Image sensor evaluation kits support VR and smart buildings

Evaluation kits from ams support eye tracking, presence detection and object recognition in virtual reality headsets, smart lighting and home and building
automation products.

The Raspberry Pi and Arduino-based NanEyeC evaluation kits are based around the ams NanEyeC miniature image sensor.

The NanEyeC camera, image sensor is supplied as a 1.0 x 1.0mm surface-mount module. It produces 100kpixel resolution up to 58 frames per second and can be used for video applications where the camera needs to be accommodated in an extremely small space, such as eye tracking in virtual reality (VR) headsets. It can also be applied in user presence detection, to support automatic power on/off controls in home and building automation (HABA) applications such as air conditioning, home robotics, appliances and smart lighting.

The NanoVision demo kit for the NanEyeC is based on an Arduino development platform. It includes all necessary drivers to interface the sensor’s single-ended interface mode (SEIM) output to an Arm Cortex-M7 microcontroller. It also supports image processing including functions like colour reconstruction and white-point balancing.

The second board is the NanoBerry, designed for more demanding operations like eye tracking or stereo vision systems. This evaluation kit uses a NanEyeC image sensor add-on board to the Raspberry Pi port and includes firmware to interface to the Raspberry Pi host processor. Engineers can use the Arm Cortex-A53-based processor to perform demanding operations such as object detection, object tracking and computer vision functions provided by the OpenCV library.

The NanoBerry kit is suitable for high frame-rate and low-latency applications such as eye tracking. When integrated into the NanEye PC viewer, it enables full evaluation of the NanEyeC with access to all registers and raw image data.

The NanoVision board is available now to customers on request and the NanoBerry kit will be demonstrated at CES 2020 (the Venetian Tower, Suite 30-236) and will be available to customers in Q1 2020.

https://ams.com

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SYSGO and STMicroelectronics demonstrate secure telematics

Real-time operating system (RTOS) for certifiable embedded systems company, SYSGO has jointly developed the Automotive Secure Gateway, based on STMicroelectronics’ Telemaco3P SoC.

The Telemaco3P SoC is an automotive processor for secure telematics and connectivity, which is combined with SYSGO`s PikeOS hypervisor-based RTOS, which brings avionics-grade safety and security to the automotive market, says the company.

The Telemaco3P platform ensures a secure connection between the vehicle and the cloud. Its asymmetric multi-core architecture is built upon powerful application processors as well as an independent controlled area network (CAN) control sub-system with optimised power management. Its ISO 26262 silicon design, embedded hardware security module and automotive-grade qualification up to +105 degrees C ambient temperature enable it to be used in a range of secure telematics applications supporting high-throughput wireless connectivity and over-the-air (OTA) firmware upgrades.

PikeOS extends the concept of secure telematics by encapsulating all communications channels and all applications in individual partitions, using a positive-security concept. This means that individual partitions cannot communicate with each other unless explicitly allowed and configured by the developer. The strict separation on the kernel level ensures that any malfunction or malicious attack will not impact the software running in partitions other than the one originally affected. PikeOS is currently the only RTOS/hypervisor certified to Common Criteria (EAL 3+). It has been used in a range of critical safety and security applications in the avionics, railway, and automotive industries.

The Automotive Secure Gateway implements a comprehensive security concept including a virtualised firewall, an intrusion detection system (IDS), fast and secure boot capabilities and a secure OTA update process. It supports secure cloud communications via LTE, as well as secured Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Ethernet and CAN connectivity within the car.

At CES 2020, ST and SYSGO will demonstrate how the Automotive Secure Gateway can detect and effectively mitigate OTA attacks. Demos will take place at CES 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, in the Automotive Grade Linux showcase in the Smart City exhibition (Westgate Booth 1815) and in SYSGO’s hospitality suite in the Westgate Hotel (floor 18, suite 1830).

https://www.st.com

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Renesas collaborates with Xilinx on Versal ACAP reference designs

Power semiconductors from Renesas and timing solutions from its subsidiary, IDT, support the Xilinx Versal adaptive compute acceleration platform (ACAP) devices featured on the Xilinx VCK190 evaluation kit and the Renesas VERSALDEMO1Z power reference board.

The 7nm process Versal is the industry’s first ACAP platform that addresses applications in data centre, automotive, 5G wireless, and wired and defence markets, says Renesas.

The company provides turnkey clocking and power reference boards that help system developers jumpstart Versal ACAP designs. For developers creating complex, compute-intensive systems that demand flexible and high-performance power delivery and timing, the collaboration has resulted in pre-validated reference designs that allow developers to rapidly develop and optimise system performance and power efficiency.

The Xilinx VCK190 is the first Versal AI Core series evaluation kit. It is based on the VC1902 Versal AI Core series ACAP, providing AI inference and signal processing throughput for cloud, network, and edge applications. The kit features complete timing solutions including the 8A34001 ClockMatrix system synchroniser for IEEE1588 and eCPRI applications, 8T49N240/8T49N241 Universal Frequency Translators for low-jitter and flexible transceiver SerDes clocking, a programmable clock generator and clock buffer/multiplexer for PCIe interface.

The Renesas VERSALDEMO1Z power reference board provides full power rails for the Versal ACAP’s adaptable engines, AI engines, scalar engines, and external DDR memory. The board is a complete power supply solution featuring one member of the ISL68xxx digital multiphase PWM controller family and multiple members of the ISL99xxx smart power stage family to provide high-efficiency and scalable Vcore power. There are also ISL91211A power management IC (PMIC) and DC/DC regulators.

The Renesas VERSALDEMO1Z power reference board is available now from Renesas Electronics.

Renesas Electronics delivers semiconductors that enable billions of connected, intelligent devices, microcontrollers, analogue, power, and SoC products for automotive, industrial, home electronics, office automation, and information communication technology applications.

http://renesas.com

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Microchip delivers early access for RISC-V enables PolarFire SoC FPGAs

At this week’s RISC-V Summit in San Jose, California, USA, Microchip has announced an early access program for its PolarFire SoC.

Explaining the reason behind the programme, Microchip cited the trend towards compute-intensive gateways and edge devices which is driving the integration of traditional deterministic control applications with the additional embedded processing capabilities needed for smart and secure connected systems. The early access programme for the PolarFire SoC FPGA offers what is claimed to be the world’s first hardened real-time, Linux-capable, RISC-V-based microprocessor sub-system on the mid-range PolarFire FPGA family. According to Microchip, this brings low power consumption, thermal efficiency and defence-grade security to embedded systems.

Qualified customers can start designing now with Microchip’s Libero SoC 12.3 FPGA design suite and SoftConsole 6.2 integrated development environment (IDE) for the embedded developer. Customers can also debug embedded applications using Renode, a virtual model of the microprocessor sub-system.

The company believes that, in addition to driving innovation in the embedded space, as designers develop a new class of power-efficient applications, there will also be the opportunities to add “unprecedented capabilities” at the edge of the network for communications, defence, medical and industrial automation.

PolarFire SoC delivers power efficiency that is up to 50 per cent lower power than competitive devices in the industry, said Microchip. This reduces the bill of materials by eliminating the need for fans and heat sinks. It is believed to be the first SoC FPGA with a deterministic, coherent RISC-V CPU cluster and a deterministic L2 memory subsystem enabling Linux plus real-time applications.

The support of real-time and rich operating systems such as Linux is part of Microchip’s growing Mi-V RISC-V ecosystem, a comprehensive suite of tools and design resources developed by Microchip and third parties to support RISC-V designs. Ecosystem partners ready to support PolarFire SoC include WindRiver, Mentor Graphics, WolfSSL, ExpressLogic, Veridify, Hex-Five, and FreeRTOS as well as development tools from IAR systems and AdaCore.

http://www.microchip.com

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