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NXP and MicroEJ collaborate to use software containers to accelerate embedded platform development

Thu, Jan 04, 2024

NXP Semiconductors has announced the NXP Platform Accelerator, developed in collaboration with MicroEJ. The NXP Platform Accelerator leverages MICROEJ VEE software containers with standard APIs to bring a smartphone-like software design process experience to the industrial and IoT edge. The use of MICROEJ VEE enables software portability across NXP’s broad portfolio of RTOS-based MCUs and Linux-based applications processors, enabling manufacturers to significantly accelerate new product development and reduce costs. Furthermore, the NXP Platform Accelerator provides dedicated APIs to create easy access to advanced functionalities integrated in NXP’s processor portfolio, such as power management and 3D/2D graphics.

Why it matters: Smart devices across industrial and IoT markets are challenging to develop and deploy. Many are designed for a single purpose, with fixed functionality and limited computing capability that may be insufficient to support the evolving needs of an increasingly automated environment. Scaling product capability requires redeveloping and integrating low-level software, RTOS or higher-level OS, and middleware, which can create major development challenges and significantly slow product development.

The NXP Platform Accelerator solves this challenge by utilising software containerisation that enables binary software portability across the breadth of NXP’s processors portfolio, from MCUs to applications processors. Reusability at the binary level enables customers to prototype new products as quickly as possible and create a broad portfolio of complex smart devices that evolve with market needs and trends. Furthermore, the NXP Platform Accelerator enables sandboxed application deployment at the edge, bringing smartphone-like capability to the edge, such as partial or complete over-the-air updates, downloadable apps, and microservices.

More details: “Just like what happened in the smartphone industry, containerisation can be a tremendous tool to drive the rapid development of new smart device platforms,” said Charles Dachs, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Industrial and IoT Edge, NXP. “By integrating MicroEJ’s software container with NXP’s broad portfolio of edge processing solutions, we equip engineers to bring more products to market faster, with reduced costs, and to support the continuous evolution of their smart devices across industrial and IoT markets.”

“Software portability and BoM optimisation are often mutually exclusive,” said Fred Rivard, CEO of MicroEJ. “The NXP Platform Accelerator combines these two objectives, thanks to tiny software containers. This small-footprint innovation allows developers to benefit from both an optimised bill of materials and a modern software design process. This enables engineers to create new products and platforms more quickly, design products that are lower power and lower cost, while still allowing for feature-rich differentiation and innovation by device manufacturers.”

The NXP Platform Accelerator integrates advanced development tools, including simulation, virtual device management and a multi-language framework for combination of C, Java, and JavaScript languages, as well as agile collaboration processes and support for Android Studio, IntelliJ and Eclipse IDEs. In addition, the NXP Platform Accelerator integrates dedicated APIs for power management and graphic functions, making it extremely easy for customers to utilise the complex and powerful hardware IP brought by NXP. For example, a simple call to “low power profile” from the customer application layer will trigger performance optimisation for a given power profile. In addition, NXP-tailored containers support broad scalability and integrate NXP-specific optimisations and libraries that leverage processor hardware innovations.

The NXP Platform Accelerator is currently available for NXP’s processors, including power-efficient i.MX RT595 and high-performance multi-core i.MX RT1170 crossover MCUs.

http://nxp.com/PlatformAccelerator

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Ceva extends its Connect IP Portfolio with Wi-Fi 7 platform for high-end consumer and industrial IoT

Thu, Jan 04, 2024

Ceva has announced the general release of its next generation RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 7 IP platform, further expanding its widely-licensed portfolio of connectivity IP, targeting high-end consumer and industrial applications including gateways, TVs, set-top-boxes, streaming media devices, AR/VR headsets, personal computing and smartphones. The RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 7 IP leverages all the latest advanced features of the IEEE 802.11be standard to deliver a premium high performance, cost- and power-optimised Wi-Fi solution for integration into the next wave of Wi-Fi Access Point (AP) and Station (STA) products.

According to global technology intelligence firm ABI Research, annual Wi-Fi enabled chipset shipments will exceed 5.1 billion by 2028, with more than 1.7 billion of these chipsets supporting the Wi-Fi 7 standard. As Wi-Fi enabled device shipments continue to grow, increasing numbers of semiconductor companies and OEMs are choosing to integrate Wi-Fi connectivity into their chip designs, and need access to high quality Wi-Fi IP to reduce the development costs and risks. Spanning Wi-Fi 4/5/6 over the past decade, Ceva has already established a considerable leadership position in Wi-Fi IP licensing, with more than 40 licensees for its RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 6 IP family, serving a wide range of end markets and applications, from end points to access points, across the IoT sphere. Expanding on this leadership position, Ceva’s RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 7 IP provides a unique, comprehensive 802.11be MAC and PHY solution for integration into the next generation of Wi-Fi SoC products.

Andrew Zignani, Senior Research Director, ABI Research, commented: “Ceva’s wireless connectivity IPs play an integral role in the proliferation of connectivity standards in the broad IoT markets, as is evident from their customer’s success in shipping more than 1 billion connectivity chips annually. With the introduction of their RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 7 IP platforms, semiconductor companies and OEMs have a trusted partner to develop differentiated, high-performance Wi-Fi 7 chipsets for their connectivity roadmaps, with lower risk and a lower cost of ownership.”

Tal Shalev, Vice President and General Manager of the Wireless IoT BU at Ceva, stated: “The relentless expansion of Wi-Fi usage has pushed the Wi-Fi 7 standard to offer enhanced data throughput, improved latency and support more spectrum in the face of mounting network congestion. Achieving this requires highly complex, cutting-edge functionalities like 4K QAM modulation, Multi Link Operation and Multi Resource Unit to optimize link efficiency across the available bands. Our RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 7 IP platform incorporates all the features of this latest-generation, wireless standard, dramatically simplifying development and time-to-market for companies looking to add Wi-Fi 7 connectivity to their products.”

Wi-Fi 7’s 4K QAM modulation scheme is a substantial increase on the previous 1K QAM of Wi-Fi 6, while Multi Link Operation (MLO) introduces dynamic channel aggregation, seamlessly combining heterogenous channels from the same or different bands to navigate interference and boost throughput. Similarly, Multi Resource Units (MRU) enables the creation of larger channel bandwidths by intelligently stitching together punctured or disjointed Resource Units within the same band. The outcome is not only a remarkable up to 5 times increase in raw speeds but also significantly reduced latency, thanks to diminished contentions and retries.

visit https://www.ceva-ip.com/product/rivierawaves-wi-fi-platforms/.

 

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Mouser signs global distribution agreement with Ambiq to deliver ultra-low power AI microcontrollers

Wed, Jan 03, 2024

Mouser has announced a new global distribution agreement with Ambiq, a leading supplier of low-powered, AI-enabled microcontrollers for wearables, hearables, IoT, edge devices and mobile edge computing applications.

“We are pleased to announce our partnership with Ambiq, which furthers our commitment to providing the latest products and technologies to our customers worldwide,” said Kristin Schuetter, Vice President of Supplier Management at Mouser Electronics. “We look forward to providing engineers and buyers worldwide with their innovative embedded solutions, backed by Mouser’s best-in-class logistics and unsurpassed customer service.”

“Mouser is well-known for its worldwide distribution and support system,” said Mike Kenyon, Vice President of Sales and Business Development at Ambiq. “We are excited to enter into this relationship. With distribution through Mouser, we can draw on their expertise in delivering leading-edge technologies and expand our global customer base.”

Among the Ambiq products now available from Mouser are the Ambiq Apollo4 Blue Lite system-on-chip (SoC) and the Ambiq Apollo4 Blue Lite evaluation board. The Apollo4 Blue Lite SoC features a 32-bit Arm® Cortex®-M4 core with a Floating-Point Unit, along with a Bluetooth® Low Energy 5.1 radio with robust RF connectivity. This SoC is ideal for use in battery-powered endpoint devices, including smartwatches, fitness bands, animal trackers, voice-activated remotes and digital health products. The Ambiq Apollo4 Blue Lite evaluation board offers a complete demonstration and development platform for the Apollo4 Blue Lite device.

Mouser also offers the Apollo3 Blue Plus evaluation board and the Apollo3 Blue Plus SoC. The Apollo3 Blue Plus device is based on Ambiq’s Voice-on-SPOT (VoS) platform, making it the perfect microprocessor for enabling always-on voice assistant integration and command. The Apollo3 Blue Plus evaluation board enables quick and easy prototyping of the SoC. The Apollo3 Blue Plus Voice-on-SPOT kit, also available from Mouser, facilitates demos, evaluation, and the development of ultra-low power audio and voice capabilities on the Apollo3 Blue Plus SoC. The kit provides always-on voice capability with options for one or two microphones, signal processing, wake word/command detection, codec, and Bluetooth Low Energy communication.

The Artasie AM1805 evaluation board offers an easy method to measure and evaluate Ambiq’s AM18x5 real-time clocks. The evaluation board includes on-chip oscillators to provide minimum power consumption, full RTC functions including battery backup and programmable counters and alarms for timer and watchdog functions, and a PC serial interface for communication with a host controller.

To learn more about Ambiq products available from Mouser, visit https://www.mouser.com/manufacturer/ambiq/.

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R&S verifies NXP’s next generation automotive radar sensor reference design for extremely short object distances

Fri, Dec 22, 2023

The radar target simulator R&S RTS has been used to verify the performance of NXP® Semiconductors’ next-generation radar sensor reference design. This collaboration enables the automotive industry to take another step forward in the development of automotive radar, the principal technology that enables advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving features.

Engineers from both companies conducted a comprehensive series of tests to verify the new sensor reference design which is based on a NXP’s 28 nm RFCMOS radar one-chip SoC (SAF85xx). The R&S RTS radar test system combines the R&S AREG800 automotive radar echo generator with the R&S QAT100 antenna mmW frontend, offering unique short-distance object simulation capabilities as well as superior RF performance and advanced signal processing with many advanced functions. This enables realistic tests of next generation automotive radar applications and brings automotive industry’s vision of fully autonomous driving one step closer.

NXP’s next generation automotive radar sensor reference design is enabled by the industry’s first 28 nm RFCMOS radar one-chip SoC family leveraging the R&S RTS radar test system. The radar sensor reference design can be used for short, medium and long-range radar applications to serve challenging NCAP (NCAP: New Car Assessment Program) safety requirements as well as comfort functions like highway pilot or urban pilot for the fast-growing segment of L2+ and L3 vehicles.

The R&S RTS is the only test system suitable for complete characterisation of radar sensors and radar echo generation with object distances down to the airgap value of the radar under test. It combines the R&S AREG800A automotive radar echo generator as a backend and the R&S QAT100 antenna array or the R&S AREG8-81S as a frontend. The technically superior test solution is suitable for the whole automotive radar lifecycle including development lab, hardware-in-the-loop (HIL), vehicle-in-the-loop (VIL), validation and production application requirements. The solution is also fully scalable and can emulate the most complex traffic scenarios for advanced driver assistance systems.

Adi Baumann, Senior Director ADAS R&D, at NXP Semiconductors says: “We have been collaborating closely and successfully with Rohde & Schwarz for many years on the verification of our automotive radar sensor reference designs. Rohde & Schwarz’ cutting-edge automotive radar test systems allows us high-quality and highly efficient validation of our automotive radar products and proves outstanding performance of our radar one-chip. The level of experience, quality and support that Rohde & Schwarz provides to NXP is making a difference.”

Gerald Tietscher, Vice President Signal Generators, Power Supplies and Meters from Rohde & Schwarz says: “We are grateful for the collaboration with NXP to accelerate the deployment of advanced automotive radar sensors based on 28 nm automotive radar chips. They serve ever more challenging NCAP safety requirements and will help enable new safety applications. Our experience in automotive radar testing allows us to provide a best-in-class test solution for this radar sensor design based on the industry’s first 28 nm RFCMOS one-chip radar SoC.”

NXP will present the latest developments for radar including the automotive radar sensor reference design at CES 2024 trade show in Las Vegas from January 9 to 12, 2024, at booth CP18.

https://www.rohde-schwarz.com/

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