Antenna Design Grows Up


Apple’s iPhone 4 antenna issue represents a classic example of what can go wrong in modern antenna design. Put one in the wrong place, and a seemingly insignificant part can turn a cool new product into a public relations nightmare. Ever since antennas dropped out of sight, most consumers don't give them a second thought. In the 1960s, almost every home had a rooftop antenna. Fast forward ... » read more

The Week In Review: IoT


Market Research There will be 8.4 billion connected things in use this year, a 31% gain from 2016, and leading up to 20.4 billion connected devices in 2020, according to Gartner. The market research firm estimates worldwide spending on endpoints and services will hit nearly $2 trillion in 2017. Greater China, North America, and Western Europe account for two-thirds of the IoT installed base th... » read more

Performance Increasingly Tied To I/O


Speeding up input and output is becoming a cornerstone for improving performance and lowering power in SoCs and ASICs, particularly as scaling processors and adding more cores produce diminishing returns. While processors of all types continue to improve, the rate of improvement is slowing at each new node. Obtaining the expected 30% to 50% boost in performance and lower power no longer can ... » read more

The Week In Review: IoT


Tools Google this week updated its Internet of Things platform, releasing a Developer Preview for Android Things, enabling application developers to create IoT devices running on the mobile Android operating system. “We incorporated the feedback from Project Brillo to include familiar tools such as Android Studio, the Android Software Development Kit (SDK), Google Play Services, and Google C... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


Standards The latest version of the Bluetooth standard was ratified by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group. Key updates in Bluetooth 5 include four times range, two times speed, and eight times broadcast message capacity, as well as updates that help reduce potential interference with other wireless technologies. Tools Synopsys updated its hierarchical static timing analysis tool for ... » read more

Making Mobile Payments Simple


Shopping will one day become a truly interactive experience, with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi beacons scanning digital profiles, stored in the cloud and accessed on mobile devices and wearables, to generate recommendations in real time. Although beacon deployment is still ramping up, the technology is poised to play a critical role in the evolution of mobile payments as consumers begin to truly interac... » read more

Benefits Of Bluetooth Low Energy IP Integration Into A Single SoC


A recent Synopsys-executed user survey showed significant IoT system-on-chip (SoC) design growth from 2013 to 2015 with contributions from the new wearable IC market. Also, according to Teardown.com, in over 800 teardowns of mobile and wearable products from 2012 to 2015, wireless chips outnumbered the actual number of products, indicating multiple wireless ICs in some designs. Based on these ... » read more

The Route To 5G


The mobile phone has seen explosive growth over the last two decades to become an essential part of our everyday lives. Right from the outset, ARM has been at the heart of these devices enabling ever more sophisticated capabilities whilst maintaining a focus on maximizing battery life through industry leading power efficiency. The complexity of smartphones is not often fully appreciated, with ... » read more

Will 5G Enable Connected Cars?


As the telecom, automotive and semiconductor ecosystems rally to develop solutions for next-generation mobile networks for the connected car, 5G technology has emerged as a strong contender. Fifth-generation mobile networks will enable data transmission rates of more than 10Gps, connecting machines to machines, as well as everything else, including smartphones, IoT devices that require a... » read more

IoT Has Always Been With Us


By most accounts, Kevin Ashton of the Auto-ID Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology coined the term “the Internet of Things” in 1999, referring to a system of ubiquitous sensors connecting the Internet with the physical world. We were well into the 21st century before the Internet of Things, as a marketing term or a short description of a certain technology, came to be wide... » read more

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