Power/Performance Bits: Jan. 8


Ferrimagnetic memory Engineers at the National University of Singapore, Toyota Technological Institute, and Korea University propose a new type of spintronic memory that is 20 times more efficient and 10 times more stable than commercial ones. In spintronic devices, data is stored depending on up or down magnetic states. Current devices based on ferromagnets, however, suffer from a few issu... » read more

Ultra-Low-Power SAR ADC in 22 nm FD-SOI Technology Using Body-Biasing


Today’s sensor applications show a rising demand on miniaturized autonomous sensors nodes with extreme requirements on power dissipation. One core functionality of these sensor nodes is the conversion of analog sensor signals to digital data for post processing and data communication. In this work a 11-bit Successive Approximation Register (SAR) ADC with minimized power dissipation is develop... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Dec. 11


Internet of Ears for smart buildings Scientists at Case Western Reserve University proposed a new way for smart homes to determine building occupancy: sensors that 'listen' to vibration, sound, and changes in the existing ambient electrical field. "We are trying to make a building that is able to 'listen' to the humans inside," said Ming-Chun Huang, an assistant professor in electrical engi... » read more

The Growing Promise Of Printed Electronics


Printing electronics using conductive ink rather than lithography is starting to move out of the research phase, with chipmakers now looking at how to commercialize this technology across a broad range of sensor applications. Unlike traditional semiconductors, which use tiny wires as circuits, printed electronics rely on conductive inks and often flexible films, although they can be printed ... » read more

Training a Neural Network to Fall


Who knew falling was so complicated? “I don’t want to work on a fall detection system ever again,” said MbientLab CEO Laura Kassovic in front of an ARMTech Con audience. The audience laughed as she flashed a picture of what could now be a better approach—the Apple Watch Series 4, which had recently been announced. “The Apple 4 has the fall detection sensor built in. It’s probably... » read more

Dirty Data: Is the Sensor Malfunctioning?


Sensors provide an amazing connection to the physical world, but extracting usable data isn't so simple. In fact, many first-time IoT designers are unprepared for how messy a sensor’s data can be. Every day the IoT motion-sensor company MbientLab struggles to tactfully teach its customers that the mountain of data they are seeing is not because the sensors are faulty. Instead, the system d... » read more

Autonomous Vehicle Design Begins To Change Direction


Tools that are commonly used in semiconductor design are starting to be applied at the system level for assisted and autonomous vehicles, setting the stage for more complex simulated scenarios and electronic system design. Simulation is well understood for designing automotive ICs, but now it also is being used to design vehicle architectures and sensors, as well as for sensor miniaturizatio... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Internet of Things Lowe’s, the home improvement retailer, is giving up on the smart home market. The company is putting its Iris Smart Home business up for sale as part of a reorganization. The retailer made a big splash at CES 2015 with its Innovation Lab offerings, which included retail service robots and the Holoroom “home improvement simulator.” The Iris product line includes multipl... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Internet of Things Forrester Research released its 2019 Internet of Things predictions. Some key points: Bundled service offerings will catalyze a sleepy consumer IoT market; cybercriminals will lay siege to a smart-city implementation; and a market for IoT managed services will emerge in 2019. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are coming up. Those days present some opportunities to purchase ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Nov. 20


In-memory compute accelerator Engineers at Princeton University built a programmable chip that features an in-memory computing accelerator. Targeted at deep learning inferencing, the chip aims to reduce the bottleneck between memory and compute in traditional architectures. The team's key to performing compute in memory was using capacitors rather than transistors. The capacitors were paire... » read more

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