Embedded Systems

Fujitsu has launched a 4Mbit ferroelectric RAM (FRAM) with a quad SPI interface at Embedded World in Nuremberg. Called, MB85RQ4ML, with its four bi-directional I/O pins operating at 108MHz it can reach a data transfer rate of 54Mbyte/s. “In this respect, MB85RQ4ML is over four times as fast as our existing parallel 4Mbit FRAM device and even outperforms the 45ns parallel SRAM,” said ...

The embedded world no longer looks at chips and software in isolation. Developers are now offered choices of embedded platform, but the selection process still involves matching both your hardware and software requirements, writes Richard Wilson Embedded design these days is all about choosing a platform to meet your requirements. Does the hardware provide the right performance without breaking the ...

Test and development systems are following the trend for platforms with traditional benchtop instruments being replaced by PC-based test systems with modular instruments sitting on a high speed bus such as PXI, LXI or even Ethernet. For example, NI’s VirtualBench is a software-based multiple instrument which combines a mixed-signal oscilloscope, function generator, digital multimeter, programmable DC power supply and digital ...

Antenova has revealed an antenna for TransferJet, and is demonstrating it at Embedded World in Nuremberg. TransferJet is a wireless technology for high-speed (375Mbit/s) transfer of large files, secured by proximity – think fast NFC. It operates in the unlicensed bands in places including the USA, Europe and Japan. Antenova’s device is a surface-mount coupler called Zoma that operates in the ...

After choosing to exclusively adopt the use of its own Exynos 7 octa-core processor in last year’s Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge models, Samsung has once again turned to Qualcomm Technologies to power the new Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, writes Tom Wilson from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Qualcomm has confirmed that the Snapdragon 820 processor will be present ...

Full LTE carrier aggregation and simultaneous 3G working, and 5G operation, will be possible with its latest 16Goperation/s baseband control processor, said intellectual property firm Ceva at its launch. Like ARM, Ceva is purely an intellectual property (IP) firm which does not sell silicon. Its main products are baseband PHY DSPs – it claims to have IP in every third ...

Microchip has put its MPLAB Xpress integrated development environment (IDE) in the cloud. This a free IDE for PIC microcontrollers which automatic code generation and MPLAB XC compilers, support for programmer/debugger hardware, and 10Gbyte of secure online storage with a myMicrochip account. There is also a library of Microchip-validated code examples and an interface to MPLAB Code Configurator (MCC) 3.0 for GUI-based ...

A group of researchers from the Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence and the University of Zurich has developed artificial intelligence software to teach drones to autonomously recognise and follow forest footpaths. “While drones flying at high altitudes are already being used commercially, drones cannot yet fly autonomously in complex environments, such as dense forests. In these environments, any little ...

A deterministic Ethernet protocol could have cost and design benefits for IoT applications such as connected vehicles and smart factories, writes Richard Wilson Innovasic is a US-based data networking company which believes it is possible run Ethernet links as a deterministic protocol carrying time-critical data in industrial IoT applications. The company says it has demonstrated how time-critical control data can ...

NXP’s development boards for the Kinetis K82, K81, and K80 family of security-enabled microcontrollers built on the ARM Cortex-M4 core are available from Farnell element14. These MCUs have been given security features such as boot ROM to support encrypted firmware updates and automatic decryption from external serial NOR flash memory. There is also hardware AES acceleration built with side band attack protection ...