Embedded News

NXP announced that it's NFC technology has been selected by Sony Ericsson's  Android platform group. This will allow new Sony Ericsson mobile handsets to use the NFC system to make purchases conveniently with just the swipe of their phone.

For further details see

http://www.nxp.com/news/content/file_1919.html

Texas Instruments are offering to swap competitors under-performing development tools for a range of TI development tools at TI's ESC booth.

On offer are the MSP430 eZ430-Chronos Watch, the Stellaris Cortex-M3 EvalBot and the C2000 Piccolo controlStick

For more details see:

http://newscenter.ti.com/Blogs/newsroom/archive/2011/04/27/texas-instruments-will-give-away-hundreds-of-microcontroller-kits-in-its-quot-tool-swap-quot-program-at-esc-silicon-valley-683420.aspx

http://www.ti.com/maketheswitch

Over the last year ARM have been contributing speed improvements to the Google V8 Javascript engine - used in the Chrome browser, Android smart phones, and the new HP WebOS. These improvements have seen a huge increase in performance - up to 5x on some benchmarks.

For full details see:

http://blogs.arm.com/software-enablement/456-googles-v8-on-arm-five-times-better/

The full V8 source code is available from:

http://code.google.com/p/v8/source/checkout

Ka-Ro electronics have released the first production i.MX53 module - the TX53. This modules includes the 1GHz Cortex-A8 i.MX535 processor, with up to 2GB of RAM, and 128MB of flash. Initial pricing is at 129 euros.

NXP Semiconductors have announced the new LPC11U00 series. This Cortex-M0 includes a full speed USB 2.0 device controller with up to 10 configurable end points.

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. today introduced its first USB 3.0 controller, the EZ-USB® FX3 targeted at video and imaging, printing, scanning, and a variety of applications that need higher throughput than USB 2.0.

Toshibas new Cevo engine processor includes 6 Cortex-A9 cores, along with four hardware graphics accelerators, and on-die DRAM.

Running at full throttle, Cevo is capable of calculating the nine separate images required to give eight people glasses-less 3D viewing on a single TV screen.

For further details see:

http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Articles/2011/04/07/50858/Toshiba-reveals-hex-core-ARM-A9-TV-processor.htm

http://eu.press.toshiba.eu/en/articles/pressgeneric/pr_cevo_2011

Shanghai InfoTM has licensed a series of ARM® IP, including ARM11™, Cortex™-A5 MPCore™ and Cortex-A9 MPCore processors as well as ARM Mali™-300 and Mali-400 MP Graphics Processing Units (GPUs).  The fabless semiconductor company has identified consumer demand for visually stunning 3D graphics and compelling user experiences on a full range of mobile computing devices.  

For more details see:

http://www.arm.com/about/newsroom/shanghai-infotm-licences-range-of-arm-cpu-and-gpu-ip-to-address-full-range-of-mobile-computing-devices.php

TI have released a new mini-robot platform based on the Stellaris Cortex-M3 LM3S9B92.

This platform is aimed directly at experimentation and development, providing both a range of built-in off-the-shelf functionality, as well as expansion slots for customised designs.

STMicroelectronics have announced a tiny MEMS 3-axis analog gyroscope. Measuring just 4x4x1mm³. The L3G452A gyroscope provides 625 degrees /second accuracy, and can operate with a voltage range of 2.4v - 3.6v.

For more information see:

http://www.st.com/internet/com/press_release/p3144.jsp

TI have unveiled a new reference design based on their recently released TMS320DM81xx DaVinci processor. This should provide a complete hardware and software platform on which security developers can base next-generation high quality surveilance and DVR solutions.

Leif Lindholm has posted an excellent summary on memory access ordering, an issue which can be of vital importance in debugging and optimisation of lowlevel code.

http://blogs.arm.com/software-enablement/431-memory-access-ordering-an-introduction/

ST-Ericsson have used the CTIA trade show to demonstrate their new Nova A9500 application processor. This processor was announce in early February, and is available for sampling now.

Fujitsu used the Embedded World 2011 conference to present its complete range of new FM3 microcontrollers. The range include the MB9Bxxx series of high-performance CPUs, and the basic MB9A100 line.

QNAP have released the TS-412U, a new 1U rack mount NAS, featuring the Marvell 6281 1.2GHz ARMv5TE compliant CPU. These devices include 256MB of DDR II memory, along with 16MB of internal flash, and use an embedded Linux based operating system.

For more details see

http://www.qnap.com/PressRelease_detail.asp?pr_id=231