Panel PC PCap HMIs have multi-touch operation    

A series of 21.5 and 23.6 inch projective capacitive (PCap) multi-touch screens for monitor or panel PCs from Portwell are powered by AllWinner A83T Octa-core Cortex A7 CPU to provide necessary basic computing power or Intel Atom Apollo Lake x5-E3930 processors.

The Lead-PD, -PND and -PPC series of panel PC products are designed for the IoT market. The robust, functional and flexible multi-touch human machine interfaces (HMIs) have HD 10-point PCap touch screen and are slim and bezel-free. They also have an IP65 water- and dust-proof front panel.

The 10-point multi-touch display supports a full set of gestures such as zooming in and out, panning or rotating to allow users a new way to control and interact with what’s on the screen, says Portwell.

The Lead series can be used in smart retail applications include digital signage, recognition, customised advertisements/ promotions, merchandise locations, self-checkout, and delivery. They can also be used in kiosk applications, such as point of interest, point of information in hospitality, hotel or restaurant locations, transportation such as parking lot, train station, airport; library, exhibition hall, government infrastructure, industrial or factory automation, facility management, intralogistics or smart warehouses.

Within the series are the Lead-PD series, a touch display with multi-touch function, the Lead-PND series, which is an Arm-based flat panel PC that supports the Android operating system, and there is the Lead-PPC series, utilising Intel Atom Dual Core processor compatible with Windows 10 IoT, Linux, and Android operating systems.

All three models have display sizes of 21.5 or 23.6 inches and backshell colour options in black flame-retardant plastics. They all have a full HD 1920 x 1080 resolution wide-screen display and a 16:9 ration panel. They also all have PCap and 10-point multi-touch operation and are constructed to a fanless and bezel-free design. Mounting option are standalone or VESA 75 x 75mm. The models in the Lead series are certified to CE (EN 55032 and EN 55024), FCC 47CFR Part 15 Subpart B and EN 60068-2-6 for vibration and EN 60068-2-27 shock absorption.

https://www.portwell.eu 

> Read More

AEC-Q101-qualified MOSFETs are compact for ADAS and ECUs

Measuring just 1mm2, the RV8C010UN, RV8L002SN and BSS84X AEC-Q101- qualified MOSFETs are suitable for high-density applications such as ADAS and automotive ECUs.

Increased electrification has led to more electronic and semiconductor components used per vehicle. For example, the average number of multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) and semiconductor components installed in a single automotive ECU is expected to increase by 30 per cent, from 186 in 2019 to 230 in 2025. At the same time, such high density automotive applications demand greater miniaturisation, which has led to research into bottom electrode packages and their heat dissipation in a compact form factor.

One area that developers are investigating is mounting options for bottom electrode packages. For automotive parts, automated optical inspection (AOI) is performed after mounting to ensure reliability, but with bottom electrode components the solder joint cannot be verified because the terminals are not visible. This makes it difficult to conduct visual inspection that meets automotive standards, explains Rohm Semiconductor. Its Wettable Flank technology ensures a side electrode height of 125 micron in the 1.0 x 1.0mm package.

According to Rohm, the compact, high heat dissipation MOSFETs support high density mounting, achieving the same performance as 2.9 x 2.4mm packages (SOT-23 packages) in the smaller 1.0 x 1.0mm package (DFN1010 packages). As a result, the mounting area is reduced by approximately 85 per cent.

At the same time, adopting a high heat dissipation bottom electrode structure improves heat dissipation (which normally decreases with size) by up to 65 per cent over an SOT-23 package, says Rohm.

It is increasingly being adopted by vehicle manufacturers, says the company because it achieves high solder mounting reliability during AOI. In addition, the bottom electrode package provides miniaturisation and high heat dissipation, making it ideal for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and automotive electronic control units (ECUs) featuring higher board densities.

Application examples are switching and reverse connection protection, autonomous driving control ECUs, in-car infotainment systems, engine control ECUs, drive recorders and ADAS applications.

All three MOSFET series are in mass production.

http://www.rohm.com/eu

> Read More

Accelerator card by Untether AI delivers up to two Peta OPS for AI inference

AI workloads for inference require increasing amounts of compute resources, far outstripping the gains available to traditional CPU and GPU architectures, says Untether AI. It has unveiled the tsunAImi accelerator cards which is powered by the runAI devices. Untether AI says its use of at-memory computation, breaks through the barriers of traditional von Neumann architectures, to offer industry-leading compute density with power and price efficiency.

AI accelerators are used in data centres and Untether AI says that it focuses on inference acceleration, transferring the weights and activations between external memory, on-chip caches to the computing element to maximise power efficiency. Untether AI is able to deliver two Peta operations per second (OPS) in a standard PCI-Express card form factor.

“For AI inference in cloud and datacenters, compute density is king, said Arun Iyengar, CEO of Untether AI. “Untether AI is ushering in the Peta OPS era to accelerate AI inference workloads at scale with unprecedented efficiency,” he added.

The tsunAImu accelerator card is based on the company’s runAI200 devices. They are tailored for inference acceleration and operate using integer data types and a batch mode of 1. The at-memory compute architecture features a memory bank of 385kbytes of SRAM with a 2D array of 512 processing elements. There are 511 banks per chip and each device offers 200Mbyte of memory and operate at up to 502 Tera OPS in “sport” mode. It may also be configured for maximum efficiency, offering eight TOPs per watt in “eco” mode.

The runAI200 devices are manufactured by Untethered AI, using a cost-effective, mainstream 16nm process.

The tsunAImi accelerator cards are powered by four runAI200 devices, providing more than two times any currently available PCIe cards, says Untethered AI. This compute power translates into over 80,000 frames per second of ResNet-50 v 1.5 throughput at batch=1. This is three times the throughput of its nearest competitor. For natural language processing, tsunAImi accelerator cards can process more than 12,000 queries per second (qps) of BERT-base, four times faster than any announced product.

The Untether AI imAIgineTM software development kit (SDK) provides an automated path to running networks with push-button quantisation, optimisation, physical allocation and multi-chip partitioning. The imAIgine SDK frees data scientists from having to perform low-level optimisation tasks and instead spend time in developing models. The imAIgine SDK also provides an extensive visualisation toolkit, cycle-accurate simulator, and an easily integrated runtime API.

The imAIgine SDK is currently in early access with select customers and partners. The tsunAImi accelerator card is sampling now and will be commercially available in Q1 2021.

http://www.untether.ai

> Read More

Pre-certified modules accelerate time to market, says Silicon Labs

Bluetooth, Zigbee, Thread and multi-protocol modules from Silicon Labs reduce time-to-market for secure smart home, building and industrial automation applications.

The pre-certified wireless modules are claimed to be the only modules in the industry with full stack support for multi-protocol solutions to enable commercial and consumer IoT applications. y offer package options and integrated device security.

“Silicon Labs has mastered the challenges that come with adding wireless connectivity to IoT devices,” said Matt Saunders, vice president of IoT marketing and applications at Silicon Labs. The modules allow IoT device makers to get pre-certified and secure wireless devices quickly to market.

The integrated modules are available in multiple package options including system in package (SiP) and traditional PCB versions. SiP modules contain miniaturised components that remove the need for complicated RF design and certification by opening space-constrained IoT designs to module-based solutions, says Silicon Labs. PCB modules enable flexible pin access and additional options to extend RF performance.

The xGM210PB features Secure Vault, the ARM PSA Level 2-certified IoT device security, as well as dynamic multi-protocol support for Bluetooth, Zigbee, and OpenThread and supports Wi-Fi co-existence. It is optimised for IoT applications, such as connected lighting, gateways, voice assistants and smart meter in-home displays, xGM210PB modules offer up to +20dBM output power and better than -104dBm sensitivity.

The BGM220 is one of the world’s smallest Bluetooth modules, says Silicon Labs, and the first to support Bluetooth Direction Finding. The integrated, pre-certified Bluetooth 5.2 module delivers up to 10 years’ operation on a coin cell battery, making it suitable for appliances, asset tags, beacons, portable medical, fitness, and Bluetooth mesh low-power nodes.

The MGM220 is a low-power, low-cost module for lighting controls, building and industrial automation sensors as well as Zigbee Green Power and energy harvesting applications.

Finally, the BGX220 Xpress includes an on-board Bluetooth stack, Xpress command interface and pre-programmed cable replacement firmware to deliver serial to Bluetooth LE with no need for firmware development. The modules are suitable for industrial applications including human machine interface (HMI) devices, addressing size, safety, and environmental challenges.

The modules are supported in the free-of-charge Silicon Labs Simplicity Studio 5 integrated development environment (IDE), which has software stacks, application demos and mobile apps, network analyser and patented energy profiler. Developers can also use simple APIs from Silicon Labs Xpress modules.

Samples, production quantities and development kits for all four modules are available now.

http://www.silabs.com

> Read More

About Smart Cities

This news story is brought to you by smartcitieselectronics.com, the specialist site dedicated to delivering information about what’s new in the Smart City Electronics industry, with daily news updates, new products and industry news. To stay up-to-date, register to receive our weekly newsletters and keep yourself informed on the latest technology news and new products from around the globe. Simply click this link to register here: Smart Cities Registration