NASA Increases Happy Landings for Drones [Portfolio]

TORONTO – Statistically, flying is the safest way to travel. We don’t worry about airplanes dropping from the sky. But drones are another thing altogether.
If a drone runs into mechanical problems, there’s no Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger to land it on the Hudson River. To keep unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from landing on our heads, NASA is trying to make them smarter.

Dubbed Safe2Ditch, the technology is aimed at allowing drones to continuously run self-diagnostics during flight to anticipate problems. If something goes wrong, the system could make changes to how the drone is flying and estimate how much longer it could stay in the air.

Since a drone with mechanical problems would need to set down quickly, Safe2Ditch would immediately begin to search its database for safe landing locations and autonomously land at the closest spot. Safe landing options would include fields, parking lots or parks, said Lou Glaab, assistant branch head for the Aeronautics Systems Engineering Branch at the NASA Langley Research Center. Worst case scenario, a drone might have to land in a dense forest to avoid people, but the goal is to keep avoid damaging the drone in an emergency landing.

Read my full article for EE Times.

Are Self-Charging Batteries a Decade Away? [Portfolio]

TORONTO – The onus of improving power efficiency in smartphones has often been placed on other components such as the memory or flash storage, but within the next decade they may have self-charging batteries, thanks to researchers at a Canadian university.

In collaboration with provincial power utility Hydro-Québec’s research institute, IREQ, Montreal’s McGill University may eliminate the frustrating experience of being without use of a phone after forgetting to recharge it. In an interview with EE Times, professor George Demopoulos, the university’s chair of mining and materials engineering, said that while lithium-ion batteries have enabled the proliferation of all kinds of mobile devices, they still require frequent recharging because of their limited energy density.

Read my full story on EE Times.

Faster Networks Push Interface Development [Portfolio]

TORONTO – As Ethernet speeds get faster, Rambus is looking to make sure memory and interfaces can keep up with the recent launch 56G SerDes PHY.

The analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and (DSP) architecture of the 56G SerDes PHY is designed meet the long-reach backplane requirements for the industry transition to 400 GB Ethernet applications, said Mohit Gupta, senior director of product marketing at Rambus. This means it can support scaling to speeds as fast as 112G, which are required in the networking and enterprise segments, such as enterprise server racks that are moving from 100G to 400G.

“Ethernet is moving faster than ever,” Gupta said. “The pace has picked up substantially due to big data, the Internet of Things (IoT) and other trends putting high demands on communication channels. There is already a forum for 112G SerDes speed which will drive the 800G standard.”

One clear usage case, said Gupta, is data center deployment by the “big four” — Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Google.

Read my full article on EE Times.

Startup ‘Eyes’ Healthier Displays [Portfolio]

Display technology shouldn’t be left to engineers.

That’s what’s driving a Montreal-based startup to develop eye-friendly technology for smartphones, automotive dashboards and virtual reality headsets. The genesis of IRYStec goes back to 2013, when Tara Akhavan, a second-year PhD student attending the Vienna University of Technology, was presenting at a conference around high dynamic range (HDR), where her work caught the eye who would be the company’s first investor, Montreal-based TandemLaunch. Read my full article on EE Times.

Micron CEO Durcan to Retire [Portfolio]

Micron Technology Inc. CEO Mark Durcan announced his pending retirement Thursday (Feb. 2). No timeframe has been set for Durcan’s retirement, but he will continue to head the company as CEO for the time being.

Micron (Boise, Idaho) said its board of directors has formed a special committee to oversee the succession process and has initiated a search, with the assistance of an executive search firm, to identify and vet candidates. Durcan has pledged to help with the search process and the transition. Read my full article on EE Times.

Persistent Memory Platform Support Will Take Time [Portfolio]

TORONTO — Over the last several years, there’s been an increasing overlap between what was traditionally seen as memory and traditionally seen as storage, as well as the increasing use of persistent memory.

Last week’s Persistent Memory Summit in San Jose, organized by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) as part of its Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI), included a presentation by Steve Pawlowski, vice president of advance computing solutions at Micron, outlining how computing architectures must change to get the right data to the processor efficiently and how persistent memory such as NVDIMMs can play a role.

EE Times spoke to Pawlowski following his SNIA keynote on why new computing architectures must support current software applications, the current roadmap for NV-DIMMs, and what might be the non-volatile memory of choice down the road.

Read my full Q+A on EE Times.

Miniaturization, IoT Fuel Electronics Adhesive Growth [Portfolio]

TORONTO — The market for high-quality electronics is growing, and with that also comes a rising need for technology adhesives. This demand has been driven, in part, by miniaturization.

“As the market for high-quality electronics has increased in the past few years, the need for material to protect and bond electronic components has also increased,” said Technavio Senior Industry Analyst Chandrakumar Badala Jaganathan, in an interview with EE Times.

The research firm’s recent Global Electronic Adhesives Market 2017–2021 report is forecasting the market to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of close to 10% between now and 2021, said Jaganathan. “The market in 2017 is expected to grow by 8.89% compared to 2016.”

Read my full article on EE Times.

NRAM’s Day Is Finally Here: Report [Portfolio]

Better late than never might be a good way to sum up NRAM.

After years of not quite be ready for wide adoption, a new report from BCC Research is predicting that Nano-Ram (NRAM) is finally in a position to disrupt incumbent DRAM and flash memory with commercialization expected in 2018. The Wellesley, MA.-based research firm said the first non-volatile memory chip to exploit carbon-nanotube technology looks like it’s finally ready to have a serious impact on computer memory.

“Industry experts had given up on waiting for CNT memory,” said BCC Research editorial director Kevin Fitzgerald in an interview with EE Times. “I believe one needed fresh eyes to really see that the time was coming when it was really possible to make the switch from silicon to carbon.”

Read my full article on EE Times.

Micron’s Successful Quarter Reflects 3D NAND Progress [Portfolio]

TORONTO — Financial analysts attending yesterday’s quarterly update from Micron Technology were congratulating the company on its strong numbers, but the real story might be that it’s mastered 3D NAND.

“What’s encouraging is where they are with their 3D NAND,” said Jim Handy, principal analyst with Objective Analysis. In a telephone interview with EE Times after Micron’s Q1 2017 conference call, he noted that other vendors, particularly Samsung, have struggled with 3D NAND, whereas Micron appears to making good progress. “Micron’s transition time is going to be longer than other technologies because they have to buy new equipment.”

That includes whole new factory in Singapore, noted Handy. “There’s something that eluded everyone else that Micron seems to have got right.” He speculates that its decision to use a floating gate process might have been a factor, as other vendors went the charge trap route. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised that Micron has shown everyone the need to go with floating gate instead of charge trap.”

Read my full article on EE Times.

New Consortium Drives Micron’s Xccela Bus [Portfolio]

TORONTO – Micron Technology’s recently launched Xccela Consortium is ostensibly aimed at promoting its high-speed, low signal count octal interface bus and ecosystem, but at least one early member of the group sees as also being necessary for unifying a fragmented market for NOR flash technology that supports the growing market for instant-on applications.

“Serial NOR flash has pretty much diversified over the past decade,” said Mike Chen, GigaDevice Semiconductor’s senior director of technical marketing, in an interview with EE Times. “Everyone has their ideas to and is designing their own product based on their customer needs. Everyone has their own ideas.”

This has led to complicated product lines, Chen said. Based on customer feedback from the field, he said having a standard would make his life much easier. “We see a need in this product line to have some sort of unification,” he said.

Read my full article on EE Times.