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Plessey lights make more tomatoes
Feb
The seven-month trial, managed by Plessey head agronomist Maarten Klein (right), ran from November 2016 at Gebr Koot in the Netherlands.
Brioso variety tomatoes were illuminated by either 150μmoles/s/m² of HPS or the same, but with an extra 58μmoles/s/m² of Plessey LEDs.
“By the end of the trial, an extra yield of 9.4% (3.28kg/m²) was achieved with a slight…
Infrared lit sensors can spot carbon-dioxide
Feb
GSS invested in its own epitaxy machines to manufacture mid-range IR LEDs…
Osram reveals future of LED automotive headlights
Feb
By pixelating the light source, arbitrary headlight beam patters can be created, extending the concept of main/dip beam to complex beam shapes that minimise dazzle while maximising useful illumination for the driver.
Sketch of Eviyos
Branded Eviyos, the 1,024 pixels are combined in a 4 x 4mm light source with a minimum luminous flux of 3 lm/pixel, with prototypes …
Silicon Labs sampling single-chip 4G/Ethernet clocks
Feb
The Si5381/82/86 clocks are non-MEMS RF CMOS chips implementing the company’s ‘DSPLL’ technology (diagram below) to deliver a timing solution that combines 4G/LTE and Ethernet clocking in a single IC.
With DSPLL, of which this chip has the firm’s fourth generation, a low-jitter outer loop with a bandwidth below 10Hz surrounds a MHz bandwidth low phase-noi…
Silicon Labs produces up to 12 ‘any-frequency’ clocks from a single input
Feb
Called Si5332, 230fs(rms) general jitter performance is claimed, with specific examples of: 245fs for clocking system PLLs, 196fs for SerDes PLLs, 220fs for PCIe Gen4 (16Gtransfer/s)and 366fs for FPGAs.
The chip comes in three versions, with six, eight or 12 outputs.
All versions work from a single crystal and have two of the firm’s ‘MultiSynth’ fractional…
EW: Fujitsu 4Mbit FRAM reaches 54Mbyte/s operation
Feb
Called, MB85RQ4ML, with its four bi-directional I/O pins operating at 108MHz it can reach a data transfer rate of 54Mbyte/s. “In this respect, MB85RQ4ML is over four times as fast as our existing parallel 4Mbit FRAM device and even outperforms the 45ns parallel SRAM,” said the firm.
In a SOP-16 package, it is at least 50% smaller than Fujitsu’s parallel dev…
Renesas protects IoT IP from cradle to grave
Feb
“Secure life-cycle management is the foundation to maintaining the integrity of end-products,” said the firm. “The Synergy Platform Device Lifecycle Management [DLM] solution consists of Synergy security MCUs plus the associated Synergy software and tools enabling OEMs to better protect their software intellectual property IP from theft and cloning during ma…
ADI Cortex-M3 is surprise entry in ULP benchmark list
Feb
Called the ADuCM302x series and aimed at IoT end nodes (and made at TSMC), it consumes under 38uA/MHz in active mode and …
2.4GHz wireless MCUs get stacks for Thread and ZigBee
Feb
Called Wireless Gecko, they integrate an ARM Cortex-M4 core with a 2.4GHz radio, hardware cryptography, stacks for Thread and ZigBee, and radio interface software for proprietary protocols and Bluetooth Smart.
There are three product ranges: Blue Gecko for Bluetooth Smart, Mighty Gecko for ZigBee and Thread, and Flex Gecko family for proprietary wireless protocol…
Cavium 64-bit ARM-based processors sample this quarter
Feb
The product line has 4 product families – CN80XX, CN81XX, CN82XX and CN83XX with 1 to 24 full custom, enhanced 64-bit ARM v8.1 cores.
The 1 to 4 core CN80XX and CN81XX product families will be sampling in Q2 of 2016, and the 8 to 24 core CN82XX and CN83XX will be sampling in Q3 of 2016.
The product line is optimised to run multiple concurrent data and control …
TI launches retimers
Feb
These devices expand TI’s high-performance retimer portfolio, and support flexible, cost-optimized system design, enabling designers to speed their products to market while maintaining optimal performance.
The retimers improve signal quality by removing jitter and compensating loss for signals transmitting over long traces and cables.
The DP159 and TMDS181 ret…
Aluminium electrolytic capacitors handle higher ripple currents
Feb
The V-TC and V-TCU series capacitors have from 1.2 to 1.5 times higher ripple current capabilities at 125°C, says the supplier.
The specifications are for the V-TC series 300mA for D8 can size up to 750mA for G can size and V-TCU series 400mA for F can size up to 750mA for G can size.
V-TCU parts also offer 1.2 to 2.2 times larger capacitance values (220µF up to…
IQD clock oscillators for extreme applications
Feb
The IQXO-540 AUTO series is housed in a 2.0 x 1.6 x 0.8mm ceramic sealed package with frequencies available in the range from 4.0 to 50MHz.
With stabilities down to ±25ppm over -40 to +85 degrees C or ±50ppm over the extended temperature range of -40 to 125 degrees C, this new range of clock oscillators is suitable for extreme environments found in industrial a…
Microchip dev board covers 16 and 32bit PICs
Feb
Explorer 16/32 allows the evaluation of the 16bit PIC24, dsPIC33 and 32-bit PIC32 families through PIMs for easy device swapping.
“It facilitates prototyping of the end application for proof of concept before migrating to the actual design,” said the firm. “The board features a mikroBUS interface to easily add new functionalities using Click Boards from Mik…