Graphcore Shares Its Views on Evolving TÜV SÜD Product Service Reviews Key Testing Machine Learning Strategies, Lays Its Plans

european www.electronics-eetimes.com December 2016 business press

100Gbit/s on copper

Executive interview: STMicro’s CEO, Carlo Bozotti Special Focus: Artificial Intelligence

161123_5Mill_EET_EU_Snipe.indd 1 11/18/16 2:01 PM 161019_LogoBurst_EET_EU.indd 1 10/17/16 2:32 PM CONTENTS DECEMBER 2016

4 & 49: OPINION 6 - 23: NEWS & TECHNOLOGY

Uncommon Market: ST’s Bozotti on ‘back-to-silicon’ differentiation Pyramidal micro-LEDs for quantum computing EE Times Europe interviewed Bozotti at a bustling Last Word: Electronica settles into automotive, Electronica in Munich. industrial, IoT roles

24 - 31: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & 32 - 37: POWER SUPPLIES & MACHINE LEARNING BATTERIES

AI startup Graphcore shares its views on evolving TÜV SÜD Product Service reviews key testing machine learning strategies, lays its plans. scenarios for safe battery deployment.

38 - 43: AUTHENTICATION & ENCRYPTION 46: READER OFFER Implementing secure authentication This month, Arrow Electronics is giving away 10 without being a cryptography expert ARIS IoT development platforms worth 150 Euros For many engineers, encryption is probably the first each, for EETimes Europe’s readers to win. word that comes to mind when they think about security. Probably only a few think initially about 48: DISTRIBUTION CORNER authentication.

3 Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 www.electronics-eetimes.com UNCOMMON MARKET QUANTUM BITS If your 5G idea works here... Pyramidal micro-LEDs output entangled- photons for quantum computing

By Julien Happich sing scalable and foundry- The original manufacturing pro- compatible lithographic cess includes the epitaxial growth of processes, researchers Quantum Dots (QDs) inside inverted fromU the Tyndall National Institute pyramidal recesses originally pat- in Cork have designed pyramid- terned lithographically patterned on shaped quantum dot light-emitting a (111)B GaAs substrate, each with it will work here. diodes able to produce entangled a base approximately 5µm wide. photons (whose actions and states Through numerous metalorganic are linked). The micrometre-sized vapour phase epitaxy (MOVPE) structures can be replicated in large steps, several differently composed arrays where each microLED could Dr Emanuele Pelucchi, Head of Epitaxy and Physics of III–V (Al)GaAs layers and an InGaAs potentially be individually controlled Nanostructures at the Tyndall National Institute in Cork. QD layer self-assemble inside the electrically. This, report the researchers in Nature Photonics diminishing pyramidal recess. under the title “Selective carrier injection into patterned arrays According to the paper, complex epitaxial dynamics yield of pyramidal quantum dots for entangled photon light-emitting three embedded low bandgap vertical quantum wells (VQWs) diodes”, could lead to their use and integration into photonics- and a vertical quantum wire (VQWR) of a diameter around based quantum computers where polarization-entangled pho- 20nm, respectively. tons could theoretically be used to encode quantum informa- In addition, a thin InGaAs layer forms a group of intercon- tion. necting nanostructures: a flat QD at the central axis of the structure, three lateral quantum wires (LQWRs) and three lateral quantum wells (LQWs). Through back-etching the original substrate, the researchers managed to revert to apex-up pyramidal structures, enhancing light extraction by several orders of magnitude compared to the inward-built embedded devices. Top and bottom contacts were then designed so as to selectively inject current in the single QD at the centre of the pyramid, always using self-aligning tricks 50,000 football fans streaming live-action that inherently made the devices easy to manufacture at scale. By contacting all the μLEDs, the researchers could perform mobile video. All at once. a bulk analysis across approximately 1,300 μLEDs, but did not Soon it will be reality. A world connected as never before. discard the possibility to control those μLEDs individually for better performance selectivity and to compensate for process Always on. Amazingly fast. Massive traffic. Instant information. inhomogeneity. Ideally, for quantum information processing, That’s the promise of 5G. New spectrum. New waveforms. they would like to use the μLEDs as perfectly indistinguishable Millimeter-waves. Massive MIMO. More. Keysight offers the sources of entangled-photons. Photon extraction efficiency was world’s first 5G simulation, design and test environment able fairly low too, at around 1%, something the researchers ought to be improving to emulate your real-world 5G wireless thesis. With deep using various tricks expertise to help you tackle 5G risk and complexity. So you of the trade (includ- can go from 5G ideas to 5G reality faster. ing built-in material strain and electric HARDWARE + SOFTWARE + PEOPLE = 5G INSIGHTS fields). Dr Emanuele Pelucchi, Head of 1) (Top left) Scanning electron microscopy image of a sample Epitaxy and Physics right after the chemical etching step showing exposed of Nanostructures at pyramidal structures. (Bottom left) Sketch of a p–i–n junction Tyndall National In- μLED in cross-section view. (Right) a magnified region of stitute in Cork sees the central part of a pyramid with a QD. The epitaxial layers his team’s results as 5G© Keysight Get Technologies, the latest Inc. 2015 app notes, comprise a representative structure with dominant AlGaAs key steps towards Scanning electron microscopy image white papers and tutorials the realisation of alloys that form a vertical quantum wire (VQWR). Arrows of a sample with exposed pyramidal www.keysight.com/find/5G-Insights integrated quantum indicate the injection current through the VQWR. Courtesy structures in an apex-up geometry. photonic circuits for Roisin Kelly, Tyndall National Institute, University College quantum computing Courtesy Roisin Kelly, Tyndall National Cork. processing tasks. Institute, University College Cork. © Keysight Technologies, Inc. 2016

4 Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 www.electronics-eetimes.com

Keysight_5G_Soccer_PE_EETE.indd 1 08/02/2016 10:38 If your 5G idea works here...

it will work here.

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Keysight_5G_Soccer_PE_EETE.indd 1 08/02/2016 10:38 NEWS & TECHNOLOGY BUSINESS STRATEGY

Infineon places its bets on compound semiconductors, lidar, radar

By Christoph Hammerschmidt ith sustainability as its magic success formula, In FY 2016, Infineon sold 12 million 77 GHz radar chips, more chipmaker Infineon has grown faster than the chip than in the previous six years combined. And the demand is industry in the FY2016 that just ended. For the years expected to continue: For FY 2016, Ploss plans to sell between ahead,W CEO Reinhard Ploss is even sure that he can increase 25 and 30 million units. To meet the rising demand for these the company’s profitability in an almost stagnant global market. products, Infineon has started to increase its (actually rather old) But his high-flying plans depend on one factor that is not yet fab in Regensburg, Germany. completely certain. Lidar is another technology Infineon is betting on. Half a de- The yearly figures presented by the German chipmaker cade ago, lidar sensors had the size of a flowerpot and carried are rather unspectacular, but positive: 12 % overall revenue the price tag of a compact car – a prohibitive price for volume growth (7% resulting from organic growth), segment result vehicles. Recently, Infineon announced the takeover of lidar up 9.5%. The interesting aspect in these figures are twofold: technology company Innoluce, which will enable them to make First, it has been achieved in an environment characterized by almost zero growth for the semiconductor industry. And all four of Infineon’s business units – Automotive, Industrial Power Control, Power Manage- ment & Multimarket and Chip Card & Security – contributed to the growth and the profit. This was not always the case. The chip card and security business, years ago the company’s problem child, continued its recovery and actually turned out to have the highest profitability with a segment result margin of 19.3%. This reflects the fact that in Europe, Infineon’s security chips are provided to 70% of all #redCUBE ID card and passport projects, the company said. The success was widely driven by Infineon’s focus on embedded world Hall 3 Booth 359 applications that help customers to improve their energetic sustainability, be it in the area of electromobility or energy efficiency in industrial environments. lidar sensors affordable, compact and robust enough for every- What all these application fields have in common is the demand day use. “It is our goal to turn lidar into an affordable option for REDCUBE Terminals are the most reliable high-power contacts on the PCB level. Low con-  Flexibility in processing and for efficient power electronics. Riding the wave of this demand, every new car worldwide, like we already have done with radar,” Infineon achieved 60% of its revenue with power electronics – Ploss said. tact resistance guarantees minimum self-heating. Four different designs cover all leading connection technologies MOSFETs and IGBTs, and in the future, increasingly compound For the year ahead, Infineon expects a slower growth of processing technologies and offer a wide range of applications.  Highest current ratings up to 500 A semiconductors (SiC); the planned takeover of SiC specialist some 6% - which seems moderate, but it still is higher than the Wolfspeed is expected to further boost the company’s position expected overall semiconductor market growth. In the long run,  Board-to-Board and in this field. the company plans to outgrow the total market by 8%. A cor- www.we-online.com/redcube Wire-to-Board solutions The advent of electromobility across the globe provided the nerstone of this plan is the strategic investment in compound  Extremely low self-heating tailwind for rising demand for power semiconductor. In this semiconductors – and here we are again at Wolfspeed. Once context, the success of the electromobility did not only create this takeover is home and dry, it will provide significant contri-  Robust mechanical connection rising demand in Infineon’s automotive business but likewise in butions to Infineon’s future plans in the areas of electromobility, its industrial business, because this segment sells components 5G mobile networks, connected cars and Internet of Things. for the charging infrastructure as well as for public transporta- The Wolfspeed takeover is the condition for the Munich-based tion like hybrid and electric buses and trams. chipmaker to develop power semiconductors for frequencies up In the automotive segment, radar chips where in particularly to 80GHz, which are needed to establish the cellular infrastruc- high demand, and the growth is indeed breath-taking. ture for 5G networks. REDCUBE PRESS-FIT REDCUBE PLUG REDCUBE SMD REDCUBE THR

6 Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 www.electronics-eetimes.com #redCUBE

embedded world Hall 3 Booth 359

REDCUBE Terminals are the most reliable high-power contacts on the PCB level. Low con-  Flexibility in processing and tact resistance guarantees minimum self-heating. Four different designs cover all leading connection technologies processing technologies and offer a wide range of applications.  Highest current ratings up to 500 A  Board-to-Board and www.we-online.com/redcube Wire-to-Board solutions  Extremely low self-heating  Robust mechanical connection

REDCUBE PRESS-FIT REDCUBE PLUG REDCUBE SMD REDCUBE THR NEWS & TECHNOLOGY EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

ST’s Bozotti on ‘back-to-silicon’ differentiation By Peter Clarke

arlo Bozotti, CEO of STMicroelectronics, has presided Bozotti added: “Silicon technology is an imperative differen- over a difficult period in the company’s history as he first tiator for MCUs. We are on 40nm and the next step is FDSOI put together the ST-Ericsson mobile processors joint at 28nm with some form of embedded flash.” FDSOI stands ventureC and then had to engineer the exit from what had be- for fully depleted silicon-on-insulator, a manufacturing process come an ill-fated project. But now the write-offs, reorganizations said to provide advantages in terms of low power and simpler and product phase outs are just about behind the company and manufacturing over FinFET technologies but at the expense of it is starting to resume growth. EE Times Europe interviewed requiring an engineered wafer containing a buried oxide layer. Bozotti at a bustling Electronica in Munich. However, Bozotti declined to comment on whether ST would “The market is on an upturn, despite an IMF revision taking go beyond its ARM license with the addition of support for ma- down global GDP forecast,” said Bozotti. “We saw a good trend chine learning, a particularly hot topic at present. in bookings in Q3 and this continued in October and the upturn is broad.” Pushing automotive Bozotti said automotive, with the surge in interest in ADAS and But an examination of the numbers shows ST’s main busi- autonomy, was a particularly fertile ground for ST where it is ness group revenues were still already strong. Bozotti said ST marginally down in Q3 com- could capitalize on two trends pared with a year before. The in automotive electronics; digi- overall revenue increase was talization and electricification. largely down to success with a time-of-flight ranging image In 2015 ST ranked as about sensor that, for now, is part of the fourth largest automotive the “others” product group. chip vendor behind NXP, Infi- neon and Renesas and about 8 “In Q3 distribution sales percent market share, accord- were up 12.2 percent and the ing to Semicast Research. book-to-bill ratio was well “We want to keep going in the above one. In the second half traditional areas where we are all the product groups will con- strong – smartpower for the tribute to year-on-year sales power train and car body and growth. The year-on-year is ex- also in infotainment.” pected to be up 11.2 percent fourth quarter over fourth quarter,” said Bozotti attributing this In car infotainment ST is a chip partner for SiriusXM satel- to strong smartphone, automotive and industrial demand. lite radio, it also provides tuners for radio, GPS, telematics and mid-range processing. “But not the application processor,” he “MCUs, automotive, speciality image sensors are all con- said. “We also want to push our silicon-carbide power semi- tributing to growth,” he said. But what about MEMS, which conductor technology. 2017 will be the first important year has been a stalwart part of the ST product portfolio during for silicon-carbide. Silicon-carbide replacing IGBTs will be an the ST-Ericsson transition? It would appear that ST’s strategy important trend.” of extending from success with MEMS in smartphones and consumer applications to automotive and industrial applications “And then there is advanced safety with the Mobileye gen- is proving more difficult to execute than market leader Bosch’s eration three [EyeQ3] and generation four [EyeQ4] in FDSOI migration in the other direction; from automotive to consumer. coming next year. And then the EyeQ5 in 7nm FinFET technology which will have 10 application cores and perform sensor Bozotti answered: “We are certainly growing in MEMS. In fusion computing.” automotive we need to do more; both in sales and design wins. A second key partner in automotive is Autotalks Ltd. (Kfar So yes consumer is the biggest part [of MEMS sales] but it is Netter, Israel), which provides vehicle-to-anything (V2X) com- much more variegated than before. Before it was one customer munications chipsets. “And then there is MEMS and sensors one product. Now it is multiple sensor types spread over many for automotive,” said Bozotti indicating that this rounded out a products.” broad offering.

And Bozotti was also positive about ST’s success with mi- Qualcomm/NXP crocontrollers. “We were the first to enter the distribution market But lying fourth in an automotive chip vendor ranking and with with ARM microcontrollers. We have 700 different microcon- Qualcomm expected to takeover NXP Semiconductors it could troller types and 40,000 customers. We want to do more but be perceived that ST’s participation is threatened. a very strong ecosystem has developed. The Nucleo boards “They would be a very important player but our customers provide a lego approach to supporting other products through a do not always like bundles. Qualcomm does not bring much standard physical interface and form factors.” market share so the shares will stay the same,” Bozotti coun- tered.

8 Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 www.electronics-eetimes.com 6633-More New Products-93x277.pdf 1 11/3/16 3:48 PM

EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

Qualcomm does bring wireless technologies such as LTE and 5G modems and high-end Snapdragon processors as well as automotive wireless charging, which some could see as the future of automotive digitalization and electrification.

“We will not be in the modem business or in the high-end processors. But what we are doing is technology-based and very difficult to compete against. Some 30 percent of ST is automotive and silicon-carbide is extremely strategic. ST has an R&D spend of $1.4 billion per year. More new There may be strong R&D spending but in the area of FDSOI it has been argued that years of investment has yet to produce a return in terms of sales. With regard to FDSOI and the fact products that there appears to be a lack of breakthrough applications and customers Bozotti said: “We have some important projects. In communications infrastructure we have business. And space is in stock than important because of the radiation hardness of FDSOI. And the EyeQ4 from Mobileye in FDSOI is a tremendous success. It is in many high-end cars in 2017.” any other

He added: “The combination of FDSOI with some sort of novel flash memory is the way to go from 40nm to 28nm distributor. MCUs,” Bozotti argued adding that this was both for general C purpose and automotive MCUs. “It takes time,” he said. M

Y But time at ST could be something that Bozotti does not have in abundance. CM

Management transition? CY According to reports that appeared in April 2016, ST’s board of directors had already started reviewing candidates for a CMY replacement CEO who could be brought in prior to the expira- K tion of Bozotti’s contract in May 2017. This would provide for an overlap and smooth transition. But Bozotti declined to confirm or deny that, or expand on the situation.

“No comment. The focus of the company is on growth. The exit from ST-Ericsson is done. And now we want to grow,” Bozotti said.

But has ST’s time working through its ST-Ericsson problems left the company weaker and smaller and has it been distracted while others have been participating in industry consolidation?

“We have the financial power to make moves in M&A if necessary. We have a $2 billion net cash position,” answered Bo- zotti. “The priority today is organic growth but also to reinforce the lines of product we have,” said Bozotti referencing ST’s recent acquisition of NFC and RFID assets from Austria’s AMS AG as an example that more moves might follow.

“In the semiconductor world, manufacturing need no longer be a barrier to being in the business. Any small company with good ideas, good IPs, can compete using a silicon foundry,” said Bozotti emphasizing why ST is turning to areas where manufacturing can be proprietary and differentiating. “With MEMS, with time-of-flight sensors, with FDSOI and silicon-carbide we have differentiated technology. This we make at home. Order now at This differentiation and technology convergence means we can develop products for automotive, for industry and IoT. The R&D mouser.com is there. We will be a leader. We are on course,” Bozotti concluded.

www.electronics-eetimes.com Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 9 NEWS & TECHNOLOGY Fast and accurate power meters. Tesla to equip all vehicles for autonomous driving The new champions By Christoph Hammerschmidt V manufacturer Tesla plans to equip all his vehicles for (according to sources from Rohde & Schwarz. automated driving, as the first in the industry. Towards familiar with the topic, the this end, the company plans to install the electronic hardware will be pro- For decades, RF professionals have trusted power measurement solutions from Egear necessary into all of its new vehicles; the software will vided by Nvidia which will then be gradually activated at a later point in time. replace Mobileye). Before Rohde & Schwarz. With their unrivaled speed and fidelity, the Rohde & Schwarz As Tesla boss Elon Musk recently posted in his blog, the activating the systems, USB and LAN capable power sensors are the market leaders. autopilot function will be available rather soon – by end of next the car will have to learn – in learning mode it will be able not year, it will be possible to cross the United States without the only to learn from its own driver but likewise from all other driv- More to explore: need to touch the wheel. ers equipped in the same way; their data will be stored and kept www.rohde-schwarz.com/ad/powersensors According to Tesla, the vehicles will get eight cameras for a ready in the cloud to be combined to a huge data base. complete 360°surround view – hitherto, the vehicles had just The new model 3, scheduled for production start in 2017, one. In addition, they will get a more powerful forward-facing will already come with the new hardware. Likewise, the exist- radar and twelve short-range ultrasound sensors. To process ing models will be equipped with the more powerful platform, all these data, the Tesla cars will get a new computing platform, effective immediately. However, the installed base cannot be 40 times more powerful than the existing one and capable of upgraded, Musk wrote. running neural network algorithms and thus be self-learning Micro-sensor stitches deliver in-vivo diagnostics By Julien Happich

esearchers from Tufts University have sewn as matching electrodes. In devised a tool kit to experiment with one experiment, the researchers thread-based microfluidics, sensors were able to monitor the elec- andR electronics that could be used to moni- tricity flow between one cotton tor tissues in-vivo. Threads are something thread coated with carbon nano- surgeons are familiar with and are flexible tubes and polyaniline nanofibers, enough to comply with stretchable skin or and another thread coated with soft organs during surgery. silver and silver chloride. In-vivo, With his team, associate professor Sa- this electricity flow offers an meer R. Sonkusale and principal investigator internal measure of the medium’s at Tufts’ NanoLab experimented with sewing A toolkit of thread-based chemical and physical acidity, which can be a sign of threads from different materials, coating sensors, microfluidic channels, and interconnects infection in a recently stitched them with conductive materials such as for the realization of a thread-based diagnostic wound. carbon nanotubes and infusing them with device (TDD), shown here for transdermal health They also devised an ampero- various chemical reagents. monitoring. (Source, Nano Lab, Tufts University, CC metric glucose sensor consisting Sewing specific thread combinations of carbon/functionalized CNT BY-ND ). and connecting them to reading electron- threads (working electrode), ics, the researchers were then able to monitor electrical signals, carbon threads (counter electrode), and silver/silver chloride either signalling strain, temperature, or even sensing in-vivo threads as the reference electrodes. They infused the working subcutaneous chemical markers to diagnostic particular patient electrodes with glucose oxidase, an enzyme that reacts with conditions. In some cases, they also leveraged the wicking glucose present in the blood to generate an electrical signal. property of threads to design three-dimensional multi-reagent Alternating voltages pulses of 0.5 and 0V, they were able to microfluidic circuits. read out the output current as a response to different glucose The thread-based diagnostic device (TDD) platform, as concentrations. they describe it in Nature’s Microsystems & Nanoengineering pH measurement is another thread-based experiment they journal in the paper “A toolkit of thread-based microfluidics, carried out successfully. sensors, and electronics for 3D tissue embedding for medical Of course, the experiments could go on, threads can be diagnostics” combine nanomaterial-infused conductive threads functionalized with an endless variety of sensing chemistries, connected to a flexible surface readout electronic circuitry, for to measure proteins, DNA and other biomarkers directly in the signal conditioning and wireless transmission. tissues where they are implanted. And complex multi-reagent They fabricated strain sensors out of stretchable rubber microfluidic circuits could be devised, splitting threads into fibres coated with carbon nanotubes and silicone (monitoring distinct channels probing different areas. the thread’s electrical resistance), which they suggest, could be Next, the researchers aim to integrate other electronic com- used to monitor wound healing or muscle strain experienced ponents on the threads, including capacitors, diodes, and tran- due to artificial implants. sistors, to create a highly flexible and self-contained implantable Using different coatings and threads, sensing circuits can be diagnostic platform.

10 Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 www.electronics-eetimes.com

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15353.012_Powersensoren_EETimesEurope-Dez16_210x297_e.indd 1 09.09.16 8:16 Uhr NEWS & TECHNOLOGY HAPTICS NOW ALSO LEADING THE Invisible haptics extend to AR/VR LOW RANGE! By Julien Happich

arly November, Bristol-based startup said. Ultrahaptics introduced a develop- The CTO wouldn’t even let us know what ment platform for companies to sort of products Ultrahaptics is getting into, Eevaluate its ultrasound-based 3D mid-air but judging from the size and thickness of haptics technology. EETimes Europe caught the current solution, most probably large- up with the company’s CTO and co-founder sized items such as white goods. Tom Carter to get an insight on the technol- “The size of the hardware is a factor that ogy’s latest developments. determines which are the products where The development platform features 192 we can apply our technology” conceded piezo-electric ultrasound transducers (just Carter, “the smaller we can make it, the under 14x14 units) forming an active matrix wider the market of course, but for now you approximately 14 by 14 centimetres and won’t find it in laptops or mobiles, there isn’t about 10mm thick. When cleverly driven enough space for it” he added. using proprietary beam-forming algorithms “But we’ve made a lot of progress and (involving time delays between adjacent Ultrahaptics’ CTO, Tom Carter. we think we can shrink further our technol- transducers), phase shifts in the emitted ogy by an order of magnitude, with proprie- ultrasounds are arranged so that peaks tary piezo-electric devices we could reach a of ultrasound pressure can be felt several solution about 1mm thick and cheaper too”. centimetres away from the solid interface, “In the last year, we’ve improved a lot the shaped nearly arbitrarily. refresh rate of our haptic interface. We’ve The invisible shapes created out of gone from between 100 and 200 frames ultrasounds can be felt by hand and be per second to 10,000 frames per second, accurately interpreted as virtual buttons, which means we can create more complex switches, dials or any other virtual object shapes” Carter said. programmed by Ultrahaptics. A higher refresh rate means that the As he anticipated about 18 months ago, ultrasound signal can be multiplexed even Carter confirmed the technology has been more to create a richer feel with more adopted by a number of OEMs for their The development kit together with “touch points” for a more pleasing and products. “Some consumer products have software haptic effects to choose from. tangible interface. been designed with our technology, they are “We’ve designed a lot of new sensations, finished and pretty much ready to go, but it is really up to the and we are working on a software tool that would let users companies to make it public. It is at the whim of their product browse through libraries of effects and try or even edit the hap- marketing departments, probably in the next few weeks” Carter tic effects to adjust them for their products”, the CTO told us. In the lab, the company is even looking at creating textures LOW OHMIC PRECISION AND POWER RESISTORS on top of the shapes it emulates. “We have the complete underlying technology to create textures, we are experimenting by modulating the frequency to get vibrations on the skin. Our biggest challenge to realize texture was the refresh rate, LOWER REQUIREMENTS, SAME QUALITY, SAME ADVANTAGE. now we are able to focus “touch points” down to 4.3mm in Ultrasonic beam forming principle applied to haptics. diameter (from 8.6mm previously) and we can get the change of Our new CMx series is specially designed for lower performance requirements, meaning that we now lead the vibration at the right speed” Carter said. competitive environment in both high and low performance ranges for the first time. Beyond whitegoods, kitchen appliances and possibly, the automotive cockpit, Ultrahaptics is keen to have an impact in augmented and virtual reality, although the company admits It features, for example, an outstanding power value of 2 watts at a contact point temperature of 100°C. there are limitations imposed by the position of the actuators.

“I see our technology most useful in the work place, if you’re doing CAD modelling, you could have haptics augmented reality in front of your computer, built into your desk. Here, no need to wear special gloves, you could see the 3D model designed by a co-worker through AR glasses and interact with it physically”. “This would also work well in virtual reality scenarios if you sat in front of a desk, the visuals are really good and we could add the textures in haptics. For example you could feel the Innovation by Tradition Ultrahaptics demonstration with visual feedback. grain of wood and interact with objects more naturally”, the CTO concluded. Isabellenhütte Heusler GmbH & Co. KG Eibacher Weg 3 – 5 · 35683 Dillenburg · Phone +49 (0) 2771 934-0 · Fax +49 (0) 2771 23030 12 Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 www.electronics-eetimes.com [email protected] · www.isabellenhuette.de NOW ALSO LEADING THE LOW RANGE!

LOW OHMIC PRECISION AND POWER RESISTORS

LOWER REQUIREMENTS, SAME QUALITY, SAME ADVANTAGE. Our new CMx series is specially designed for lower performance requirements, meaning that we now lead the competitive environment in both high and low performance ranges for the first time.

It features, for example, an outstanding power value of 2 watts at a contact point temperature of 100°C.

Innovation by Tradition

Isabellenhütte Heusler GmbH & Co. KG Eibacher Weg 3 – 5 · 35683 Dillenburg · Phone +49 (0) 2771 934-0 · Fax +49 (0) 2771 23030 [email protected] · www.isabellenhuette.de NEWS & TECHNOLOGY EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

Melexis CEO: Strong alone

By Christoph Hammerschmidt

ith sales of €400 million euros in 2015, Melexis is one of the smallest semiconductor vendors, but nevertheless a rather successful one. At Electronica, EE TimesW Europe met Melexis CEO Francoise Chombar for a short interview. The semiconductor industry seems currently to be in a consolidation phase: NXP – itself not exactly a light weight - is swallowed by Qualcomm, Intersil by Renesas – and Melexis’ main competitor Micronas has been bought by mighty Japa- nese industry group TDK. Time for Melexis to look out for a strong partner? No, says Chombar, rather the opposite. “The current situation amidst newly intensified market con- centration in the semiconductor industry actually creates opportunities for companies the size of Melexis, because the list to choose from for customers get shorter,” she said. Is she sure? With the strong backing from TDK, Micronas could become a Trust in her own strength: Melexis CEO Francoise Chombar formidable contender, right? But Chombar is quite certain that she is not afraid of any and products? giant. Because, first, TDK and Micronas are not playing in Wouldn’t it make sense to look out for a financially potent exactly the same market segment where Melexis is operating, partner? and, second, Micronas has not the degree of fitness as Melexis, Chombar remained unimpressed: First, Melexis is a fabless Chombar explained. “They have been struggling for quite a company, which makes it much easier to shoulder R&D invest- while. The takeover by TDK gives them the chance to recover, ments – “the capital intensity in the chip industry is more in the but they are no longer masters of their own destiny,” she fab”, she answered, followed by a firm commitment to its own argued. qualities. “We don’t need to get saved, we are strong”, she said. Plus, Melexis is more creative and innovative, at least as “We are focused on what we do. We research, invent, develop seen from Chombar’s perspective. “We are continuously renew- and design, but we don’t need to manufacture.” ing our portfolio”, she said. Melexis’s success curve runs widely in parallel to the semi- “We invest 14 to 15 per cent of our sales into R&D and have conductor demand in the automotive industry. And yes, she a very healthy balance sheet. Our growth is all-organic, based agreed, the demand is strong in the automotive market, with on the ingenuity and creativity of our staff.” She added that chips being responsible for cars becoming safer, smarter, and size is not the only success factor: “Perhaps we are small, but with more stylish interiors. we have strong growth of 13 % in overall sales. Over the past “But what drives technology the most is the trend towards 5 years, we had a CAGR of 12% while the market only grew at more sustainability. Actually, sustainability is the most important 5%.” trend: cleaner engines, electrification, and hybridization. See our Again, the EE Times Europe reporter remained skeptical. latest product: a temperature sensor, a critical feature to make After all, the semiconductor industry is probably the most the engine run under optimum conditions.” capital intensive industry in the world. So how can a small com- The autonomous car seems currently being the technology pany afford the immense costs to develop new technologies driver for the entire automotive industry. “Yes, there is a big hype about self-driving cars”, she agreed. Nevertheless, “the autonomous is a shifting target, it is not here yet.” At least, the road is clear: “It will be paved with ADAS which need more sensors, including Time- of-flight (ToF) sensors, for example. “Our ToF sensor is still the only one in series cars, and we know that the take rates are high”, Chombar said. Melexis’ success in its markets makes her optimistic for the future. “Combining sensors, signal conditioning, making sensors smart is our expertise. The combination of different technologies leads to new applications. An example is Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems (TPMS): They are combining the expertise to design low power and small form factor chips. We can design such features into many applications.”

14 Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 www.electronics-eetimes.com RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Impedance analysers ought to be simpler By Julien Happich fter a long career as an electronic coaxial cables or unshield- designer at Philips, spending over 25 ed twisted pair (UTP) lines. years designing analogue circuits, Wil While offering perfor- ADijkman took his retirement as an opportunity mance comparable to to design yet new products, this time under his much more expensive own name. instruments from the On the electronica Fast Forward start-up competition, the low-cost platform, Dijkman was presenting a novel USB impedance analyser impedance analyser he started developing in is portable too, measuring 2012. only Size 250x250x50mm. “Today’s impedance analysers are very This makes it suitable for expensive, in the tens of thousands of euros, small labs or education where it can characterize and often built as large complicated instru- analogue filters, coils and transformers, Elcaps ments”, Dijkman pitches, “If you take a look at (value and ESR). the HP4194A designed in the 70s and still in For now, the retired engineer is accepting use today, it is massive with 60 buttons on its orders in small numbers. Dijkman is open to interface, you would almost get frightened by it licensing his know-how to larger T&M vendors, and don’t know where to start.” although he says his instrument operates on In comparison, Dijkman’s hand-made units the principles described in the “Impedance retail for just under 2300 euros and are simpler Measurement Handbook” published by Hewlett- to use, with 11 soft buttons for easy access to Packard, Agilent and Keysight, freely available measurement, monitoring parameters such as online, and he struggles to understand why T&M |Z|, Φ, L, C, Rs, Rp, D, Q and X in real time and vendors do not offer cheaper and more user- in different readout combinations. This allows friendly impedance analysers. engineers to identify subtle differences be- The units he builds characterize components tween different brands and types of capacitors across the 0.1Ω to 10MΩ impedance range, they and inductors, or to map the parasitics of high ship with a component test fixture, a power sup- frequency transformers, or simply to determine The impedance analyzer ply and a USB cable and operates with Windows with precision the characteristic impedance of characterizing a coil. XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10. Continental, Oxford University drive deep learning for cars By Christoph Hammerschmidt

rtificial intelligence with deep learning as one of up for other tasks”, said its sub-disciplines is increasingly becoming a cor- Lionel Tarassenko, head nerstone technology for smarter vehicles. Object of the Engineering Sci- Arecognition and human-machine interaction are two of ences faculty. Continental the hottest AI topics in the automotive world. Supplier intends to contribute its Continental and the University of Oxford have launched a expertise in the field of joint research activity in this area. mobility to the research The collaboration has been started recently and is activities while the Oxford focusing on new usage opportunities and development chances University will offer its competence of AI algorithms. for AI algorithms aiming at improving future mobility applica- The collaboration includes creating new postdoctoral tions. Continental expects new insights how AI can be used in research positions at Oxford. Both partners expressed their autonomous driving, in improving future vehicle access sys- intention to extend the research scope and time frame of the tems, reducing accidents and in making the dialog between activities at a later point in time. machine and driver more sensitive, explained Continental Similarly, Varta is well positioned to benefit from the renew- Corporate Technology Officer Kurt Lehmann. able energy market where storage is becoming increasingly Both the Engineering Sciences faculty of the Oxford Univer- important, the company said. The worldwide installed capacity sity and the German supplier share a vision “of a world where of photovoltaic plants is projected to increase at an average an- the transportation of people and goods is fully automated and nual growth rate of 22 percent to 613GW by 2020 from 227GW seamless and thus time and mental resources can be freed in 2015. www.electronics-eetimes.com Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 15 NEWS & TECHNOLOGY AUDIO

Israeli startup picks up clean sound optically

By Julien Happich

eadquartered in Israel with many features a sales office in Califor- currently served nia, startup VocalZoom by discrete sen- wasH founded in 2010 to focus sors. It could be on human-to-machine commu- used to perform nication speech enhancement more robust voice challenges. It started product de- identification velopment in 2013 shortly after it through multi- had signed strategic agreements How VocalZoom’s optical sensor cleans up acoustic audio. factor biometrics a large automotive OEM and with (each individual 3M Corporation, sampling its first having a unique facial “sound engineering samples of its Vocal- signature”), but also serve as an Zoom HMC sensor last summer. accurate and low power voice The sensor consists of an wakeup solution. The sensor is off-the-shelf VCSEL 850nm laser accurate enough to detect the with an embedded photodiode, speaker’s heart rate from the packaged with the company’s skin, doubling as a liveness sen- proprietary ASIC for processing sor, since it can make the differ- the soundwaves that are detected ence between a sound speaker optically from reading out the and a live person. speakers’ skin vibrations. “For biometrics, all the pro- Interviewed by EETimes Consolidating multiple sensors and features into one. cessing can be done locally on Europe, Rammy Bahalul, Vice the VocalZoom chip, by not hav- President of Sales and Business Development for VocalZoom ing to transit to the device’s main processor, data is much more gave more details about the technology. secure”, emphasizes Bahalul. “When someone speaks, the sound propagates all over the By detecting the direction of arrival, the sensor can also skin too, and we can measure these vibrations by detecting the verify that the person of focus is in the right direction and at laser’s reflection on the skin through an interferometer. The way the right distance, say in ATM or automotive use cases, to only the interferometer works is that any back reflections interfere listen to a particular user. with the stabilized laser wavelength in the cavity, and that im- VocalZoom has recently completed a design-in phase with pacts the laser power”. speech recognition provider iFLYTEK who plans to launch a The ASIC monitors the laser power fluctuations as read by headset based on its technology before the end of the year. the built-in photodiode, and turns it into a noise-free “audio” Even in a busy call centre, the audio fusion performed in the signal that can then be fused with the real audio signal recorded headsets would pick up a clean signal from each individual call by a microphone, either through an audio processor or cloud receptionist. The two companies are also collaborating on the software. development of an automotive voice control and voice biomet- “It is similar to bone conduction, but without contact, we rics product, based on a far-range version of VocalZoom’s HMC can measure vibrations up to 1.5kHz”, continued Bahalul, “we sensor. are not reading lips but actual facial vibrations, these can be Bahalul told us the company was expecting its sensor to be detected all around the neck and even behind the ears.” integrated into motorbike helmet headsets by the end of 2017 The optical sensor can be placed a few millimetres away and that it could be prototyped into a car mirror or into a car up to a meter, making it practical for applications in headsets, infotainment’s system by the first half of 2017. wearables, smartphones or laptops, but also in automotive ap- For now VocalZoom is open to different business models. plications where it could be mounted into the rear-view mirror or “We could sell a complete sensor module with the laser and in ATMs. the ASIC on a small PCB, or for high volume OEMs, we could When tested with leading speech recognition providers, the license the technology so they could manufacture everything startup claims its HMC sensor makes all and optimise the sensor, for example to the difference in noisy environments, (even integrate it into smartphone cameras” said in strong and complex noise), reducing Bahalul. almost all errors and making speech recog- “We can perform all the audio process- nition more widely usable. In a high noise ing on our ASIC, so MEMS microphones environment, the company is able to revive could share the ASIC. We are looking at original speech from -10dB (inaudible voice multiple vendors to shrink the technology versus high noise) to 20dB when Vocal- to their standards. When you actually look Zoom enabled. at the cost of the individual sensors that As well as improving speech recogni- our solution could replace in a smartphone, tion, audio signal fusion from the optical we could offer a much better cost struc- Example of a standalone HMC sensor unit. sensor and a microphone could enable ture” he concluded.

16 Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 www.electronics-eetimes.com PHOTONICS

Photonics 3-D modeler born By R. Colin Johnson oventor’s SEMulator3D began as a tool for designing deposition sizes, mask alignment problems and the feasibility of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), then evolved using extreme ultra-violet (EUV) for some of the critical patterning to semiconductor equipment companies, chip makers steps. In the process, Coventor has invented a new buzz-word andC foundries for the 3-D structures in FinFETS, 3-D NAND and “patterning budget” which will allow MEMS, semiconductor, HD disk-heads. Now every major company in the MEMS and photonic and mixed signal chip makers to determine where using semiconductor supply chain uses Coventor’s tools (with over half EUV will be profitable to do so and where convention immersion of their customers making semiconductors instead of MEMS). lithography should be used in the fabrication of the same chip. Next Coventor is anticipating the mixed analogue/digital/photonic chips of the future by adding modelling of the optical channels, mixers, and other specialized functions for the coming photonic era. “Today MEMS and semiconductor

Silicon photonics test die with top cladding removed to show structures, with close-ups of a (a) Mach-Zehnder modulator and (b) directional coupler (Source: Coventor) makers are grabbing bigger and bigger market shares by using the fabless model, which reduces risk and lowers costs,” Mike Jamiolkowski, CEO and President of Coventor told EE Times at the recent MEMS Executive Congress “For our MEMS+ tool we offer behaviour modelling and a complete library of every major device architecture. For our SEMulator3D tool, which is also used by MEMS makers, we have added libraries of shapes, process integration steps, below-14-nanometer architectures, prefab device structures, and virtual fabrication capabilities for FinFETs, 3-D NANDs, hard disk (HD heads and other nanoscale applications. Now by adding photonic device libraries, SEMulator3D can offer faster/smaller dies, higher yields and multi-variable analysis for MEMS, semiconductors and photonic devices too.” Virtual fabrication likewise allows a MEMS, semiconductor, photonic and mixed-signal chip-makers to find and WWW.PCBCART.COM correct flaws before the first tape-out, [email protected] saving time and wafer costs. Now Coventor is extending their analytics to virtual wafer fabrication which goes beyond yield and variability analytics to identify troublesome process variables,

未命名-1 1 16-8-22 上午9:48 www.electronics-eetimes.com Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 17 NEWS & TECHNOLOGY MORE THAN MOORE

Anticipating a more virtual Moore’s law

By Alan Patterson

icky Lu, executive director of the described in his paper, starts with Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Silicon 4.0. The advances from the Association, is looking forward current 3.0 generation have enabled toN the coming era of a “virtual” Moore’s a lot of new applications such as Law, leading to a resumption of growth augmented reality, virtual reality and profitability in the chip industry. and machine intelligence, he says. “There will be another 30 years of The next threshold is what Lu calls growth for the semiconductor indus- heterogeneous integration, or the in- try,” Lu predicted in an interview with corporation of silicon and non-silicon EE Times. “We are going to see ‘effec- materials by means of technologies tive’ 1nm. Moore’s Law will become a such as integrated fan out (InFO). ‘virtual’ Moore’s Law. The industry needs a boost. From To InFO and beyond 1995 to 2008, the sector delivered a 7 InFO is a packaging technology percent compound annual growth rate developed by Taiwan Semiconductor (CAGR) and a total return to shareholders nearly three times that Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) to put bonding pads on the edge of of the overall stock market, management consultancy McKinsey silicon, eliminating the need for an interconnecting substrate. notes in a 2015 report. Now, the story is much different. InFO provides a 20% reduction in package thickness, a 20% Although some semiconductor players continue to thrive and speed gain and 10% better thermal performance. gobble up smaller competitors, overall growth and revenue have Infineon developed the technology in 2008 as embedded declined. wafer-level ball grid array (eWLB,) to cut cost and package The semiconductor industry can break out of stagnation at thickness while boosting component integration. However, yield around $400 billion in annual revenue to achieve $1 trillion at problems impeded adoption of the new technology up until 1nm, according to Lu. In his paper entitled “A New Silicon Way” TSMC’s commercialization of InFO. that will be presented at the IEEE Asian Solid-State Circuits “This new InFO structure is what will lead heterogeneous in- Conference on November 7 in Toyama, Japan, Lu outlines a tegration to Silicon 4.0,” Lu says. “Another innovation is through transition to a new generation beyond the limitations of tradi- interconnect via (TIV), which is like a pillar connecting the die to tional linear scaling on silicon. the outside. So you have both horizontal and vertical intercon- There is evidence that linear scaling has already reached nect, both outside the silicon. That’s key for the continuation its physical limits. “People say they are doing 10nm process of heterogeneous integration. In the past, we couldn’t do TIV modes, but you will not find any line widths at that level,” Lu because we didn’t have InFO technology.” says. With InFO, silicon will connect directly with parts such as lenses, sensors or actuators that are currently built into systems Departing flatland and haven’t yet been miniaturized, according to Lu. That’s why technology development has gone non-linear. In “That’s heterogeneous integration of silicon and non-silicon 2011, Intel announced its Tri-gate technology, leading the way using InFO,” Lu says. “All of these parts today are sitting on from planar development of transistors on silicon into three a printed circuit board, burning a lot of power. We are still five dimensions. With 3D, even scaling by a factor of 0.85 results in orders of magnitude away from optimal power consumption.” a transistor density that is more That’s where Lu sees new like 0.5 scaling in two dimensions, potential for foundries, silicon Lu says. designers and system houses Other companies have fol- to cooperate. Silicon is a $300 lowed that trend. Toshiba built billion industry, but consumer 3D NAND in 48 layers, and that electronics is a $1.6 trillion indus- memory has been used in Apple’s try, he notes. iPhone 7. Samsung has taken the System makers will need het- idea a step further with the cre- erogeneous integration to create ation of a 64-layer flash memory smaller devices with lower power device. The technology level was consumption, according to Lu. only 32nm, yet it was the virtual “There should be a very equivalent of 13nm, Lu notes. smooth transition to these new “Now we are in silicon age 2.0 technologies because we are still with vertical transistors and a two generations away from the scaling parameter of 0.8 to 0.85,” end of Moore’s Law,” Lu says. Lu says. “Silicon 3.0 is like a 3D “Tri-gate, 3D NAND and InFO landscape. We are seeing more have come very smoothly. Silicon and more people going there.” (Source: TSMC) will scale down to 5nm with per- Lu says that his theory, as formance like 1nm.”

18 Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 www.electronics-eetimes.com INTERCONNECTS

100Gbit/s on copper: we’ve got IP for that says Aquantia

By Julien Happich fter it announced last June open it up and modify it to our own 5/2.5 Gigabit NBASE-T PHY secret sauce to build a 100G SerDes. devices for Ethernet over Then we license our IP back to Glo- twistedA pair copper wire, fabless balFoundries”, he continued, without company Aquantia is eyeing hyper- revealing if Aquantia would get a free scale data centers with an all-electri- deal or still get royalties back from cal 100Gbit/s SerDes solution. any semiconductor vendors willing Aquantia’s Co-Founder and Senior to integrate its 100G SerDes in their Vice President for Business Develop- chips. ment, Philippe Delansay explains the The company combined the company’s bold move to 100Gbit/s 56Gbit/s IP core with patented as a requirement for fast evolving Mixed-Mode Signal Processing hyperscale data centers. Aquantia’s Breakthrough 100G Technology for (MMSP) and Multi-Core Signal “When data centers only had Hyperscale Data Centers Achieves $1/1G Processing (MCSP) architectures it North-South data flows between has developed over the past. So far, aggregation switches and TOR switches, there was a linear correlation between the total IP traffic and the aggregate data center bandwidth. But with novel Leaf-Spine architectures, server-to-server traffic now flows East-West too, and data center bandwidth accelerates beyond global IP traffic”. Then Delansay cited the results Comparing yesterday’s data centers with next gen hyperscale topologies. from a recent survey from Crehan Research, revealing that the majority of direct server and storage Aquantia has tested critical pieces of the QuantumStream archi- Ethernet network connections in hyperscale data centers are cur- tecture in silicon and is confident to have silicon reaching data rently within 3 meters. centers by 2018. “We’ve figured out that if you could support 100Gbit/s on Built on standard CMOS 14nm FinFET, a single SerDes will copper for up to 3 meters, we would serve a sizeable portion of support 100G over 50cm backplanes, 100G over 3 meters of the hyperscale data center market, without the costs of deploying Direct Attach Cable small form-factor pluggable (SFP) transceiv- optical fiber”, continued Delansay. ers, and up to 400G over 3m Direct Attach Cable Quad-SFP Listening to companies like Facebook, LinkedIn or Juniper transceivers. Networks, Aquantia’s Co-Founder notes that although 100 Giga- Talking about future market prospects, Delansay shared the bit Ethernet is the future, 100Gbit/s optical transceivers are con- following view: sidered as too expensive for massive deployment. Somehow, the “Data centers represent tens of millions of ports. If we assume industry seems to be ready to pay up to a price target of USD100 for each 100G port, $1/1G for 100G links. A price tag unreach- that makes a billion dollars market opportunity. able with optics. I am not saying we’ll sell all the ports in that “Hence, why not keep optical fibers for market, a portion will go to optical fibers, but long distances only?” suggests Delansay, we’ll be first to market with actual silicon”. confident that Aquantia’s QuantumStream So why license your IP back to Global- technology will deliver 100Gbit/s on a Foundries? We asked. single-lane of copper at an unbeatable “Because we’ve got the ability and the price. mindset to eventually make QuantumStream So where does your IP come from? We an industry standard. Just last month, the tech- asked. nology for our 5/2.5 Gigabit NBASE-T PHY de- “We knew we wanted to build a vices was IEEE-ratified as an industry standard 100Gbit/s SerDes and we could have done (802.3bz). Companies can download the specs that in house, but to speed time to market, and turn out a chip, but we still maintain two we decided to start from state-of-the-art Aquantia’s Co-Founder and Senior Vice to three years of advance over our competi- 56Gbit/s SerDes IP from GlobalFoundries”, President for Business Development, tors. By licensing our IP, we hope to increase explained Delansay. the market size, and as the pie gets bigger, so Philippe Delansay. “We’ve licensed the IP so we could does our share of revenues”. www.electronics-eetimes.com Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 19 NEWS & TECHNOLOGY LED LIGHTING

Better light extraction for DUV LEDs

By Julien Happich

mproving upon prior art, could be enhanced an international team of in sidewall-emis- researchers has open a sion-enhanced DUV promisingI path towards high LEDs by adopting efficiency deep UV LEDs internal reflectors (emitting at 280nm) thanks to on the inclined a novel device geometry. DUV sidewalls of mesa light sources emitting in the stripes, the photons range 250−280nm could be being reflected useful in many applications down through the such as air and water purifica- sapphire substrate. Schematic illustrations for one TC structure. An MgF passivation layer is tion or for sterilization in food 2 Although it processing, thanks to their deposited on the whole area except p-contact regions, while an Al over- proved beneficial, ability to effectively damage layer is deposited on the whole area in order to reflect and redirect sidewall- the mesa stripe or destroy the DNA or RNA of heading DUV photons down. The Al mirror electrically connects to the geometry itself microbes including bacteria, p-contact metal of each TC. caused anisotropy in viruses, and cancer cells. light extraction, only Publishing their findings in effective transversally, not along the the ACS Photonics journal in stripes’ length. a paper titled “Arrays of Trun- One way to circumvent this limitation cated Cone AlGaN Deep-Ul- was to change the form factor of the traviolet Light-Emitting Diodes actual devices, adopting an isotropic Facilitating Efficient Outcou- geometry, namely truncated cone (TC)- pling of in-Plane Emission”, shaped active mesas. Because each the researchers looked at circular MQW emitting region is encap- improving the Light Extraction sulated within an MgF2/Al reflector-clad Efficiency (LEE) of AlGaN DUV truncated cone, the TM-polarized pho- LEDs, notoriously poor due to tons bounce off the inclined sidewalls, DUV light re-absorption. down through the sapphire substrate, What they explain from regardless of their emission direction. literature is that the LEE of Ray tracing simulations first con- AlGaN DUV LEDs is particu- Bird’s-eye view scanning electron microscope images for firmed that such TC-shaped DUV LEDs larly poor mainly due to two one TC taken from a 20×20 array (scale bar is 6μm). would exhibit an isotropic emission reasons: one is the absorption pattern with enhanced light-output of DUV light in the p-type GaN power. Then the researchers validated contact layer, the second is the nature of the DUV photons that their simulation through experiment. They grew several DUV are generated, when highly transverse-magnetic (TM) polarized LED epitaxial structures on 4-inch c-plane sapphire substrates, with a preferred in-plane emission pattern, they are more likely then etched TC active mesas in various array sizes, ranging to be trapped and absorbed inside the device, they write. from 5×5 to 25×25 on chips measuring 1x1mm2. Across these Unlike InGaN-based visible samples, the base of the TC-shaped LEDs for which micro/nano- active mesas varied from about 150µm lens arrays and highly reflec- in diameter to about 40µm in diameter tive mirrors can enhance light for the denser arrays. extraction, such approaches The result was up to 37.1% improve- are ineffective for extract- ment in light emission compared to ing TM-polarized anisotropic stripe-type LEDs. They also found that emission from AlGaN DUV the operating voltages of TC LEDs with LEDs. low perimeter lengths are lower than In a previous study “An that of the stripe-type LEDs, improving Elegant Route to Overcome simultaneously both the optical and Fundamentally-Limited Light electrical properties of the LED through Extraction in AlGaN Deep- design optimization. Ultraviolet Light-Emitting Di- Contributing to this research were odes: Preferential Outcoupling teams from Pohang University of Sci- of Strong In-Plane Emission”, ence & Technology (POSTECH), from the researchers had demon- the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, strated that the extraction of Optical microscopy images of the TC LEDs with various and also from Samsung Electronics’ TM-polarized DUV photons arrays ranging from 5×5 to 25×25 (scale bar is 250μm). LED Business.

20 Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 www.electronics-eetimes.com LED LIGHTING

True yellow NW-LED fills the green-yellow gap in white light By Julien Happich n international team of research- beams, like a phosphor, and used as a light-scat- ers from King Abdullah Univer- tering plane in a reflective configuration, adding its sity of Science and Technology own yellow emission to the white mix. A(KAUST) and King Abdulaziz City for The result was a correlated color temperature Science and Technology (KACST) have circa 6000 K and a color-rendering index of 87.7. come up with a novel way to fill the Corresponding author Boon S. Ooi, Profes- “green-yellow gap” typically seen in sor of Electrical Engineering and Director of the white-LED implementations based on KACST Technology Innovation Center for Solid multiple phosphors. State Lighting wrote us that the objective of this Published in the ACS Photonics jour- method is to reduce the blue-intensity of white nal, their paper “True Yellow Light-Emit- lights, creating an eye-friendly warmer white, while ting Diodes as Phosphor for Tunable offering a new way to tune the color temperature Color-Rendering Index Laser-Based for laser-based SSL. White Light” describes a nanowire- “We have based LED emitting at 588nm, grown submitted a on a low-cost, CMOS-foundry-compati- Visualization of the fabricated US provision- ble Ti-thin-film/Si substrate platform. yellow NW LED. al patent on A dense layer of nanowires is grown, reaching a surface this technology”, he added, density of 9x109 cm−2, with a fill factor of 88%. hinting at some commer- And each nanowire p-i-n LED structure embeds an active re- cial opportunities. gion made of five stacks of 3nm thick InGaN quantum disks (Qdisk) separated by a 10nm quantum barrier. Operating the yellow NW LED alone, they observed a peak emission of 588nm at 29.5 A/cm2 (75mA in a 0.5x0.5mm2 device) and a low turn-on voltage of about 2.5V, with an internal quantum efficiency of 39%, without “ef- SEM image of the device ficiency droop” up to an injection current density of 29.5A/ structure based on a two 2 cm . temperature-step growth method Then they demonstrated the benefit of mixing such a yel- Device structure showing multiple (inset, TEM of Qdisks embedded low light with the light of red, green, and blue laser diodes. nanowires grown side-by-side. in a nanowire). In their setup, the yellow NW LED was illuminated by RGB Designing flexible deep UV LEDs to clean water By Julien Happich sing molecular beam epitaxy to grow self-assembled tall and about 20 to 50 nanometres in diameter. AlGaN nanowires onto tantalum and titanium foils, Until now, they write, deep-UV LEDs had only been fabri- researchers at the Ohio State University have devised a cated on rigid single-crystal semiconductor substrates, making U deep UV LED which could them much more expensive to manufacture than relying on be not only lightweight but metal foils and molecular beam epitaxy, a process that lends also flexible and possibly itself well to large areas. produced in a roll-to-roll The research was funded by the Army Research Office and process. the National Science Foundation, with a particular focus on Describing their findings developing portable in the Applied Physics Let- ultraviolet lights for ters paper “Nanowire LEDs soldiers and others to grown directly on flexible purify drinking water metal foil”, the researchers and sterilize medi- report an electrolumines- cal equipment. The cence peak emission of researchers are now Ohio State University researchers about 350nm at a turn-on experimenting with have developed a technique to voltage of about 5V for other metal foils such create light emitting diodes on what looks like locally as steel and aluminium. Nanowires grown on titanium foil at metal foil. Image by Brelon J. textured nanowires under a The university Ohio The Ohio State University. Image by May, courtesy of The Ohio State scanning electron micro- State University is open Brelon J. May, courtesy of The Ohio scope. The individual wires to license its technol- University. State University. are about 200 nanometres ogy for industrialization. www.electronics-eetimes.com Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 21 NEWS & TECHNOLOGY OLEDS

Integrated OLED only drives the pixels that need a refresh By Julien Happich

esearchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Organic streams, the application could use a compression algorithm to Electronics, Electron Beam and Plasma Tech-nology modify and recalculate the video data so it would only refresh (FEP) in Dresden have developed a near-eye OLED the pixels that need it. This could be done on a smartphone or displayR for head-mount wearables that can drastically reduce even in the cloud upon the app’s request. overall system power consumption. This would not only reduce display power consumption but When built into smart glasses to display real-time data (such also reduce the strain on the micropro-cessors, since less video as heart rate, GPS information, dis-tances etc…) the new OLED data would require processing (fewer full frames). In wearables, only refreshes the pixels that need an update while retaining this means longer lasting batteries and less heat. the overall state of whatever static background pixels. In some In effect, the whole display is architected so as to allow for a cases, that may be only the last digits of evolv-ing data, hence flexible refresh rate for each pixel. While the whole display could refreshing only a fraction of the whole display. In another ex- be refreshed at about 30fps, smaller areas can be refreshed at ample, you could only refresh the pixels where the action takes significantly higher rates. place in a video, while static background would remain unchanged.

The research center says that for video applications, the new approach was able to reduce power consumption from 200mW (typical of microdisplays) to between 2 and 3mW, two orders of magni-tude. “While in traditional microdisplays, the whole image is refreshed line by line, we’ve redesigned the control circuitry in order to be able to address every single pixel individually, like in a memory with address lines and columns”, explained Philipp Wartenberg, IC Design Engineer and Proj- ect Manager in the Department of IC & System Design at Fraunhofer FEP, adding that the AMO- LED is fabricated onto a CMOS electronic back- plane. The display pixels are equipped with static memory and arranged in a freely addressable matrix, explains Fraunhofer FEP in its brochure.

“We’ve analyzed different applications, and we thought it would be nice to build a display onto which all the pixels could be addressed individually. We can “For a fixed bandwidth, it follows a simple ratio. If you refresh achieve significant energy savings by doing that, even more half the pixels, then you can double the frame rate for the cor- so in the whole electronic system than just at the display level” responding partial image”, noted Wartenberg. Wartenberg told EE Times Europe. By refreshing only a quadrant, you could quadruple the In some applications, you know the region where the pixels frequency, although you may prefer to keep a reasonably low are changing, where you’ll get status information, and you can refresh rate to minimize data transfers and limit power con- optimize the electronics for that, but in the case of live video sumption. Color-tunable white OLEDs raise luminous efficacy By Julien Happich sing a simple and up-scalable orthogonal photo-pattern- side by side and as narrow as 20μm. A key improvement in the ing technique they had demonstrated in prior research, a lateral colour mixing is the use of fine orthogonal photolithogra- team of German researchers from Dresden’s Integrated phy techniques, which they say don’t suffer the resolution and CenterU for Applied Physics and Photonic Materials (IAPP) and substrate size limitations of fine metal masks typically used for the Institute for Applied Physics have designed a two-color patterning. Because they are able to align the OLED strips com- OLED device that can be tuned from blue to white to yellow pletely adjacent, with no gaps between them, the overall OLED seamlessly. emits across the full panel’s surface, without any dark areas Rather than stack multiple monochrome OLED layers verti- between units hence improving overall luminance. cally (compromising on individual colour efficiencies), they opt- Publishing their results in Nature’s Light: Science & Appli- ed for alternating strips of yellow and blue p-i-n OLEDs, aligned cations journal in the paper “Adjustable white-light emission

22 Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 www.electronics-eetimes.com OLEDS

from a photo-structured micro-OLED array”, the researchers strips of efficient fluorescent blue and phosphorescent yellow experimented with several micro-array dimensions, alternating monochrome devices with different width ratios, varying from 50/50, 80/80, 80/20 and 100/30μm for the yellow/blue subunits. What’s more, the photolithographic patterning technique they developed allowed them to precisely position top electrodes on the substrate, enabling each of the subunits to have separate drivers VY and VB for yellow and blue subunits, hence allowing them to drive a colour mix across the whole spectrum from blue to yellow (between the CIE color coordinates (0.14, 0.18) for the blue emitter and (0.5, 0.5) for the yellow emitter) at any given brightness level. In effect, they were able to tune the white light from warm (CIE 0.45,0.41) to cold (CIE 0.33,0.33). Next on their agenda, the researchers hope to further improve the light quality and luminous efficacy of their devices by enriching its emission spectrum through the addition of a green emitter. Additional light extraction techniques could also boost overall device efficiency.

(a) Device architectures of yellow and blue p-i-n OLEDs (sY and sB, respectively). (b) Patterning the microstructured OLED array with strips only tens of micrometres wide. (c) False-color topography image of a device alternating 50μm blue and 50μm yellow strips. (d) Micrograph of the structured OLED under electrical operation and (e) a close up photograph of the micro-OLED tuned to emit white light.

www.electronics-eetimes.comew17_190x136_EE_Times_Europe_2ew17P.indd 1 Electronic Engineering Times Europe December11.10.16 2016 15:11 23 DESIGN & PRODUCTS AI & MACHINE LEARNING

Best design practices for large-scale analytics projects By Mike Paquette omplex choices for anyone look- Acute skills shortages within data ing at implementing large scale science will also be a determining factor analytics platforms are not helped in the end choice of the software itself. byC the IT industry’s predilection for over- While Big Data and machine learning are using buzzwords. ‘Big Data’, Artificial often associated with Spark, Hadoop Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning and MapR, the skillsets required to build are certainly hot topics, but they are also applications in R and Python are both in danger of becoming so misused as to scarce and in high demand from sectors become meaningless. such as finance and pharma. Explore Potential users should adopt a healthy more accessible technologies using dose of scepticism to avoid vendors Making sense of data: a four-step process. subject-specialists rather than dedicated dressing up their ailing proprietary solu- data scientists. tions as ‘themes du jour’. Away from the hype, modern search technologies have radi- Best practice 1: data capture cally altered the speed and scale of what is possible. Analysis The source and nature of the data being captured form a vital applied to larger volumes, higher velocities and wider variet- starting point. The source may be a factor in determining ies of heterogeneous data reveals new patterns that will never platform and software choice. Source-target connectivity, the become apparent on a smaller scale. availability of open APIs and suitability of the analytics platform More recent developments, combining search, graph tech- for specific types of data will all play a role. nologies, machine learning and behavioural analytics, put an Within Elastic’s own platform the Beats project offers ready array of algorithmic assistants to work for the end-user. In the built open source solutions for Time Series data, packet moni- hands of experts, these tools are the beginnings of AI. toring, metrics and sensor data with timestamping, while the Community Beats project offers a community driven initiative to AI for electronic engineering create, share and maintain a rapidly growing range of connec- The abilities to analyse and learn from vast quantities of data tors to specific applications and environments. can deliver value in nearly all areas of electronic engineering. Integrating these powerful search technologies with Time Series Best practice 2: data ingestion analysis offers massive benefits in areas as broad as: silicon If analysis is being applied to large existing datasets, uploaded fabrication; process monitoring; weather station sensor net- as batch jobs, the initial ingest process is straightforward. How- works; data networking infrastructure; voice communications ever, in the increasing number of cases where users are looking design; radio signal processing; and electrical grid usage. to ingest live data, system architecture needs to take account of Within industrial control systems, the impact of moving from likely flow of traffic. Within large scale analytics platforms, data arduous monitoring, towards intelligent anomaly detection, sys- ingestion is almost inevitably subject to latency. So where live temic behavioural analysis and more accurate prediction, can’t data arrives in sporadic peaks or surges, additional queueing or be understated. As we enter an era where almost all electronic buffering solutions may be vital. devices will deliver sensor data and receive instruction across In live data environments, the connectivity of the analytics the Internet, well-engineered, intelligent software platforms will platform to popular real-time streaming environments such as form a major part of the value of all electronic devices. Apache Kafka, Redis, ZeroMQ or buffering solutions may also be an important consideration. Platform implementation The ingestion process also gives organisations a one-time Infrastructure decisions will largely be determined by an organ- opportunity to clean, enrich and optimise data before index- isation’s existing IT strategy. Nonetheless, high level scoping is ing. This stage allows users to transform data from the format essential and key considerations include, details of capturing determined by its source, into a format more suited to efficient the data source, data format, volumes/speeds and acceptable search and analysis. The common example for data augmenta- latency. tion is geolocation. More broadly, data that has been optimised Most companies start small with pilot projects, before grow- for efficient transport across a restricted fabric (mobile/wireless) ing into broader, mission critical usage. The overriding rule for may contain key values that unlock far richer levels of context infrastructure is that organisations will benefit from more open, and information in other systems/applications. flexible software platforms allowing them to move implementations between different environments as needs change. Popular Best practice 3: indexing open source distributions, with active user communities, will A database index significantly improves the speed of data offer the best mix between customisation, innovation and dif- retrieval operations. Indices are used to quickly locate data ferentiation; allowing companies to focus on the core business. without having to search through everything. When and how indexing is carried out within the system architecture can be a Mike Paquette is Director of Security Market Solutions at critical factor in determining the choice of the system. There are Elastic - www.elastic.co two essential models:

24 Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 www.electronics-eetimes.com AI & MACHINE LEARNING

Schema-on-write Graph analysis Here, the schema is defined be- If your anticipated analysis focuses fore data ingestion. Data is indexed heavily on relationships between according to predefined schema. entities such as computing optimal When results are presented, they paths between nodes in a physical get their format from the same topology, or determining communi- schema. Historically, enrichment of ties of users in a social graph, then data was accomplished with often a graph database might be an ap- complex operations, requiring time- propriate platform. consuming re-indexing. Advantages Technically, another form of NoSQL of this approach include high- database, graph databases store performance queries. Drawbacks Time series analysis using Elastic’s Kibana. relationships between entities in of this approach are potentially slower ingestion/indexing rates. structures called nodes, edges, and properties, and allow ef- Proper schema definition in advance is key. ficient multi-level searches of stored data. Depending on your requirements, you may be able to gain Schema-on-read some benefits of graph exploration without the need for a dedi- In this model no schema is predefined. Data is simply ingest- cated graph database, such as Neo4j, or Elastic’s own Graph ed into the data store as it arrives; the schema and enrichment analytics feature. applied at the time queries are converted to data. This approach Some platforms can provide graph exploration of data based avoids the need for careful schema definition in advance, and on relationships determined from relevance data maintained can achieve high ingestion rates. It sometimes results in slower by their search functions. These functions provide the ability to query performance, though, due to lack of pre-calculated indi- explore potential relationships living amongst the data stored ces. Most schema-on-read data stores thus have the capability in the platform; linkages between people, places, preferences, to optimise common query types, once they’ve been learned, to products, you name it, can provide tremendous insight. improve query performance. Some data stores employ hybrids of the two-models, offering Visualizations the advantages of one approach without common disadvan- While the automated analytics described above can offload tages. Elasticsearch can operate in a schema-less mode, or human analysts from repetitive searching and pivoting through with automatically created schemas, so new queries/searches, data, the data needs to be visualized in order to enable teams devised to uncover new relationships, can operate perfectly. to gain the insight they’re seeking to begin with. Elasticsearch can parallelise the ingestion/indexing process There are dedicated visualization platforms, Kibana for exam- to overcome the slow indexing traditionally associated with ple, that retrieve data from your data store, creating reports to schema-on-write models. gain and communicate insights. Other tools provide a rich set of visualizations from your data store which can be shared across Best practice 4: automated analytics analysts. and visualizations Analysing time series data such as those types outlined may The results that can be delivered from the right platform require a tighter integration between your data store and your choice are mind-blowing. The combination of simple search, visualization platform. Visualizations such as simple metrics, with other emerging technologies - machine learning, anomaly data tables, line charts, time series charts, bar charts, pie detection, graph analysis are hard to underestimate. And when charts, and geographical tile maps should represent a minimum it’s open source - free to evaluate - it’s not a hard sell. Process- set of capabilities. ing is where the fun starts. Conclusion Machine learning Tackling a large-scale analytics projects can be daunting. How- Almost all automated analytics utilising unsupervised machine ever, if engineering discipline is applied to the project, carefully learning have skill sets based on modern data science. Some- modelling the process of converting data into insight before times referred to as “algorithmic assistants,” they baseline making larger investments of time or money, success is increas- normal behaviour by accurately modelling time series data; they ingly achievable. identify anomalous data points or “outliers”; they score the level Consider and model the format, volumes, speeds, and vari- of anomalousness of these outliers. ability of the input data, the accept- This set of skills is often packaged able latency between data creation up under the term “machine learn- and results, the need for high-avail- ing anomaly detection.” ability, period for data retention, Recent developments in ma- and anticipated query volume. chine learning-based analytics Finally, remember that moving have additional capabilities; think data from one data store to another of these as “senior algorithmic as- (aka overcoming “data gravity”) can sistants”; taking the work of their be costly, time-consuming, and subordinate assistants, performing complex. advanced functions such as influ- Consider a platform that offers encer analysis, correlation, causa- a mashup of capabilities in a single tion, and forecasting, to provide data store that meets your specific even more context for engineers. Geopoint analysis performed by Elastic’s Kibana needs. visualization platform. www.electronics-eetimes.com Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 25 DESIGN & PRODUCTS AI & MACHINE LEARNING

Graphcore’s execs on machine learning, company building

By Peter Clarke raphcore Ltd. (Bristol, England), offered by TSMC, Knowles said: “TSMC a startup developing a machine offers several versions of 16nm FinFET,” learning processor, is not ready and indicated a final decision on which Gto make details of its hardware archi- one has not been taken yet. tecture public but CEO Nigel Toon and There is clearly momentum building CTO Simon Knowles were prepared to for writing machine learning software, discuss some of the background think- whether it is to select an individual’s ing with EE Times Europe. music choices in the cloud or to make Toon said that Graphcore currently decisions embedded in autonomous stands at 40 employees and that the $30 vehicles. And with that momentum is million raised in the recently announced coming the development of a host of Series A would be used to complete proprietary and other API and interface the first design and for some limited standards and languages albeit that expansion. “We could have taken more these mainly target the running of neural but this is sufficient to get product out,” networks in software on general pur- said Toon. “We will keep the engineering pose or graphics processors or FPGAs. based here in Bristol but there is scope Nigel Toon, CEO and co-founder of Graphcore. The list of interfaces includes: Google for some customer support and busi- TensorFlow, Theano, Torch, Caffe, Micro- ness development roles in Silicon Valley, Seattle and China,” he soft’s Azure, DMTK and CNTK, Veres from Samsung, DSSTNE added. and many more besides. Are any going to be relevant to Graph- Toon acknowledged that there is one other major technology core? company, besides Samsung and Robert Bosch, that contributed Knowles commented: “We made a very early decision to not to the Series A funding. He said that company has chosen not to introduce a new interface. Our technology is programmed using go public on the investment. standard frameworks. We will emphasize TensorFlow and Mxnet With regard to the Intelligent Processor Unit (IPU) Knowles initially but will be able to address others over time.” commented: “We will release our technology in the second half TensorFlow is an open source software library for numeri- of 2017. It is a brand new, from-scratch design.” cal computation using data flow graphs. Nodes in the graph Much of the team had previously worked with Knowles at represent mathematical operations, while the graph edges Element 14 designing for wireline, and at Icera designing for represent the multidimensional data arrays (tensors) communi- wireless. Now the team is doing the same for machine learning. cated between them. MXNet is another open source library for What Graphcore has said about deep learning with broad language input the IPU – on its website – is that it will support. include massively parallel, low-precision “Fortunately, the world has reached floating-point compute and a much high- some sort of consensus to use frameworks er compute density than other solutions. rather than to invent new languages for The IPU will hold the complete machine machine learning. That means program- learning model inside the processor and ming can be done in Python and C++ and have 100x memory bandwidth than other entered into Tensorflow making it much solutions. easier for us to architect hardware,” said This will be backed up with an IPU- Knowles. Appliance intended to increase the per- Toon added: “Initially the same software formance of both training and inference can be run on the IPU as on other systems by between 10x and 100x compared to and it will just run faster and more energy contemporary systems; and the IPU- efficiently on the IPU. Thereafter more Accelerator, a PCIe card designed to plug into a conventional ambitious applications can be attempted.” server computer to accelerate machine learning applications. Knowles added: “One of the details we can disclose is that Knowles said: “It will be a very large chip. We have not taped we have a software interlayer called Poplar, which is itself a out, and because it is a large chip we cannot really benefit from graphic framework that we link to Tensorflow or other frame- doing test circuits on shuttle runs. Fortunately, we [the team] works. Poplar does the same job for the IPU that CUDA does for have a long-standing relationship with TSMC and a very good a GPU. Poplar is closer to the metal while Tensorflow is closer to track record of getting it right first time.” the software programmer’s point of view.” Toon added: “But we are going to make the libraries associ- Knowles said that the design is being aimed at a 16nm Fin- ated with Poplar totally open.” FET process from TSMC. When asked whether that would be However, with the machine learning landscape changing the 16FF+ or 16FFC (near-threshold voltage) process variants so rapidly it remains unclear which of a host of startups can

26 Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 www.electronics-eetimes.com AI & MACHINE LEARNING

intersect with where the market will be “Supervised learning, unsuper- in a few quarters time. Such startups vised learning, reinforcement learning; include Nervana, acquired by Intel, all three are very important and we Wave Computing Inc. KnuEdge Inc., will support all three. Then there is BrainChip Inc. and TeraDeep Inc., hardware training or learning versus amongst others. hardware inference.” Knowles agreed that the landscape Knowles pointed out that some is fast moving. “Five years ago it was people say you need different hard- the wild West but as an entry mecha- ware to support learning and inference nism graph frameworks have emerged because the first would typically work as the clear choice.” with much larger datasets and may And while machine learning is much need higher dynamic range. “Our view broader than just neural networks even is that it is not necessary to split this a term like neural networks is evolving. functions. It is quite possible to do “The success of neural networks is both on one piece of silicon.” very recent indeed. If you use the term Simon Knowles, CTO and co-founder of Graphcore. It is notable that Knowles former now the assumption is you mean convolutional neural networks. colleague and boss at both Element 14 and Icera, Stan Boland, Previously it might have been “random forest” networks as used has his own artificial intelligence startup FiveAI Inc., also based in Microsoft Kinect and before that “support vector” machines. in Bristol. However, Boland’s experience has apparently per- The field is nascent and moving faster than ever before. So it suaded him to take a different route to Toon and Knowles and would be folly to build a machine specific to one architecture.” focus on software for autonomous automobiles. “Perhaps, Stan Knowles added that some of the neural network architectures is a prospector looking for gold in AI and we shall supply the are only popular because they can be run on GPUs, which are of picks and shovels,” said Toon. Indeed there is the possibility that course optimized primarily as graphics renderers and therefore both companies could be successful with FiveAI software run- show inefficiencies in running neural network software. ning on Graphcore hardware at some point in 2017 and beyond. Movidius to push AI at edge of network By Junko Yoshida ovidius, a leading embedded computer-vision processor company, soon to be acquired by Intel Corp., has agreed with China’s Hikvision to penetrate artificial Mintelligence (AI) deeper into surveillance cameras. The deal put Movidius in a direct contact with Hikvision (pronounced high-K vision), a Chinese company not only known as a major factor globally in the surveillance market, but also for its expertise in advanced visual analytics. In a phone interview with EE Times, Movidius CEO, Remi El- Ouazzane, said, “Deploying Artificial Intelligence at the edge [of the network] is becoming a massive trend.” Movidius, which has played a key role behind Google’s Proj- ect Tango, has been promoting its ultralow-power vision pro- (Source Movidius) cessing SoC in a number of embedded systems. The company has set its sights on accelerating the adoption of deep learning the cloud, Movidius’ ultra-low power Myriad 2 Vision Processing in a host of applications, including security cameras, drones Unit can run advanced algorithms — like those developed by and augmented reality (AR)/virtual reality (VR), as El-Ouazzane Hikvision — at the edge, inside cameras themselves, explained explained. Movidius. Aside from an extended collaboration with Google in neural Hikvision isn’t just a volume manufacturer of surveillance network technology, Movidius has been working with DJI, in cameras. Its core expertise lies in the development of Machine Shenzhen, China, the world’s leading maker of drones and Learning-based advanced visual analysis. aerial cameras. In fact, Hikvision just last week won the “scene classification” Based on Movidius’ vision processor unit called Myriad 2, category at ImageNet Challenge 2016. Organized by Stanford DJI earlier this year launched its Phantom 4 aircraft, with “the University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Michigan, ability to sense and avoid obstacles in real time and hover in a and UNC Chapel Hill, the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recog- fixed position without the need for a GPS signal,” as described nition Challenge evaluates algorithms for object detection and by DJI. image classification in large scale signals. Ranked No.1 in scene classification at ImageNet 2016 Other categories include object detection, object localization, The deal with Hikvision is geared toward driving Movidius’ object detection from video and scene parsing. According to embedded vision processor into the world of security cam- Hikvision Research Institute, its researchers used “inception- eras. Although running Deep Neural Networks has historically style networks and not-so-deep residuals networks that perform required devices to depend on additional computing power in better in considerably less training time.” www.electronics-eetimes.com Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 27 DESIGN & PRODUCTS AI & MACHINE LEARNING

Sense, assess and decide started this early — three to four years ago — and we’ve nailed Embedded systems, capable of actions such as “to sense, this one down.” That time advantage is “monumental,” he assess and decide,” will only grow further, explained Movidius added. CEO El-Ouazzane. Along with this growth, the industry has an increasing China connections number of tech companies “trying to attack ‘Deep Learning’ Beyond design wins for its own embedded vision SoCs, Mo- from different layers and come up with new SoC platforms,” he vidius benefits, in El-Ouazzane’s opinion, from its partnerships observed. with leading Chinese companies — DJI and Hikvision included A case in point is ThinCI (pronounced Think-Eye), a startup — with deep expertise in neural networks. The Movidius CEO just out of the closet. cited recent Chinese advancements in AI. Validation comes Considering the performance level required for neural from a new report published last week by the White House as a network applications in a power- part of a strategic push for the U.S. constrained environment, embed- development of AI. ded vision processing needs a As outlined in the report, “Na- special, purpose-built architecture, tional Artificial Intelligence Research El-Ouazzane explained. This trend and Development Strategic Plan” is amplified by Moore’s Law which put together by the National Sci- has recently shown signs of slowing ence and Technology Council, the down, he added. United States was an early leader on Common to all three applications deep-learning research. But China — security cameras, drones, AR/VR is surpassing the United States not — is the demand for improvements only in the number of AI papers pub- in power consumption, explained lished annually, but also in quality of El-Ouazzane. research. But how exactly are neural Journal articles cited at least once, mentioning “deep A chart shows the number of networks applied to each of these learning” or “deep neural network”, by nation (Source: journal articles cited at least once, applications? White House) mentioning “deep learning” or “deep neural network,” by nation. Forensic analysis The Movidius CEO told EE Times, “It’s not just Google, but For security cameras, the demand is not just for industrial-grade a growing number of Chinese companies including Baidu are big pixel cameras but cameras that can do “forensic analysis,” making a huge progress in the field of neural networks today.” said Movidius CEO. People are planning to use neural networks to “prevent stuff like thefts from happening,” he explained. Intel-Movidius By leveraging Deep Neural Networks and stereo 3D sensing, Intel’s Movidius acquisition deal is expected to close in the Hikvision claims it has been able to achieve up to 99% accura- fourth quarter this year. Asked what’s next for Movidus, El- cy in its advanced visual analytics applications. Some of these Ouazzane told EE Times, “We plan to lead in the embedded applications include: car model classification, intruder detec- vision processing market with a roadmap that advances higher tion, suspicious baggage alert, and seatbelt detection. frame rate at lower power in our vision processing unit (VPU).” According to Movidius, the Myriad 2 platform allows these Becoming part of Intel is “interesting to us,” he added, largely functions to be processed instantaneously in the camera, rather because it will “give us an opportunity to explore what the dis- than going to the cloud for processing. tributed neural network means to edge Hikvision CEO, Hu Yangzhong, devices and to the cloud.” promised that he “will build a long term While Movidius focuses on locally partnership with Movidius and its VPU processing intelligence, Intel concen- roadmap.” trates on a large network-based cloud. In drones, neural networks are key to Where is the best place — in the net- tracking objects. Instead of developing work or in the device — to develop infer- hand-crafted vision applications that ence systems is a subject that needs can be very time consuming, the use further study. of deep learning can offer much higher Movidius in collaboration with Intel robustness in object-tracking applica- hopes to learn how to adjust ‘weight’ tions, said El-Ouazzane. management, develop competitive infer- “By next year, you will see drones ence systems, and how best to build Movidius CEO Remi El-Ouazzane and Intel using neural networks,” he predicted. more effective neural networks — all in senior vice president Josh Walden discuss Neural networks are also useful in the context of end-to-end systems, as scene classification when handling a what’s possible in the drone lab at Intel’s Santa the Movidius CEO explained. massive amount of mixed reality in AR/ Clara headquarters. When Movidius is finally integrated VR applications. into Intel, “We will be the only company working on deep learn- AI, however, is still in its infancy, acknowledged El-Ouazzane, ing in an end-to-end system covering both edge devices and noting that there are many different schemes and ways to de- clouds,” he noted. Will the Movidius team stay intact? ploy deep learning. El-Ouazzane told EE Times, “Yes, the whole team will move Against the backdrop of a number of startups similarly to Intel and we’ll keep the Movidius branding. Intel will help us competing to corner the deep learning-based computer vision grow successfully.” He added, “They are not going to spoil the market, Movidius is fortunate, said El-Ouazzane, because “we toy” they have just bought.

28 Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 www.electronics-eetimes.com AI & MACHINE LEARNING

Startup digs deep learning, snags big backers

Junko Yoshida t a time when “Deep Learning” isn’t just hot but approaching the hype-cycle’s boiling point, nobody should be surprised at the Aemergence of another deep-learning, vision processing startup. This one is called ThinCI (pronounced “Think- Eye”), founded by Dinakar Munagala, an accomplished engineer/architect with an Intel pedigree. Surprising about ThinCI (El Dorado Hills, Ca- lif.), however, is its well-heeled, big-name backers with credible technological expertise, and a unique “massively parallel architecture” which Munagala describes as an engine “purposely built for vision processing and deep learning.” Munagala promises that his patent-pending chip architecture can bring “two orders of magnitude improvements in performance” compared to other deep learning/vision processing solutions. ThinCI, after operating in a garage on a shoe- string budget for six years, is emerging from stealth mode this week. It recently snagged two big automotive tier ones as institutional investors and secured ThinCI’s VISCEN (VISual Computing ENgine) hardware architecture a roster of who’s who in the tech industry as private investors. (Source: ThinCI) The two tier ones signed up are DENSO Interna- tional America, Inc., and Magna International Inc. Munagala explained to EE Times that this is “a massively Private investors include: Dado Banatao, chairman ThinCI parallel architecture designed to process multiple compute board of directors and managing partner, Tallwood Venture nodes of a task graph at the same time.” Capital; Dadi Perlmutter, former executive vice president, Deep learning, in essence, is based on a set of algorithms general manager of Intel Corp.’s Architecture Group; Jürgen that try to model high level abstractions in data by using a deep Hambrecht, chairman of the Supervisory Board of BASF SE and graph with many processing layers, composed of multiple linear Member of Supervisory Board of Daimler AG; and several oth- and non-linear transformations. What’s unique about ThinCI’s ers of similar stature. architecture appears to be in the way it handles a deep graph. Instead of processing data sequentially through a deep Simplicity, flexibility graph, with multiple processing layers, “ThinCI’s architecture Perlmutter, asked why invest in ThinCI, told EE Times, “Through streams data through the entire graph using extreme parallel- all my career I significantly appreciated simplicity and flexibility. ism,” explained Munagala. I always preferred approaches that went away from brute force, and looked at the bottlenecks of a new computing problem, and But that’s only half of the story. found ways to eliminate the bottlenecks by finding new ap- As Perlmutter put it to EE Times, “The other major factor proaches. ThinCI has done just that.” [about ThinCI’s processor architecture] is programmability.” He explained that many make the mistake of hardware tailoring for While other solutions are limited to moving data in and out a given solution, while history’s lesson is that the problems keep to feed a big, hungry computing engine, Perlmutter described changing, and programmers have great innovative powers. ThinCI computing as “tailored to Deep Learning graph analy- What ThinCI needs is “a way to program the processor and get sis.” He said it “eliminates by a huge factor unnecessary access new solutions that are ever evolving,” noted Perlmutter. to memory.” Its end results? “This results not only in speeding up the Apparently that’s what the startup delivers. Munagala told computation but reducing cost and power,” he added. Munag- EE Times, designers “benefit from a unique programming ap- ala told EE Times that he quit Intel six years ago with ambitions proach, while using industry standard API’s. [This] facilitates to develop a new chip architecture that can meet the needs of the ease of building deep networks that are optimized for their next-generation technologies, such as deep learning. processor.” ThinCI, however, has yet to disclose details of its processor Asked to compare ThinCI to other processors on the market, architecture. The company describes it “a revolutionary graph Munagal said, “Take an example of GPUs.” Although GPU has streaming processor.” been used for deep learning (i.e. Nvidia), “it isn’t designed for www.electronics-eetimes.com Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 29 DESIGN & PRODUCTS AI & MACHINE LEARNING

data analysis” he said. “It’s inefficient at vision processing, and ly slow-moving industry, especially considering all the testing it is power and memory hungry.” and certifications that must go into final products. The problem with DSP is that it’s inefficient to program and It makes sense for any startup is to look for near-term op- complex to program.” portunities elsewhere. Vision processing and deep learning What about hardwired devices? This isn’t feasible because applications “can be applied everywhere” from natural user algorithms for deep learning are evolving too fast for fixed solu- interfaces to surveillance cameras and even white goods, ex- tions. plained Munagala. CPU, meanwhile, is “only for general purpose,” because it lacks performance while consuming too much power. Perlmutter agreed. “Automotive is just one class of deep learning, but deep learning answers a huge new class of prob- On-die graph execution lems.” In contrast, the claim to fame of ThinCI’s visual comput- He explained, “Creating adaptive solutions applies to all ing engine is its ability to offer “on-die graph execution.” It’s human-like actions. They range from vision, to speech, optimiz- designed to accelerate CNN (Convolutional Neural Networks), ing algorithms on big data collections, and sophisticated BOTs DNN (Deep Neural Nets) and other complex algorithms. More and assistants.” important, data coming from a camera sensor “would be stored To Perlmutter, deep learning is hugely effective, especially and processed on chip, without DRAM access,” according to “when we move away from smartphones, into Augmented the company. Reality (AR)-like devices.” He said, “Our interaction with AR Hence Munagala believes the ThinCI visual computing devices, and the level of sophistication we will need from them, engine can bring more performance, lower power consumption, in the office, in manufacturing floor and on the go, will be much programmability and a smaller memory footprint compared to more than the clumsy way we interact with smartphones today.” other processing architecture. Fortunately, ThinCI’s edge in the embedded market is that its Of course, the vision processing SoC market is beginning to visual computing engine is very scalable. “We can address a di- see a number of new processors. Movidius, recently acquired verse market ranging from wearables to servers with a common by Intel, is a good example. It offers a vision processor de- software stack,” said Munagala. signed for the embedded market. But when asked to compare with architectures currently used Timeline in deep learning, Munagala said, “Our solution is more than 13x According to the startup, the architecture of its visual comput- in performance to size, power.” More importantly, “Architectur- ing engine “is frozen and was proven in a test chip in 2015.” ally, ours is more forward looking. Being able to solve problems The company needed to raise money to fulfill the first other architectures aren’t able to.” He also added the signifi- production silicon scheduled in 2017. ThinCI has its complete cance of a “simple programming model.” software tool suite in beta-test since early this year. ThinCI’s investors generally appear very confident of what Automotive Tier Ones this team can deliver. Investments from the two big tier ones clearly illustrate three Jürgen Hambrecht, chairman of the Supervisory Board of things: First, the auto industry’s huge appetite for vision pro- BASF SE and Member of Supervisory Board of Daimler AG, told cessing and deep learning technologies (they don’t think they EE Times that he personally decided to invest in ThinCI because have seen all the answers yet), second, their strong commit- of “its outstanding team and their competence.” ment to make autonomous driving a reality, and last but not Hambrecht likes the fact that “the startup is bringing together least, tier ones in particular need a technology breakthrough breakthrough hardware software for very diverse industry ap- that can give them a certain leverage to get back at the same plications.” table with big boys. Look no further than the Mobileye/Intel/BMW alliance announced last July. Conspicuously absent from that deal were tier ones. “DENSO has been researching new developments in the area of computer vision processing, and our investment in ThinCI represents a strong belief that ThinCI’s technology will soon become a key component of next generation autonomous driving systems that require advanced computing techniques combined with deep learning capabilities,” Tony Cannestra, DENSO International America’s Director of Corporate Ventures, said in a statement. Swamy Kotagiri, Chief Technology Officer at Magna, also said in a statement: “We are excited to combine the work ThinCI is doing in the area of processing and software with Magna’s overall understanding of automotive systems.” Beyond automotive markets ThinCI isn’t just hanging its hat on the automo- (Source: ThinCI) tive market, however. Automotive is a notorious-

30 Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 www.electronics-eetimes.com AI & MACHINE LEARNING

Cray expands deep learning to supercomputers and cluster systems At the 2016 Supercomputing Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, Cray Inc. unveiled new deep learning capabilities across its line of supercomputing and cluster systems. With validated deep learning toolkits and the most scalable supercomputing systems in the industry, Cray customers can now run deep learning workloads at their fullest potential – at scale on a Cray supercomputer.

“The convergence of supercomputing and big data analytics is happening now, and the rise of deep learning algorithms is evidence of how customers are increasingly using high performance computing techniques to accelerate analytics applications,” said Steve Scott, senior vice president and chief technology officer at Cray.

“Training problems look very much like classical supercomputing problems. We believe that with our Cray Programming Environment, validated toolkits, and the latest processing technologies, we have the right combination of hardware and software expertise to help our customers efficiently execute deep learning workloads now and in the future.”

Cray has validated and made available several deep learning toolkits on Cray XC and Cray CS-Storm systems to simplify the transition to running deep learning workloads at scale. These toolkits include the Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit (previously CNTK), TensorFlow, NVIDIA DIGITS (Deep Learning GPU Training System), Caffe, Torch, and MXNet.

Additionally, the Cray CS-Storm system – a dense, accelerated GPU cluster supercomputer that offers 850 GPU teraflops in a single rack – now supports the NVIDIA Tesla P100 for PCIe data center accelerator and the NVIDIA Tesla M40 deep learning training accelerator.

And with the addition of the NVIDIA Tesla P100 to the Cray XC50 supercomputer, Cray now has a variety of scalable systems well suited for running a wide array of emerging deep and machine learning applications. Cray www.cray.com

www.electronics-eetimes.com Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 31 DESIGN & PRODUCTS POWER SUPPLIES & BATTERIES

Testing to ensure battery integrity

By Richard Poate

ithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries have proven to be a reliable and cost-effective power source, helping to revolutionise technology development. Lightweight and long lasting, Lthey have proven invaluable in the evolution of electrical and electronic products, from consumer-friendly smartphones and tablets to advanced medical diagnostic devices and even the current generation of electric vehicles.

Consumer electronic devices are becoming smaller with many power hungry features, resulting in the battery pack also becoming smaller, but at the same time requiring greater capacity. Such devices are often carried in people’s pockets, increasing the potential safety hazard and risk of personal injury. The recent media coverage of Samsung’s recall of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone is a prime example of the potential volatility of lithium-ion batteries. ments, manufacturers often call on third-party specialists to Batteries must therefore be tested at all levels, with tests verify compliance. that cover investigations such as electrical, chemical, corrosive, mechanical, and abuse. These include: Required Tests According to UN38.3 UN38.3 requires that lithium cells and batteries are subject to • Life cycle testing - verifies how long a battery lasts and as many as eight separate tests. Five tests are mandatory and demonstrates the quality of the battery. These tests include apply to all cells and batteries, with three being dependent on cycle life testing, environmental cycle testing and calendar life whether a cell, battery or a rechargeable battery is being tested. testing. • Abuse testing - simulates extreme environmental conditions Tests must be completed in a defined order, primarily as and scenarios to test batteries beyond limits. this creates a method for ageing the battery to replicate its real • Performance testing - demonstrates the efficiency of bat- lifetime usage. The sample must not leak, vent, disassemble, teries, such as performance testing under various climatic rupture or ignite. The eight tests evaluate samples for risks from conditions. electrical, mechanical and environmental conditions, and are as • Environmental and durability testing - demonstrates the follows: quality and reliability of a battery through tests including vibration, shock, EMC, thermal cycling, corrosion, dust, salt 1) Altitude Simulation - a sample is stored at a specified pres- and humidity. sure and at ambient temperature for at least six hours. 2) Thermal Test - a sample is cycled 10 times through extended Testing to minimise air transport hazards periods of exposure to extreme heat and cold conditions, There are also safety concerns where battery inventories are after which it is stored for 24 hours at ambient temperature. transported via aircraft, with increased attention to the potential 3) Vibration Test - a sample is subjected to vibrations of varying dangers of transporting lithium batteries with manufacturers amplitudes over a three-hour period in each of three mutually of lithium batteries (cells and packs) having to meet stringent perpendicular mounting positions. requirements. 4) Shock Test - a sample is secured to a testing device and subjected to three calibrated shocks of varying intensity in The United Nations (UN) Manual of Tests and Criteria con- both a positive and negative direction in each of three differ- tains test methods and procedures to be used for the classifica- ent mounting positions, for a total of 18 separate shocks. tion of dangerous goods according to the provisions of the UN’s 5) External Short Circuit - a sample that has been heated to a Recommendations on the Transport of Dangerous Goods. The specified temperature is then subjected to a specified short sixth revised edition of the Manual was published in 2015, with circuit condition for at least one hour after the sample’s Part 3, Section 38.3 addressing the requirements that apply to external case temperature has reverted pre-test specified lithium cells and batteries. temperature (small cells or batteries), or (in the case of large batteries) has decreased by half of the maximum tempera- The provisions are used as the basis for transportation com- ture increase observed during the test. panies to accept batteries, and customs officials will check that 6) Impact/Crush Test – a sample is subjected to a single impact the battery manufacturer’s self-declaration meets the require- from a mass of a specified weight dropped from a speci- ment of UN38.3. However, with such a complex set of require- fied height. Another sample is then crushed between two flat surfaces at a defined speed until either the applied force Richard Poate is Senior Compliance Manager at TÜV SÜD reaches a calculated limit, the voltage of the cell drops by at Product Service, a global product testing and certification least 100 mV, or the cell is deformed by 50%. organisation – www.tuv-sud.com 7) Overcharge Test - a sample is subjected to a charge current

32 Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 www.electronics-eetimes.com POWER SUPPLIES & BATTERIES

equal to twice that of the manufac- • Thermal Fuse turer’s maximum recommended con- Some prismatic batteries have an additional tinuous charge current at ambient feature, a thermal fuse which limits the cur- temperature for a period of 24 hours. rent under fault conditions. 8) Forced Discharge Test - a sample is forced discharged at ambient tem- A protection circuit (PCM) is also usually perature at an initial current equal fitted within the battery pack consisting of to the maximum discharge current a custom designed integrated circuit that specified by the manufacturer and monitors the cell and prevents over-charge, for a calculated time interval. over-discharge, and over-current. This in combination with two Field Effect Unlike most other standards and Transistor (FET) devices to control the charge regulations that relate to product and discharging. Also present is a tempera- testing, UN38 requires that the test ture sensing device (thermistor) designed to sequence must be repeated from the invoke protective action via the control IC in start if any of the five mandatory test the event of an over-temperature scenario. phases are non-compliant. Not only does the product need ageing correctly, it could be that if you fix one problem, there is The real world of testing no assurance as to how that adaption will affect the results of In reality we have first-hand experience of many examples the other tests within the test sequence. where testing has highlighted particular safety issues, many of them serious. In one memorable instance, whilst overcharging a So the entire test process needs to go back to square one, battery (UN 38.3) a venting of gas occurred. if a product fails any of the five mandatory test stages, and the This is normal. However, after a minute or so, it was evident that manufacturer will have to provide new samples, as well as pay the design of the vent plate was inadequate and the result can for tests to be re-conducted. This not only costs extra, it will only be described as a significant explosion where the vent, the also delay time to market for new products and could seriously intended weak point, couldn’t vent the gas fast enough. Not impact a manufacturer’s profitability. ideal when you consider the battery was undergoing tests to prove it suitable for air transport! Safety Features within the design Manufacturers of Li-ion and Li-ion polymer batteries include We have also experienced many examples of swollen battery internal protection devices in addition to the protection circuits packs, again generally caused by inadequate design/safeguards within the overall battery pack to guard against excessive heat of the protection mechanisms. On its own, a swollen battery is and pressure. Typical protection devices include: probably OK, but consider it at temperature within an electrical enclosure, say a mobile phone handset, and you have a recipe • Vent Plate / Vent Tear Away Tab for disaster. Excessive build up of pressure within battery cells is caused The battery will swell to a point where it becomes restrained primarily from excessive abnormal heat generation or over- by the enclosure, eventually it ruptures. Oxygen enters through charging. The vent allows the safe release of gas. the rupture, elevated temperatures and fuel within and hey • Positive Temperature Coefficient (PTC) presto you have a rather energetic explosion / fire! PTCs act as both a current fuse and a thermal fuse so that, when excessive current is drawn, the resistance of the PTC Technology change increases resulting in increased heat generation. The resistance The development of Li-ion technology has played a signifi- of the PTC is selected so that it trips at the pre-determined cur- cant role in the pace of technology evolution and today’s user rent. demands that mobile devices and other technologies give them • Separator increased functionality with portability. Li-ion has helped manu- When the separator reaches its defined temperature (typically facturers deliver on that. 130ºC), the pores are blocked by the melting of the material, preventing electrical current to flow between the electrodes. The While Li-ion batteries still have some disadvantages, their separator is also sometimes known as a ‘shut-down separator’. progressive development over the last few years has meant that these are far outweighed by the advantages. An improvement of manufacturing processes through the introduction of more robust standards, as well as increasing consumer understanding of how to respect these batteries, means that the safety of Li-ion has dramatically improved.

However, while the overall failure rate of lithium batteries in use is low, safety concerns still exist, particularly in connection with their transport in aircraft. UN/DOT 38.3 details testing requirements that are now applicable to all lithium cells and batteries, and manufacturers of lithium batteries and products using lithium batteries must account for these testing requirements in the design, manufacture and distribution of their products.

www.electronics-eetimes.com Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 33 DESIGN & PRODUCTS POWER SUPPLIES & BATTERIES

Battery-less wearables make debut

By Julien Happich

alifornia-based startup Ma- mesh”, explained Boukai, “this yields trix Industries just came out a much more mechanically robust of stealth mode with a very device”. promisingC Indiegogo crowd-funding After this breakthrough, Boukai campaign for what may be the first co-founded Silicium Energy late commercially-available battery-less 2011, receiving seed funding from smart watch, leveraging a novel type various investors. The company was of thermoelectric units. renamed Matrix Industries about a Monitoring your activity (calories month ago, before launching the burned, steps taken) and sleep quality, Indiegogo PowerWatch campaign. the PowerWatch as the company calls “Nobody was able to pronounce it is built with power-efficient compo- Silicium Energy correctly, and we nents such as a 1.2” diameter LCD wanted to make it easier on consum- memory display and Ambiq Micro’s ers”, the CEO recalls. ultra-low power Apollo MCU, so it can draw all of its operating power Although he wouldn’t reveal too from a small thermoelectric unit that much about the patented process generates electricity out of body nor about the actual figure of merit heat. Still the device can connect to achieved, Boukai told us this was a a smartphone via a built-in Bluetooth CMOS-compatible process involving 4.0 LE module to wirelessly sync with some form of electrochemical etch- the MATRIX iOS and Android apps The PowerWatch monitors your activity (calories ing, maybe a way to hint at further for more in depth data interpretation burned, steps taken) and sleep quality, powered device integration. After all, one could (peaks, trends). from the heat you generate. integrate power management and Calorie counting is performed conversion electronics into the very through a sensor-fusion based algorithm, reading data not only same micro-drilled die that serves for the thermoelectric unit, on from the voltage information provided by the Seebeck effect a small reserved non-drilled area. (when the wearer’s body heats up), but also from two tempera- By creating a very fine mesh (in fact removing most of the ture sensors (near the skin and away from it on the outer side of silicon) out of a PN doped wafer, a thermoelectric junction is the watch) and from an accelerometer. simply created by metallizing the end faces of the wafer to ex- But at this early stage of the company’s existence, the ploit the Seebeck effect, no stacking needed here, a simple and PowerWatch is really only a public demonstrator, admitted CEO robust planar architecture that can be sized up on demand. and Co-Founder Akram Boukai when interviewed by EE Times Coming back to the PowerWatch launch Boukai said: “it is Europe. The bigger story is really about the very low cost and just a way for us to come out of stealth mode, to show that rugged thermoelectric unit that the former academic invented thermoelectrics are now a viable source of energy for wear- when doing research on clean energy sources in the Chemistry ables. There has been a lot of failures in the past, the pain point Department of the University of California, Berkeley. being that for most wearables you have to replace the batteries Back in 2008, Boukai and his research colleagues published or you have to recharge them very often”. a paper in Nature, “Silicon nanowires as efficient thermoelectric “We wanted to see how the market would respond by show- materials”, which was our first hint for this interview. ing our technology in the most demanding form factor. But in “Actually we don’t use silicon nanowires, this was a lab the long term, we’ll take this technology into other devices, sen- discovery and a curiosity. We had found that while bulk silicon is sors, beacons with energy harvesting” Boukai said, adding that a good heat conductor, by processing it into nanowires, its ther- he would certainly be open to licensing it. mal conductivity decreased by a hundred times and became The response on Indiegogo has been quite impressive so similar to that of glass while retaining a very good electrical con- far, raising over USD 370,000 in less than ten days, with still a ductivity” revealed Boukai. month to go. “Then I became professor at the University of Michigan But would that watch be feasible with off-the-shelf thermo- where I was trying to figure out a way to manufacture these electric generators from competition? We asked. silicon nanowires in a scalable way to build efficient thermoelec- “Certainly”, answered Boukai, “but off-the-shelf Bismuth- tric units”. Telluride type generators are much more expensive, so you But as you would imagine, stacking silicon nanowires verti- may be able to integrate them in one-off consumer products, cally to create PN junction thermoelectric generators was prov- but they would be too expensive to be adopted for large-scale ing difficult. industrial IoT deployment. Our technology is about twenty times “We had developed a process to create the silicon nano- less expensive, and being silicon it can operate at much higher wires, but arranging them into a device was difficult, so we temperatures too”. decided to take a different approach, in fact we inverted the Powering the PowerWatch is a 1cm2 holey slab of silicon, process. We took a silicon wafer between 500µm and 1mm 1mm thick. “Of course, there has to be metal on each side, the thick, and drilled lots of nanoscale holes in it to create a silicon mechanical design of the device around the thermoelectric unit

34 Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 www.electronics-eetimes.com A44EET_EURO_2_37x10_87_A44E.qxd 10/24/16 4:4

POWER SUPPLIES & BATTERIES DC-DC CONVERTERS is an important aspect to ensure a good temperature differential, 2V to 10,000 VDC Outputs from the wearer’s skin contact to 1-300 Watt Modules the outside”, clarified the CEO, Regulated/Proportional/Programmable adding that at room temperature, the thermoelectric unit could Isolated/Single/Dual Outputs generate between 40 and 50µW/ 2 High Reliability cm /ºC. Greater than 1,000,000 hrs. As soon as the Indiegogo Mil Hbk 217F campaign is over, the startup • plans to discuss other applications with potential customers Military Upgrades in the medical and IoT markets. Expanded operating temperature Also on Matrix Industries’ road- -55º to +85º C, no derating required map are differently sized thermo- • electric generators, most prob- Environmental Screening ably connecting the same little Selected Screening, Mil Std 883 silicon dies in series to scale up An early PowerWatch prototype with the • on power. Boukai is also tinkering thermoelectric unit built-in and all the electronics ULTRA Miniature on reference kits to make ther- out on an external board: since then fully From 0.5" x 0.5" x 0.2" moelectric units more accessible integrated into the watch. • to makers and others to use. Surface Mount/Thru-Hole

• Custom Models • US Manufactured Qualcomm, Preh team up • AS 9100 Approved

High Reliability AC/DC on wireless EV charging Power Supplies, Transformers and Inductors By Nick Flaherty ualcomm has signed up German technology supplier Preh for its wireless charging technology for electric vehicles. Preh, part of the Chinese Joyson Electronics Group, will use Qualcomm’s inductive Halo technology to develop newQ products and will focus on commercializing wireless charging for Plug-In Hybrid (PHEV) and Electric Vehicle (EV) manufacturers. Preh is currently developing automotive wireless charging systems based on Double D magnetics, which deliver high power, superior performance in an industry- leading small vehicle package See PICO’s full line catalog at size, supported by Qualcomm. www.picoelectronics.com The company is in discus- sions with a number of global automotive manufacturers concerning advanced wireless charging programmes. “The inclusion of Qualcomm Halo WEVC technology in our product portfolio is a PICO Electronics,Inc. key development to enhance our e-mobility offering,” said Michael Bischoff, Executive 143 Sparks Ave. Pelham, N.Y. 10803 Director at Preh. “We have strong relationships with all the major global automotive E Mail: [email protected] manufacturers and are excited to commercialize higher power WEVC solutions for our Pico Representatives customers, with the ultimate aim to enhance the EV driver experience.” Germany “As a leading global supplier to the automotive industry, Preh represents a great ELBV/Electronische Bauelemente Vertrieb fit for Qualcomm, expanding our automotive supplier network and becoming a E-mail: [email protected] contributor to the dissemination of this exciting new technology,” said Steve Pazol, Phone: 0049 89 4602852 Fax: 0049 89 46205442 vice president and general manager of the Wireless Charging busiess at Qualcomm. “Qualcomm Halo technology covers all aspects of WEVC systems, allowing Preh to England deliver highly efficient, safe and flexible systems to meet the market needs.” Ginsbury Electronics Ltd. E-mail: [email protected] Qualcomm is providing Preh with a comprehensive technology transfer package, Phone: 0044 1634 298900 aimed to enhance their ability to develop commercially and technically viable WEVC Fax: 0044 1634 290904 systems, as well as to support the future design of improved high-power WEVC systems based upon advanced magnetics. www.electronics-eetimes.com Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 35 DESIGN & PRODUCTS POWER SUPPLIES & BATTERIES

Nanomaterials create flexible supercapacitors By Nick Flaherty

esearchers at the University of Cen- sional (1D) nanowires with the conformal 2D tral Florida have developed a new TMD layers, the supercapacitor components process for creating flexible superca- possess “one-body” geometry with atomi- pacitorsR that can store more energy and be cally sharp and structurally robust core/shell recharged more than 30,000 times without interfaces. These outperform previously degrading. The team at UCF’s NanoScience developed stand-alone 2D TMD-based Technology Center has experimented with supercapacitors, particularly with the charge applying newly discovered two-dimensional retention. materials only a few atoms thick to superca- “For small electronic devices, our materi- pacitors. als are surpassing the conventional ones “There have been problems in the way people incorporate worldwide in terms of energy density, power density and cyclic these two-dimensional materials into the existing systems - stability,” said Nitin Choudhary, a postdoctoral associate on the that’s been a bottleneck in the field. We developed a simple team. “If they were to replace the batteries with these superca- chemical synthesis approach so we can very nicely integrate pacitors, you could charge your mobile phone in a few seconds the existing materials with the two-dimensional materials,” said and you wouldn’t need to charge it again for over a week.” principal investigator Yeonwoong “Eric” Jung, an assistant A lithium-ion battery can be recharged fewer than 1,500 professor with joint appointments to the times without significant failure. Recent NanoScience Technology Center and the formulations of supercapacitors with two- Materials Science & Engineering Depart- dimensional materials can be recharged a ment. few thousand times. By comparison, the Jung’s team has developed superca- new process created at UCF yields a super- pacitors composed of millions of nano- capacitor that doesn’t degrade even after meter-thick wires coated with shells of it’s been recharged 30,000 times. two-dimensional transition-metal dichalco- “It’s not ready for commercialization,” genide (TMD) material. A highly conductive said Jung, who is working with UCF’s Office core provides fast electron transfer for fast of Technology Transfer to patent the new charging and discharging and the uniformly The team at Forida used 1D nanowires process. coated shells of two-dimensional materials coated in 2D structures to create a “But this is a proof-of-concept demon- yield high energy and power densities. flexible supercapacitor stration, and our studies show there are very By combining an array of one-dimen- high impacts for many technologies.” Scrap metal batteries promise energy storage innovation By Nick Flaherty team at Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN) has created pensive salt used in laundry detergent. the world’s first steel-brass battery - made from junkyard “Imagine that the tons of metal waste discarded every year metal scraps - that can store energy at levels compa- could be used to provide energy storage for the renewable en- Arable to lead-acid batteries while charging and ergy grid of the future, instead of becoming discharging at rates comparable to ultra-fast a burden for waste processing plants and charging supercapacitors. the environment,” said Cary Pint, assistant The key is anodization, a common chemical professor of mechanical engineering at treatment used to give aluminium a durable and Vanderbilt University. “When our aim was to decorative finish. When easily available waste produce the materials used in batteries from scraps of steel and brass are anodized using a household supplies in a manner so cheaply common household chemical and residential that large-scale manufacturing facilities electrical current, the researchers found that the don’t make any sense, we had to approach metal surfaces are restructured into nanometre-sized networks this differently than we normally would in the research lab.” of metal oxide that can store and release energy when reacting The team’s next step is to build a full-scale prototype battery with a water-based liquid electrolyte. suitable for use in energy-efficient smart homes. The team determined that these nanometre domains explain “We’re seeing the start of a movement in contemporary so- the fast charging behaviour as well as the battery’s stabil- ciety leading to a ‘maker culture’ where large-scale product de- ity. They tested it for 5,000 consecutive charging cycles - the velopment and manufacturing is being decentralized and scaled equivalent of over 13 years of daily charging and discharging - down to individuals or communities. So far, batteries have re- and found that it retained more than 90 percent of its capacity. mained outside of this culture, but I believe we will see the day Unlike the lithium ion batteries used in today’s Powerwall- when residents will disconnect from the grid and produce their type systems, the steel-brass batteries use non-flammable own batteries. That’s the scale where battery technology began, water electrolytes that contain potassium hydroxide, an inex- and I think we will return there,” said Pint.

36 Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 www.electronics-eetimes.com A54E_EETimes_2_37x10_875_Layout 1 10/24/16 4:44 PM Page 1

Introducing the new POWER SUPPLIES & BATTERIES Pico Electronics website... picoelectronics.com High efficiency 1 kW full-brick DC-DC converter is baseplate cooled Murata has launched its third modular DC-DC converter development effort for industrial 12 V and 24 V systems needing 1kW of power. The ICF series follows the same design principles as the previous modules to provide an industrial grade, rugged, high-power, baseplate-cooled DC-DC converter. Capable of delivering up to 1,000 Watts from an input source of 9 to 36 VDC with a typical efficiency rating of 96.4%, the ICF series offers two output voltage options (24 VDC or 28 VDC) and is packaged in an enclosed industry-standard full-brick package. Measuring 119.0x64.0x13.2mm, the converter is enclosed in a specially designed package/baseplate that meets the environmental stress limits for shock and vibration specified in MIL-STD-810G, while offering full power with a baseplate operating Now it’s faster and temperature range of -40 °C to 105 °C without derating. The ICF series achieves easier to find the its high performance by incorporating proprietary circuit architectures, advanced packaging, and thermal design advances. Accommodating an input voltage range magnetic & power of 9 to 36 VDC, two single output models are available, providing a nominal 24 or 28 components you need! VDC regulated output. The outputs are fully isolated from the input supply, allowing flexibility for various grounding requirements or for creating positive or negative Featuring our easy-to-use outputs. A Basic insulation system provides galvanic input-to-output isolation rated product Search Wizard! at 2250 VDC that is provided across all models. The ICF series has been designed Welcome to www.picoelectronics.com, featuring to meet EN60950, UL/CSA safety requirements for embedded power modules. The Pico’s unrivalled selection of high quality industry-standard full-brick enclosed package has been specially designed to meet Transformers, Inductors, DC-DC Converters and the demands of rugged operating environments and complies with the MIL-STD- AC-DC Power Supplies. Our easy-to-use Search Wizard helps you identify the right part for your 810G standard for functional shock and vibration. All modules come with a positive specifications and facilitates the ordering process. logic remote On/Off control as the standard configuration. Pico’s new website is fully compatible with all Murata platforms – desktop, mobile, and tablets — so you www.murata.com can get started right away and anywhere! Go to Pico Electronics for: • Miniaturized Transformers and Inductors Audio Transformers / Pulse Transformers / DIN rail power supplies output 120W and 240W DC-DC Converter Transformers / 400Hz Transformers / MultiPlex Data Bus Recom has added new DIN rail power supply series rated at 120W and 240W to its Transformers / Power & EMI Inductors / Surface Mount and Plug-In existing range, supporting brief peaks of 50% above rating, and allowing parallel • QPL MIL-21038/27 Transformers & connection to increase the output power available or for redundancy. The two new Surface Mount Equivalents versions operate at input voltages ranging from • DC-DC Converters 85VAC to 264VAC for worldwide usage, and are • Industrial, COTS and Military equipped with an active PFC circuit for a power • High-Voltage Converters — factor greater than 0.95. The REDIN120 series is To 10,000 VDC available with output voltages of 12, 24 or 48VDC, • AC-DC Power Supplies — Power Factor while the more powerful REDIN240 series supplies Corrected Modules to 2,000 Watts, Isolated, 5 to 300 Watts, Encapsulated 24 or 48VDC. The terminals are designed for wires of up to 4mm² cross-section. Both power supplies are isolated at 3kVAC/1min between input and output, and are capable of very high efficiency values of up to 92.5% for REDIN120 and 94.3% for REDIN240. This does not only reduce power consumption, but also PICO ELECTRONICS, Inc. heat generation within the enclosed casing. The modules run at operating tempera- www.picoelectronics.com tures ranging from -25°C to +70°C with nominal output available up to +60°C, and 143 Sparks Avenue switch off automatically to protect the system if the maximum permissible tempera- Pelham, New York 10803 Call Toll Free: 800-431-1064 • Fax: 914-738-8225 ture is exceeded, or in case of overvoltage, overload and short-circuit. In addition E Mail: [email protected] to the standard red and green LED indicators, a floating relay contact generates a “power good” signal for either the power indicator on the control cabinet or as an Pico Representatives error message to the PLC; several modules can be connected in series. The new Germany Vertretungen Deutschland models feature a robust metal casing for back and side mounting on a DIN rail; side ELBV/Elektronische Bauelemente Vertrieb [email protected] mounting is especially beneficial in switch cabinets with low installation depths. Telefon: 0049 (0)89 4602852 Both versions are 124.4mm in height and 114.5mm in depth. REDIN120 is extremely Fax: 0049 (0)89 46205442 England slim at 33mm, and REDIN240 is only marginally wider at 46mm. Ginsbury Electronics Ltd Recom Power [email protected] Telefon: 44 (0)1634 298900 www.recom-power.com Fax: 44 (0)1634 290904

www.electronics-eetimes.com Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 37 DESIGN & PRODUCTS AUTHENTICATION & ENCRYPTION

Implementing secure authentication without being a cryptography expert

By Christophe Tremlet oday, digital security is one of the most hyped topics in electronic design. For many engineers, encryption is probably the first word that comes to mind when theyT think about security. Probably only a few think initially about authentication. However, authentication is a fundamental function of secure devices or transactions. Let’s take the example of home banking. Clearly, you’d want confidential information such as balances and account numbers to be encrypted. This is what happens when your internet browser displays the green lock with https://. Fig. 1: Authentication based on symmetric cryptography relies on a That said, the first thing the internet browser checks secret number shared between the host and the device. when establishing a secure connection is that the bank website is genuine; in other words, it authenticates the bank website. Indeed, sending login and password information the same secret number. The host sends a random number, the to a mock-up site would be extremely harmful, as these cre- challenge, to the device. The device computes a digital signa- dentials can be further re-used to run any kind of unauthorized ture as a function of the secret and the challenge and sends it transactions on behalf of an unsuspecting bank account holder. back to the device. The host then runs the same computation Secure internet browsing is generally achieved through the TLS/ and compares the result. If both computations match, then the SSL protocol, which ensures authenticity and confidentiality. device is authenticated – see figure 1. Authentication is also important for Internet of things (IoT) In order to make sure that the result cannot be mimicked, applications: an untrusted endpoint could put a whole infra- it’s essential to use a function that has adequate mathematical structure at risk. Let’s consider smart meters connected to the properties; for example, making sure that it is impossible to re- electrical power distribution system. An easy way for an attack- trieve the secret with the computation result is mandatory. Se- er to disrupt the grid is to load a virus or malware in the smart cure hash functions, such as SHA-256, support these require- meters. Infected meters could then send fake messages to the ments. For the challenge-response method, the device proves it infrastructure reflecting a power consumption largely different knows a secret without disclosing it. Even if an attacker were to from the actual one. The grid would then become unbalanced; intercept the communication, the attacker still wouldn’t access worst case, the attack could trigger a full power outage. In order the shared secret. to avoid this situation, both the hardware of the meter and its Authentication based on asymmetric cryptography relies on firmware must be verified as genuine. The process of authenti- two keys: a private and a public key. The private key is known cating the firmware is called secure boot. only by the device to be authenticated, while the public key can be disclosed to any entity willing to authenticate the device. As Implementing an effective in the previously discussed method, the host sends a challenge authentication method to the device. The device computes a signature based on the Now that we understand the importance of authentication, let’s challenge and the private key and sends it back to the host – discuss how to implement it. The most trivial way to authen- see figure 2. ticate is to use a password. In our smart meter example, the But here, the host will use the public key to verify the sig- device could send a password to the grid control system. The nature. It’s also critical for the function used to compute the server would verify the password and then authorize further signature to have certain mathematic properties. The most transactions. While this method is easy to understand, it is by commonly used functions for the asymmetric schemes are RSA far not the best one. An attacker could quite easily spy on the and ECDSA. Here also, the device proves it has knowledge of a communication, record the password, and re-use it to authen- secret, the private key, without disclosing it. ticate a non-genuine piece of equipment. For this reason, we consider password-based authentication as weak. Why security ICs are beneficial A much better way to perform authentication in the digital for authentication world is the challenge-response method. Let’s take a look at Challenge-response authentication always needs the object to two flavors of the challenge-response method: one based on be authenticated to hold a secret. In symmetric cryptography, symmetric cryptography and another one based on asymmetric this is the shared secret between the host and the device. For cryptography. asymmetric cryptography, this is the private key. In any case, Symmetric cryptography-based authentication relies on a the security brought by challenge-response authentication shared secret. The host and the device to be authenticated hold breaks when the secret is revealed. Here’s where security ICs can help. One fundamental feature of security ICs is to provide Christophe Tremlet is Executive Business Manager, Micros & strong protection of keys and secrets. Maxim offers three fami- Security at Maxim Integrated - www.maximintegrated.com lies of solutions to support authentication.

38 Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 www.electronics-eetimes.com AUTHENTICATION & ENCRYPTION

Fig. 2: Asymmetric key authentication relies on public and private keys.

- Authentication ICs: These are configurable but fixed-function ever, to offload public-key math and provide additional secure devices that provide the most affordable way to implement operations, host-side co-processors such as the DS2476 (com- challenge-response authentication, along with a compact set panion IC to the DS28C36) are available to simplify develop- cryptographic operations ment of the system solution. - Secure microcontrollers: On top of supporting challenge- response authentication, these devices offer a full set of Secure MCUs with support for symmetric cryptographic functions, including encryption and asymmetric cryptography - Low-power microcontrollers: While these products do not Maxim offers secure microcontrollers ranging from the exclusively target security, they have all of the building blocks MAX32590 (ARM9 running at 384MHz) application-class pro- required to enable strong authentication cessor that can run advanced operating systems such as Linux down to small-footprint co-processors such as MAX32555 or Within authentication ICs, the SHA-256-based products MAXQ1061. support authentication based on shared secrets (Figure 3), while These microcontrollers support both symmetric and asym- ECDSA-based ICs use a private/public key pair (Figure 4). In metric cryptography for digital signature and authentication as addition to the cryptographic engines, these products feature well as encryption algorithms. They feature hardware accelera- on-board EEPROM memory. This memory is configurable and tors for SHA, RSA, ECDSA, and AES as well as a full cryptogra- can be used to store authenticated user data such as calibra- phy library providing a turnkey API aligned to standards. They tion information for sensors. have built-in secure boot, so that firmware authenticity is always guaranteed. Thanks to their comprehensive set of crypto functions, they can handle multiple authentication schemes. The MAXQ1061 is a co-processor that not only enables authentication but also handles the most critical steps of the TLS/SSL standard secure communication protocol over IP. Handling TLS protocol within the chip improves the level of security and offloads the main processor from computing-intensive tasks. This is very valuable for resource-constrained embedded systems. Low-power microcontrollers such as MAX32626 target wearable devices, Fig. 3: SHA-256 secure authentication is based on shared secrets. so are not “security-centric” ICs.

SHA-256-based products are the most affordable solutions. While they enable mutual authentication, the distribution of the shared secret requires some precautions so that the secret is not exposed during device manufacturing and set-up. The secret can be programmed in a Maxim factory to circumvent this drawback. Maxim’s DS28E15/22/25 ICs are based on the SHA-256 technology Fig. 4: ECDSA-based authentication relies on a private/public key pair. and differ by their internal memory size. Since the same secret With attacks becoming more and more frequent, however, is stored on both the host and device sides, we recommend us- this product has been designed with the security challenges ing a co-processor such as the DS2465 on the host side. of tomorrow in mind. Hence, MAX32626 has a hardware Trust Asymmetric cryptography-based products such as DS28C36 Protection Unit supporting authentication as well as hardware and DS28E35 offer a more flexible scheme as the key does not AES for encryption and a built-in secure boot. need to be protected against disclosure on the host side. How- www.electronics-eetimes.com Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 39 DESIGN & PRODUCTS AUTHENTICATION & ENCRYPTION

New possibilities for smart-factory security

Hubertus Grobbel ot and smart factories rely on sensors, actuators and systems that are networked and communicate with each other, but how can that communication and data be safeguarded againstI espionage and sabotage? Flash-memory specialist Swissbit offers an answer - smart and highly flexible SD cards featuring integrated security for system identification. Intelligent production that automatically adapts to products Special firmware and Secure Element transform a Flash or circumstances, providing convenient remote control and Memory into a versatile component for security solutions for remote maintenance are poised to bring manufacturing to a example in IIoT. new level in terms of quality, efficiency and flexibility. However, networking industrial installations and the consequent autono- • by installing SIM cards (as is done with mobile phones); mous communication between ‘things’ also bring with it new • by soldering identifiable hardware components (Trusted Plat- risks. For instance, what happens if hackers or manipulated form Module (TPM)) onto the relevant components; systems seize control of robots or industrial installations? In • or through the use of processors that can be unambiguously other words, how does a ‘thing’ know that the data or data identified via integrated elements (Trusted Execution Environ- selections it receives from another ‘thing’ are legitimate and that ment (TEE)). these system components are ‘who’ they say they are? Although all of these solutions provide levels of protection and have a number of pros and cons, under real conditions they Three steps to security - Identification, are subject to certain limitations which need to be considered. authentication, authorization One thing they all have in common is that they limit the flexibility IIoT issues can be addressed through the use of modern secu- of the solution provider, binding equipment manufacturers to rity solutions in classic IT, along with communication between certain producers, components and/or processors, and distri- human users. These solutions require identification, authentica- bution channels in the technological development processes. tion and authorization here on the example of a user. • Identification involves a user to log-in to reveal his/her iden- Flash memory using a “TPM” as the solution tity - in doing so confirms that he/she is a specific user. One of the world’s leading providers of flash memory solutions • The next step is authentication, i.e. verifying that the user and industrial storage media, Switzerland-based Swissbit, sug- is who they say they are. In order for this to occur, the user gests a new solution - industrial flash memory cards with em- needs to identify themselves by means of a password/PIN bedded security which functions as a Trusted Platform Module and/or additional hardware-specific identification credentials, (TPM). This solution is advantageous for IIoT component and which can be a token, smart card or the like.For applications solution developers and can meet safety requirements as well where security is mission critical, two-factor identification is as performing other functions. needed comprising of elements such as a password/PIN in addition to a non-copyable means of validation such as face Ideal for industrial applications recognition or other biometrics tools. The advantages kick in during the integration phase, which • Once the user has been successfully identified, access is becomes very simple for developers for a number of reasons: granted and usage rights provided with approved permis- • the memory interfaces are standardized; sions (authorization). • middleware for cryptographic operations is available; The user could also be thought of as a (sub-) system in ma- • flash memories with TPM-functionality are available in various chine based processes. form factors including SD cards, micro SD cards and USB sticks. Problems that arise in real life This solution is based on flash memory modules, which for Pure software-based solutions for installations requiring security many years have been highly rated for use under industrial (including production lines and industrial installations) do not conditions – such as a much larger temperature range than provide adequate protection and can be easily copied and ma- consumer/commodity cards and a far superior product life-span nipulated. Systems that communicate with each other via the and availability. internet or through IIoT gateways must, on one hand provide an identity that cannot be cloned, and on the other, have the ability A smart combination - memory and security to send and receive highly secure encrypted data. Such protec- Swissbit’s idea of combining a unique identifier with a standard tion always requires a solution that is integrated into hardware, data storage device is elegant by virtue of the fact that most known as a security anchor. Selecting the right security anchor IIoT components and systems already need memory for their for a given application can be done in any of a number of ways: data and operating systems. Swissbit secure memory cards, which are already widely Hubertus Grobbel is head of the Swissbit AG security products used in big deployments for wiretapping-proof governmental department - www.swissbit.com mobile phones and police body cams, are mainly composed of

40 Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 www.electronics-eetimes.com AUTHENTICATION & ENCRYPTION

a flash memory chip, a smart card and a controller. But what are the security implications for mobile Their special firmware with integrated AES en- access? cryptor supports other application scenarios. The With Swissbit’s solution, security using standard fact that Swissbit uses a crypto chips as security tablets and highly secure user authentication via anchor means not only that communication is se- secure microSD card is no problem. After logging cure, but also that data can be securely encrypted. on, users are reliably identified via a PIN which This in turn allows for Trusted Boot implementation unlocks the secure authentication identifier which and license monetarization. What’s more flash can never be copied. This is even possible through memory with an integrated encryptor can be used a PC via a USB stick. This allows users with the to encrypt a system’s data storage devices such as defined required permissions to securely access classic hard drives. the relevant systems at any time.

Retrofitting legacy systems? PS-450 is a SD Memory Conclusions One of the obstacles to establishing IIoT security is Card for security Users who – with good reason – want secure pro- that older systems and components lack adequate applications. cesses such as encryption and two-factor identi- protection. Now legacy systems and components fication in classic IT networks and on the Internet that have USB or SD interfaces can be easily equipped with shouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than this in the IIoT. counterfeit-proof identities and can then be integrated into When it comes to machines, robots or entire industrial instal- the existing security solution. Retrofitting continues to be a lations that largely run autonomously based on sensor data and key issue as the life cycles of security solutions and industrial ‘make decisions,’ it must be ensured that these only process memory cards are remarkably similar. Similar to memory cards, or deliver data when the relevant data-transferring systems are security algorithms are subject to wear and tear. As such, uniquely identified. the length and algorithm requirements continuous change to For this reason such systems need to be equipped with protect against increasingly sophisticated attacks. The ease of counterfeit-proof identities. This can be provided via flash mem- substitution makes the combination of storage and security an ory solutions that use crypto chips as TPM. Apart from being ideal combination. highly flexible, they can be retrofitted and an be combined with other functions such as encryption and data protection. Security for mobile use There are many opportunities for such applications, particu- Systems and installations used in smart factories of the future larly in areas where industrial flash memory cards are already will no longer have specific operating elements and screens, but used. In medical equipment the security of patient data can be will instead be operated, monitored and maintained via mobile improved, and manipulation can be avoided during metering. In devices and tablets. The constant desire for mobilization and tracking logistics, industrial terminals can be safeguarded from cost reduction ultimately shifts control to mobile devices and external attacks, and secure processes can be implemented thus into low-trust environments beyond a physically protected with relative ease. Flash-Memory combined with high security facility. provides a truly smart solution. IoT: connected heaven or security hell?

By Thibaut Rouffineau

ccording to the latest estimates by Gartner, the total the Internet of Things has a serious security issue, and as the number of connected devices will reach nearly 6.4 billion number of connected devices increases, this problem is only by the end of this year. From smart homes, to autono- set to get worse. Amous vehicles, to futuristic Smartdust, the Internet of Things So why are so many IoT devices suffering from such security has finally moved beyond the realm of theoretical concepts and concerns? In truth, there are a many possible interconnected into our day to day lives. reasons for the IoT’s security flaws. Here are four of what we As the presence of IoT devices has become more apparent believe to be the most common weak points: however, so too has its Achilles heel: Security and the management of the diaspora of devices. In recent months we’ve seen 1. Product and company lifespans several high profile stories emerge regarding hacks and cyber- How long should a business support an IoT device or function; attacks across the IoT. two years, three years, five years, forever? Should an IoT device In late September, 2016 registered the biggest DDoS attack in a car be treated the same as an Amazon Dash button? Will in history, when security expert Brian Krebs’ website, KrebsOn- the company be around, never mind the product line? Quite a Security.com, was hit with a BotNet comprising of over 145,000 lot of manufacturing is white labelled some of the brands you IoT devices. This botnet was later used to launch a second buy don’t even know what’s in their devices. It’s an environment attack on US and European internet infrastructure successfully where often the software is seen as a cost centre, implemented bringing down sites such as Twitter, Paypal and Spotify. to provide savings rather than security and additional value. Given the scale of these attacks, it seems fair to say that While this mindset is starting to change it will be years if not decades before software is seen as an integral value-adding Thibaut Rouffineau is Head of Devices Marketing at Ubuntu – part of a device. www.ubuntu.com www.electronics-eetimes.com Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 41 DESIGN & PRODUCTS AUTHENTICATION & ENCRYPTION

2. Lack of regulation explore new features and service that they could layer on top of This brings us onto the question, should IoT be regulated? their devices. Probably yes and we believe there certainly should be some. However, given the breadth of the landscape, regulation needs 3. It’s too difficult to be carefully thought through. As it stands, the IoT industry Given that there can be multiple different OSs even for one has been stimulated and driven by the innovation of individuals, brand, it can be incredibly difficult for business and users to as such we don’t want to risk stifling this innovation, or throwing maintain their devices. Even mobile phones can have significant the baby out with the bath water. We also need to look at exist- security concerns as a result of out of date OSs and software. ing laws which cover some of the issues, it’s just that manu- Users often lack the knowledge or wherewithal to update facturers often don’t realise that devices themselves. Have you ever they could be fined for not taking tried to find a firmware update for due care for their devices, even your router never mind a thermo- years after they have sold them. stat? It’s not easy, and even if it As just one recent example were, the lack of UI can make it dif- Asus was fined in the US for not ficult for all but the most advanced updating the OS on some of its users to update them safely. routers. A business could have thou- While there have been calls, sands of devices across a country both in the US and Europe, for they need to configure and update tighter regulation of the IoT, without the entire organisation falling suggestions such as the EU’s over. One misapplication and it go “security stickers” are hardly an wrong. Devices need to be safe- adequate replacement to genuine cross-device security stan- guarded against faulty updates with a centralised, standardised dards. Whether decided by industry bodies or governments, transactional update-and-rollback mechanism, and a method of standardised regulation must be implemented across-the-board quickly and reliably auditing the update status of devices. in order for IoT to succeed. There needs to be a much easier method for enterprises to configure and manage their IoT deployments, and for con- 3. The proliferation of software sumers to have a relative peace of mind. Critical security and For years one of the favoured approaches to creating IoT firmware updates must therefore be as automated as possible. devices has been to develop a custom-built OS, often a one off As the Mirai botnet showed us, a security flaw doesn’t just af- variant based on some variety of Linux. This lack of standardi- fect the individuals but millions of consumers and businesses sation across the OS space makes it very difficult for firms to as well. provide an all-encompassing security solution, especially in an We believe we need to do our part rather than just expect- ecosystem where even an obscure device can have 100,000 ing other players in the market to do theirs. By automating IoT deployments. updates and providing the infrastructure to easily configure and At the same time, having billions of devices running on dif- update a whole range of devices with Ubuntu Core 16 we are ferent OSs will make it incredibly difficult for the industry to doing our bit helping businesses maintain their devices for years establish and centralised regulation of updates or individual to come, while re-inventing new sustainable software based coding standards. business models for these devices. Brands need to take as much care in their software develop- So whether you have a smart lightbulb or a component in ment as they do in the hardware. If they do this they cannot only a drone there will be the means and infrastructure to protect look after their customers but unlock additional value as they everyone in the age of IoT. Trusted platform module has up to 110Kbytes the largest non-volatile memory in the market to provide up to storage for sensitive data 110Kbytes storage for sensitive data. The STSAFE-TPM mod- STMicroelectronics has released two new STSAFE Trusted Plat- ules leverage ST’s expertise with the secure ARM SecurCore form Modules (TPM) to secure system-authentication data such SC300 processor, which has anti-tamper, data-watching, and as cryptographic keys and software measure- memory-protection features. Both devices are ments in inaccessible and unalterable hard- Common Criteria (CC) and Trusted Computing ware. This protected storage prevents attack- Group (TCG) certified against the applicable ers from interfering with the device’s integrity, TPM 1.2 and 2.0 protection profiles and US stealing private data, or taking over the system Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) to gain unauthorized access or privileges that 140-2 certifications are in progress. The new would put the system, data, or its network modules come with RSA and ECC Endorse- at risk. The Trusted Computing Group’s latest TPM 2.0 speci- ment Keys (EKs) needed to support authentication and associ- fication adds extra features over and above the earlier TPM ated key certificates are provided, signed by the independent 1.2, including cryptographic algorithms and support for user certification authority Globalsign Ltd to guarantee authentic- hierarchies. The first of ST’s new STSAFE-TPM devices, the ity. The ST33HTPH2ESPI and ST33HTPH20SPI are available ST33TPHF2ESPI, supports both specifications and can switch in either a TSSOP28 or QFN32 package. Both devices are in easily between the two, allowing OEMs to provide TPM 1.2 or production now. TPM 2.0 capability on the latest device technology. The second STMicroelectronics device is the ST33TPHF20SPI, which supports TPM 2.0 and has www.st.com

42 Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 www.electronics-eetimes.com OUR CONTRI- AUTHENTICATION & ENCRYPTION BUTION TO INDEPENDENCE Escrypt, Renesas jointly develop secure automotive platform More options with energy harvesting wireless remote Semiconductor supplier Renesas and Escrypt GmbH, a Bochum, Germany based switches system provider for embedded security, are joining their forces to develop and No wires, no batteries – the energy market an integrated hardware and software platform that will feature high secu- harvesting wireless remote switch rity for automotive electronic systems. The planned platform solution comprises Renesas’ RH850/P1x-C Series of automotive safety microcontrollers (MCUs) with from ZF can be integrated directly Escrypt’s CycurHSM, a security software stack, to realize highly complex automo- into networks in industrial and tive security solutions. The new solution reduces development time and integrates building systems. Use this energy security functions in safety-critical automotive ECU applications. Additionally, the independence and experience its solution serves as a stepping stone to achieve autonomous driving by accelerat- many advantages for yourself. ing the integration of safety and security functions. In the autonomous driving era, switches-sensors.zf.com in-vehicle infotainment, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) networks are expected to become mainstream. The connectivity between these networks requires robust security measures to ensure the systems are protected from unauthorized external access. Renesas’ RH850/P1x-C Series integrates a hardware security module with a co-processor supporting data encryption, authentication, and random number generation to address these mission-critical security requirements in vehicle systems. CycurHSM is a security software stack that fits RH850/ P1x-C MCUs and complements the security features in hardware with additional security services, such as secure boot, secure flashing, and debugging. Upcoming novel use cases such as software and firmware updates Over-the-Air (SOTA/FOTA) or advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and the resulting in-vehicle communications require higher ECU protection levels against unauthorized or malicious access and manipulation. Therefore, in addition to protection software, hardware security protection within the ECU has also become essential. The solution is intended to accelerate safety and security functions required for vehicles of the autonomous era with highly optimized HSM technology. The ICU-M provides security services based on private and public key cryptography that allow advanced cyber-security use case implementations. The ICU-M includes dedicated secure code/data flash, enhanced debug control methods by dynamic authentication, fast AES engine with multiple execution contexts and complex ciphering modes, pseudo random number generation seeded by true random number generator compliant with AIS-31 and many other security features. CycurHSM is a scalable solution, ranging from SHE (Note 4) and SHE+ up to full HSM functionality (such as secure flashing, secure onboard communication, advanced mechanisms for secure boot, secure debugging, or feature activation). CycurHSM runs on the ICU-M and provides dedicated software interfaces to make use of the full power of HSM technology. Escrypt’s HSM security stack will be available for further Renesas MCUs in the near future. ECU developers can rely on optimal-fit components from Renesas and Escrypt to simplify implementation of the desired security functions. For an existing Autosar application, since the combined hardware/software solution is fully Autosar-compliant, no further development of security functions is required and the remaining tasks boil down to a simple configuration of the software, thereby eliminating up to 90 percent of the development effort. For new applications, Autosar-compliant or not, the clean interface offered by the combined hardware/software enables system developers to concentrate on high-level software development, without having to worry about low-level or hardware-specific issues. This leads to a significant reduction of the overall effort by at least 50 percent in case of new applications. The security solution can be further enriched by additional security services such as risk analysis and efficient security concepts, as well as software products such as key management from Escrypt. The security solution can also be integrated into a full Autosar stack, as e.g., provided by Escrypt’s parent company ETAS, itself a sub- sidiary of automotive supplier Bosch. The globally available combination of Renesas and Escrypt products will enhance the security of connected, highly automated vehicles and provide added value to customers worldwide. Renesas www. renesas.com

www.electronics-eetimes.com DESIGN & PRODUCTS MISCELLANEOUS

An e-paper shield starter kit for the makers Vertical micro USB connectors

Pervasive Displays (PDi) has released an open-sourced e-paper is only 5.20mm above PCB shield starter kit based around the Teensy LC microcontroller The USB3160 launched by Global Connector Technology is a board, to help makers and hobbyists integrate e-paper into any low profile SMT Micro USB vertical receptacle with one of the project needing a lowest profiles available in display. the market at 5.20mm height Created by Soni- above PCB. This combined kTech, the e-paper with enhanced high cur- shield starter kit rent rating for charging at comes in three 2.8A, a full 1A over standard flavours, each con- products, makes it suitable taining an adapter for fast charging application board designed with requirements. The USB3160 the popular Teensy LC microcontroller in mind. The adapter is also more reliable than its rivals due to the positioning of board is also compatible with any other microcontroller which the shell stakes. GCT engineers have identified that compet- uses the common SPI protocol to connect with the Pervasive ing products have them very close to SMT pads and pose Displays’ E2215CS062 e-paper screen. E-paper works best a greater risk of short circuiting - the USB3160 avoids this at room temperature and a digital thermometer is included on problem with its cleverly designed shell stakes allowing for the adapter board to communicate with the microcontroller via more space. Several variants of the new vertical Micro USB an I2C interface. The kit is available to purchase through the connector are available from launch, including three different Pervasive Displays website or Crowd Supply website. shell stake lengths at 0.70 1.20 and 1.70mm offering custom- Pervasive Displays ers even greater flexibility for product designs. www.pervasivedisplays.com/kits Global Connector Technology www.gct.co 8-bit microcontrollers target in-cabin touch interfaces Modular platform for evaluating Cars are equipped today with an increasing number of motors GaN transistors to adjust things like headlights, seats, rear view mirrors and Gallium nitride power switch specialists GaN Systems recently more. Silicon Labs has introduced an evaluation platform that allows designers to introduced two families of explore the characteristics automotive-grade EFM8 of a range of power devices, microcontrollers (MCUs) de- using a single base board. signed to handle such body Rather than having to source electronics motor controls an evaluation kit for each and similar applications via device and power level, the touch interface. kit uses a common mother- The new AEC-Q100- board and plug-in daughter qualified, ultra-low-power EFM8SB1 Sleepy Bee family pro- cards. appropriate to indi- vides advanced on-chip capacitive touch technology enabling vidual devices. The universal motherboard and four daughter- easy replacement of physical buttons with touch control. The boards will, the company says, help power design engineers EFM8BB1/BB2 Busy Bee family features high-performance to easily evaluate GaN E-HEMT performance in any system analog and digital peripherals, making these devices a versatile design. GaN Systems (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) builds lateral- choice for controlling motorized in-car equipment. All EFM8 transistor device in gallium nitride-on-silicon, using its “island” MCUs deliver best-in-class 8-bit performance through a combi- technology, and makes a range of switches in a proprietary nation of advanced features and capabilities including a high- top-and-bottom contact, thin package outline. GaN Systems speed pipelined 8051 core, ultra-low power, precision analog is also launching the GS61008P-EVBBK, a highly efficient 48V and enhanced communication peripherals, on-chip oscillators, to 12V synchronous buck converter based on the GS61008P small-footprint packages, and a patented crossbar architecture 100V, 90A GaN E-HEMT. This system demonstrates very high that enables flexible digital and analog peripheral multiplexing efficiency at frequencies up to 2 MHz. Using the universal to simplify PCB design and I/O pin routing. EFM8SB Sleepy motherboard (GS665MB-EVB), a family of four daughterboards Bee MCUs are the vendor’s most energy-friendly 8-bit devices (pictured) ranging from 750W to 2,500W consists of two GaN offering high touch performance, ultra-low sleep-mode power Systems 650V GaN Enhancement-mode HEMTs (E-HEMTs) (50 nA with full memory retention and brown-out detection) and and all necessary circuits, including half-bridge gate drivers, fast 2 µs wake-up time. The automotive-grade EFM8SB1devices isolated power supplies and an optional heatsink to form a high support -40 to +85°C ambient temperatures, core speeds up to performance half bridge power stage. The platform serves as a 25 MHz and flash sizes up to 8 kB. The MCUs integrate a 12-bit reference design and evaluation tool as well as a deployment- analog-to-digital converter (ADC), high-performance timers, a ready solution. The circuit on each daughter card, and the temperature sensor, and enhanced SPI, I2C and UART ports. exact layout can be duplicated in a target design. Silicon Labs GaN Systems www.silabs.com/efm8. http://gansystems.com

44 Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 www.electronics-eetimes.com MISCELLANEOUS

Green LED integrates light sensor WiFi module connects automatically for heart rate monitoring to the cloud The ALS-PD50-42C from Everlight Electronics is an ambi- The EBVchip operation of Avnet company EBV Elektronik ent light sensor that operates at a 550nm and has a very low (Poing, Germany) and DeviceDrive, a Cloud-on-Chip com- signal calculation failure pany based in rate and a high current Oslo, Norway, efficiency for heart rate are jointly signal detection in wear- introducing the able electronics. latest EBVchip Based on the principle device IRIS, of PPG (photoplethys- a complete mogram), the heart 802.11 b/g/n rate signal is calculated networking according to the current solution on changes in transmission and reflection between a green light a chip. The LED and the light sensor to detect the systolic and diastolic device is blood vessels. With a large detection area of 8.1mm2, the ALS- presented as a module hosting DeviceDrive’s WRF01 chip. PD50-42C’s signal is strong and reliable, unaffected by signal The device targets applications such as smart power plugs, interferences caused by people’s skin colour, tattoos and hair home automation, mesh network gateway, industrial wireless on the skin. The ALS-PD50-42C series has a current signal out- control, sensor networks, wearable electronics, WiFi location- put of 0.8 μA at a light current of 100 Lux from a white LED (Vr aware devices, security ID tags and WiFi position system = 5V). The device’s coating design effectively reduces the in- beacons. “Because Iris enables automatic connection to the terference from UV light below 400nm and infrared light above cloud and mobile apps, no network configuration is needed,” 650nm, thereby decreasing the effect of strong sunlight. The says Dr. Eckart Voskamp, EBV Director Product Innovations. ALS can be operated within a supply voltage range from 0 to “We are combining the best-in-class hardware with a very 5V in a temperature range from -25°C up to +85°C. This device innovative software and cloud connectivity solution of our is rated to be RoHS compliant, Pb-free and halogen-free. partner DeviceDrive. This makes deployment for our custom- Everlight Electronics ers extremely easy and offers very attractive cost of connec- www.everlight.com tivity and thereby completing our IoT EBVchips product family nicely.” An API based on JSON through UART makes passing object parameters simple. Iris is completely worldwide certi- Arduino shield eases stepper motor fied and supports OTA (Over The Air) upgrades of module and driver designs client firmware. The shielded, small size module has an embedded on-board PCB-antenna with a gain of 2 dBi. Iris also The Arduino-based evaluation kit (EVK) from Rohm Semicon- integrates an MCU for internal use, has a UART interface for ductor has been designed as a ‘shield’ to plug directly into the simple serial connectivity and provides design capabilities for Arduino main board. It low power, which makes it very applicable for battery-oper- integrates the com- ated applications.To simplify the design process, a complete pany’s HTSSOP-B28 mobile software development kit for multiple platforms, such packaged stepper as iOS and Android is also available. Furthermore, Iris offers motor drive IC and extremely simple software-integration. A complete evaluation complements its sup- kit is available. port ecosystem, allow- EBV ing engineers to rapidly www.ebv.com prototype their stepper motor systems. Ar- duino is a widely used open-source platform. The new EVK comes in 15 different variants for Rohm’s stepper motor driver Ics, from standard, micro step, low voltage to high voltage. This comprehensive solution covers supply voltages from 8V to 42V, enables up to 2.5A per phase, as well as micro-stepping and single- or multi-phase control of one or two stepper motors. It is well suited to drive bipolar stepper motors available in a wide range of supply voltages and current capabilities. It drives with CLK-IN or PARA-IN variants and provides high efficiency, easier power control and comprehensive protection functionalities in a robust and compact design, enabling accurate fine-tuning of the motor perfor- mances. Moreover, the EVK is designed to be stackable so that a second shield can be added on top to drive two motors. Rohm Semiconductor www.rohm.com/eu

www.electronics-eetimes.com Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 45 Reader DESIGN & PRODUCTS MISCELLANEOUS Offer

InvenSense, Sonion launch miniature MEMS Speed up your IoT projects: win this board!

microphones This month, Arrow Electronics is giving away 10 ARIS IoT Some 18 months after the start of a collaboration, InvenSense development platforms worth 150 Euros each, for EETimes Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) and Sonion A/S (Roskilde, Denmark) Europe’s readers to win. The ARIS IoT hardware and software have launched the O-series of platform enables users to MEMS microphones. These get their IoT applications up are intended to be low-noise, and running quickly with the low-power miniature micro- Renesas Synergy develop- phones for use in hearing aid ment framework. Based applications. A family of four on a Renesas Synergy S7 MEMS microphones come in MCU with 240MHz ARM two small form factors; the 08 Cortex-M4 core, the ARIS at 8.2 cubic millimeters and the 11 at 10.8 cubic millimeters. board has a host of features The units work with a supply voltage of 0.9V. . The O-series, including a 3-axes accel- which will begin to ship in volume in January 2017. erometer and a 3-axes gyroscope that deliver position and InvenSense Inc. motion sensing information; as well as humidity and tempera- www.invensense.com ture sensors for environmental feedback. Communication with other devices and the Cloud is enabled via an Ethernet 10/100 port, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE 4.1/4.2) and Wi-Fi b/g/n Murata offers 3-axis MEMS accelerometer support. NFC tag functionality is also included along with a crypto bootloader and support for over-the-air (OTA) firmware Murata’s SCA3300 series of 3-axis MEMS accelerometers updates. The combination of the Arrow ARIS board and the aimed at a broad range of industrial and automotive applica- Renesas Synergy software platform with its operating system, tions. Measuring 7.6 x 8.6 x 3.3 mm this small surface mounted a variety of qualified stacks, libraries and consistent APIs, MEMS sensor offers a user enables developers to reduce time to market and decrease the selectable measurement range total cost of ownership of a product over its lifetime. of 1.5g, 3g or 6g and features better than 10 mg offset Check the reader offer online at stability. Presented as offering best-in-class characteristics www.electronics-eetimes.com for MEMS sensor inclination measurements the SCA3300 series has a non-linearity of 0.1% and typical noise density 37 µg/√Hz. Mechanical over-damping 8-bit AVR MCUs come of the sensor enables high performance measurements in with core independent peripherals harsh, vibrating environments. This compact sensor, packaged in a pre-moulded dual flat lead SMD housing operates from a Microchip’s latest generation of 8-bit tinyAVR MCUs include 3.3 VDC supply and consumes 1 mA during normal operation four new devices ranging from 14 to 24 pins and 4 KB or 8 KB making it suitable for battery powered applications. In its low of Flash, all featuring Core In- power mode, consumption drops to about 0.5 mA. Communi- dependent Peripherals (CIPs). cation with the host application is via an industry standard SPI The ATtiny817/816/814/417 interface. The SCA3300 is a reliable 3D MEMS sensor that is devices provide all the qualified according to the automotive AEC-Q100 quality stan- features needed to help to dard. The sensor also features extensive failsafe functions and drive product innovation flags for diagnostics. These include monitoring of an internal including small, low pin-count reference signal, checksum techniques for verifying communi- and feature-rich peripherals cation and signal saturation / over range monitoring. A unique with 4 KB or 8 KB of Flash diagnostic feature is continuously running self-test that verifies memory. Other integrated features include: a core-independent the proper operation of whole signal chain from MEMS sensor Peripheral Touch Controller (PTC); Event System for periph- movement to signal conditioning circuitry in each measurement eral co-operation; custom programmable logic blocks; self- cycle. Operating temperature range is from – 40 to +125 de- programming for firmware upgrades; non-volatile data storage; grees C. Target applications for the SCA3300 include levelling 20 MHz internal oscillator; high-speed serial communication and alignment systems, inertial measurement units for heavy with USART; operating voltages ranging from 1.8 V to 5.5 V; machinery, navigation systems, AGVs, and construction and 10-bit ADC with internal voltage references; and sleep currents surveying tools. There is also a wide range of different future at less than 100 nA in power-down mode with SRAM retention. applications in high accuracy automotive inertial sensing, such CIPs allow the peripherals to operate independently of the core as in autonomous driving (ADAS) and intelligent transmission and include serial communication and analogue peripherals. control, to inclination sensing in weighing scales. An evaluation Together with the Event System, which allows peripherals to board is available for the SCA3300 that incorporates a Java- communicate without using the CPU, applications can be op- based GUI to graph sensor output, data logging and data rate timised at a system level. This lowers power consumption and calculations. increases throughput and system reliability. Murata Microchip www.murata.com www.atmel.com/tinyAVR

46 Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 www.electronics-eetimes.com MISCELLANEOUS

Dimmable LED driver for automotive lighting Piezo actuators for millimeter-thin haptics

LED lighting is conquering the car. Allegro Microsystems’ new Designed around multilayer piezo plates, the millimeter-thin switching regulator IC provides constant-current output for piezo actuators from TDK’s Epcos group can be driven be- high-power LEDs, serving the needs for multiple application tween 1 and 1000Hz to create versatile haptic effects when scenarios including daytime embedded into the interface running lights, front and of consumer products. The rear fog lights, turn/stop actuators combine a multi- lights, map lights, and dim- layered piezo plate construc- mable interior lights. And it tion with cost-effective cop- is AEC-Q100 qualified. The per inner electrodes, together A6217 integrates a high-side with a low-profile titanium N-channel DMOS switch cymbals that acts as a me- for DC-to-DC step-down chanical amplifier. Thanks (buck) conversion. A true average current is output using a to the multilayer technology the actuators can be driven with cycle-by-cycle, controlled on-time method. Output current is relatively low operating voltages up to 120 V. When activated, user-selectable by an external current sense resistor. Output the piezo plates only expand minimally in the z axis, but due to voltage is automatically adjusted to drive various numbers of the constant volume of the piezo effect contract simultaneously LEDs in a single string, ensuring optimal system efficiency. in both the x and y axes. This radial contraction is mechanically LED dimming can be accomplished by logic-level or “chopped amplified by the cymbals on both sides of the plate by a factor battery” PWM, as well as analogue dimming capability. The of 15 in the z axis. The actuator is available in two types, a 5 A6217 also features switching frequency dithering for reduced N type that achieves a displacement of up to 100 µm and a 20 EMI signature. The A6217 is an enhanced version of the known N type that can achieve a displacement of more than 200 µm, A6213 and is available in a pinout-equivalent eSOIC-8 package measuring 12.7x12.7x1.6mm and 26x26x2.4mm respectively. (LJ), or a more compact 3x3mm wettable flank DFN-10 (EJ). Compared with conventional electromagnetic solutions such Both packages have an exposed pad for enhanced thermal as eccentric rotary motors (ERMs) and linear resonant actua- dissipation, and are lead (Pb) free with 100% matt-tin lead- tors (LRAs), the piezo actuator with haptic feedback features frame plating. the highest acceleration and force, the lowest insertion height Allegro Microsystems and the fastest response time, all in a single component with www.allegromicro.com integrated sensor functionality. TDK Corporation www.epcos.com Quadruple thermocouple interface for efficient ICE control Intelligent displays The MLX90342 is a high-performance quadruple thermocouple interface that provides rapid response and very high levels soon programmable in Java of accu- The iLCD panels from demmel will soon implement a Java racy when Virtual Machine, making unnecessary the use of an external measuring controller. The application run- extreme ning on the display panel can temperatures. perform control functions that It has been have run externally before, specifically which significantly simplifies designed to the hardware design. Java’s allow auto- object oriented approach is motive designers to address the need for more stringent engine particularly suitable for user and exhaust thermal management and control. This need is interface applications and is being driven by the higher temperatures associated with new, much less error-prone than C. Moreover, features like multi- smaller, more efficient engine designs. The MLX90342 sup- threading are already integrated in Java. The iLCD Manager XE ports a -40°C to 1300°C thermocouple temperature range and , available for download at no charge, will be extended to also has an operating temperature specification spanning -40°C to accommodate the Java development environment. As with 155°C. Sophisticated on-board cold junction compensation other IDEs, comfortable Java code editing with syntax high- and linearization, plus factory calibration, guarantee an intrinsic lighting is possible and included. The Java application can be accuracy of ±5°C (at 1100°C). The sensor interface is housed generated with the integrated compiler, and subsequently up- in a miniature, 26-pin 6x4mm QFN package and has a rapid loaded directly onto the display via the USB interface. Demmel refresh rate of 50Hz that aligns with manufacturer expectations will also integrate a debugger to enable remote debugging of for high-speed response. Temperature data can be transmit- the Java application directly on the display via USB, including ted via a SENT Revision 3 digital interface, while extensive common features like breakpoints and variable inspection. The diagnostic capabilities monitor the health of the sensor and Java Virtual Machine can be run on the existing iLCD hardware interface to identify operational problems. with a very small footprint. Melexis demmel products gmbh www.melexis.com www.demmel.com

www.electronics-eetimes.com Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 47 DISTRIBUTION CORNER

Wireless power design kit Obsolescence manager offers product lifecycle risk assessment Promising faster integration of wireless power supply with up to 15W rating, Würth Elektronik eiSos (Waldenburg, Germany) has RS Components (RS) has introduced a new online tool that can configured a Qi Standard compatible wireless power design help OEMs and product developers to manage the problem kit for the medium power of obsolescence, and plan range. The “WPC 15W kit” for when the End-of-Life has been jointly developed (EOL) notices are placed on with the Japanese IC sup- parts that will soon cease to plier Rohm Semiconductor. be produced, repaired and The kit offers a fast plug & supported by component play solution for developers vendors. The search for a vi- working on products need- able replacement component ing a wireless power supply. can also be extremely time The kit contains transmitter module, receiver module, LED load consuming. The Obsolescence Manager developed by RS is a module, quick start guide, and power supply unit with an EU, completely free component-lifecycle risk-assessment tool that US, and UK adapter. The WPC 15W kit meets the Qi Standard has been specifically designed to enable engineers and buyers 1.2 with an extended power profile. to monitor and manage the risks caused by obsolescence. Würth Elektronik eiSos RS Components www.rohm.com/eu www.rs-online.com

Digi-Key now stocking SPEC electrochemical Distributor’s “change the world” challenge gas sensors offers $10000 in product prizes As part of a new distribution agreement between Digi-Key At the recent electronica trade show, distributor Premier Farnell Electronics and SPEC Sensors, the global distributor is now / element14 kicked off its “Change the world with $1000” stocking low profile, ultra-low- design competition; you have until power gas sensors in a small form 20th January 2017 to submit intitial factor for IoT applications including proposals, and the next significant gas sensing in industrial, agricultur- date is at the 2017 Embedded World al, home, and safety, as well as in- exhibition (Nuremberg, March 2017). door and outdoor air quality. “Digi- The stated aim of the distributor’s Key is extremely excited to partner competition is, “to find out how the with SPEC Sensors,” said David world of electronics can have a posi- Stein, VP Global Semiconductors at tive impact on the world we live in,” by challenging designers Digi-Key. “Their advanced sensor to come up with creative ideas of how they could use $1,000 of offering includes gas and air quality sensors ideal for the rap- products from element14. No purchase is needed to enter: en- idly growing IoT markets of smart cities, building automation, trants download their bill of materials and write a short descrip- and industrial wearable devices.” tion of how they would use the products to change the world. Digi-Key Electronics element14 www.digikey.com www.premierfarnell.com

Truly Semiconductor appoints andersDX Future Electronics expands as a direct representative NXP distribution worldwide A major global manufacturer of TFT and AMOLED displays, Future Electronics announced its expanded engagement with Truly Semiconductor has strengthened its presence in the UK NXP Semiconductors N.V. , enabling the distributor to sup- by appointing andersDX port the full NXP portfolio as a as a direct sales repre- result of the company’s Decem- sentative. ber 2015 merger with Freescale The announcement gives Semiconductor. According to the UK’s largest OEMs Karim Yasmine, Corporate Vice access to Truly’s 1 mil- President Strategic Supplier lion sq. mt. of display Development, Future Electronics, manufacturing capacity “We have a long, strong and col- through expert local sup- laborative relationship with NXP and look forward to offering an port. As Truly’s UK representative, andersDX will be empow- even broader portfolio of NXP’s industry leading products for ered to initiate and support direct trading relationships for Truly our Industrial, Automotive, Medical, Consumer Aerospace, and with UK customers. Security customers on a global basis.” andersDX Future Electronics www.andersdx.com www.FutureElectronics.com

48 Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 www.electronics-eetimes.com LAST WORD

Electronica settles into automotive, industrial, IoT roles

By Peter Clarke

n a week when the biennial Electronica trade show in Mu- nich, Germany, was overshadowed by a presidential election on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean and amid the sup- posedI long-term decline of Europe as a power in semiconductors and electronics, it seems reasonable to ask if Electronica is still busy — and still relevant. Computing, consumer and communications companies are the three C application sectors that have driven the electronics industry in recent times. But as globalization — and free trade — have taken hold and we have moved from national to regional champions in these areas and then on to global win- ners, Europe has lost many of its equipment companies serving these sectors. In computers ICL, Siemens-Nixdorf, Olivetti are no more and Europe, like the rest of the world, buys from Apple, Dell and Lenovo. In consumer electronics brands like Bush, Phil- The Fujitsu booth at Electronica addressed industrial and ips, Grundig have either pulled out of markets or are not what automotive themes. they were. And finally in telecoms we have witnessed the fall of one-time mobile phone handset market leader Nokia as well as And Electronica in 2016 reflected these changes. Just about changing fortunes at Ericsson and the disappearance of Alcatel all the computer, consumer and communications interest has albeit into a revamped Nokia equipment company. been stripped out of Electronica. Those sectors have their own So component and technology companies no longer need global events such as Computex in Taiwan, the Consumer to come to Electronica to pitch to these companies and that Electronics Show in Las Vegas and Mobile World Congress in might seem like the essence of a tragic story of post-industrial Barcelona. decline. But at Electronica companies came from all over the world What Europe has attained — indeed what Germany has at- to pitch their products for automotive, industrial and Internet of tained, setting aside some software shenanigans perpetrated by Things applications. Exhibitor after exhibitor told me that Elec- Volkswagen — is a global leadership in the automotive sec- tronica is now part of a global calendar that takes in all the ter- tor. This is particularly true at the high end where automotive ritories and all topics. The fragmentary nature of industrial and electronics is being adopted fastest by the likes of Audi, BMW IoT markets and their lower volume, higher value nature means and Daimler. And through the still healthy ‘Mittelstand’ that that Electronica has become a second home for the distribution makes up a majority of employment in Germany Europe retains companies and it is they that tend to have the largest booths. a healthy industrial electronics sector. The Mittelstand is the Indeed, in 2016 there was a happy coincidence of a reason- hypothetical part of Germany inhabited by small- and medium- ably healthy global economy and the realization that automo- sized businesses. Companies there tend to be family-owned, science- or technology-based, and run on traditional, debt-free lines. And many of these small companies are nimble power houses in industrial electronics, precision instrumentation and factory automation.

Qualcomm’s small booth showed off its Halo wireless Electronica 2016: Back to busy. automobile charging technology.

www.electronics-eetimes.com Electronic Engineering Times Europe December 2016 49 LAST WORD

PUBLISHER tive and industrial electronics André Rousselot provide steady if moderate +32 27400053 growth, reasonable margins [email protected] and stability; a comforting contrast to the rollercoaster EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ride of the consumer and Julien Happich smartphone sectors. We have +33 169819476 been seen the European chip [email protected] companies Infineon, NXP, EDITORS STMicroelectronics, AMS Christoph Hammerschmidt and others turning away from +49 8944450209 the three Cs and towards [email protected] automotive, transportation, Cars in various states of deconstruction could be Peter Clarke industrial, renewable energy found on many booths. +44 776 786 55 93 and energy distribution ap- [email protected] plications. Now many of their peers are following suit. Nick Flaherty And it was noticeable that Qualcomm was at Electronica; albeit on smallish booth but +44 7710 236368 one packed with automotive temperature grade Snapdragon processors, mock ups of [email protected] automotive dashboards and references to its Halo wireless charging technology for au- Jean-Pierre Joosting tomobiles. The takeover of NXP by Qualcomm can be seen as the desire by Qualcomm +44 7800548133 to move beyond the saturated and diminishing margins of mobile communications and [email protected] to bring its wireless communications expertise to the automotive and industrial applications. Similarly, semiconductor giant Samsung had a booth that essentially addressed CIRCULATION & FINANCE automotive and embedded applications. Luc Desimpel And Electronica was busy. The U-bahn crush index — the degree to which I find it [email protected] possible or impossible to get on a Messe-bound train first thing in the morning — was ADVERTISING PRODUCTION & up on two years ago and definitely up on four years ago. REPRINTS Lydia Gijsegom The Chinese are coming [email protected] There is also the China effect. Chinese and other south-east Asian companies, now that they are established at home, are increasingly looking out for new territories, of which ART MANAGER one is Europe. Chinese company names in translation typically begin with the city name Jean-Paul Speliers where they are based, a habit that is usually dropped as companies become more ACCOUNTING anglophone and marketing savvy. But it helped me with a spot audit of the catalog to Ricardo Pinto Ferreira measure the degree to which China was present at this year’s Electronica. There were 19 companies from Changzhou, 10 from Cixi, 29 from Dongguan, 28 from Ningbo and REGIONAL ADVERTISING 119 from Shenzhen. In total there were well over 250 small mainland Chinese companies REPRESENTATIVES here that, no doubt, intend to become much larger. Contact information at: I heard one attendee state that the show seemed slightly smaller than before. But ex- http://www.electronics-eetimes.com/ amination of the record does not bear this out. The same number of gigantic halls were content/sales-contacts. in use. But there were some signs of the effects of consolidation. The odd booth-shaped area cordoned off as a sitting area and the Fairchild booth empty but for signage exhort- ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING TIMES EUROPE ing show attendees to make their way to the On Semiconductor booth in a different hall. However, with something like 300 Chinese companies attending Electronica there is published 11 times in 2016 is something to be said for the steady-state theory of electronics evolution. While one by EUROPEAN BUSINESS PRESS SA name, albeit iconic disappears, many smaller companies are arriving on the scene eager Chaussée de Louvain 533, to make an impact. 1380 Lasne, Belgium And just before Electronica opened the announcement was made that Semicon Tel: +32-2-740 00 50 Europa, a show for chip manufacturing equipment and materials, would co-locate with Fax: +32-2-740 00 59 european Electronica and Productronica email: [email protected]. business press in alternate years starting in www.electronics-eetimes.com 2017. In the even years, when VAT Registration: BE 461.357.437. it is alongside Electronica, Company Number: 0461357437 that will serve to fill up the RPM: Nivelles. remaining halls at the Messe. Electronica is evolving Volume 18, Issue 11 EE Times P 304128 It is free to qualified engineers and managers and is now essentially an automotive, industrial and IoT involved in engineering decisions – see: electronics show but one of http://www.electronics-eetimes.com/subscribe global scale that is going to © 2016 E.B.P. SA be around for many years to All rights reserved. P 304128 come. Consolidation on show at Electronica.

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