#MEMS: "On-chip Oscillators Debut at Silicon Labs"

The world's first micro-electro-mechanical-system (MEMS) built right on top of an standard complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) chip enables mobile devices to downsize by ditching the bulky quartz crystal required today. Look for even tiny consumer and industrial devices using Silicon Labs CMOS+MEMS=CMEMS formula by year's end: R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog


Fabricating a micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) oscillator atop a standard CMOS chip marries the economy of silicon to the reliability of MEMS. Further Reading

#CHIPS: "Active Driver Assistance For the People"

Driverless cars are an inevitability, albeit not until the 2020-2040 time frame according to Freescale Semiconductor, which recently unveiled an active radar system (that takes over braking and steering during emergencies) which is inexpensive enough for car manufacturers to put on all models, instead of just luxury models like today: R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog

Further Reading

#CHIPS: "Supercomputing Targets Business Users"

Intel is redefining supercomputing for use in business and commerce, rather than exclusively for scientific and research. The automobile maker Audi has already signed on, changing its workflow to revolve around supercomputer-rendered-prototypes rather than the physical prototypes that it used to have to build: R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog


Raj Hazra, vice president of the Architecture Group and general manager of Intel’s Technical Computing Group, shows off a new Xeon Phi model.Further Reading

#CHIPS: "Budget Supercomputing for the People"

For as little as $1695., users can now add a teraFLOPS supercomputing coprocessor to their Xeon-powered workstation or server. Intel's new Xeon Phi models are now cheap enough for any business and many home users: R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog


Intel Xeon Phi supercomputing coprocessors are not priced for every budget, including a high-density model for embedded applications.Further Reading

#ALGORITHMS: "Virtualization Turns Tablets into Windows Desktops"

Virtualization and cloud orchestration can now turn any smartphone or tablet into a Windows Desktop, thanks to Citrix who showed how any any PC, MacOS, Android or iOS device can now offer business users access their familiar software applicaitons: R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog


Mark Templeton, president and CEO of Citrix, speaks at the Citrix Synergy 2013.Further Reading

#CHIPS: "Intel Supercomputer on-a-chip Rules"

Intel powered four of five winners in the Top500.org ranking at the International Supercomputer Conference (ISC 2013, Leipzig Germany). The grand prize winner went to the MilkyWay-2, powered by Intel's many-integrated core (MIC) architecture using Xeon Phi coprocessors--clocking in at over 50 petaFLOPS: R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog

Further Reading

#CHIPS: "Intel's Budget Supercomputer Expands Reach"

Earlier this week Intel's supercomputer on-a-chip, the Xeon Phi, powered MilkyWay-2 whcih was declared the fastest supercomputer in the world. Now Intel has diversified its Xeon Phi offerings, inlcuding a new high-end model and a high-density single-board version for embedded designs: R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog

Next Intel plans to integrate a 100-Gbit per second interconnection fabric right on the die of future Xeon Phi single-chip supercomputers.
Further Reading

#CHIPS: "China's MilkyWay-2 Retakes Supercomputer Crown"

Powered exclusively by Intel Xeon and Xeon Phi parallel processors, China's MilkyWay-2 supercomputer was declared the world's fastest by the Top500.org twice yearly listing: R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog

Further Reading

#CHIPS: "Intel Application Processors Outperform ARM"

When you beef-up an ARM processor to run a high-end operating system, such as Windows 8, it looses its low-cost/low-power advantage over Intel application processors, according to ABI Research: R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog

Further Reading

#DISPLAYS: "SlimPort Turns Smartphoone into a PC"

The smartphone today have enough processing power and software to become the PC for the younger generation--if only if wasn't for that tiny display. Analogix SlimPort aims to solve that problem by putting its screen up on any nearby display whenever the user plugs it in to recharge anyway: R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog


Analogix SlimPort turn Android smartphone into PCs every time the user plugs it in to recharge.Further Reading

#CHIPS: "Xeon Phi Server Tops 8-teraFLOPS"

Intel's supercomputer on-a-chip, the Xeon Phi, can pack up to 8-teraFLOPS into a single Cirrascale server by housing an octal pack of PCIe cards in it: R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog

Further Reading

#CHIPS: "ARM supplier aims for one-stop-shop"

Freescale will expand its portfolio of low-power ARM microcontrollers for Internte of Things (IoT) devices from 66 to 110 in 2013 according to an announcement this week at Computex. Freescale was first to the market last year with a microcontroller licensing the ultra-low-power ARM Cortex-M0+ in a 5-by-5 millimeter package, but a Computex promised an ultra-small chip-scale package measuring just 1.9-by-2.0 millimeter next month. The rest of its ultra-low-power ARM processors in the 110 member Kinetis family will be released throughout 2013: R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog


Freescale's ultra-low-power ARM-based Kinetis microcontrollers are available now in a 5-by-5 millimeter package, but next month will debut in a minuscule 1.9-by-2 millimeter package for even the smallest Internet of Things (IoT) devices.Further Reading

#ALGORITHMS: "Freescale debuts Internet of Things toolkit"

With Internet of Things (IoT) devices proliferating wildly--already outnumbering people worldwide--Freescale is accelerating time-to-market for IoT designrs with an open-source toolkit called the intelligent sensing framework (ISF). Announced at Computex this week, the ISF lowers the bar for developing context-aware applications by doing all the backend busy-work of collecting and fusing sensor data thereby allowing the designer to concentrate on realizing context-aware use cases: R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog


Freescale's Xtrinsic intelligent sensing framework (ISF) is an open-source' resource for that performs sensor fusion for context-aware Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
Further Reading