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Monthly Archives: October 2016

Only Connect: A further guide to Ethernet Cat 5e and Cat 6 testing

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Welcome to another post in the series by Nick Locke, of Nicab Ltd, who has more than 15 years experience in the electronics manufacturing industry specialising in interconnection cable assembly. In our previous Guide to Cat 5e and Cat 6 cables we discussed the main differences and briefly showed the complex test structure required for true full Ethernet connectivity. This week we ...

Cloud security system spots software hacks in cars

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Secure software for connected vehicles that uses cloud services, will be demonstrated at TU-Automotive Europe 2016 in Munich this week (2-3 November). The intrusion detection system (IDS) for connected vehicles is the result of a collaboration between connected vehicle software firms Harman and Airbiquity. With the increasing dependency on software to power vehicle systems and features, making vehicles secure from internet based hackers has ...

Why Should Foreigners Get UK Roaming When Brits Can’t?

If foreigners can come to Britain and use any of the wireless networks, why shouldn’t we be able to use all the UK networks? A jolly good question. It was asked by a group of MPs who call themselves the British Infrastructure Group. We all know the mobile coverage is shit. And we know why. It’s shit because the operators ...

Yorkshire firm adds 3D force sensing to notebooks

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Peratech, the Yorkshire-based sensor materials firm, is collaborating with several notebook computer manufacturers to incorporate its 3D force-sensing technology. The firm is developing its QTC force sensors for use in notebook PCs. The sensors, which consist of nanoparticles printed and encapsulated in ultrathin (down to 50 µm) polymer membranes, can be configured to sense an X-Y position when touched lightly ...

Industrial IoT node comes in kit-form

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Eurotech is offering IoT designers a development kit that bundles all the hardware and software needed to prototype as sensor-based IoT device with data support in the cloud. The ECDK 4001 development kit is intended to allow designers to model specific IoT applications based on a template that includes the various elements typical of an industrial IoT chain – gateway, PLC, devices, protocols, cloud services. The ...

RS works with CIPS to offer MRO guidance

The Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS) is working with RS Components to offer its members information and guidance on the advantages of MRO. The topics covered include methods of unravelling MRO complexity, analysing consumption data and tracking savings achieved. MRO, or Maintenance, Repair and Operational Supplies, can be defined as all items and processes needed by a company to maintain its production and ...

Bristol start-up Graphcore raises $30m

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Graphcore, a Bristol-based AI start-up headed by Nigel Toon formerly of Icera, picoChip and XMOS, has raised $30 million in VC money. Backers include Samsung, Bosch and Hermann Hauser. Graphcore is developing processors specifically for machine learning – an approach which, it says, will deliver up to 100x more performance than off-the-shelf GPUs. Graphcore calls its processors IPUs. ‘The IPU ...

Imec ‘Beyond CMOS’ programme demoes spin waves in majority devices

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Imec has demonstrated the generation and detection of spin waves in sub-micron-sized magnetic waveguides with wavelengths smaller than 350nm traveling over 10 micrometer in a 500nm wide waveguide, and has proposed models for majority operation in nanoscale spin-wave structures. Spintronic majority gate devices promise alternatives to CMOS technology for certain applications, for example for arithmetic circuits. Majority gates are devices ...