Embedded Systems

High Wycombe developer Sonaptic is working with Vodafone, Sun Microsystems, Nokia and Ericsson to create a Java-based standard for 3D audio on mobile phones. Java-enabled mobiles are rapidly emerging as an important platform for new types of multimedia services based around the J2ME Java applications suite. An applications programming interface (API), called JSR-234 for mobile video and audio, has been ...

Philips Electronics and Texas Instruments are joining forces to drive the adoption of the worldwide RFID standard known as EPC Generation 2 standard. The collaboration on conformance testing for ensuring interoperability is intended to accelerate deployment of RFID labels, hardware and systems. The royalty-free EPC Gen 2 standard, which is an RFID specification for UHF band centred around 900MHz, is ...

Cars containing multiple cameras will be on the market in the next three to four years, according to the semiconductor industry. “I have been in contact with every German automotive system manufacturer and every German car manufacturer and everyone is working on something connected with cameras,” said Peter Lieberwirth general manager of the automotive segment at Toshiba Electronics, Europe, “and ...

The Government is about to release the specification for its e-passport chip. “We will be rolling out e-passports from the end of the year and our offices will be issuing them by the end of the second quarter next year,” said a spokesman for the Passport Office. Last week the German government announced Philips as the lead system provider for ...

Demand for personal video recorder (PVR) products increased tremendously during the past year, as unit shipments rose from 4.6 million in 2003 to over 11.4 million in 2004. This is according to In-Stat, which said the demand stems from increased consumer awareness about the concept of time-shifting television programming. Both pay-TV service providers and PVR product manufacturers are reaping the ...

Mini camcorders and portable digital video recorders are just a few of the applications Protocom Technology has in mind for the most recent device out of its labs. The Californian company’s GoldenReel PR818S MPEG4-ASP device will provide the processing power behind Samsung’s new Miniket Mega 4-in-1 memory-based camcorder. The Samsung device offers features including PC/Internet and MP3 capabilities and flash ...

Philips and Microsoft have announced non-exclusive agreements to connect PCs with Nexperia-based products. Philips plans to support Microsoft Windows Media Audio and Video and Windows Media Digital Rights Management 10 (DRM) technology in its Nexperia ICs for use in digital media receivers, personal video recorders, portable audio players, IP set-top boxes and video phones. “By supporting Windows Media technology in ...

Philips and Freescale have agreed to share technologies they have developed for FlexRay, the next-generation high-speed automotive bus standard. The companies will use a common protocol engine, and a common SystemC-based reference software model. Although FlexRay is an open standard, Ross McOuat, European automotive MCU marketing manager for Freescale, said that customers are concerned its complexity will lead to problems ...

MontaVista Software is set to take on the might of Symbian and Microsoft as it moves to drive Linux further into use as an operating system (OS) in mobile phones with the launch of the Mobilinux Open Framework programme. The programme is intended as a means of bringing semiconductor firms, mobile software and phone integrators together to create reference architectures ...

Cambridge Consultants has designed an intelligent radio transceiver architecture claimed to have a new level of power economy and performance for in-body medical diagnostic and therapeutic applications. “Combined with the opportunities offered by the MICS frequency allocation – which is emerging as a worldwide standard endorsed by the FCC and ETSI – we see great demand for an optimised single-chip ...