IP innovates with visually lossless image compression for GPUs

Providing a reduction in memory footprint, Imagination Technologies has announced PowerVR PVRIC4 technology which provides cost savings for memory and bandwidth-constrained devices such as DTVs, smartphones and tablets.

The company explains that its new generation of powerful image compression technology will enable SoC to reduce costs without a discernable loss of image quality. PVRIC4 enables random-access visually lossless image compression, ensuring bandwidth and memory footprint savings of at least 50 per cent, confirms Imagination, and enables systems to overcome performance bandwidth constraints.

PVRIC4 is provided as a standalone IP block for SoC manufacturers, already used by partners.

PVRIC4 features a dual-pipeline framebuffer compression engine. A new lossy pipeline, used only if the lossless pipeline does not achieve 50 per cent compression, ensures that even difficult to compress ‘noisy’ images are compressed with the highest fidelity. A decision logic block determines which output should be used to guarantee the compression ratio, and highly tuned algorithms ensure the image quality change is imperceptible. The hybrid solution offers SoC manufacturers high fidelity ensuring bandwidth and frame buffer allocation savings on graphics and video content, says the company, all performed in hardware and achieved without any performance overhead.

PVRIC4’s bandwidth savings translate into better battery life and cost savings for system manufacturers. RAM and bandwidth can be freed for other uses, such as enabling simultaneous fast 5G downloads while the GPU is in use, or a reduction in the number of DRAM devices used in the system.

PVRIC4 will be available as a feature in next-generation PowerVR GPUs and is available for licensing now as a standalone IP block.

Imagination Technologies provides a range of silicon IP (intellectual property) including key processing blocks needed to create the SoCs that power all mobile, consumer and embedded electronics.

Imagination Technologies was acquired in 2017 by Canyon Bridge, a California-headquartered, global private equity investment fund.

http://www.imgtec.com

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Low-power microcontrollers secure the IoT

Building on Arm TrustZone hardware-based cyber protection for resource-constrained connected devices, the STM32L5 microcontroller has an Arm Cortex-M33 core.

The Cortex-M33 boosts protection for small devices by integrating Arm’s TrustZone hardware-based security, explains ST. The STM32L5-series microcontrollers add further enhancements including software isolation, secure boot, key storage, and hardware cryptographic accelerators. They also provide rich functionality, says the company, and long run-times powered by coin cells or energy harvesting.

They consume as little as 33nA in shutdown mode and achieving 402 ULPMark-CP in the EEMBC ULPBench. The microcontrollers also integrate low power techniques such as adaptive voltage scaling, real-time acceleration, power gating, and multiple reduced-power operating modes.

Integrated digital and analogue peripherals, and consumer and industrial interfaces such as CAN FD, USB Type-C, and USB Power Delivery, the STM32L5 microcontrollers can be used for products such as industrial sensors or controls, home-automation devices, smart meters, fitness trackers, smart watches, medical pumps or meters.

The TrustZone IP integrated in the STM32L5 series microcontrollers implements trusted-computing principles for authenticating devices connected to a network. There is the freedom to include or exclude each I/O, peripheral, or area of flash or SRAM from TrustZone protection, allowing sensitive workloads to be fully isolated for maximum security. ST has engineered TrustZone to ensure support for secure boot, special read-out and write protection for integrated SRAM and flash, and cryptographic acceleration including AES 128/256-bit key hardware acceleration, private key acceleration (PKA), and AES-128 On-The-Fly Decryption (OTFDEC) to protect external code or data. Active tamper detection and support for secure firmware install are also included.

In addition to the flexible power-saving operating modes and ST’s low-power technologies, the STM32L5 series also features a switched-mode step-down regulator that improves low-power performance when the VDD voltage is high enough and can be powered up or down on-the-fly.

The microcontrollers achieve up to 165 DMIPS/427 CoreMark using the ST ART Accelerator at 110MHz. The ST ART Accelerator now supports both internal flash and external memory with an 8kbyte instruction cache for greater efficiency in case the software runs out of external memory.

512kbyte dual-bank flash allows read-while-write operation to aid device management and ensures a high level of safety by supporting error correction code (ECC) with diagnostics. There is also a 256kbyte-SRAM and features to support high-speed external memory including single, dual, quad, or octal SPI and Hyperbus Flash or SRAM, and an interface for SRAM, PSRAM, NOR, NAND or FRAM.

The STM32L5 series also introduces new digital peripherals including USB Full Speed with dedicated supply allowing customers to keep USB communication even when the system is powered at 1.8V. There is also a UCPD controller compliant with USB Type-C Rev. 1.2 and USB Power Delivery Rev. 3.0 specifications.

Analog features include an ADC, two power-gated DACs, two low-power comparators, and two operational amplifiers with external or internal follower routing and programmable-gain amplifier (PGA) capability.

The STM32L5 series is available in standard temperature grade for consumer and commercial applications, or high-temperature grade specified from -40 to +125 degree C.

STM32L5-series microcontrollers are sampling now and scheduled to begin production in Q2 2019.

http://www.st.com/stm32l5

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Rapid IoT prototyping kit accelerates edge node development

Developers can take internet of things (IoT) projects from initial idea to proof of concept quickly, with the NXP Rapid IoT prototyping kit, now available from Mouser Electronics.

Rapid IoT has hardware, enhanced security and power management within a small form factor and is pre-configured with 11 NXP devices (including microcontrollers, interface, near field communication (NFC), anti-counterfeit security and sensor options. The kit is designed to support engineers in the development of a range of IoT devices, including smart appliances, wearables, home and building automation, and medical devices.

The NXP Rapid IoT prototyping kit combines a high-performance, low power NXP Kinetis K64 microcontroller based on an Arm Cortex-M4 core, and an NXP Kinetis KW41Z wireless microcontroller that enables Bluetooth low energy (BLE), Thread, and Zigbee connectivity. The modular device is versatile, with a capacitive touch sensor, six-axis digital accelerometer and magnetometer, three-axis digital gyroscope, digital pressure barometric and humidity sensor, digital ambient light sensor, and digital air quality sensor.

Pre-programmed applications enable users to quickly get familiar with the kit’s capabilities. The device features a web integrated development environment (IDE) with graphic user interface (GUI)-based programming to help users modify the device’s behaviour without having experience of embedded coding, says Mouser. Engineers can transition ideas from prototype to development with automatic source code generation for NXP’s MCUXpresso, a set of software tools including software development kit (SDK), IDE and configuration tools.

Rapid IoT is compatible with the NXP IoT Modular Gateway development platform that brings together the building blocks for secure, production-ready IoT systems including hardware, software, connectivity, security and cloud services with guidance and support. Rapid IoT is also fully compatible with the MikroElektronika Hexiwear docking station and over 400 MikroElektronika Click boards to enable a wide range of functionality for almost any IoT use case.

Mouser claims to stock the world’s widest selection of the latest semiconductors and electronic components for the newest design projects. Mouser Electronics’ website is continually updated and offers advanced search methods to help customers quickly locate inventory. Mouser.com also houses data sheets, supplier-specific reference designs, application notes, technical design information, and engineering tools.

http://www.mouser.com

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Farnell element14 offers Microchip SAM L10 and SAM L11 eval kits for IoT

Development distributor, Farnell element14, has announced the availability of the Microchip SAM L10 and SAM L11 Xplained Pro evaluation kits and associated microcontrollers. The devices are claimed to be the industry’s lowest-power 32-bit microcontrollers as well as the first to offer chip-level security and Arm TrustZone technology.

According to Farnell element14, the SAM L10 is the industry’s lowest power microcontroller in this class and allows users to develop secured applications without the battery constraints of less power-efficient microcontrollers. Its low power consumption makes it suitable for a range of IoT applications in areas such as wearable devices, gaming controls, energy harvesting, smart pens and low-power industrial sensor nodes.

The SAM L11 features integrated hardware security for IoT nodes, remote keypads and authentication systems for smart cities and home automation, industrial automation or medical devices.

The microcontrollers run at 32MHz with memory configuration of up to 64kbyte flash and 16kbyte SRAM. They also have low power consumption and an enhanced peripheral touch controller for capacitive touch interfaces to be incorporated into appliances, fitness trackers, automotive door handles, key pads or remote controls. The interface is four times faster than previous generations of peripheral touch controller and provides highly-responsive and accurate touch sensing, says Farnell element14. It is supported by the QTouch Configurator and QTouch Modular library, designed to add elegant touch interfaces to designers’ applications. Both devices are available in 24- and 32-pin package options.

The SAM L10 and SAM L11 are built with picoPower technology to provide flexible power saving modes. They are also claimed to be the industry’s lowest power microcontroller in their class with an EEMBC certified ULPMark of 405.

Power debugging and data visualiser tools are available to monitor and analyse power consumption in real time, helping developers optimise system designs for lower power consumption with improvements in battery life.

The chip-level security incorporated into SAM L11 MCUs is based on Arm TrustZone technology to help protect against both physical and remote attacks, together with a security framework to simplify the implementation of security. IoT nodes driven by a SAM L11 provide strong resistance to remote software attacks, thereby increasing the reliability and avoiding any downtime of the critical functions of the nodes, says the company. The chip-level tamper resistance will help protect from cloning and intellectual property theft.

Both microcontrollers are available as development kits: the SAM L10 and SAM L11 Xplained Pro Evaluation Kits. These are fully supported with security, low-power and touch demos to accelerate development and help customers get their designs to market faster.

http://www.element14.com

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