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JULY 8th, 2005
Potentia Semiconductor, a provider of configurable ASSP power management
controller chips, has received $8 million in a funding round that included investments from VenGrowth Private Equity Partners
of Toronto, Kodiak Venture Partners and Teachers' Private Capital, which is affiliated with the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan
Board.
Potentia Semiconductor's President and CEO, Danny Osadca indicated
that the company’s product meets the new demand for designers to produce power systems with reduced design cycle times,
"Power system designers are challenged to deliver more advanced system level power management functionality under ever-increasing
board size constraints. Designers face these challenges in a world of shortened design times and lean design teams and that's
why Potentia is offering a new and more effective way of designing and implementing power management solutions."
JULY 8th, 2005
Three more companies have agreed to join Power.org, an organization
dedicated to the electronic systems power reduction. These companies are involved in the semiconductor market and include
Denali Software, Inc., an Intellectual Property (IP) core and EDA company, HCL Technologies, also offering semiconductor IP
cores as well as general engineering services, and Xilinx, Inc., considered the market leader in the FPGA chip market. On
announcement of the agreement,
Mark Aaldering, Vice President of the IP and Embedded Processing
Divisions, Xilinx noted that the focal point of the organization centered around the PowerPC, a microprocessor architecture,
"The momentum and promotional benefits of the Power.org collaboration are important factors in advancing the adoption of PowerPCtechnology
as a standard in the industry. We see our participation as a means to continue expanding our PowerPC embedded solution.”
JUNE 24th, 2005
Reflecting the trend to standardize and automated VLSI design and
IP SoC integration, is the growing acceptance of a Power Architecture standard that is being formalized by Power.org. The
organization has set its goal to reduce power consumption for electronic systems, integrated circuit, IP core and macro core
design. Centered on the original IBM Power Architecture, the organization has attracted nearly 30 members, with eleven more
members added in June. Among those that have recently joined include Fabless , Electronic Manufacturing Services, Electronic
Design Automation (EDA) and Supercomputer companies. New fabless members include AboveMicro Technologies Corp., Ankya Cayman
Corporation, Rapport Incorporated and TimeLab. Among the new Electronic Manufacturing members are Celestica Universal Scientific
Industrial and Venture Corporation Limited. From the EDA industry, the organization has added EDA DAFCA, and Forte Design
Automation. Others that hopped on the power train included Barcelona Supercomputing Center and Teak Technologies, Inc.
The new members join an existing membership base that international
market leaders in the IT, IC, and EDA markets. These include Cadence Design and Synopsys in the EDA market, Chartered Semiconductor
in the IC foundry market, as well as Bull, IBM, Novell, Red Hat and Sony in the general hardware segments of the IT and consumer
electronics market. Other fables and fab based semiconductor companies on the list include AMCC, Culturecom (producer of the
first 32-Bit Chinese microprocessor), Shanghai Belling and Tundra Semiconductor. Others on the list include Wistron and Jabil
Circuit , both electronic manufacturing services companies and Thales, a broad based electronic systems company.
JUNE 9th, 2005
Power Integrations, Inc. (NASDAQ:POWI) has introduced a 3-watt charger
reference design that it estimates reduces no-load energy by 97 percent over linear transformer based designs. The company
says that the new design consumes less than 30 mW of no-load power. The design has been developed for portable applications
such as cell phones, cordless phones, MP3 players and PDAs.
The new design, DI-84, is a 5 V, 600 mA charger based on the company's
TinySwitch-II power conversion IC family. The DI-84 operates on AC voltages from 85 VAC to 265 VAC. The Y capacitor less solution
also meets CISPR-22 Class B conducted EMI limits. This feature, according to the company, assists in the development of low
component count and low cost solutions without undesirable "touch current" associated with metallic cell phones.
Doug Bailey, Vice President Marketing at Power Integrations
noted that the product’s energy reduction contribution to total world energy demands would be significant, "The sheer
number and ubiquity of products that use external chargers and adapters makes their overall contribution to energy waste significant.
The DI-84 low-power charger design will allow manufacturers to rapidly bring products to market that exceed all worldwide
mandatory and advisory efficiency and standby power consumption regulations." One of the markets Mr. Bailey refers to is
the cellular phone market. About 600 million cell phones a year are sold.
MAY 27th, 2005
Golden Gate Technology Inc., an EDA company focused on integrated
circuit design algorithms that reduce power consumption, has added Power Optimize Gold and Power Plan Gold to its designer's
tool kit. Through the generation of complex power grids, multi-voltage islands and the company's WiresFirst technology, the
company indicates that significant savings in power can be achieved. In support of the design tools' power capabilities, Kelvin
Chun, Director of Design Center Application Engineering at Oki Semiconductor pointed to their internal benchmarks, "We have
over 50 successful tapeouts with Power Plan Gold. From our benchmarks, we determined that, out of all the tools we evaluated,
Power Optimize Gold consistently produced exceptional results."
Two basic components of power consumption are central to the operation
of the company's WiresFirst patented power optimization methodology. These are wire related power consumption and transistor
related power consumption. According to the company, wire power consumption becomes more critical as process feature size
scale. Specifically the company estimated that "wires account for 5x more power consumption than transistors at the 90 nanometer
node, and 30x more power consumption than transistors at 35 nanometers."
Both Power Plan Gold and Power Optimize Gold are available now and
are priced at $115,000 and $395,000 respectively for time-based licenses.
MAY 16th, 2005
Sandia National Laboratories, which has been working on the development
of electronic components to withstand high temperature and high pressure, indicates that its technology may help reduce energy
costs as well as find new energy resources.
Research uncovered during the course of the project, which was originally
to overcome the hurdles to drilling deeper for geothermal energy and natural gas, has revealed other applications. As Randy
Normann, one of the engineers on the project explains, "In most airplanes all the control electronics are in the cockpit with
the pilot because they're too (heat) sensitive to go anywhere else. But if you can move them onto the engine where it's hotter,
that would save hundreds of wires and about 600 pounds of weight per aircraft." The researchers estimate that about 600 pounds
of wire could be removed from an aircraft and over $30 million in fuel costs could be saved over the life of the airplane
if the electronics could be moved from the cockpit to the engine compartment.
Other applications that the researchers talked about include brake
systems in cars and earthquake analysis. Normann indicated that the high temperature electronics technology could eliminate
the need for hydraulics in automobiles. The capability to drill into the earth deeper has also given geologists more information
about the results of seismic activity and ways to predict it.
The original project was to develop electronic components that could
withstand temperatures of over 600 degrees Fahrenheit for sustained periods of time - ideally to permit drilling deeper than
the current 20,000 feet limitations - at depths greater than 20,000 feet the drill temperature becomes to hot and the electronics
fail. One of the goals of energy seekers has been to drill down to 35,000 feet. Apparently, geothermal energy and natural
gas may exist in abundance at those depths. The center of the earth, if one remembers from middle school, is extremely hot.
MAY 16th, 2005
Agile Systems Inc., a producer of power electronic modules and integrated
circuits, has completed $7 million in financing. Financiers included Expansion Capital Partners, LLC on behalf of the Clean
Technology Fund II, LP, as well as RBC Capital Partners, Covington Capital, RoyNat Capital Inc. and BEST Total Return Fund.
The Technology Lending business of GE Commercial Finance, as part of the package, will provide revolving/term credit.
Ralph Steedman, CEO of Ajile indicated that the funding would be
used for new high-efficiency product launches, "this funding will underpin our aggressive product development schedule and
help to launch several new high efficiency motor control products over the next 18 months." Agile estimates that electric
motors consume over 50% of the annual generated energy in North America.
Giving specifics about the markets that Agile addresses was Bernardo
Llovera, General Partner of Expansion Capital Partners, "High performance motion control and electronic drives for brushless
DC motors are two of the fastest-growing portions of the overall motor drives and controls market. As manufacturers and assemblers
look to reduce costs while improving performance, they are increasingly turning to smaller, faster, more accurate motion controllers
and electronic motor drives. Agile's superior controller and drives designs make it uniquely positioned to capitalize on this
trend."
Bill Demars, Managing Director, Technology Lending at GE Commercial
Finance, in line with GE's emphasis on clean energy companies, said, "Agile is a good example of the very promising companies
successfully raising capital these days, in part because of the high level of interest within the Clean Energy segment."
Agile Systems, besides its electronic motor control systems, offers
DPC digitalPOWER integrated circuits. This family of chips is based on a number of CMOS and DMOS process cells, which include
analog, mixed signal and digital components such as high side drivers, analog to digital converters (ADC) and pulse width
modulators.
MAY 16th, 2005
The Wireless Semiconductor Division at Agilent's Semiconductor Products
Group has reported that its new CDMA power amplifier modules, based on its CoolPAM technology, have extended the cell phone
talk time up to 30 minutes. Bryan Ingram, Vice President and General
Manager at the wireless chip division discussed the motivation of the development and plans to further increase the talk time.
"These 3 mm x 3 mm power amplifiers were developed based on requests from our handset customers for both smaller footprints
and the efficiency and performance of Agilent's CoolPAM technology. We expect to further extend mobile handset talk-time capabilities
by integrating CoolPAM into next-generation front-end modules that incorporate low-loss FBAR duplexers."
Agilent's FBAR duplexers enable simultaneous two transmission of
voice signals. The FBAR, based on RF MEMS technology, and the CoolPAM technology were the focal point of a development program
with Agilent's Korea R&D center which was formerly Wavics. Wavics , the original developer of the CoolPAM technology,
was acquired by Agilent in 2005.
MAY 16th, 2005
QuickLogic Corporation (NASDAQ:QUIK), a company with core low power
FPGA technology, reported that its revenue for its first quarter ended March 31, 2005, was up 21 percent year-over-year and
13 percent sequentially. The company's ESP (Embedded Standard Products) and Advanced ESP products contributed 34 percent
of the revenue for the first quarter of 2005.
Tom Hart, Chairman, President and CEO at Quicklogic commented on
the companies bookings and the design momentum of its FPGA products, "We are very pleased with 13% sequential revenue growth
and particularly our return to profitability in the first quarter. Net bookings in the quarter were at an all time high. In
addition, our new QuickPCI II and Eclipse II FPGAs -- the lowest power FPGAs in the industry -- continue to build design momentum
with our customers and partners. Our confidence in the revenue potential from these products continues to grow."
MARCH 28th, 2005
Oki indicates that its new flexible heat sinks, the X Cool Stick-It
Flexible series, could become as popular as post-its are in the office. The new technology gives heat sinks the flexibility
to be easily and economically fit anywhere into an electronic system. Because of this, heat generation from electronic
systems are expected to be reduced in the order of 40 percent. "X CooL, targeted toward the electronic equipment market,
is an application of Oki's Stick-it Flexible Hybrid Sheet*1 that can reduce both heat radiation and heat conduction," said
Harushige Sugimoto, Chairman and President of Manufacturing Service Company at Oki Electric. "We will continue to provide
heat radiation solutions by continuing to provide the series as well as developing new products, and target net sales of 1
billion yen in the fiscal year ending March 2006 with our Stick-it Flexible series."
Oki Electric and Ceramission Co., Ltd co-developed the *1 Stick-it
Flexible Hybrid Sheet. The sheet is 0.2mm thick and is flexible. The material used is an inorganic liquid ceramic paint.
MARCH 17th, 2005
Advanced Micro Devices' Microprocessors Offer 28 Percent
Power Savings - Wins Energy Star from EPA
AMD (NYSE: AMD), the recognized
adversary of Intel for the title of microprocessor market leader, has taken one more step towards domination of the microprocessor
market. The company's Cool'n'Quiet technology, which has been designed into all of AMD's Athlon 64 desktop processors, has
received the 2005 ENERGY STAR Award. This award is given to company's who have demonstrated a significant contribution to
the reduction of energy consumption. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency made the award to AMD on March 15th at its 2005
ENERGY STAR Awards Ceremony in Washington D.C. AMD received the award as a result of its contribution to the reduction in
energy requirements for PCs. AMD was able to demonstrate to the EPA that computers based on its Cool'n'Quiet technology achieved
a power savings of up to 35 Watts. Commenting on the energy test results and the award, Craig Hershberg, Product Manager for
Office Equipment and Consumer Electronics at the U.S. EPA stated, "In AMD's tests, Cool'n'Quiet showed a significant decrease
in power consumption resulting in energy efficiency improvements up to 28 percent, making it an ideal candidate for the ENERGY
STAR Certificate of Recognition."
The number of PCs shipped
each year is in the order of 200 million units. Using this number, AMD’s “potential” power reduction contribution,
if its microprocessors were shipped in every PC, would equal over 6000 million watts.
MARCH 16th, 2005
Well Known Hearing Aid Chip Company Announces Very Low Power Bluetooth Wireless Headset
Gennum Corporation, noted
for its hearing instrument integrated circuit technology, has introduced a very low power, Bluetooth headset. Gennum's Z-E-N
Bluetooth headset, which is based on Gennum's multiprocessor DSP has a rated power consumption of 1 milliwatt at a 42 MIPS
processing rate. The company says that its new headset is 25 percent smaller than its previous Z-E-N headsets and is lighter
- weighing in at less than an ounce, 22 grams. Battery life time has been extended and talk time is now seven hours.
MARCH 4th, 2005
Freescale Semiconductor has made available its HC908LB8, an 8-bit
microcontroller, for the design of power reduction optimized lamp ballast systems. Besides reducing the energy bill for these
light systems, the microcontroller is also useful in the design of motor systems where power factor correction or pulse width
modulation techniques are also employed. Mike McCourt, Vice President and General Manager of Freescale's Microcontroller Division
indicated that the fluorescent tube is the most common type of indoor lighting and says that new legislation, such as the
Kyoto Protocol and Energy Star programs, require ballast designers to improve the power efficiency of lighting systems.
Freescale's microcontroller has a number of features that make the
design of energy-efficient lighting systems simpler. These include power factor correction and brightness control circuits.
In order to expedite the design of energy efficient systems with its microcontroller, Freescale has made available a reference
design and development kit. The DEMO908LB8 demonstration board will be available for a price of $49.95. The demonstration
board comes with the Metrowerks CodeWarrior IDE. The HC908LB8, available now in production, is priced at $1.60 in quantities
of 1000. The device comes in a 20-pin SOIC package.
MARCH 4, 2005
The recent announcement that Adtran has introduced a Power Over Ethernet
(PoE) switch-router and now that MGE UPS Systems, an uninterruptible power supply company, has selected PowerDsine's Midspan
PoE products for VoIP, Wireless LANS and network security camera applications, it could be assumed that PoE has established
a market for itself. One of the keys to the acceptance of the technology is that PoE based systems help assure that electronic
devices won't be shut down in the case of a widespread power outage. This is a concern for enterprise providers, who want
to rid themselves of the chaos that ensues from a power outage - such as lost data, downed servers, missing web sites and
a flood of phone calls and emails from upset webmasters. Such problems may also result in internet access providers adopting
battery free based back up and voltage regulation systems, such as flywheel energy storage devices and alternative off-grid
power systems.
MARCH 3rd, 2005
ARM
and Synopsys Energy Manager Reduce Chip Power Consumption 60 Percent
ARM and Synopsys, as a result of a joint collaboration to produce lower power chip designs, have available a low-power
reference methodology that implements the ARM Intelligent Energy Manager (IEM). The
companies indicated that the IEM can reduce the power consumption of the ARM core by as much as 60 percent.
Actual power savings in a real chip design were underscored at Samsung. Sung Bae Park,
Vice President of Processor Architecture Lab at Samsung Electronics indicated that Samsung's work with both ARM and Synopsys
will expedite the development of the company’s next generation low-power devices for mobile applications. These mobile
devices are to be based on the ARM1176JZF-S and the IEM technology.
Mike Inglis, Executive Vice President of Marketing at ARM suggested that the dramatic power reduction gains were a
result of the integration and optimization of Artisan Physical IP within the ARM processor and Synopsys' integration of ARM and Artisan specific low-power design algorithms into its Galaxy Design Platform. He also indicated that ARM not only has the ability to offer low-power ARM cores to
its partners, but also low power IP solutions for entire SoCs.
Rich Goldman, Vice President of Strategic Alliances at Synopsys seemed to illusively imply that the success of the
power reduction optimization design flow was in part a result of the emphasis that Synopsys has placed on the integration
of power management technology into its Galaxy design tools for both ARM processor
specific designs and general SoC designs.
FEBRUARY 28th, 2005
Light-to-Digital Converters Announced for Energy Conservation
Applications
Texas
Advanced Optoelectronic Solutions, Inc has introduced its ambient light sensor technology, which is a CMOS mixed signal integrated
circuit with an on-board visible light blocking and broadband photodiode. The chip is used to convert ambient light intensity
to a proportional digital output signal. Applications for the chip include automatic backlighting display and keyboard illumination
for electronic devices such as cell phones and laptops. The TSL2560 and the TSL2561 Light-to-Digital Converters are also used
to extend battery life and automatically match the display backlighting to the ambient lighting conditions for optimum viewing.
The company indicates that backlighting can account for as much as 30 to 40 percent of the power requirements in electronic
devices. The light converters also have applications in digital cell phones, flat panel televisions, street lighting, and
solar cell based energy conversion and machine vision.
FEBRUARY 7, 2005
Microsemi’s Energy Saving Light Sensor In Hewlett-Packard’s Notebooks
Thanks
to Microsemi Corporation’s new light sensor, users of the latest HP Compaq notebook computers will see less power drain
on their portable’s battery supply. The latest model 6200 and 8200 series
computers automatically adjust the brightness of the LCD display according to the ambient light of the area. When in dim lighting
environment, the LCD display will dim, which lowers the power drain. The user can also adjust the brightness level for different
types of content – for example movies or text.
JANUARY 25th, 2005
Power
Optimization Design Tools Win Market Share
Apache Design Solutions, a company that offers EDA tools that are used
to ensure that chip power is minimized, reported that its 2004 revenue tripled over 2003 levels. Furthermore the company announced
that its fourth quarter was its eighth consecutive record quarter.
JANUARY 25th, 2005
Power
Management Architecture Cuts Power 40 Percent
The right tools and the right design strategy could be two keys to low-power chip design. Toshiba reported that it
reduced power consumption forty percent on its Media embedded Processor (MeP). Toshiba used a power management design architecture
that included dynamic voltage supply and frequency scaling design techniques. Toshiba says the power management architecture
can be applied to other system chip designs.
For the project, Toshiba used Synopsys’ tools, which could be a major part of thesuccess story. Synopsys over
the last year has made a considerable effort to build tools specifically to minimize power consumption and to enable power
optimization techniques. This has been a part of its chip yield enhancement program. Minimized power tends to correlate with
maximum chip yield.
JANUARY 20th, 2005
Xilinx’s Low Power Technology
Selected For Grand Innovation Award
Xilinx’s low-power programmable logic device has been selected
as a finalist for this year’s EDN Innovator/Innovation Awards. Specifically for the "Greatest Innovation of the Past
15 Years." Xilinx’s CoolRunner-II CPLDs very low power is one reason Xilinx might actually win the vote. Xilinx states
the replacement of the analog sense amplifiers with a digital architecture in the CPLD has resulted in a 1000 fold reduction
in the chip’s power consumption. Apparently, Xilinx’s customers have also liked what they’ve seen. Xilinx
reports that it has increased its market share in the CPLD market from 20 to 25 percent over a year ago (as of the end of
its third quarter 2004). This is up from 10 percent five years ago.
JANUARY 20th, 2005
Power-over-The Ethernet Powers
PowerDsine
Power over Ethernet (PoE) technology, used to transmit power supply
energy over standard Ethernet cable, has been a growth market because it is costly to run AC power lines and sockets to where
the Ethernet peripheral needs to be located (surveillance cameras). PowerDsine has won over NETGEAR, Inc. with its PoE solution.
NETGEAR will use the solution in its ProSafe 8 Port 10/100 Desktop Switch.
JANUARY 20th, 2005
Dupont Electronic and Communications Technologies reports that its
technology has allowed the elimination of electrical wires in the Mars Exploration Rovers, namely Spirit and Opportunity.
Why? To reduce the heat dissipation and weight associated with such conductors. What do the Rovers use instead to connect
the electronic modules to the Rovers’ motors and sensors systems? Answer, the Mars rovers each have over 70 yards of
flexible circuits made of thin DuPont’s Pyralux laminates and composites. According to the company, this results in
space savings of 60 to 70 percent when compared to designs based on traditional round wire and cables.
JANUARY 14th,
2004
New
Memory Chip Offers Dramatic Decrease in Power Consumption
Elpida
Memory claims its latest DRAM chips
have a standby current about 95 percent less than traditional DRAMs. DRAMs equipped
with Elpida’s SSR power reduction technology have a standby current rating in the order of 40 uA. This compares to other
manufacturer’s DRAM chips that are rated at 2000 uA (2 mA). Elpida produces 256 Mbit and 512 Mbit DRAM chips based on
the latest 0.11 micron process technology. Elpida Memory expects its low power
DRAM chips to be available in March 2005. Posted Jan 14, 2005.
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