The latest electronics research news from within the industry and universities from around the world.
Analog Devices has collaborated with the University of Limerick (UL) and other companies, including Stripe, to launch a computer science program called Immersive Software Engineering (ISE). Given increased demand for developer talent globally and rapid growth of the internet economy, ISE is designed to revolutionize the way computer science is taught, creating industry experienced software professionals to drive greater business ...
Imec showed the first IEEE 802.15.4z impulse-radio ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) transmitter chip at ISSCC. The device strikes a balance between UWB’s accurate and secure ranging capabilities for indoor localization and the need for increased energy efficiency. Fabricated in 28nm CMOS (with an occupied core area of only 0.15mm²), the chip aims to enable the next generation of cost-effective, small form-factor UWB ...
GaN power transistors are becoming the gold standard for fast compact mains power switching – GaN HEMTs have no reverse recovery charge and can be designed with low on-resistance and low parasitic capacitance. However, their gates are fussy, and unbelievably fussy if all available speed is to be squeezed from this technology. Inappropriate gate drive can permanently weaken the switch ...
Princeton University has found a way to determine the direction to an object in three dimensions using only on-chip THz antennas with ~2°accuracy. It exploits frequency-dispersive leaky-wave antennas – end-fed strips, 1.7mm long, with transverse slots spaced at 43μm intervals. The crucial property of these, is that injecting a frequency between 360 and 400GHz into one end results in fan ...
Quantum computing might be all about qubits, but something has to set up those qubits, nurture them, then take their decisions away once they have settled. With only a handful of qubits, it was possible to lead signals in from the outside world but, as qubit counts climb, good old reliable CMOS has been asked to take over the care ...
At ISSCC a session was set aside for papers on machine leaning (ML) processors. This was a packed session, with nine presentations, on chips from 5nm and 7nm processors for mobile and cloud use, to ultra-low-power application-specific accelerators for wearables. IBM and Samsung both presented ML processors for phones, where local AI processing will remove the need for cloud participation, ...
A European consortium has been launched to lay the foundations for quantum processor manufacture on an industrial scale in the EU. Called Quantum Large-Scale Integration with Silicon (QLSI), and valued at €15m, it will focus on spin qubits and silicon lithography as the route to maintaining large numbers of quantum bits for information processing. “The partners have already realised many ...
Osaka University has teamed up with Rohm to send 8K video at 48Gbit/s over a 300GHz carrier using a simple modulation technique. “In general, such ultra-high-speed data transmission experiments are performed using multi-level modulations via a complex system with high power consumption that uses off-line or on-line digital signal processing,” said team leader Masayuki Fujita. “The present real-time demonstration, which ...
A European project has been set up to further improve the reliability of electronics. Called Intelligent Reliability 4.0 (iRel40), it is coordinated by Infineon and has 75 science and industry partners from 13 countries. “Enhancing electronics performance through miniaturisation and integrating more and more functions is progressing steadily,” said Infineon CEO Reinhard Ploss. “Performance and complexity are increasing, as the ...
High-temperature batteries could one day power road vehicles, according to the University of Nottingham, which has worked with Chinese universities to take a step forward with molten salt ‘metal-air’ batteries. Having a battery running at 700-800°C might seem a little impractical. “This molten salt battery has multiple feasible application directions, and transport is one of these,” Nottingham professor of electro-chemistry George Chen ...
