Microprocessors

Renesas has released more details of its Synergy secure cradle-to-grave management system for programmable devices, and announced a beta release. “Secure life-cycle management is the foundation to maintaining the integrity of end-products,” said the firm. “The Synergy Platform Device Lifecycle Management [DLM] solution consists of Synergy security MCUs plus the associated Synergy software and tools enabling OEMs to better protect ...

Analog Devices has unveiled a surprise – a general-purpose ultra-low-power (ULP) ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller, and it beats all but one on EEMBC’s ULPBench benchmark. Called the ADuCM302x series and aimed at IoT end nodes (and made at TSMC), it consumes under 38uA/MHz in active mode and <750nA in stand-by. With this it scores 245 on ULPbench, beaten only by Ambiq ...

Silicon Labs has revealed a family of wireless microcontrollers for IoT end nodes. Called Wireless Gecko, they integrate an ARM Cortex-M4 core with a 2.4GHz radio, hardware cryptography, stacks for Thread and ZigBee, and radio interface software for proprietary protocols and Bluetooth Smart. There are three product ranges: Blue Gecko for Bluetooth Smart, Mighty Gecko for ZigBee and Thread, and ...

Atmel announced a 14pin 8bit AVR microcontroller with better programming, timing accuracy and voltage reference accuracy than it has offered before at the low-cost end of its range. Called ATtiny104, it has 1kbyte of self-programming flash. “We have added self-programming flash, something we hadn’t done on low end devices before,” product marketing manager Rune Staveli Kvernland told Electronics Weekly, adding ...

Russian company T-Platforms has announced a Linux desktop PC based around a MIPS processor – as Baikal-T1 chip from Baikal Electronics, also of Russia. Baikal-T1 has two MIPS P5600 cores clocked at at least 1GHz. “P5600 currently holds the highest CoreMark/MHz score among 32bit CPU IP processors, making it one of the most powerful processors when it comes to performance per ...

LG Electronics has licensed the Ceva imaging and vision digital signal processor (DSP) silicon intellectual property (IP) for integration into mobile processor SoCs. The DSPs carry out the image processing needed in computational photography and computer vision applications such as video analytics, augmented reality and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). The dedicated DSPs take off-loaded tasks from the CPUs and GPUs, ...

Qualcomm has introduced a Snapdragon processor for wearables. Called Snapdragon Wear 2100, it is 30% smaller than the existing Snapdragon 400, consumes 25% less power, has an integrated sensor hub, and options on an LTE modem with satellite navigation, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. “The Snapdragon Wear platform consists of a suite of silicon, software, support tools, and reference designs to allow ...

The limit for fanless designs is often the magic 15W TDP threshold. So what do 6th generation Intel Core processors have to offer and how can the challenges of thermal design be mastered? Asks Christian Eder. High-end embedded systems designed for industrial applications can integrate only a specific selection of new processor technology. In fact, they are only fit for ...

FTDI Chip has introduced modules to facilitate the evaluation, development and subsequent implementation of its 32-bit FT90X Super-Bridge MCUs. Optimized for use in home security, industrial control, home/building automation systems, data logging and embedded multimedia applications, the MM900EVxA series of FT90X-centered modules is made up of 4 different units. The MM900EV2A and MM900EV3A incorporate 1.3M pixel camera modules, capable of ...

Ingenic has introduced ‘X Series’, a family of 1GHz MIPS-cored microcontrollers aimed at the more complex end of human-machine interfacing – face, voice and fingerprint recognition, as well as audio and security. The core has what Imagination Technologies, owners of MIPS cores, describes as a “mobile-level” feature set with a double-precision floating-point unit and multimedia/audio acceleration instructions for lossless audio decoding. ...