ICs & Semiconductors Archives - Page 78 of 230

Smart lock and energy harvesting secure wireless power

Thu, Jan 05, 2023

Infineon Technologies has announced that wireless power system company, NuCurrent, is an Infineon Preferred Partner. The partnership launches with a focus on Infineon’s energy harvesting actuator and sensing ICs. With NuCurrent and Infineon technology, devices will implement optimised, contactless access and entry, eliminating or minimising the need for batteries in many applications.

NuCurrent’s design tools enable IP and development services which allow OEMs a faster route-to-market.

Infineon’s NFC tag-side controllers with integrated H-bridge and energy harvesting modules are a single-chip solution for developing cost-effective, miniaturised actuation or sensing applications operating in passive or active mode. The partnership will incorporate NuCurrent’s wireless power systems technology and design capabilities.

“NFC wireless energy harvesting and charging are game-changing technologies from various perspectives: product design, environmental sustainability, and user experience,” said Jacob Babcock, CEO of NuCurrent. As the capabilities of energy harvesting expand NFC is expected to deliver new features to product developers.

“Infineon and NuCurrent are bringing together complementary capabilities that are paving the way for new solutions eliminating batteries in locks, sensors, and other applications via contactless energy transfer,” explained Doris Keitel-Schulz, vice president of Contactless Power and Sensing at Infineon. “We are providing a reliable, low-maintenance, and secure replacement to batteries that significantly reduces e-waste. Our energy harvesting technology via mobile phone NFC field enables the digitalisation of the passive world and connects them into the mobile phone ecosystem,” she said.

Over time, the partnership is expected to produce solutions for varied applications, particularly locks in industrial, office, and hospital settings.

For sensor applications, the partnership enables new categories of applications where sensors do not require batteries and are triggered by NFC energy harvesting. An example of potential applications is a smart lock with energy harvesting features, showcased at CES 2023 in Las Vegas.

NuCurrent supplies wireless power technologies and product integration, spanning span magnetics, software and systems simulation. The company holds over 300 patents and systems integration expertise which supports manufacturers of appliances, smartphones, wearables, hearables, consumer electronics, medical devices, robotics, IoT, sporting equipment and other emerging product categories.

http://www.nucurrent.com

http://www.infineon.com

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Matter portfolio from NXP includes secure tri-radio wireless MCU

Thu, Dec 15, 2022

Two microcontrollers (MCUs) added to NXP’s portfolio of end-to-end Matter solutions, the RW612 and the K32W148, combine edge processing capabilities with integrated security. The result, said NXP is to streamline development, simplify designs and reduce costs for Matter-enabled smart home devices.

The recently launched Matter standard aims to enable devices from different brands and ecosystems to seamlessly, reliably and securely communicate and thereby free consumers from ecosystem restraints. This allows consumers to select devices based on desired features rather than complex or confusing connectivity requirements. Both the multi-protocol supporting NXP K32W148 and the tri-radio RW612 have native support for Matter, make it easier for developers to integrate the functionality into smart home devices.

The RW612 is believed to be the industry’s first tri-radio wireless MCU with concurrent, multi-protocol support for Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth Low Energy 5.3 and 802.15.4 and capable of supporting Thread or Zigbee. It is targeted for smart home devices such as thermostats, garage door openers, door locks, IP cameras, robotic vacuums, as well as smart appliances.

The K32W148 wireless MCU offers multi-protocol enablement across Thread, Bluetooth Low Energy 5.3, and Zigbee for devices such as smart plugs, smart lighting and low-power smart devices and sensors. It can add Thread and Zigbee support to home routers, hubs and bridges. Being multi-protocol, it reduces costs and simplifies antenna design with a single antenna.

The RW612 leverages an integrated tri-radio and advanced edge processing capabilities from the EdgeVerse i.MX RT crossover MCU family. It features an Arm Cortex-M33 MCU subsystem with TrustZone-M and fully integrated Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth LE 5.3 and 802.15.4, capable of supporting Thread or Zigbee. It also includes on-chip SRAM and high performance configurable peripherals, including Ethernet, LCD controller and five FlexComm modules to support a variety of serial protocols.

The level of integration reduces design complexity, bill of materials costs and end product size, added NXP. The RW612 is supported by the unified MCUXpresso development environment to reduce time to market.

NXP also offers the RW610, part of the same family of devices, which are ready to support new features such as Bluetooth LE Audio and Auracast broadcast audio for audio-focused applications, including portable audio devices and speakers, home theatre systems and gaming controllers.

The multi-protocol K32W148 wireless MCU has separated radio and security execution environments to free the main Arm Cortex-M33 core and memory for the customer’s application. The multi-protocol radio supports Matter, Thread, Bluetooth LE 5.3 and Zigbee. It also includes dual-PAN capability to simplify the co-existence of multiple IEEE 802.15.4 networks, such as Thread and Zigbee.

It is also supported by the unified MCUXpresso development environment.

Both the K32W148 and the RW61x wireless MCUs are part of NXP’s EdgeLock Assurance program, which follows a secure-by-design approach, including protection against remote and local software attacks, as well as support for secure boot, secure debug and secure over-the-air firmware updates, with an immutable root-of-trust, hardware accelerated cryptography, and lifecycle management.

The RW612, RW610 and K32W148 are currently sampling.

http://www.nxp.com

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Ventana launches RISC-V CPU for data centres at RISC-V Summit

Thu, Dec 15, 2022

At this week’s RISC-V Summit in San Jose, California, Ventana Micro Systems introduced Veyron V1. The data centre class RISC-V CPU runs at 3.6GHz and will be offered in the form of high performance chiplets and IP.

The Veyron V1 is the first RISC-V processor to provide single thread performance that is competitive with the latest incumbent processors for data centre, automotive, 5G, AI and client applications, claimed Ventana Micro Systems. Its efficient microarchitecture also enables the highest single socket performance among competing architectures, said the company.

The efficient performance of the Veyron, combined with RISC-V’s open and extensible architecture optimises the workload for efficiency gains which are enhanced further through domain specific acceleration that will extend Moore’s Law to deal with the emerging energy and thermal constraints for data centres, the company said.

The standards-based Veyron V1 compute chiplet and reference platform are claimed to accelerate time to market by up to two years and reduce development costs by up to 75 per cent. Chiplet based solutions provide flexibility and are economical by right sizing compute, IO and memory while composable architectures leveraging chiplets allow companies to focus on innovation.

Ventana provides a software development kit (SDK) which includes an extensive set of software building blocks already proven on Ventana’s RISC-V platform.

The RISC-V CPU core is the centrepiece of the first compute chiplet solution with chiplets supplied by different companies. Ventana’s Veyron platform also enables integration of a flexible domain specific accelerator for hardware / software codesign.

Veyron V1 will be available in the second half of 2023 and is the first in a series of products from Ventana.

“Ventana has a world class team with an average of twenty plus years of experience bringing multiple new CPU architectures to market,” said Patrick Moorhead, founder and chief analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. “Ventana is the first big core in RISC-V to show up, the only game in town, and has a jump on the market.”

Key features include a 5nm process technology, 16 cores per cluster and a high core count multi-cluster scalability up to 128 cores. There is 48Mbyte of shared L3 cache per cluster, advanced side channel attack mitigation for cybersecurity and I/O memory management and advanced interrupt architecture (AIA) system IP.

https://www.ventanamicro.com/

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Mouser stocks NXP’s latest EdgeReady processors for 3D facial recognition

Tue, Dec 13, 2022

Distributor, Mouser Electronics is now stocking the i.MX RT117F crossover processors from NXP Semiconductors. This is the latest of NXP’s EdgeReady portfolio. The i.MX RT117F crossover processors offer an inexpensive, embedded, secure 3D facial recognition system for smart locks and other access control systems. It can add machine learning-based secure facial recognition capabilities quickly and efficiently to smart homes and smart industrial IoT-based applications using NXP’s eIQ machine learning software.

The i.MX RT117F crossover processors feature NXP’s Arm Cortex-M7 CPU core with 2Mbytes of on-chip SRAM, running at up to 1GHz for fast, more accurate facial recognition and improved power efficiency. The i.MX RT117F has dual core processing and security features. It also provides a 2D GPU (graphics processing unit), two Gigabit Ethernet ports (and one 10/100 port), two high speed USB OTG with PHY and support for a MIPI display and camera. The i.MX RT117F crossover processor can be combined with a 3D structured light module (SLM) camera for security of 3D facial recognition at the edge. According to Mouser, it addresses privacy concerns and eliminates latency typically associated with cloud-based alternatives.

The i.MX RT117F also includes a license to run NXP’s facial biometric authentication library. In the comprehensive library there are camera drivers, image capture and pre-processing tools, face detection, tracking, alignment and recognition tools, wireless drivers and automation scripts.

Mouser is also stocking the SLN-VIZN3D-IOT development kit. This implements an onboard i.MX RT117F processor for secure facial recognition with 3D liveness detection and features integrated, turnkey software. It also includes an available remote registration capability to allow end-users to register their faces from mobile devices.

Mouser says it offers the world’s widest selection of the newest semiconductors and electronic components — in stock and ready to ship. Mouser’s website hosts an technical resources, including a Technical Resource Centre, product data sheets, supplier-specific reference designs, application notes, technical design information and engineering tools.

https://www.mouser.com

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Smart lock and energy harvesting secure wireless power

Matter portfolio from NXP includes secure tri-radio wireless MCU

Ventana launches RISC-V CPU for data centres at RISC-V Summit

Mouser stocks NXP’s latest EdgeReady processors for 3D facial recognition

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