Electronics Weekly Electronics Design & Components Tech News
Let’s take it in reverse order:
5. Astrolight brings space laser communications to Lithuanian navy
Astrolight, a space communications startup, has joined Nato’s Defense Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA), bringing its dual-use laser communication technology to the defense sector. A Vilnius, Lithuania-based company, Astrolight specialises in space-to-Earth and ship-to-ship laser communications. It’s focus in DIANA will be tactical communication between navy ships. The company plans to develop a product for optical comms so that they can communicate without using conventional radio systems.
4. ST to add FD-SOI/ePCM 32bit MCU for embedded applications
In H2, ST will sample an STM32 MCU for industrial applications made on an 18nm Samsung FD-SOI process with embedded phase change (ePCM) memory. Volume production is planned for H2 2025. “ST has pioneered and brought to our customers FD-SOI and PCM technologies for automotive and aerospace applications,” says ST’s MCU president Remi El-Ouazzane, “we are now taking the next step to bring the benefits of these technologies to developers of industrial applications.”
3. 80Top/s AI vision and real-time control MCU for industrial robots and machinery
Renesas is aiming at industrial robots with a microcontroller that combines AI vision and real-time control processing. Called RZ/V2H, the ICs include the company’s DRP-AI3 ‘dynamically reconfigurable processor’ AI accelerator – recently revealed at ISSCC in San Francisco – in 10Top/s/W form. “Pruning technology employed in the DRP-AI3 accelerator improves AI computing efficiency, boosting inference performance to 80Top/s,” according to the company. Also on the die are four 1.8GHz Arm Cortex-A55 CPUs for Linux application processing, two 800MHz Cortex-R8 cores for real-time processing, and one Cortex-M33 sub-core.
2. How Little We Know [Mannerisms]
“A trend is a trend is a trend, But the question is: Will it bend?
Will it alter its course through some unforeseen force, And come to a premature end?”
So doodled Sir Alec Cairncross. Nowhere is this more true than in the semiconductor industry. In its mid-year forecast for 2000, IC Insights forecast a $250bn market for 2001. It turned out to be worth only $139bn representing a 32% y-o-y drop instead of the forecast 24% rise.
1. Imec designs Nanowell FET
Imec has unveiled another pioneering design – the nanowell FET. Building upon traditional FinFET principles, this innovation introduces an additional well in the nanowire that further enhances the sensitivity of the device. The device features a 35-40nm wide silicon FinFET with a 25nm nanowell as the active sensing area. Within the well, binding of an estimated ten short single-stranded DNA molecules boasts a clear signal of 40mV, which is the double of the signal achieved from the previous FinFET device.
