Weartech-Design Sources / Software Archives - Page 8 of 14

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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Secora Pay on 40nm process offers new applets contactless payments

Thu, Oct 21, 2021

Contactless payment has been gaining in popularity and Infineon says its Secora Pay portfolio on 40 nm technology addresses many of the new payment card and devices. It uses the company’s Solid Flash chip and offers new applets and customised value-added products for standard payment cards (Secora Pay S) as well as multi-application cards (Secora Pay X) and components to turn any device into a payment device (Secora Pay W).

The product portfolio also provides applets of global (Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express) and domestic networks. It offers state-of-the-art contactless and personalization performance, allowing MasterCard contactless transactions of 200ms.

Secora Pay options on 40 nm technology offer backward compatibility to existing Secora Pay products in terms of card production antenna designs, personalisation and product certification. The family uses a security controller including certified software integrated in coil on module (CoM) chip modules and fine-tuned inlays for seamless card production.

Infineon uses inductive coupling technology and wire embedded card antennas for the CoM system which is claimed to offer high flexibility in card designs. It can be integrated into environmentally friendly cards from recycled and ocean-bound plastic or wood, high performance dual interface metal or LED cards, says Infineon.

According to Infineon, Secora Pay products support the highest throughput in card production with minimum consumable material for manufacturing highly robust dual interface cards. As well as saving resources, new value added services based on Secora Pay’s NFC tag functionality are offered, allowing additional use cases like initial card activation.

The pre-certified Secora Pay W with SPA2.1, a small antenna on 35 mm film tape, addresses the growing demand for payment accessories and new payment form factors. In combination with payment and tokenisation services provided by partners, Infineon explains that it allows the easy integration of payment functionality into end-customer applications, for convenient contactless payment functionalities for wearables like wristbands as well as key fobs or other form factors.

Product versions supporting the latest Visa and MasterCard applications are available now. Additionally, applets supporting American Express, Discover and others will become available in Q1/2022.

http://www.infineon.com

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Intel expands neuromorphic research chip – introducing Loihi 2

Fri, Oct 01, 2021

Now with one million neurons, the second generation research chip from Intel, Loihi 2, uses a pre-production Intel 4 process. There is also now a software framework for developing neuro-inspired applications.

The second-generation chip improves the speed, programmability, and capacity of neuromorphic processing, comments Mike Davies, director of Intel’s Neuromorphic Computing Lab. Loihi 2 broaden the processing technology’s use in power and latency constrained intelligent computing applications. “We are open sourcing Lava to address the need for software convergence, benchmarking, and cross-platform collaboration in the field, and to accelerate our progress toward commercial viability,” adds Davies.

Neuromorphic computing draws insights from neuroscience to create chips that function more like the biological brain. Researchers hope that it will deliver orders of magnitude improvements in energy efficiency, speed of computation and efficiency of learning across edge applications including vision, voice and gesture recognition to search retrieval, robotics, and constrained optimisation problems. To this end, Intel and partners have demonstrated robotic arms, neuromorphic skins and olfactory sensing projects.

Advances in Loihi 2 allow the architecture to support new classes of neuro-inspired algorithms and applications and provide processing that is 10 times faster than its predecessor. It also exhibits up to 15 times greater resource density (up to one million neurons per chip), and improved energy efficiency.

Fabricated with a pre-production version of the Intel 4 process, the use of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography has simplified the layout design rules compared to past process technologies for rapid development of Loihi 2, says Intel.

The Lava software is an open, modular, and extensible framework, for researchers and application developers to build on each other’s progress and converge on a common set of tools, methods, and libraries. Lava runs seamlessly on heterogeneous architectures across conventional and neuromorphic processors, and is interoperable with a variety of AI, neuromorphic and robotics frameworks.

Developers can begin building neuromorphic applications without access to specialized neuromorphic hardware and can contribute to the Lava code base, including porting it to run on other platforms.

Loihi 2’s greater programmability will allow a wider class of difficult optimisation problems to be supported, including real-time optimisation, planning, and decision-making from edge to data centre systems.

Loihi 2 also improves support for advanced learning methods, including variations of backpropagation, the algorithm of deep learning.

Fully programmable neuron models and generalised spike messaging in Loihi 2 suggest reductions of over 60 times fewer ops per inference compared to standard deep networks running on the original Loihi without loss in accuracy. It incorporates faster, more flexible, and more standard I/O interfaces, including Ethernet interfaces, glueless integration with a wider range of event-based vision sensors, and larger meshed networks of Loihi 2 chips.

http://www.intel.com

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Reference design develops 3D spatial audio in headsets and earbuds

Fri, Oct 01, 2021

Three companies have collaborated to bring 3D spatial audio hardware and software together in a reference design for consumer electronics OEMs and ODMs.

Wireless connectivity and smart sensing specialist, Ceva, has partnered with wireless communications company, Beken and 3D spatial audio expert, VisiSonics to offer a 3D audio reference design to accelerate development and deployment of headsets and true wireless stereo (TWS) earbuds for use in gaming, multimedia and conferencing.

The reference design leverages Beken’s BK3288X Bluetooth Audio SoC series featuring the Ceva-X2 Audio DSP running VisiSonics’ RealSpace 3D audio software, together with Ceva’s MotionEngine Hear head tracking algorithms. OEMs and ODMs can use the ready-to-deploy SoC with any audio encoding format, to introduce 3D audio for VR, AR and the new generation of motion-aware earbuds. The single chip-based reference design provides a self-sufficient 3D audio solution, residing on the headset side, without the need for a 3D audio rendering engine on the host device. As well as being cost-efficient, this also enables a lower latency design, says Ceva.

Weifeng Wang, vice president of engineering at Beken, comments: “Spatial audio brings the wireless audio user experience to the next level and we’re pleased to partner with Ceva and VisiSonics to make it easy for our customers to leverage this exciting new technology in a cost-effective, power-efficient turnkey offering”.

“Spatial audio is an incredibly hot market right now as the Android and PC ecosystems look to build on the industry momentum behind its use in music and gaming to create immersive audio experiences,” adds Moshe Sheier, vice president of marketing at Ceva.

The 3D Audio Reference Design is available now directly from Ceva, and the associated software package combining VisiSonics’ RealSpace 3D audio with Ceva’s MotionEngine Hear is available now for licensing by Ceva and VisiSonics.

Ceva licenses wireless connectivity and smart sensing technologies. It provides DSPs, AI engines, wireless platforms, cryptography cores and complementary software for sensor fusion, image enhancement, computer vision, voice input and artificial intelligence.

DSP-based solutions include platforms for 5G baseband processing in mobile, IoT and infrastructure, advanced imaging and computer vision for any camera-enabled device, audio / voice / speech and low-power always-on / sensing applications for multiple IoT markets.

https://www.ceva-dsp.com

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

Secora Pay on 40nm process offers new applets contactless payments

Intel expands neuromorphic research chip – introducing Loihi 2

Reference design develops 3D spatial audio in headsets and earbuds

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