NIWeek: Xilinx honours team for LabView FPGA design

Xilinx has honoured the winner of the LabView FPGA Innovation Award at a ceremony during the NIWeek 2012, National Instruments' technology conference and exhibition in Austin, Texas. The winning design team was selected by a judging panel of National Instruments and Xilinx represenattives to have the most innovative application using LabVIEW system design software to program the FPGA in NI hardware. The Data Science Automation design team was recognized for its use of FPGA technology in a mission-critical oil and gas industry field application.  "I'm proud to honor this year's LabVIEW FPGA award recipients from Data Science Automation for exemplifying the tremendous performance, flexibility and freedom afforded...

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Microchip signs global deal with Arrow

Microchip Technology has signed a global distribution deal with Arrow Electronics. This global agreement includes Microchip’s complete line of 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit PIC microcontrollers, analogue and interface semiconductors, wireless solutions, and memory devices, along with related development tools. Arrow is also a principal distributor for Standard Microsystems Corporation (SMSC) that was recently acquired by Microchip. “This is a strong addition to our global linecard,” said Jeff Eastman, Arrow's senior v-p of global supplier marketing and asset management. “Microchip’s resources aid in almost every aspect of a customer’s design, from concept to production,” said Eastman. “Arrow is already franchised with SMSC products,”...

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Discordant bits and single photons boost quantum power

Exploiting the weirdness inherent in the quantum world to create new technologies just got a little easier, thanks to two breakthroughs. One suggests that an untapped quantum phenomenon previously dismissed as mere "noise" could give quantum computers a boost. The second harnesses objects known as quantum dots, used previously in brain science and computing, to make quantum code-sharing more secure. The quantum world, with particles that can be in multiple places at once, is known for its strange properties. Perhaps the most famous example is entanglement, which inextricably links particles no matter how far apart they are in space. Most quantum computers exploit entanglement: the idea is that some problems could be run much faster on a computer that has entangled quantum bits, or...

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NIWeek: First RF vector signal transceiver unveiled

National Instruments has unveiled at NIWeek in Austin, its first RF vector signal transceiver on the PXI virtual instrumentation bus. The PXIe-5644R RF vector signal transceiver is a software-designed instrument which combines a vector signal generator and vector signal analyser with a user-programmable FPGA into a single PXI modular instrument. As a result engineers can use the LabView design system to optimise the FPGA-based hardware for specific mobile and other wireless applications. “When we first started our company, we envisioned the central role software would play in instrumentation, and now we are truly seeing LabVIEW revolutionize the way engineers approach RF design and...

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Smartphones drive strong mobile DRAM sales

Due to growing smartphones and tablet sales, mobile DRAM is set to hit a record $6.56bn in revenues this year, up 10% from 2011, according to an IHS iSuppli Mobile & Embedded Memory Market Brief. Mobile DRAM density in smartphones increased from 2.28Gbit to 5.85Gbit in the last two years. The expansion is even greater in tablets, with the mobile DRAM average density soaring fourfold during the same period from to 8.33Gbit. Mobile DDR DRAM chips differ from standard DRAM with power-saving features including lower operating voltage and optimised refresh rates. “The mobile DRAM segment is achieving impressive growth as mobile operating systems, streaming apps and games require more memory to handle sophisticated tasks,” said Ryan Chien, analyst for...

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Xilinx pushes Zynq-7000 to 1GHz on TSMC 28nm process

Xilinx says it has increased the top processing performance spec of its Zynq-7000 programmable SoC devices to 1GHz. This is a 25% increase over initial specifications for the two largest Zynq-7000 devices. Target applications are likely to be in high-end image and graphic processing applications within the medical, aerospace and defence markets. “A significant factor behind our ability to take the Zynq-7000 family to 1GHz is Xilinx’s choice of TSMC’s 28nm HPL process, which we are using for our entire 28nm generation to bring the value of low-power with high-performance to customers,” said Vidya Rajagopalan, Xilinx’s vice president of processing solutions. Based around an ARM dual-core Cortex-A9...

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Toshiba will start volume production of a 3Tbyte HDD this month.

The 3.5 inch drive is aimed at consumer products. It complies with the EU RoHS directives. There are variations: one for desktop PCs; one for digital video; one for low power consumption applications. High-speed data transfers are secured by adoption of SATA I/F capable of a 6Gb/s transfer ra...

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