Small form factor single board computers (SBCs) are available in a range of sizes, but they all have one thing in common: Increasing processor speed and memory specifications. Size, performance and I/O peripherals will inevitably be a trade off. For example, at one end of the scale there is Datasound Labs’ 386SX-based CPU module which measures 65x45mm. The 40MHz processor ...

There you are standing at the bus stop when your mother’s voice starts emanating loudly from your pocket, asking if you’ve got to the bus stop alright and to let her know when you reach the other end. This could prove embarrassing for anyone, even those under the age of 14, but similar situations could be occurring in the UK ...

Bristol start-up Icera has negotiated a $22.5m funding round taking total investment in the firm to $33m. The fabless firm said the investment was sufficient to take it through to production of its wireless chips and will allow it to double head count in the next 12 months. “Over the last 18 months we’ve been building up the company, we’re ...

They said it, mistakenly, about videophones and world peace, but RFID, the use of radio waves for identification tagging, could be an idea whose time has come. “The technology has been around for 40 years, but now it’s becoming useful because it’s getting cheaper,” says Professor Edgar Fleisch of the University of St Gallen, part of the EPCglobal consortium aimed ...

A next-generation plasma etching tool that can rapidly produce complex 3D shapes in silicon has been released by wafer processing equipment supplier Surface Technology Systems (STS). The Pegasus deep reactive ion etch (DRIE) tool brings together a number of advances, including a very uniform high density plasma source to enable etch rates of up to 25µm per minute, with minimal ...

The Open University (OU) and NASA are to co-operate further on software for Mars missions. “We have laid the foundations and are exploring more substantial future projects with NASA,” Dr Simon Buckingham Shum, a researcher at the OU’s Knowledge Media Institute, told Electronics Weekly. Earlier this year, following a NASA request, the OU supplied two software packages to NASA’s ‘Hab’ ...

There are many times when a project needs an answer to the onset of component obsolescence, even though there are still many years worth of production life left in the equipment. The advantages achieved would be: higher reliability; lower hardware costs; space savings; transfer of obsolescence management to the module maker; and single inventory item as opposed to many. The ...

The intellectual property assets of display firm Printable Field Emitters (PFE) has been bought by a consortium of its founders, former directors and other stakeholders using personal funds. When the firm went into administration, “we were quite advanced with an Asian company and starting the technology transfer process”, Richard Tuck told Electronics Weekly. “The intention is to continue this [the ...

Researchers in the US have repeated work on magnesium diboride superconductors that shows how doping with carbon doubles its resistance to magnetic fields. The Ames Laboratory of the US Department of Energy added five per cent carbon to MgB2, and increased the magnetic field limit, the Hc2 at 0K, from 16 Tesla to 36 Tesla. Critical temperature dropped slightly from ...

Inotera Memories, the 50:50 DRAM joint venture between Infineon Technologies and Nanya Technology of Taiwan, has inaugurated its 300mm semiconductor production facility. The fab, in the HwaYa Technology Park in the north of Taiwan, has been producing DRAMs on a 110nm trench process technology since April. By the end of the year the fab is planned to be running 20,000 ...