Microprocessors

Stealthy, three year-old, processor start-up Groq says it has developed a single chip architecture which can deliver 1PetaOps/sec performance. Groq calls its architecture Tensor Streaming Processor (TSP). Two years back it said it had recruited eight of the ten people who developed Google’s Tensor Processing Unit (TPU). The company has raised $62.3 million in funding. Groq’s architecture is equivalent to ...

Microchip detailed an FPGA family with a quad core 64bit RISC-V processor alongside the programmable array. Called ‘PolarFire SoC’, the “architecture brings real-time deterministic asymmetric multiprocessing capability to Linux platforms in a multi-core coherent CPU cluster”, according to the firm, which worked with Risc-V specialist SiFive to create the devices. Real-time operation is included for safety-critical, system control and trusted ...

Ask any senior executive in a semiconductor company to pick their “most important” product family is rather like pinning down a proud mother or father and asking them to choose between their children, writes Farnell.

Fully-depleted silicon on insulator (FD-SoI) technology i.MX7ULP applications processors from NXP Semiconductors are now available from Mouser Electronics. They support low power graphics operation and include 2D and 3D graphics processing units (GPUs) for graphics applications in portable medical devices, wearable products, smart home controls, gaming accessories and portable printers and scanners. The processors are based on Arm Cortex-A7 and ...

Alibaba has produced its first semiconductor IP – a RISC-V processor core. The core was developed by Alibaba’s IC unit called Pingtouge and called Xuantie 910. Pingtouge says Xuantie 910 is available for licensing and related code will be released on GitHub. Pingtouge says that Xuantie 910 is the most powerful RISC-V core ever developed and can be used for ...

With increasingly tight global pollution standards for even small engines, STMicroelectronics and Arrow Electronics have produced am electronic control unit (ECU) reference design for single and twin-cylinder fuel-injected petrol engines. Called SPC5-L9177A-K02, the ECU reference design is aimed at motorcycles, scooters, and three wheelers – particularly those which must satisfy Euro 5, Bharat Stage VI (BSVI), and China IV standards. ST also foresees ...

ST microelectronics has introduced a secure microcontroller that includes a 13.56MHz RF interface for contactless operation and a serial interface for contact operation. Called ST31P450, it is built on a 40nm flash process and is aimed at contactless and contact applications in banking, identity, transportation and pay-television. The RF interface includes an RF UART for contactless comms up to 848kbit/s compatible with ...

A marketing initiative to promote STM32 MCUs has been launched by ST. Called MadeForSTM32  it labels qualified, reviewed, and approved products from ST Partners. Engineers designing with MCUs  rely on the design ecosystem that provides configuration and development tools, ready-to-use software examples and libraries, and circuit boards to prototype their applications and bring them into production. For many designers, the quality ...

Qualcomm’s moble processor, designated 215, has four ARM Cortex-A53 cores, a Hexagon DSP engineered to support up to 5+ days of music playback, an Adren 308 GPU and display technologies claimed to support up to 10+ hours of video playback. It has Qualcomm’s Quick Charge  technology. It has dual-ISPs which means it can support dual cameras with optical zoom and depth sensing, ...

The MPC5777C Power Architecture microcontroller, for industrial and automotive engine management, is available from Mouser Electronics. Three dual-issue, 32-bit CPU core complexes enable the microcontroller to support applications including electric DC motor control, aerospace engines, and Ethernet and CAN FD connectivity, plus automotive applications that require compliance with SIL-1 and ASIL-D functional safety requirements. The microcontroller features two independent Power ...