www.eenewseurope.com April 2020 electronics europeNews News OptiMOS™ Source-Down a new era in MOSFET performance european business press 200324_TBB_EENE_EU.indd 1 3/23/20 1:35 PM CONTENTS APRIL 2020 Dear readers, www.eenewseurope.com April 2020 Confinement has become the norm for most of Europeans and restrictions are taking place all over the world, giving a devastating blow to many industries and livelihoods electronics europeNews News yet promising casualty mitigation. The extreme economical context is calling for societal changes. The urgency to find medical and welfare solutions is accelerating research, unleashing new funds, open-source projects are flourishing and companies of all sizes are rushing to put remote work strategies into place and re-organize their workforce with new priori- ties. These changes will be long lasting, and hopefully for the better. Our April edition looks at some of the latest edge hardware and AI firmware solu- tions, some of which may find direct use in deciphering the vast amounts of data put to contribution by epidemiologists to predict the progression of the virus and possibly decide on the best confinement strategies. OptiMOS™ Source-Down Other features covered in eeNews Europe’s April edition include Optoelectron- a new era in MOSFET performance ics, Power Supplies and Batteries. european business press Until confinement restrictions become a thing of the past, stay safe, read and educate yourself. Feel free to share your academic and business news with us. Julien Happich Editor in Chief 4 - 49: OPINION 34 - 43: EDGE COMPUTING & AI Uncommon Market: Industry 4.0: edge Food system at risk of computing power is key crash? Edge computing used in conjunction with cloud Last Word: computing – that is, Haptics is ready for processing data locally standardization then sending it to the cloud – is becoming an increasingly indispens- 6 - 25: NEWS & TECHNOLOGY able element of the burgeoning Industry 4.0 concept. Photonic platform delivers compact beam steering 44 - 47: OPTOELECTRONICS Researchers led by Colum- bia Engineering Professor Event-camera equipped drones get milliseconds Michal Lipson have devel- reaction times oped a low-power beam Leveraging so-called steering platform that is event cameras a non-mechanical, robust, and scalable approach to with a proprietary beam steering. moving-obstacle detection algorithm, researchers have 26 - 33: POWER SUPPLIES & BATTERIES reduced a drone‘s reaction time from Thin transparent nano- tens of milliseconds generator is stretchable to only 3.5 milliseconds in order to detect and avoid Researchers have fast-moving objects. devised a stretchable tri- boelectric nanogenerator that leverages the unique properties of a layer of 48: DISTRIBUTION CORNER carbon nanotubes (CNTs) within a transparent elastomer matrix, capable of delivering up to 8W/m2. www.eenewseurope.com eeNews Europe April 2020 News 3 UNCOMMON MARKET ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Food system at risk of crash? By Richard Tiffin ech company backed by UK Government and Microsoft early customers. Recently Airbus, the world’s second largest claim our food system is at risk. Artificial Intelligence fed aerospace company, announced they would use Agrimetrics to by a Data Marketplace is the solution. sell satellite imagery that can be used to monitor crop health. TCovid-19 is a reminder of how vulnerable our food system “The Marketplace is a great way to get people sharing is. Supermarket shelves are empty. Twelve years earlier, the information in the same place, but that’s only the first stage of financial crash exposed the dangers of a finance system built the solution,” continues Professor Tiffin. “If we are to answer on a web of interdependencies – many poorly understood. The complex questions then data needs to be organised in certain effects of 2008 are still being felt today. ways. This includes predicting future food shortages, finding It was this fear of a ways of reducing agricul- systemic crash in our food ture’s carbon footprint and system that drove Professor limiting the spread of crop Richard Tiffin, then Director of disease.” the Centre for Food Security, Agrimetrics uses a ‘Knowl- to co-found Agrimetrics. edge Graph’ to connect the “I wanted us to understand data on its Marketplace; the hidden risks that could the same technology used spark a catastrophic chain of by Google and Amazon. It events,” explains Professor works by defining the relation- Tiffin. “Our food system is ship between data, which en- incredibly interdependent, but ables people and machines to ironically it’s also incredibly find the information they need disconnected. We have no more quickly. idea of the long-term conse- “The current applications of quences of events like Covid-19. To avoid collapse, we need to artificial intelligence are narrow and require human intervention. understand these connections.” The beauty of organising data in this way is that AI will be able 1950’s China is an example of why this is so important. The to self-serve. It will be able to explore the connections between Defend Your IP, Brand Four Pests Campaign sought to eliminate rats, flies, mosquitoes billions of different variables, uncovering links and insights that and sparrows. Unfortunately, though sparrows are an agricul- we’d never even considered.” tural pest, they also prey on a greater pest: locusts. The ensuing For example, assume you are researching the cause of your and Revenue Stream ecological imbalance fuelled the house plant’s recent poor health. Security Solutions That Are Simple to Add, Hard to Break Great Chinese Famine, which AI could use the knowledge killed 45 million people. graph to identify variables influ- The Arab Spring is a more re- encing plant health: soil, tem- Let Microchip help you secure not only your designs, but your brand and revenue cent example. Drought and wild- perature, fertilisation, pot, light, stream as well. With two decades of security experience, our experts take the fires decimated crops in Eastern and irrigation. Then automati- Europe. Putin halted exports and cally understand the variables fear out of integrating security and remove the need for costly in-house expertise. World grain prices increased by relevant to these variables – and Combine that expertise with our secure factories and provisioning services and 40%. Food shortages sparked so on. The answer could be tem- you’ll understand why many top companies trust Microchip’s experts to help guide revolution. Half a million lives perature spikes causes by turning have been lost in Syria alone. your oven on, or contamination their designs. The refugee crisis has had a last- in the production of your artificial ing effect on Europe. fertiliser. From secure encryption to trusted execution environments, find the security “These are extreme examples, In the real-world, Agrimet- but it’s easy to see how under- rics’s projects have reduced the implementations that meet your unique needs with our wide range of hardware- standing the connections would flow of pesticides into water- and software-based solutions. have helped us limited the damage of these crises, or avoid ways and used predictive models to improve fresh food sup- them all together.” ply chains and animal health. However, Agrimetrics and their This was one motivation behind the UK Government’s deci- partners have grander ambitions for the future. sion to provide initial funding for Agrimetrics, who boast Micro- “Average crop yields are around half of what is theoretically soft as a strategic partner. possible - we call this the yield gap. In theory, if we could better understand why this gap occurs, then we could increase output Feeding AI on arable farms with no additional inputs,” concludes Tiffin. The funding was used to build a Data Marketplace, which hous- “The best manufacturers have used data and AI to increase es information from across the global food system. Agrochemi- production by 50% and cut waste by 20%; agriculture can cal giant BASF and consumer goods company Unilever were do the same. It is possible to sustainably feed everyone on our planet for many years to come, but not without AI and not Secure your design at www.microchip.com/Secure Richard Tiffin is Professor of Applied Economics at the without data sharing. I believe that this can only be achieved University of Reading and Agrimetrics’ Chief Scientific Officer - through a Data Marketplace that rewards those who are willing www.agrimetrics.co.uk to share their data.” The Microchip name and logo and the Microchip logo are registered trademarks of Microchip Technology Incorporated in the U.S.A. and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their registered owners. © 2019 Microchip Technology Inc. All rights reserved. DS00002767A. MEC2236Eng01/19 4 News April 2020 @eeNewsEurope www.eenewseurope.com Defend Your IP, Brand and Revenue Stream Security Solutions That Are Simple to Add, Hard to Break Let Microchip help you secure not only your designs, but your brand and revenue stream as well. With two decades of security experience, our experts take the fear out of integrating security and remove the need for costly in-house expertise. Combine that expertise with our secure factories and provisioning services and you’ll understand why many top companies trust Microchip’s experts to help guide their designs. From secure encryption to trusted execution environments, find the security implementations that meet your unique needs with our wide range of hardware- and software-based solutions. Secure