Recent News
Renesas Electronics America Launches RX Microcontroller Design Contest
October 14, 2010
To spur embedded design creativity and competition, Renesas Electronics America Inc. launched the Renesas RX Design Contest, featuring the new RX family of 32-bit microcontrollers (MCUs) and a robust software support environment, provided by Renesas Electronics America and its Alliance Partner community, including CMX Systems, IAR Systems, Micrium, Micron Technology, SEGGER, Rowebots and TotalPhase. The Renesas RX Design Contest provides an open, creative environment in which embedded engineers can showcase their skills in any type of design using an RX MCU.
"As a leading worldwide semiconductor supplier, Renesas Electronics understands that design influence and support-on a global scale-are pivotal factors for success, particularly in the embedded world, and the Renesas RX Design Contest is one example of how we are embracing this challenge with our commitment to global innovation and excellence," said Rob Dautel, alliance and communities manager, Consumer & Industrial Business Unit, Renesas Electronics America. "The RX family of MCUs combines a unique architecture, superior performance/power balance and a comprehensive support ecosystem via our alliance partners, providing an ideal platform for designers to use as a launch pad for their Renesas RX Design Contest activities."
Starting October 13, 2010, to March 4, 2011, there will be 1,000 RX62N Renesas Demonstration Kits (RDKs) available for contestants. The use of the RDK is encouraged but not required. The contest will be coordinated across the North American, European and Asian regions. To join the competition, visit http://www.renesasrulz.com/rx-contest to register.
The design entries will be available on the Renesas RX Design Contest website for audience comments and voting. In addition to recognition for the overall "best" designs, the Renesas RX Design Contest will offer weekly challenges and prizes. Renesas Electronics America will award the top three winners: $5,000 (first place); $3,000 (second place); and $1,000 (third place); and five honorable mentions receiving $500 each. Selections will be based on a scoring of technical merit, design originality, usefulness, cost effectiveness, documentation and public voting. Participating Alliance Partners also will present their own prize awards, based on criteria for their respective prizes. Final judging and the winner selections will be announced during a special ceremony at Embedded Systems Conference Silicon Valley 2011.
About the RX62N RDK
The RX62N RDK integrates best-in-class products from several Renesas Electronics partners to create an extremely robust solution that helps reduce design and interoperability uncertainty for designers while delivering desired performance and time-to-market turnaround. Among the best-in-class components on the RDK board are devices from Analog Devices, Epson, Micron Technology, National Semiconductor, Okaya, SEGGER and TotalPhase.
About the RX Development Tools Environment
Since the introduction of the RX MCU family in 2009, Renesas Electronics has been steadily introducing new devices, features, tools and partnerships to expand the capabilities of the MCUs. Renesas Electronics supports its RX600 MCUs with a comprehensive proprietary hardware/software tool set and third parties. Renesas Electronics offers the popular High-Performance Embedded Workshop (HEW) integrated development environment (IDE). The HEW includes the RX-optimizing C/C++ compiler with integrated support for the low-cost E1 JTAG on-chip debugging tool, as well as the comprehensive E20 high-speed trace on-chip debugging tool. Third-party support for RTOS, middleware, communication protocol stacks, and color graphics is available from the global community of Renesas Electronics' partner vendors.
Micron Announces Closing of Numonyx Acquisition, Sumer Named Representative for Illinois and Wisconsin
September 1, 2010
Micron Technology, Inc., (Nasdaq:MU) announced today that the company has completed its acquisition of Numonyx B.V. in an all stock transaction valued at approximately $1.2 billion USD. Under the agreement, Micron issued approximately 138 million shares of Micron common stock to Numonyx shareholders, Intel, STMicroelectronics, N.V. and Francisco Partners, and assumed outstanding restricted stock units held by Numonyx employees.
"With this acquisition, Micron builds on its position as one of the world's leading memory companies with increased scale, a broader product portfolio and industry-leading technology," said Steve Appleton, Chairman and CEO of Micron.
The transaction further strengthens Micron's broad portfolio of DRAM, NAND and NOR memory products and strong expertise in developing and supporting memory system solutions. Micron also gains increased manufacturing and revenue scale along with access to Numonyx's customer base, providing significant opportunities to increase multi-chip offerings in the embedded and mobile markets.
As of Dec. 31, 2009, Numonyx reported net assets of $1.3 billion and cash and cash equivalents, net of debt to unrelated parties of $70 million. In the fourth calendar quarter, Numonyx generated $42 million in free cash flow based on quarterly revenues of approximately $550 million.
About Micron
Micron Technology, Inc., is one of the world's leading providers of advanced semiconductor solutions. Through its worldwide operations, Micron manufactures and markets a full range of DRAM, NAND and NOR flash memory, as well as other innovative memory technologies, packaging solutions and semiconductor systems for use in leading-edge computing, consumer, networking, embedded and mobile products. Micron's common stock is traded on the NASDAQ under the MU symbol. To learn more about Micron Technology, Inc., visit www.micron.com.
New Lattice "Platform Manager" Transforms Board Power and Digital Management
October 12, 2010
Lattice Semiconductor Corporation (NASDAQ: LSCC) today announced its third-generation mixed-signal devices, the Platform Manager™ family. The programmable Platform Manager devices are expected to simplify board management design significantly by integrating programmable analog and logic to support many common functions, such as power management, digital housekeeping and glue logic. By integrating these support functions, Platform Manager devices can not only reduce the cost of these functions compared to traditional approaches, but also can improve system reliability and provide a high degree of design flexibility that minimizes the risk of circuit board re-spins.
A video demonstration of the Platform Manager can be viewed here www.latticesemi.com/ptmEN
"Lattice first transformed board power management design with its Power Manager II products, which have been enthusiastically adopted across a wide variety of systems due to the improvements in cost, reliability and design cycle time they enable," said Gordon Hands, Director of Marketing for Low Density and Mixed Signal Solutions. "We expect that customers will rapidly adopt the new Platform Manager products, as they expand these same benefits across a broader range of functions."
Platform Manager devices are expected to be used in a broad range of applications where the complexity of the board management functions can benefit from the integrated capabilities that they provide. Typical applications are expected to include wireless infrastructure, networking core equipment, server, data storage and high-end industrial instrumentation.
About the Platform Manager Family
The Platform Manager product family consists of two devices, the LPTM10-1247 and LPTM10-12107. The LPTM10-1247 device can monitor 12 voltage rails and supports 47 digital I/O, while the LPTM10-12107 monitors up to 12 voltage rails and supports 107 digital I/O. Functionally, these devices include both a power management section and a digital board management section. The power management section consists of a programmable threshold, precision differential input comparator block with an accuracy of 0.7%, a 48-macrocell CPLD, programmable hardware timers, a10-bit analog to digital converter and a trim block for the trimming and margining of supplies. The digital board management section consists of a 640-LUT FPGA and programmable logic interface I/O.
For more information click here.
Honeywell introduces new Silicon Pressure Sensors
August 18, 2010
Honeywell Sensing & Control introduces the HSC and SSC Series of TruStability™ Silicon Pressure Sensors.
- HSC (High Accuracy Silicon Ceramic) Series: Industry-leading ± 1% total error band specification, compensated across a 0 °C to 50 °C [32 °F to 122 °F] temperature range.
- SSC (Standard Silicon Ceramic) Series: ± 2% total error band specification compensated across a wider -20 °C to 85 °C [-4 °F to 185 °F] temperature range.
The new HSC Series and SSC Series offer different accuracies and compensated temperature ranges that address specific segment needs. These devices offer customers three key benefits not found in competitive silicon sensors:
Stability: These sensors are the most stable silicon pressure sensors available.
Accuracy: They are designed to provide an extremely tight accuracy specification.
Flexibility: Their modular and flexible design offer customers a variety of package styles and options, all with the same industry-leading performance specifications.
Potential medical applications include airflow monitors, anesthesia machines, blood analysis machines, gas chromatography, kidney dialysis machines, life sciences, oxygen concentrators, respiratory machines, sleep apnea equipment, and ventilators. Potential industrial applications include barometry, flow calibrators, gas flow instrumentation, HVAC, and pneumatic controls.
For more information click here.
