Semiconductor vendors are through the worst
The first quarter of this year was the trough for semiconductor vendors, according to market-watcher Gartner. Its latest analysis forecasts that the coming months will see sequential sales growth and a drop in inventory to normal levels. “All supply chain constituents should plan for a return to semiconductor revenue growth in 2Q12,” said Gartner spokesperson Laurence Goasduff. “But, they should not allow inventory to drift higher than prudent. This will ensure maximum stability for the semiconductor industry.”

Board industry having difficult time, says Vita
The industrial and telecoms markets for embedded board products are still depressed but the military market is holding its own and the medical market is looking strong in the Far East, according to Ray Alderman, executive director of Vita, in his latest state of the industry report. “There are segments of the board industry that are having a difficult time,” he said.

Software quality can hit companies from top to bottom
Software quality affects whole organisations, from top to bottom, and not just those directly involved. This was the message Fergus Bolger, chief technical officer at Programming Research, gave to delegates at last month’s National Electronics Week in Birmingham.

Wifi can compete with Zigbee
Wifi could be the wireless communications medium of choice for many industrial applications that are being targeted by Zigbee and Bluetooth, according to Maxine Hewitt, marketing director for Alpha Micro. She was speaking at last month’s National Electronics Week in Birmingham where the firm was showing Wifi modules from Gainspan.

MEN calls for resumption of Vita 59 standardisation

Joint venture focuses on security for connected devices

Suite could remove bottlenecks as programmable devices drop below 28nm

Win a two-channel USB-to-Can adapter

Multi-core leads Vector to US office

Amplicon targets Spain and Sweden
FPGAs: More for less
Rowland Demko and Russell Nieves of Acromag's embedded sysrems group investigate some of the more sophisticated applications for modern FPGA modules
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FPGAs: Platform views
Jeff Hooker of Lattice Semiconductor explains how transforming circuit board design can reduce cost and risk
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Industrial Computers: Softly, softly
Angus Yu of Advantech's thermal manager for their networking and communications group provides some tips and tricks for reducing industrial computer noise
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Displays & Panel PCs: Affordable protection
Low-power panel PC technology is evolving for harsh environments. Kontron's Max Scholz discusses the increased cost efficiency of higher protection categories
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Arm 9 module suits smart metering
With the TQMa28, TQ has added a small Arm 9 module to its range: running at 450MHz, it is based on the Freescale i.MX28 processor. Applications include smart metering, human machine interfaces and industrial control systems. The microcontroller with its Arm 926 core includes on-chip peripherals such as two 10/100Mbit Fast Ethernet controllers, a USB host/USB OTG controller, three uarts and two Can controllers for Can 2.0B, while a 24bit LCD controller supports displays up to SVGA resolution.
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Control panels provide expansion
Four TPC automation control panels from Advantech provide expansion capabilities, expanded DI/DO support and extended Fieldbus control support. Each of the 38.1, 30.5, 25.4 and 15.2cm models uses the fanless low power consuming Intel Atom processor (1.8 or 1.1GHz) making them suitable for machine automation and factory automation applications. The TPC-71H has a PCI-e expansion slot that supports four control protocols – Profibus, Profinet, Ethercat and Powerlink. With this feature, users can connect with PLCs such as the firm's Apax, for further control and monitoring.
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Com Express variants use G series
Two variants have been introduced to enhance Kontron’s range of Com Express compact modules. The modules are dedicated to PCI based designs and are based on the AMD Embedded G series accelerated processing units (APUs). The Come-Coh2 provides increased graphics performance to SFF Com Express applications with pin-out type two, as well as parallel processing capability and low power consumption.
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Debug probe for multi-core
A debug probe for the Broadcom XLP processor family has been introduced by Lauterbach. This means the Trace 32 now supports all Broadcom multi-core processor families – XLP, XLR and XLS. Multi-core support and the included awareness for many real-time operating systems such as Linux provide a debugging environment in all stages of software development and debugging, from low level system bring-up to high-end applications involving symmetric and asymmetric multiprocessing.
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