinese market.
Then, Spreadtrum Communications, Shanghai-based fabless developer of baseband and RF chips for wireless communications market, announced on July 19th that it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Telegent.
How the deal is structured and how much Spreadtrum actually paid for Telegent (if anything) remains undisclosed.
Then, less than 10 days later of the Spreadtrum/Telegent announcement, Paris-based firm called Parrot said that it is buying DiBcom, a leading mobile TV chip vendor based in Palaiseau, the suburbs of Paris. Parrot, focused on the development of hands-free wireless systems for cars, motorbikes and scooters, is said to be interested in using DiBcom’s expertise in the multi-standard digital radio and television field – and its broader customer base – in the automotive sector.
The Parrot/DiBcom transaction, according to Parrot’s announcement on July 28th, consists of 15.9 million euro to purchase share capital and a net debt buyback (initially mainly convertible bonds) for approximately 12 million euro.
That price tag, in a nutshell, tells the whole story.
Next: Fire sales
Siano Mobile, Mobile TV, DiBcom, Telegent, Spreadtrum, Connecting the dots in mobile TV: Siano…DiBcom…Telegent
Mobile TV, after all, isn’t really about mobile phones. It’s about TV receivers that go into automobiles, media tablets, even home TVs and any other existing or yet-to-emerge products.
Siano Mobile Silicon, a Netanya, Israel-based supplier of mobile digital TV receiver chips, is announcing Monday (Aug. 8th) a design win with a major German automobile manufacturer who is rolling out new models equipped with Hirschmann Car Communication GmbH (HCC)’s latest automotive TV reception system -- powered by Siano.
During EE Times’ recent phone conversation with Alon Ironi, CEO of Siano, it was clear that Ironi still remains very committed to the mobile TV market the world over. Siano receiver chips are designed to cover various digital TV standards in different regions worldwide – DVB-T for Europe and Australia, CMMB for China. The same architecture supports ISDB-T for Japan and South America.
It’s even clearer that Siano is expanding its market well beyond mobile handsets. The company is pushing its chips in automotive (as seen in the latest announcement) as well as home digital TV markets in countries like Brazil.
Pursuing multi-standards and multi-markets is becoming a key strategy for fledgling mobile TV chip companies, as a matter of their survival.
Let’s face it. Mobile TV, once viewed as “the next big thing” for mobile phones, seems to have faded into obscurity – at least in the United States, where Qualcomm shut down its FLO TV operations last fall, and where the ATSC mobile broadcast has yet to take off.
Is it just my imagination or is it a fact?
Here are some data points that serve to clarify the situation.
Early July, a rumor started about the uncertain future of Telegent Systems Inc., once a high-flying startup of mobile TV receiver chips for cell phones (with a large engineering team in China). The obvious first question everyone asked was whether the initial enthusiasm for mobile TV on cell phones has already run its course, even in China.
Evidently, not quite.
Sources insist that the Chinese mobile TV market is still alive and well, especially products based on the China Multimedia Mobile Broadcasting (CMMB) standard backed by China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT). The demand for analog TV receivers, however, has been waning. Telegent’s struggle had much to do with the spectacular price slippage in a very competitive Chinese market.
Then, Spreadtrum Communications, Shanghai-based fabless developer of baseband and RF chips for wireless communications market, announced on July 19th that it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Telegent.
How the deal is structured and how much Spreadtrum actually paid for Telegent (if anything) remains undisclosed.
Then, less than 10 days later of the Spreadtrum/Telegent announcement, Paris-based firm called Parrot said that it is buying DiBcom, a leading mobile TV chip vendor based in Palaiseau, the suburbs of Paris. Parrot, focused on the development of hands-free wireless systems for cars, motorbikes and scooters, is said to be interested in using DiBcom’s expertise in the multi-standard digital radio and television field – and its broader customer base – in the automotive sector.
The Parrot/DiBcom transaction, according to Parrot’s announcement on July 28th, consists of 15.9 million euro to purchase share capital and a net debt buyback (initially mainly convertible bonds) for approximately 12 million euro.
That price tag, in a nutshell, tells the whole story.
Next: Fire sales
Siano Mobile, Mobile TV, DiBcom, Telegent, Spreadtrum, Connecting the dots in mobile TV: Siano…DiBcom…Telegent
In-Vehicle Infotainment, Automotive, Infotainment, GENIVI, IVI, Atom, Cortex, Intel, ARM GENIVI compliance promises multimedia experience
The first platforms compliant with the GENIVI specification have been announcd, marking the first availability of software products intended to standardise in-vehicle-infotainment (IVI) systems across car models and manufacturers. Four members have announced solutions that have been certified compliant by GENIVI, targeting Intel's Atom and ARM's Cortex-A series processors.
The GENIVI specification is a Linux-based platform which aims to simplify the process of developing and qualifying an infotainment system, while promoting compatibility throughout the automotive industry. The drive for platforms with common features should encourage more companies to develop IVI systems or sub-systems.
The first four compliant solutions come from Wind River, Mentor Graphics, Cononical and Monta Vista. Each targets features that are today more commonly found in leading consumer devices, such as 3D graphics, connectivity and improved user interfaces. It promises to deliver to the driver what is becoming familiar in other areas of personal and home entertainment; a multimedia experience with comprehensive connectivity.
According to GENIVI, automotive OEMs are now specifying GENIVI compliance in their requests for proposals (RFP) for future infotainment systems, which means software suppliers must now demonstrate they meet the compliance requirements.
This article originally appeared on EE Times Europe.
In-Vehicle Infotainment, Automotive, Infotainment, GENIVI, IVI, Atom, Cortex, Intel, ARM GENIVI compliance promises multimedia experience
Live Traffic, Google Maps, Google, Ios, Android Google brings live traffic info to Google Maps
Internet giant Google has joined the crowd of service vendors for the apparently rather attractive market for live traffic information. Beginning mid-July, the company has started to offer this information in 13 European countries. The data are available in Google Maps, Google Maps for mobile phones (Android and iOS platforms).
The information is updated at least every 10 minutes. The data are acquired from a third-party service provider and to a lesser extent by crowdsourcing, the company said. With the move, Google starts to compete with existing traffic information systems including TMC, TMC Pro and similar services throughout Europe.
"Our goal is to continuously generate the best maps available in the market", a company spokesperson said. "For this reason, we are looking to ways to augment Google Maps with additional new information." She added that the service is also available for the Beta release of Google Maps Navigation.
The service is available in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Israel, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Spain and Switzerland.
This article originally appeared on EE Times Europe.
Live Traffic, Google Maps, Google, Ios, Android Google brings live traffic info to Google Maps
Heinrich Hertz Institute, Visible Light Communication, LED Light, Broadband Communication, Wireless, Broadband, Fraunhofer, LED Heinrich Hertz Institute shows broadband communication from the LED ceiling light
With its Visible Light Communication (VLC) technology, the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute intends to present a novel method of broadband transmission at the upcoming IFA 2011 trade fair.
Using standard off-the-shelf LED lights, broadband data streams are transmitted in visible light to computers and other end devices with communication-capability. The broadband transmission speed is 100 Mbits/s; in the lab speeds of up to 800 Mbit/s have already been achieved. This transmission technique, which uses the energy-efficient electronics of LED technology, is ideal for both distribution of broadband video streams and two-way communication – from internet usage to video conferencing, the researchers say.
The optical wireless technology can be deployed in situations where wireless LAN is uncalled for – for instance, in hospitals or manufacturing processes. Basically, however, the areas of application can be in any place where LED technology is used.
Using visible light has the further advantage that data can only be transmitted and accessed within the visible light cone itself. The fundamentals of Visible Light Communication were developed by Fraunhofer HHI in association with its industry partners Siemens and France Telecom Orange Labs within the framework of the EU OMEGA project.
For more information, visit http://http://www.hhi.fraunhofer.de.
This article originally appeared on EE Times Europe.
Heinrich Hertz Institute, Visible Light Communication, LED Light, Broadband Communication, Wireless, Broadband, Fraunhofer, LED Heinrich Hertz Institute shows broadband communication from the LED ceiling light
Energy harvesting, Wireless Sensor, Smart Grid, WSN, IDTechEx Energy harvesting could reach a USD4.4 billion market in 2021
In 2011, IDTechEx research finds that the amount of money spent on energy harvesters will be USD0.7Bn, with several hundred developers involved throughout the value chain. Energy harvesting is the process by which ambient energy is captured and converted into electricity for small autonomous devices, such as satellites, laptops and nodes in sensor networks making them self-sufficient. Energy harvesting applications reach from vehicles to the smart grid.
Energy harvesting, Wireless Sensor, Smart Grid, WSN, IDTechEx Energy harvesting could reach a USD4.4 billion market in 2021
The majority of the value this year is in consumer electronic applications, where energy harvesters have been used for some time. In 2011, 1.6 million energy harvesters will be used in wireless sensors, resulting in $13.75 million being spent on those harvesters. The full breakdown is shown below, the figures represent millions of US dollars.
The Energy Harvesting Market in 2011 $0.7Bn. Source: IDTechEx report Energy Harvesting & Storage for Electronic Devices 2011-2021
Energy harvesting by technology type
This year, most of the harvesters used in the above market segments are solar cells followed by electrodynamos, two relatively mature energy harvesting technologies. However, many new technologies are now taking some market share enabling power in areas not possible before. This includes thermoelectrics - generating power from heat - where organisations such as the Department of Energy in the US are working with BMW and GM to turn heat waste from engines and exhaust into power for the vehicle's electrical systems.
NASA use thermoelectrics to power Mars rovers where they work without light, unlike solar cells. Piezoelectric energy harvesters are also of great interest due to their small form factor and high efficiency. In 2021, these four energy harvester types will have near similar market share for industrial sensing applications. However, even by then solar will continue to dominate for consumer applications.
Challenges in the value chain
The value chain
In recent years the thrust of focus for those developing energy harvesters is powering wireless sensors. Energy harvester powered wireless sensors are now available, but there is some delay in adoption of wireless sensors which is outside the control of the energy harvesting community, which is the lack of standards - too many are pushing proprietary wireless standards and users are unwilling to commit to large numbers as a result. Still too many sell hardware and not full solutions which should include the software (do they expect users to write their own software?).
Governments are moving rapidly, and could mandate the use of energy harvesting as they have with smart meters, RFID, PV etc. For example, new legislation in the UK requires carbon monoxide sensors in every classroom. In the US, the government want automatic tyre pressure monitoring. Conventional batteries will fail at low temperatures - several are now offering energy harvesting powered solutions.
The topic has also expanded into replacing grid energy locally. Several companies have developed paving tiles that generate energy when stood on, which could be used to power or supplement the power to street lighting, for instance. In addition, the new range of form factors are incredibly exciting.
The Market in 2021
This will all galvanise into a market of USD4.4 Billion ten years from now - that is the money spent on the energy harvesting component alone. That includes 250 million sensors powered by an energy harvester (at an average price of USD6 per harvester), and by then numerous consumer electronics devices including laptops, ebooks and cell phones.
This article originally appeared on EE Times Europe.
Energy harvesting, Wireless Sensor, Smart Grid, WSN, IDTechEx Energy harvesting could reach a USD4.4 billion market in 2021
Home Area Network, ZigBee Alliance, Texas Instruments, Zigbee, Smart Energy, Z-Stack, HAN TI achieves certification of ZigBee Alliance's Smart Energy 1.1 profile implementation
Texas Instruments Incorporated has achieved ZigBee Certified status for its ZigBee Smart Energy 1.1 standard implementation, recently introduced by the ZigBee Alliance. TI is making available the company's new Z-Stack 2.5.0 with support for ZigBee Smart Energy 1.1, geared towards home area networks (HAN).
Proving its leadership in the development of low-power wireless applications such as industrial monitoring and control, smart metering, building automation and more, TI's ZigBee Smart Energy 1.1 profile gives developers the confidence and means necessary to interoperate with various implementations. TI's Z-Stack 2.5.0 with ZigBee Smart Energy 1.1 is available royalty-free to all using TI's ZigBee-compliant hardware platforms.
Laurent Giai-Miniet, TI's managing director, Low-Power RF business unit, said: "Our new Z-Stack 2.5.0 will unleash a wider range of interoperable, consumer-friendly HAN products for monitoring things such as energy consumption – a key requirement for the U.S. Department of Energy Smart Grid program and initiatives out of the European Union. We will also continue to deliver Smart Energy-compliant software for future generations, including the forthcoming SEP 2.0."
The Z-Stack 2.5.0 is available from http://www.ti.com, royalty-free to all using TI's ZigBee compliant hardware platforms. TI's ZigBee development kits are available on TI's e-store.
The kits contain additional nodes for experimenting with the mesh capabilities of ZigBee, and are preprogrammed with a ZigBee demo application, giving customers ZigBee directly out of the box. A specific kit also demonstrates the concept with a CC2530 running the Z-Stack and a small MSP microcontroller running the application code.
Visit Texas Instruments at http://www.ti.com/zigbee-pr.
This article originally appeared on EE Times Europe.
Home Area Network, ZigBee Alliance, Texas Instruments, Zigbee, Smart Energy, Z-Stack, HAN TI achieves certification of ZigBee Alliance's Smart Energy 1.1 profile implementation
New conducting properties discovered in bacteria-produced wires
Their findings reported in the Aug. 7 advance online issue of Nature Nanotechnology may one day lead to cheaper, nontoxic nanomaterials for biosensors and solid state electronics that interface with biological systems.
Lead microbiologist Derek Lovley with physicists Mark Tuominen, Nikhil Malvankar and colleagues, say networks of bacterial filaments, known as microbial nanowires because they conduct electrons along their length, can move charges as efficiently as synthetic organic metallic nanostructures, and they do it over remarkable distances, thousands of times the bacterium's length.
Networks of microbial nanowires coursing through biofilms, which are cohesive aggregates of billions of cells, give this biological material conductivity comparable to that found in synthetic conducting polymers, which are used commonly in the electronics industry.
Lovley says, "The ability of protein filaments to conduct electrons in this way is a paradigm shift in biology and has ramifications for our understanding of natural microbial processes as well as practical implications for environmental clean-up and the development of renewable energy sources."
The discovery represents a fundamental change in understanding of biofilms, Malvankar adds. "In this species, the biofilm contains proteins that behave like a metal, conducting electrons over a very long distance, basically as far as you can extend the biofilm."
Tuominen, the lead physicist, adds, "This discovery not only puts forward an important new principle in biology but in materials science. We can now investigate a range of new conducting nanomaterials that are living, naturally occurring, nontoxic, easier to produce and less costly than human-made. They may even allow us to use electronics in water and moist environments. It opens exciting opportunities for biological and energy applications that were not possible before."
The researchers report that this is the first time metallic-like conduction of electrical charge along a protein filament has been observed. It was previously thought that such conduction would require a mechanism involving a series of other proteins known as cytochromes, with electrons making short hops from cytochrome to cytochrome. By contrast, the UMass Amherst team has demonstrated long-range conduction in the absence of cytochromes. The Geobacter filaments function like a true wire.
In nature, Geobacter use their microbial nanowires to transfer electrons onto iron oxides, natural rust-like minerals in soil, that for Geobacter serve the same function as oxygen does for humans. "What Geobacter can do with its nanowires is akin to breathing through a snorkel that's 10 kilometers long," says Malvankar.
The UMass Amherst group had proposed in a 2005 paper in Nature that Geobacter's nanowires might represent a fundamental new property in biology, but they didn't have a mechanism, so were met with considerable skepticism. To continue experimenting, Lovley and colleagues took advantage of the fact that in the laboratory Geobacter will grow on electrodes, which replace the iron oxides. On electrodes, the bacteria produce thick, electrically conductive biofilms. In a series of studies with genetically modified strains, the researchers found the metallic-like conductivity in the biofilm could be attributed to a network of nanowires spreading throughout the biofilm.
These special structures are tunable in a way not seen before, the UMass Amherst researchers found. Tuominen points out that it's well known in the nanotechnology community that artificial nanowire properties can be changed by altering their surroundings. Geobacter's natural approach is unique in allowing scientists to manipulate conducting properties by simply changing the temperature or regulating gene expression to create a new strain, for example. Malvankar adds that by introducing a third electrode, a biofilm can act like a biological transistor, able to be switched on or off by applying a voltage.
Another advantage Geobacter offers is its ability to produce natural materials that are more eco-friendly and quite a bit less expensive than human-made. Quite a few of today's nanotech materials are expensive to produce, many requiring rare elements, says Tuominen. Geobacter is a true natural alternative. "As someone who studies materials, I see the nanowires in this biofilm as a new material, one that just happens to be made by nature. It's exciting that it might bridge the gap between solid state electronics and biological systems. It is biocompatible in a way we haven't seen before."
Lovley quips, "We're basically making electronics out of vinegar. It can't get much cheaper or more 'green' than that."
New conducting properties discovered in bacteria-produced wires
2011-08-06
What shapes a bone? Diet and genetics dictate adult jaw shape
ScienceDaily (Aug. 5, 2011) — Researchers at Johns Hopkins found that use over time and not just genetics informs the structure of jaw bones in human populations. The researchers say these findings may be used to predict the diet of an ancient population, even if little evidence exists in the fossil record. It can also make it easier for scientists to pinpoint the genetic relationship between fossils.
Their results were published online June 23 in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
"Our research aimed to see how much of the mandible's -- or jaw bone's -- shape is plastic, a response to environmental influences, such as diet, and how much is genetic. We used archaeological jaw bones from two different regions to answer that question," explains Megan Holmes, graduate student at the Johns Hopkins Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution, and lead author of the paper. "Before we can make inferences about what the shape of a bone tells us, like what environment the individual lived in, who it's related to or what it ate, we have to understand what creates that shape. The idea that function influences the shape of jaw bones is great for the archeological record in terms of discovering the diet of a population, and it's also really useful for reconstructing the fossil record -- finding which fossils are related to which, and how."
The group chose to study the Arikara and Point Hope American Indian populations, since they were genetically isolated from other groups and ate different diets. They investigated bones from the regions dating back to the 1600s and 1700s, times for which the diets are known from other records. The Point Hope population in Alaska ate a "hard" diet that included tough dried meat. They also used their teeth for a variety of nonfood-related tasks, such as stripping leather. The Arikara, from the Dakota area of the United States, ate a softer diet, which consisted of farming supplemented with light hunting.
The researchers precisely measured jaw bones from 63 members of the Point Hope population and 42 individuals from the Arikara population using an X-ray gun as well as calipers, and they used those measurements to extrapolate the proportions of the entire jaw. "The jaw bones were similar in children before they were old enough to start chewing, but different in adulthood, which implies that this divergence is likely a functional result of their diet and the use of their jaw, rather than genetics," says Holmes.
The changes to the jaw bones were explained using a theory drawn from engineering, which directly relates the geometry of a bone to the stresses put on it during use. The team was able to investigate very specific parts of the jaw bones and relate them to specific dietary habits. In the Point Hope population, for example, they found round, wide jaw bones -- a result of having to exert more force to chew a harder diet. The Arikara, on the other hand, did not show this expansion, which they attributed to the lighter chewing requirement of a softer diet.
"Genetics creates a blueprint of the bone, but a lot of things influence the bone's construction," says Holmes. "Mechanical pressure from muscle stress and strain from day-to-day activities can remodel the bone's surface and internal structure. Knowing how much the shape of a mandible we find is related to diet and how much genetically connects it to fossils found elsewhere can really help us parse out the family tree."
This study was funded by the Johns Hopkins Center of Functional Anatomy and Evolution.
Christopher B. Ruff, Ph.D., also of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine's Center of Functional Anatomy and Evolution, was the faculty advisor and co-author of the study.
What shapes a bone? Diet and genetics dictate adult jaw shape
Did past climate change encourage tree-killing fungi?
The researchers do not rule out the possibility that today's changing climate could cause a similar increase in pathogenic soil bacteria that could devastate forests already stressed by a warming climate and pollution.
The study, available online Aug. 5, will be published in the September 2011 print edition of the journal Geology of the Geological Society of America.
The death of the forests -- primarily composed of conifers, which are distant relatives of today's pines and firs -- was part of the largest extinction of life on Earth, which occurred when today's continents were part of one supercontinent, Pangaea. The so-called Permian extinction likely was triggered by immense volcanic eruptions in what is now Siberia. The huge amounts of gas and dust thrown into the atmosphere altered global climate, and some 95 percent of marine organisms and 70 percent of land organisms eventually went extinct.
The scientists claim that thread-like or filamentous microfossils commonly preserved in Permian rock are relatives of a group of fungi, Rhizoctonia, that today is known for members that attack and kill plants.
"Modern Rhizoctonia include some of the most ubiquitous plant pathogens, causing root, stem and foliar diseases in a wide variety of plants," said coauthor Cindy Looy, UC Berkeley assistant professor of integrative biology. "Based on patterns of present-day forest decline, it is likely that fungal disease has been an essential accessory in woodland destabilization, accelerating widespread tree mortality during the end-Permian crisis."
The conifer forests, which covered the semi-arid equatorial region of Pangaea, were eventually replaced by lycopods -- four foot-tall relatives of today's diminutive club mosses -- as well as by seed ferns (pteridosperms). The conifers didn't recover for another 4 to 5 million years.
Looy and her colleagues -- Henk Visscher of the Laboratory of Palaeobotany and Palynology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and Mark Sephton of the Impacts and Astromaterials Research Centre at Imperial College, London -- caution that today's changing climate could also lead to increased activity of pathogenic soil microbes that could accelerate the death of trees already stressed by higher temperatures and drought.
"Pathogenic fungi are important elements of all forest ecosystems," said Visscher. "When an entire forest becomes weakened by environmental stress factors, onslaught of damaging fungal diseases can result in large-scale tissue death and tree mortality."
The researchers dispute the conclusion of other researchers who claim that the thread-like microfossils are the remains of algae. Furthermore, while the researchers previously thought that Reduviasporonites were fungi that took advantage of dying forests, they now believe the fungi actively helped destroy the forests.
"Previously, mass occurrences of Reduviasporonites had been ascribed to wood-rotting fungi living off an excessive abundance of dead wood," said Looy, a paleobotanist who focuses on pollen and spores as keys to understanding past plant communities. "However, the notion that the microfossils represent Rhizoctonia-like resting structures suggest a much more active role for fungi in the ecological crisis:"
The researchers' conclusion comes largely from the fact that they have found living fungi in the genus Rhizoctonia that have a dormant or resting stage during their life cycles in which they look nearly identical to Reduviasporonites.
"One of our problems was that the microfossils didn't resemble the hyphae of known fungi," Looy said. "Buta few years ago, we realized that we were looking in the wrong direction; that we should have been looking at fungal resting structures, not normal hyphae."
Fungi typically spread by means of thread-like hyphae, which can form immense underground networks of mycelia, especially in forests where the fungi live in a symbiotic relationship with tree roots. Each filament is a chain of cells with hard walls made of chitin, the same substance that insects use for their exoskeleton.
When these hyphae branch and intertwine, they may form resting structures known assclerotia. Sclerotia of modern soil-borne fungi such as Rhizoctonia look nearly identical to the disc-shaped structures found among the Reduviasporonites microfossils. Sclerotia are energy storage structures that can help fungi survive extreme conditions.
The team concluded that the loss of trees and the roots that hold soil in place led to severe topsoil erosion, which carried the sclerotia to the sea.
The researchers acknowledge that conifer forests probably suffered from other environmental stresses as a result of the long-term volcanic eruptions, which spewed carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere and likely destroyed some of Earth's protective ozone layer. Nevertheless, they wrote in their paper, "… whatever (the) sequence of events that triggered ecosystem destabilization on land, the aggressiveness of soil-borne pathogenic fungi must have been an integral factor involved in Late Permian forest decline worldwide."
The work was funded by Utrecht University, Imperial College London and the University of California, Berkeley.
Did past climate change encourage tree-killing fungi?
Discovery points way to graphene circuits: Materials scientists find new way to control electronic properties of graphene 'alloys'
Graphene's stock shot sky-high last year when the nanomaterial attracted the Nobel Prize in physics. Graphene is a layer of carbon atoms that is just one atom thick. When stacked atop one another, graphene sheets form graphite, the material found in pencils the world over. Thanks to the tools of nanotechnology, scientists today can make, manipulate and study graphene with ease. Its unique properties make it ideal for creating faster, more energy-efficient computers and other nanoelectronic devices.
But there are hurdles. To make tiny circuits out of graphene, engineers need to find ways to create intricate patterns of graphene that are separated by a similarly thin nonconductive material. One possible solution is "white graphene," one-atom-thick sheets of boron and nitrogen that are physically similar to graphene but are electrically nonconductive.
In a new paper in the journal Nano Letters, Rice materials scientist Boris Yakobson and colleagues describe a discovery that could make it possible for nanoelectronic designers to use well-understood chemical procedures to precisely control the electronic properties of "alloys" that contain both white and black graphene.
"We found there was a direct relationship between the useful properties of the final product and the chemical conditions that exist while it is being made," Yakobson said. "If more boron is available during chemical synthesis, that leads to alloys with a certain type of geometric arrangement of atoms. The beauty of the finding is that we can precisely predict the electronic properties of the final product based solely upon the conditions -- technically speaking, the so-called 'chemical potential' -- during synthesis."
Yakobson said it took about one year for him and his students to understand exactly the distribution of energy transferred between each atom of carbon, boron and nitrogen during the formation of the "alloys." This precise level of understanding of the "bonding energies" between atoms, and how it is assigned to particular edges and interfaces, was vital to developing a direct link from synthesis to morphology and to useful product.
With interest in graphene running high, Yakobson said, the new study has garnered attention far and wide. Graduate student Yuanyue Liu, the study's lead co-author, is part of a five-student delegation that just returned from a weeklong visit to Tsinghua University in Beijing. Yakobson said the visit was part of an ongoing collaboration between Tsinghua researchers and colleagues in Rice's George R. Brown School of Engineering.
Rice postdoctoral fellow Somnath Bhowmick also co-authored the paper. The research was funded by the Department of Energy and the Office of Naval Research, and the computational resources were supported by the National Institute for Computational Sciences and the National Science Foundation.
Discovery points way to graphene circuits: Materials scientists find new way to control electronic properties of graphene 'alloys'
NASA's Juno spacecraft launches to Jupiter
Juno's detailed study of the largest planet in our solar system will help reveal Jupiter's origin and evolution. As the archetype of giant gas planets, Jupiter can help scientists understand the origin of our solar system and learn more about planetary systems around other stars.
"Today, with the launch of the Juno spacecraft, NASA began a journey to yet another new frontier," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "The future of exploration includes cutting-edge science like this to help us better understand our solar system and an ever-increasing array of challenging destinations."
After Juno's launch aboard an Atlas V rocket, mission controllers now await telemetry from the spacecraft indicating it has achieved its proper orientation, and that its massive solar arrays, the biggest on any NASA deep-space probe, have deployed and are generating power.
"We are on our way, and early indications show we are on our planned trajectory," said Jan Chodas, Juno project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We will know more about Juno's status in a couple hours after its radios are energized and the signal is acquired by the Deep Space Network antennas at Canberra."
Juno will cover the distance from Earth to the moon (about 250,000 miles or 402,336 kilometers) in less than one day's time. It will take another five years and 1,740 million miles (2,800 million kilometers) to complete the journey to Jupiter. The spacecraft will orbit the planet's poles 33 times and use its collection of eight science instruments to probe beneath the gas giant's obscuring cloud cover to learn more about its origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere, and look for a potential solid planetary core.
With four large moons and many smaller moons, Jupiter forms its own miniature solar system. Its composition resembles that of a star, and if it had been about 80 times more massive, the planet could have become a star instead.
"Jupiter is the Rosetta Stone of our solar system," said Scott Bolton, Juno's principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "It is by far the oldest planet, contains more material than all the other planets, asteroids and comets combined, and carries deep inside it the story of not only the solar system but of us. Juno is going there as our emissary -- to interpret what Jupiter has to say."
Juno's name comes from Greek and Roman mythology. The god Jupiter drew a veil of clouds around himself to hide his mischief, and his wife, the goddess Juno, was able to peer through the clouds and reveal Jupiter's true nature.
The NASA Deep Space Network -- or DSN -- is an international network of antennas that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions and radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the solar system and the universe. The network also supports selected Earth-orbiting missions.
JPL manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. The Juno mission is part of the New Frontiers Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft. Launch management for the mission is the responsibility of NASA's Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
For more information about Juno, visit http://www.nasa.gov/juno and http://missionjuno.swri.edu .
NASA's Juno spacecraft launches to Jupiter
IBM, Watson, Palmisano, Research IBM CEO: How to live to be 100
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – In a speech commemorating IBM's 100th anniversary, chief executive Samuel J. Palmisano said companies need to deliver value, collaborate broadly and embrace change to survive the long haul.
Only a handful companies have lasted as long as Big Blue. Just two of the top 25 U.S. industrial firms of 1900 remained when IBM turned 50 in 1961, and only six of the top 25 Fortune 500 companies of that year remain in business today.
"We're off to the best year in 100 years and our stock is at a 100-year high even after the sell off today," said Palmisano in a talk at the Computer History Museum Thursday night.
Linking research and development is one key to success, said the IBM CEO. "You have to turn discovery into profits, that’s the fundamental role of a company," he said.
In an era of crowd-sourcing, Palmisano lobbied for the importance of basic research as fundamental to success. "Today we need deep science more than ever, serious highly institutionalized research and collaborations that are multidisciplinary," he said.
"Competition is a wonderful stimulant, but it's not sufficient," Palmisano said. "The wild West of competition needs to be complemented with collaboration even between competitors," he added.
The IBM executive quoted a 1962 speech by Thomas Watson Jr. highlighting another key pillar of success.
A company must be prepared to change everything about itself except its core beliefs, Watson said. That means companies should never define themselves by a product, technology or a business model, but only by their corporate values, said Palmisano, only the ninth chief executive in IBM's history.
IBM has not always embraced change boldly, the CEO said. "In the '90's we held on to the mainframe business model long after it was obsolete," he said.
When it finally did jettison the "old mainframe model of entitlement" it meant slashing the IBM workforce from 412,000 to 214,000 people. "That’s structural change," said Palmisano.
"We're back to 426,000 people today, so there's life after a change of business model," he said. Indeed, "in our last quarter our mainframe business was up 50 percent, so it's hardly dead," he added.
More recently IBM jettisoned its hard disk drive and PC businesses when they became commodities, selling them to Japan's Hitachi and China's Lenovo respectively. "The key is don’t get wedded to your successes in a business model or technology," he said.
Not all of IBM's history was glamorous or high tech. The company sold clocks and cheese slicers in 1914. "We had one hell of a cheese slicer," Palmisano quipped.
It also had bombs like the PC Junior and OS/2 operating system.
"We haven’t been known as a marketing company," said Palmisano. "There's an old joke that IBM products aren’t launched, they just escape from the lab," he said.
"We have another principle that’s called 'Sam wants his money back,'" he joked.
For example, the artificial intelligence researchers that got millions to build the Watson system that beat human contestants in "Jeopardy" are gearing up to make their return on that investment. Their work will be productized next year for applications in finance and a physician's assistant, he said.
IBM, Watson, Palmisano, Research IBM CEO: How to live to be 100
Tzu-Yin Chiu, David Wang, Richard Chang, Hua Hong, SMIC, TSMC CEO, semiconductor, foundry SMIC appoints TSMC veteran as CEO
LONDON – Foundry chip company Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. has appointed Tzu-Yin Chiu as CEO with immediate effect. The appointment of Chiu should resolve uncertainties that began as a result of the death of former chairman Jiang Shang Zhou.
Trading in shares in SMIC (Shanghai, China) ceased at the company's request on June 30, after SMIC reported the death of its chairman and that the company's president and CEO David Wang had failed to win re-election to its board of directors. In July Wenyi Zhang was appointed chairman of the board of directors and interim CEO.
The incoming Chiu, aged 55, has a prestigious academic record and 27 years of experience in the semiconductor foundry business. However, Chiu could be set to have a difficult start at SMIC as the foundry industry is widely tipped to be about to go into an oversupply situation. This usually affects smaller foundries, such as SMIC sooner and longer than it does market leader Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd.
Chiu has experience of both companies having begun his foundry career at TSMC and spent four years at SMIC between 2001 and 2005. SMIC was founded in 2000 by Richard Chang.
Chiu earned his bachelor's degree in electrical and system's Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California at Berkeley. He received an EMBA degree from Columbia University in New York and began his professional career as a research scientist at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, where he rose to become the department head for high-speed electronics research.
Chiu then joined Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. as senior director of fab operations. Chiu subsequently joined SMIC and served as senior vice president of operations from 2001 to 2005. He was chief operating officer at Hua Hong International Management Shanghai Co. Ltd. to 2007 and president and COO of Silterra Malaysia Sdn. Bhd from 2007 to 2009. Chiu was president and CEO of Shanghai Hua Hong NEC Electronics Co. Ltd. from 2009 to 2011.
Chiu also served as an independent director of Actions Semiconductor Co. Ltd. from 2005 to 2009. He holds ten semiconductor technology patents, and has published more than thirty technical articles.
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Tzu-Yin Chiu, David Wang, Richard Chang, Hua Hong, SMIC, TSMC CEO, semiconductor, foundry SMIC appoints TSMC veteran as CEO
2011-08-05
MIPS, IP, processor, semiconductor, financial, results MIPS' fourth quarter disappoints
LONDON – Processor intellectual property licensor MIPS Technologies Inc. turned in a disappointing set of financial results for the second quarter of 2011 which was its own fourth fiscal quarter. Both revenue and net income were down from the same quarter a year before.
MIPS (Sunnyvale, Calif.) made a net income of $728,000 in its fourth fiscal quarter compared with net incomes of $3.4 million in the prior quarter and a net income of $5.9 million in the same quarter a year before. Fiscal fourth quarter revenue was $17.6 million, compared with $23.3 million in the year ago period. Revenue from royalties was $11.8 million, a decrease of 5 percent from the fourth quarter of FY10. License revenue was $5.8 million, a decrease of 47 percent from the $10.9 million reported in the fourth quarter a year ago.
"We had strong results for our fiscal year, but our fourth quarter proved to be more challenging than we expected. Despite macroeconomic uncertainty, we remain confident in the market opportunity, and we are taking the steps necessary to achieve long-term success," said Sandeep Vij, chief executive officer, MIPS Technologies, in a statement.
For the full fiscal year revenue was $82.0 million, a year-to-year increase of 16 percent. Licensee royalty units grew to 656 million units from 510 million units in the previous financial year. The non-GAAP net income was $22.9 million, up 30 percent year-to-year and cash and investment balances ended the fiscal year at $109.4 million, a year-to-year increase of $57.0 million.
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MIPS, IP, processor, semiconductor, financial, results MIPS' fourth quarter disappoints
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