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SigmaSense partners with NXP Semiconductors for future sensing systems

Fri, May 19, 2023

Texas company, Sigma Sense has developed a sensing technology which it says will improve the performance of practically anything with a touchscreen, for example mobile phones, automotive, industrial, gaming, wearables, digital signage, industrial / IoT and even improve the performance of EV batteries.

SigmaSense’s technology intends to ‘shake up’ the industry in which the underlying technology behind most of today’s touch sensing devices has changed little in decades.

It said its approach captures more granular data from the physical world making interactive advances possible. The technology makes possible high speed touch interfaces of all sizes and shapes, new surface materials beyond glass, operation in rain and with gloves, economical large format interactive displays with the speed of a mobile experience.

SigmaSense has announced a license and co-development deal with NXP Semiconductors to transition from traditional touch interfaces to multi-dimensional sensing. It has licensed its technology to NXP, and the companies will collaborate on high-performance sensing products for specific applications, in particular those with demands for faster, more robust, fully immersive software-defined experiences.

“The next generation of smart devices and applications are demanding data for enhanced functionality that requires an entirely new software-programmable approach to sensing,” explained Lars Reger, CTO of NXP Semiconductors.

Rick Seger, CEO of SigmaSense, added: “Our co-development with NXP marks the transition to a universe of new data-centric design options driven by software-defined sensing.”

SigmaSense’s multi-dimensional sensing works through many different surfaces, shapes, and materials, enabling previously impossible designs. It makes it possible to extract “vastly more” data from the physical world for a wide range of products and systems, said the company. With the ability to measure current direct-to-digital, SigmaSense claimed to deliver an industry first of low voltage, frequency domain sensing. Fast, continuous, high-fidelity data capture with intelligent digital signal processing moves analogue challenges to the digital domain, where design flexibility can deliver orders of magnitude improvement, continued SigmaSense. The technology has the potential to change system designs “from foldable displays to EV batteries,” said the company.

SigmaSense invented software-defined sensing which achieves breakthrough levels of speed, accuracy, resolution, and noise immunity previously deemed impossible for sensing systems. Sensing through the noise, SigmaSense products increase the depth and quantity of data that can be captured from the physical world to enable exciting new experiences in a wide range of devices including mobile, automotive, battery sensing, digital signage, wearables, and all sizes of IoT touch displays.

SigmaSense is headquartered in Austin, Texas, USA, with offices in Boise, Idaho and Taipei, Taiwan.

https://sigmasense.com

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Intel updates Flex GPU for cloud gaming and AI

Fri, May 19, 2023

Aoption of Intel’s Flex series GPU continues to grow, reported the company, leading intended for flexible, general-purpose graphics processing for the data centre and the intelligent visual cloud, Intel has expanded the Flex GPU’s production-level software capabilities to include new support for Windows cloud gaming, AI inference and digital content creation.

The Flex series GPUs can be used by cloud service providers deploying Windows cloud gaming alongside streaming and media acceleration. They are also used by media studios for high-density streaming and transcoding. Digital content creators are using the platform for fast, real-time rendering using ray tracing hardware acceleration.

The Flex series GPUs address the gaming market which is projected to grow at a CAGR of 42.5 per cent from 2022 to 2028 with the global cloud gaming market estimated to reach about $13.3 billion by 2028. Game service providers must continually innovate to deliver playing experiences to subscribers while operating the most efficient infrastructure possible, advised Intel.

Intel’s new software capabilities for the Intel Flex series GPU enable customers to realise new capabilities and gains across real-world workloads coupled with third Gen and fourth Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors.

Intel provides a cloud gaming reference stack for Windows to show how to unleash Intel Flex Series for remote gaming, including how to enumerate and retarget multiple game titles to run concurrently on each of the multiple Flex Series adapters and two types of virtual displays. Intel Flex series is optimised for DirectX 9, 11 and 12 render target capture and desktop capture.

Gamestream allows users to stream and play games on devices with high-end graphics across the entertainment, hospitality, media and telecomms markets.

Olivier Lebigot, Gamestream’s CTO, said, “One of our key challenges in cloud gaming is to find the right GPU to increase the overall concurrent users (CCU) number per server, while delivering the best end-user experience. We have been pleased to find that Intel Data Center GPU Flex Series 170 offers a high density, low power solution. During our tests, our reference CCU was improved by nearly 19 per cent compared to our current hardware solution”.

Intel has expanded its Flex series capabilities for AI, including workloads for smart city, library indexing and compliance, AI-guided video enhancement, intelligent traffic management, smart buildings and factories, and retail applications.

Through the Intel AI Analytics toolkit, Intel Flex series GPU supports most common AI frameworks, including TensorFlow and PyTorch. Intel has validated more than 100 AI inference models.

The Intel software stack for visual inference now includes the open source GStreamer multimedia framework, the Intel OpenVINO toolkit inference engine and open source sample implementation of media analytics framework for creating complex visual inference and analytics pipelines.

A prominent open source solution for supporting the advancement, training and validation of autonomous driving systems is CARLA, which utilises the Unreal Engine 4.

In a single 1080p sensor scenario, a single Intel Data Center Flex 170 GPU achieves 56 frames per second (fps), which is 16 per cent faster than the Nvidia A10G (48 fps), 40 per cent faster than the Nvidia GPU Tesla T4 (40 fps) and 60 per cent faster than the AMD Radeon Pro V520 MxGPU (35 fps), reported Intel.

The performance of the Intel Data Center Flex 170 GPU scales accordingly for four 1080p sensors, reaching 23 frames per second, while the Nvidia A10G achieves 19 frames per second.

In digital content creation, real-time rendering is delivered via ray tracing hardware acceleration on the Intel Flex Series through Intel Embree. AI-based denoising can be completed in milliseconds using the latest Intel Open Image Denoise. Further productivity can be gained through the use of a single SYCL codebase for CPU/GPU rendering through oneAPI, said Intel.

Flex Series offers customers a comprehensive graphics solution, an open and full software stack, no licensing fees, and a unified programming model for CPUs and GPUs for performance and productivity via oneAPI.

http://www.Intel.com.

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Micro-ATX motherboard sets benchmarks for storage and processing

Thu, May 18, 2023

The MAX-Q670A sets new benchmarks for expandability, storage capacity, and processing power, said Aaeon. The addition to its Micro-ATX range is the company’s first Micro-ATX industrial motherboard to incorporate the new 13th Generation Intel Core processor platform (formerly Raptor Lake).

It supports a diverse range of CPUs from both the 12th and 13th Generation Intel Core processor ranges, from 35W i3 to 65W i9 devices, with the most advanced of these offering eight P-cores, 16 E-cores and 32 threads. Advanced technologies available on this platform include Intel TCC for real-time computing, Intel vPro Enterprise for robust security and stability and Intel Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0 for targeted workload management.

Aaeon designed the MAX-Q670A with upgrades in storage, hardware-based security features and increased speed and bandwidth via both onboard interfaces and expansion modules.

It is equipped with two 16-lane PCIe Gen 5 slots to accommodate multiple expansion modules such as graphic cards. There is also a further option of installing two eight-lane cards per slot. There are four LAN ports, two of which support 2.5GbE via Intel I225-LM and high-speed peripheral device interfaces, bolstered by up to 128Gbyte of DDR5 system memory to accelerate data transmission. This is in addition to a dense I/O comprised of a DB-9 port, alongside an internal nine-pin header for RS-232 function and an 8-bit digital I/O interface.

Security features include four rear USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, which are bootable, and two internal USB 3.2 Gen 1 and USB 2.0 ports which also support a USB switchable power feature for remote peripheral device rebooting.

Eight SATA III drives with RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 support provide storage capacity and there are two M.2 2242/2280 M-Keys which provide four-lane PCIe Gen 4 functionality.

The MAX-Q670A is now in mass production.

Established in 1992, Aaeon designs and manufactures industrial IoT and AI edge products. It provides industrial motherboards and systems, rugged tablets, embedded AI Edge systems, uCPE network appliances and LoRaWAN/WWAN solutions as well as OEM/ODM services worldwide. It also works closely with cities and governments to develop and deploy smart city ecosystems, offering individual platforms and end-to-end solutions.

http://www.aaeon.com

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Reclocker / redriver devices extend reach with USB 3.2-compatibility

Wed, May 17, 2023

Suitable for automotive and industrial applications, Microchip’s EQCO510 and EQCO5X31 devices offer a two-channel option to engineers wishing to send high-speed data signals up to 15 meters in both directions

While the standard universal serial bus (USB) connection transfers data between two devices, the increase in electronic components in applications across the automotive, industrial and consumer industries has spurred the need for far-reaching USB cabling products. Microchip Technology announces two new reclocker / redriver devices for long range, reliable USB operations in industrial and automotive applications.

The automotive EQCO510 and industrial EQCO5X31 reclocker / redriver devices extend USB coverage up to 15 meters – rather than the standard three meters – for maximum reach and are compatible with the USB 3.2 Generation 1 SuperSpeed protocol.

The USB reclocker / redriver devices can send high-speed data signals at a rate of 5Gbits per second in both directions. The reclocking feature includes a bit-level clock data recovery (CDR) that is used to restore signal timing and prevent jitter accumulation. The redriving feature restores the levels and shape of the signal being driven into the next segment, such as a cable or PCB trace, thus compensating for signal degradation due to cable attenuation, explained Microchip.

“Our customers now have the capability to implement a fast, reliable and long-distance USB connectivity solution of up to 15 meters, extending the three meter standard by five times,” said Matthias Kaestner, corporate vice president of Microchip’s automotive infotainment systems business unit. These devices also reduce board space because of the on-chip clock and small form factor, he added.

The USB devices are equipped with EyeOpen cable compensation at the receiver to automatically adjust for frequency dependent losses in the cable and adjusting the signal strength between 0 and 24dB with 1.0dB steps. The devices also feature MarginLink signal integrity testing, which allows runtime evaluation of the integrity of the whole signal path.

The EQCO510 and EQCO5X31 ICs support shielded twisted pair and coax cables. The devices include an integrated crystal-less CDR, which reduces the need for additional components and overall board space.

Both USB devices are available in a 20-pin, 4.0mm QFN package with wettable flanks. The automotive EQCO510 complies with AEC-Q100 Grade 2 and operates in temperatures ranging from -40 to +105 degrees C.

Target applications are in automotive infotainment systems, data communication modules and real-time video systems. In industrial applications and consumer products they can be used in machine vision, gaming accessories and smart cables.

Microchip offers two evaluation boards for the EQCO5X31, which include the EVB-EQCO5X31 USB Type-C cable extender or the EVB-EQCO5X31 USB Type-C cable repeater to demonstrate use with longer cables.

http://www.microchip.com

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SigmaSense partners with NXP Semiconductors for future sensing systems

Intel updates Flex GPU for cloud gaming and AI

Micro-ATX motherboard sets benchmarks for storage and processing

Reclocker / redriver devices extend reach with USB 3.2-compatibility

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