ICs & Semiconductors

Bluefield-3 DPU accelerates virtual clouds, says Nvidia

Thu, Nov 11, 2021

With 400Gb/s Ethernet or NDR 400Gbits per second InfiniBand network connectivity, BlueField-3 DPU (data processing unit) offloads, accelerates, and isolates software-defined networking, storage, security, and management functions to improve data centre performance, efficiency and security, says Nvidia. 

The third-generation Bluefield infrastructure on a chip enables organisations to build software-defined, hardware-accelerated IT infrastructures from cloud to core data centre to edge, says the company. In addition to powerful computing and a range of programmable acceleration engines in the I/O path, BlueField-3 is addresses the infrastructure needs of the most demanding applications and software backwards compatibility through the Nvidia DOCA software framework. 

BlueField-3 DPUs transform traditional computing environments into secure and accelerated virtual private clouds, allowing organisations to run application workloads in secure, multi-tenant environments. It decouples data centre infrastructure from business applications and is claimed to deliver optimal bare-metal performance and native support for multi-node tenant isolation. 

BlueField-3 DPU features video streaming Storage NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF), NVMe/ TCP, hyper converged infrastructure (HCI), encryption, data integrity, data de-duplication, decompression, erasure coding/RAID Security Distributed firewall, IDS/ IPS, root of trust and microsegmentation.

The portfolio includes one, two or four ports with up to 400Gbits per second connectivity, 16Gbyte on-board DDR5 memory. There is also a 1GbE out-of-band management port,  single port InfiniBand or dual ports of NDR200 / HDR (200Gbits per second), 32 lanes of PCIe Gen 5.0 and non-transparent bridging.

The ample memory consists of up to 16 Armv8.2+ A78 Hercules cores (64-bit), 8Mbyte L2 cache and 16Mbyte LLC system cache. There is also a programmable datapath accelerator, DDR DIMM support, including dual DDR5 5600Mtransfers per second DRAM controllers and ECC protection. 

For security, there is secure boot with public key accelerator (PKA) root-of-trust, secure firmware update and Flash encryption, MACsec / IPsec / TLS data-in-motion encryption, an AES-GCM 128 / 256-bit key, AES-XTS 256 / 512-bit data-at-rest encryption, connection tracking for stateful firewall and true random number generator (TRNG) storage.

 https://www.nvidia.com/

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NFC Type 2 tag IC has permanent write locks and configurable kill mode

Thu, Nov 11, 2021

Consumer engagement, production information and brand protection are offered with the ST25TN512 and ST25TN01K NFC Forum Type 2 tag ICs by STMicroelectronics. They can also be used for access control.

The ST25TN512 and ST25TN01K NFC tag ICs support multiple user-protection and privacy mechanisms including a 7-bit unique chip-identifier code, TruST25 digital signature, NFC Forum T2T permanent write locks at block level, and a configurable kill mode that permanently deactivates the tag.

The two ICs are certified to NFC Forum Type 2 specifications and leverage ISO 14443 standards. They can be used with NFC-compatible mobiles or a dedicated short-range reader. The embedded device memory includes up to 208 bytes (1664 bits) dedicated to user content.

There is also support for messages in NFC data exchange format (NDEF) which triggers native actions on a smartphone without needing a dedicated app, such as launching a web browser or starting Bluetooth pairing. Augmented NDEF (ANDEF) enables reading dynamic information such as custom messages and unique tap codes without explicitly updating the EEPROM.

The ST25TN512 and ST25TN01K are produced by a new in-house manufacturing process. Both NFC tag ICs contain an internal tuning capacitance of 50pF, which allows plug-and-play integration by inlay manufacturers. The tags harvest energy from the 13.56MHz RF transmitter field and require only an antenna to complete the design.

They also have a long data retention and operate over a wide temperature range of -40 to +85 degrees C. The ICs can be supplied in sawn and bumped wafer format or housed in a DFN5 package.

Both the ST25TN512 and ST25TN01K are available in volume production.

http://www.st.com

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Cross-domain automotive control microcontrollers enhance ECU integration

Wed, Nov 10, 2021

Microcontrollers designed to address the growing need to integrate multiple applications into a single chip and unify the electronic control unit (ECU) in vehicles, make up the RH850/U2B series.

Renesas says the cross-domain microcontrollers are built for the rigorous workloads required by vehicle motion in hybrid ICE and xEV traction inverter, high-end zone control, connected gateway and domain control applications. 

They join the company’s RH850/U2A microcontrollers for body and chassis control systems. Customers can also combine the microcontrollers with Renesas’ R-Car S4 SoC devices for automotive central gateway systems for scalable electronic / electrical architectures that are deemed the architectures for future vehicle generations. 

Naoki Yoshida, vice president, automotive digital products marketing division at Renesas, said: “The RH850/U2B microcontrollers . . . performance, memory integration and hardware-based support for new zone- and domain-control applications, particularly for powertrain and HEV/EV, while maintaining the stringent cost, safety, and security parameters required for these automotive systems”.

Designed for zone and domain applications, the 28nm RH850/U2B microcontrollers build on key functions from Renesas’ RH850/E2x series for powertrain and RH850/C1M-Ax series for HEV/EV motor control. At the same time they add enhancements including an accelerator IP, higher performance levels and increased security. This feature set enables users to integrate multiple ECU functions into a single ECU while adhering to stringent automotive-grade safety, security and real-time operation requirements.

The integrated hypervisor hardware-based virtualisation assist function allows multiple software systems with up to ISO26262 ASIL D functional safety levels to operate independently, without interference. It also reduces the virtualisation overhead to maintain real-time execution. Quality-of-service (QoS) provides a latency monitor and regulation function for all bus masters to ensure minimum bandwidth is always available. The RH850/U2B microcontrollers support safe and rapid full no-wait over the air (OTA) software updates with dual-bank embedded flash that allows the ECU to update and save images while the microcontrollers are in active mode and enables the ECU to operate from the original code if a failure occurs. Integrated motor control accelerator IP (EMU3S) works in conjunction with multiple dedicated motor control timer structures like GTM v4.1 and TSG3 to reduce CPU processing loads while achieving high-speed rotation. Dedicated data flow processor (DFP) accelerator IP enables the CPU to offload compute-heavy operations for complex control. 

The microcontrollers have up to eight 400MHz performance cores with four of them in lockstep architecture, with built-in flash targeting ASIL-D and ASIL-B applications. Integrated security functions support the Evita Full standard, including elliptic curve cryptography. There are multiple instances of AES128 lock-step modules for conflict-free, deterministic safe and secure communication.

The dedicated resolver / digital converter accelerator IP (RDC3X) processes analogue signals from a motor rotational angle sensor (resolver) or an inductive position sensor. 

The DR1000C is a RISC-V-based parallel co-processor IP with vector extension (DFP), licensed from NSITEXE, which supports the fast execution of complex mathematical algorithms.

Communication interfaces include Gigabit Ethernet TSN with switch support. 

The RH850/U2B microcontrollers will be sampling from April 2022. 

http://www.renesas.com

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DC/DC converter can extend industrial devices’ battery life by up to 20 per cent 

Thu, Nov 04, 2021

Boasting low quiescent current (IQ) of 60nA, the TPS61094 buck/boost converter can extend the battery life of industrial applications, says Texas Instruments. The bi-directional buck/boost converter’s IQ is one-third that of competing boost converters, says the company. It integrates a buck mode for supercapacitor charging while providing low IQ, to extend battery life by as much as 20 per cent when compared to commonly used hybrid-layer capacitors (HLCs). Supercapacitor charging and discharging help support peak loads and backup power, which are important for continuous operation in battery-powered industrial applications such as smart meters, smoke detectors and video doorbells, as well as medical applications.  

Engineers designing battery-operated systems frequently face a common design challenge: a need to achieve high efficiency at no- or light-load conditions, in the low milliampere or microampere range. This requires power supplies to regulate their output while maintaining low supply current in the nA range. 

Today’s lithium thionyl chloride (Li/SOCl₂) battery-based designs often manage peak load with HLCs. This are expensive and not optimal for controlling charge current, explains TI. The TPS61094’s combined low IQ and supercapacitor charging and discharging allow HLCs to be replaced with supercapacitors for peak load support and to extend battery life in applications that must run on a single battery for 10 years or more. 

The TPS61094 can provide back up power in applications that require safe power-down or last-gasp communication during a power outage. 

In addition to extending battery life, the buck/boost converter has a 2.0A inductor current limit in boost operation, which doubles the output current of competitive boost converters, according to the company.

The additional output current enables the TPS61094 to support radio standards – such as narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT), LTE-M, Wi-SUN, MIOTY, Bluetooth and wireless M-Bus – over a wider input voltage range. For example, it can support more than 250mA of output current down to an input voltage of 0.7V.

Typical industrial applications such as smart meters require several power components for back up power features or peak load support. Integrating a buck charger and a boost converter into a single IC removes the need for a discrete buck charger, inductor and two external capacitors.  

The integration of the buck charger and boost converter also allows design engineers to easily control the handshake between all functions, for a seamless transition between operating modes.

The TPS61094 is now available through TI and authorised distributors in a 2.0 x 3.0mm, 12-pin very thin, small outline no-lead (WSON) package. Full and custom quantity reels are available and there is also the TPS61094EVM-066 evaluation module.

http://www.TI.com

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