With the ongoing adoption of Industry 4.0 initiatives, manufacturers are endeavoring to equip their production machinery with network connectivity, providing highly precise, efficient access to machine status in real time, for the comprehensive analysis critical to data-driven decision making.A major challenge is the lack of universal network connectivity among automation machines, especially in legacy systems that are still in production use. These systems, along with important data regarding their function and performance, are vital business assets, essential for migration to smart manufacturing. In addition to their unconnected status, such elements are complicated to maintain. Affordable, easily adopted methods of implementing complete connectivity are, accordingly, of paramount importance to operators of systems comprising the legacy devices.A printed circuit board (PCB) producer in China found itself facing this very dilemma, with its efforts to embrace full connectivity hindered by the presence in the system of numerous legacy PC-based PCB drilling machines with no networking capability. With the inability to acquire data from these devices seriously hindering migration to smart manufacturing, the operator chose ADLINK's DEX data extraction and network connectivity solution to circumvent the obstacles in the smartest manner possible.The ideal data extraction solution brings legacy machines onboard for painless transition to Industry 4.0The inability to extract data from the legacy PCB drilling machines has been a major obstacle to the manufacturer's achieving the Industry 4.0 standard. After examining several potential solutions, the manufacturer finally selected ADLINK's DEX-100.Outdated OS renders legacy production machines data islandsIn the PCB manufacturing environment, a number of unconnectable PCB drilling machines, still operating through PC-based controllers, exist as data islands, unconnected from one another and functioning in isolation. Data extraction from the individual machines is difficult, and integration among the devices basically impossible.One major cause is that the legacy drilling machines still run OS2, for which end-of-sale and end-of-life were announced in 2005, with no available resource for obtaining the source code. Furthermore, the machine supplier did not implement Open API, preventing consolidation of drilling device data.DEX, the most cost-effective path to smart manufacturingThe DEX-100 performs optical character recognition (OCR) upon VGA/DPI display output from a legacy device, with the result converted to digital data. DEX-100 performance is unaffected by limitation of OS platforms or versions, requiring no Ethernet connection port or the requirement to recognize convoluted log files. Circumventing these barriers, the DEX-100 gathers machine status data with ease.As well as solving the network connectivity issue, DEX-100, when connected to a barcode scanner, can retrieve the serial number of the required drilling recipe, retrieve the corresponding recipe from the recipe management server and upload the serial number to the manufacturing execution system (MES), which sends the correct recipe to the DEX-100 for input to the device. Thus drilling is always executed according to the correct recipe, eliminating errors caused by manual input.To operators pursuing system connectivity, upgrading to Industry 4.0 while keeping costs to a minimum is an ongoing struggle. By extracting machine data from display content, ADLINK's DEX-100 ingeniously connects legacy systems, giving them a new life and enabling them to function fully in process automation and machine monitoring.ADLINK's DEX data extraction and network connectivity solution to circumvent the obstacles in the smartest manner possible

Winbond Electronics Corporation, a leading global supplier of semiconductor memory solutions, today announced that its innovative SpiStack dual-die NOR+NAND code storage product has been included on NXP Semiconductors FRWY-LS1012A board for use with its Layerscape LS1012A communications processor.NXP chose Winbond's W25M161AW SpiStack product for its new FRWY-LS1012A development board for the LS1012A processor. The W25M161AW provides 16Mbits of serial NOR Flash memory for the board's boot code, and 1Gbit of serial NAND for its Linux operating system.Winbond is demonstrating its SpiStack product running on the FRWY-LS1012A board at its booth 721 during the 2019 Flash Memory Summit (Santa Clara Convention Center, California, 6-8 August).The stacked-die construction of the SpiStack products and the software Chip Select capability developed by Winbond enable a serial NOR Flash die for fast boot and a serial NAND die for high memory density to be accommodated in an 8-terminal WSON package with a standard 8mm x 6mm footprint and pin-out."The W25M161AW SpiStack device provides the perfect pairing with our Layerscape LS1012A SoC," commented Jeff Steinheider, director, product marketing, NXP Industrial Applications Processors. "The W25M161AW saves board real-estate for compact designs with the LS1012A, while still providing 1Gbit of storage for a full featured Linux OS."Visitors to Winbond's booth at the Flash Memory Summit can also view demonstration systems exhibiting the industry-best Read performance of its W25N01JW High Performance Serial NAND product. The W25N01JW offers a new high data-transfer rate of 83MB/s via a Quad Serial Peripheral Interface (QSPI).Winbond's new High-Performance Serial NAND technology also supports a two-chip dual-quad interface which gives a maximum data transfer rate of 166MB/s.This high-speed Read operation, some four times faster than existing serial NAND memory devices offer, means that the new W25N01JW chip can replace SPI NOR Flash memory in automotive applications such as data storage for instrument clusters or the Center Information Display (CID).This is important for automotive OEMs because the adoption of more sophisticated graphics displays in the instrument cluster, and larger display sizes of 7" and above in the CID, is increasing system memory requirements to capacities of 1Gbit and higher. At these capacities, serial NAND Flash has a markedly lower unit cost than SPI NOR Flash, and occupies a smaller board area per Mbit of storage capacity.Syed S. Hussain, Director Segment Marketing at Winbond, said: 'Winbond's TECHNOLOGY at the Flash Memory Summit is proof of our continued commitment to product development in the low- to medium-density specialty memory sector. The SpiStack and High Performance Serial NAND products are great examples of the way that Winbond invents creative solutions to enable our customers to get the storage capacity and performance that they need in small packages at a competitive cost.'Both the W25M161AW and W25N01JW are available now in production volumes. More information may be found at www.winbond.com.About WinbondWinbond Electronics Corporation is a total memory solution provider. The Company provides customer-driven memory solutions backed by the expert capabilities of product design, R&D, manufacturing, and sales services. Winbond's product portfolio, consisting of Specialty DRAM, Mobile DRAM and Code Storage Flash, is widely used by tier-1 customers in communication, consumer electronics, automotive and industrial, and computer peripheral markets.Winbond's headquarters is in Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP) and it has subsidiaries in the USA, Japan, Israel, China and Hong Kong. Based in Taichung and new Kaohsiung 12-inch fabs in Taiwan, Winbond keeps pace to develop in-house technologies to provide high-quality memory IC products.About Flash Memory SummitFlash Memory Summit, produced by Conference ConCepts, showcases the mainstream applications, key technologies, and leading vendors that are driving the multi-billion dollar non-volatile memory and SSD markets. FMS is now the world's largest event featuring the trends, innovations, and influencers driving the adoption of flash memory in demanding enterprise storage applications, as well as in high-performance computing, automotive, mobile, and embedded systems.SpiFlash and SpiStack are registered trademarks of Winbond Electronics Corporation. All other product names that appear in this material are for identification purposes only and are acknowledged trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.Winbond's W25M161AW SpiStack product in an 8mm x 6mm package provides 16Mbits of NOR Flash for boot code and 1Gbit of NAND for a Linux or other full-featured operating system

With the goal of fueling innovation in medical devices and bridging the gap between Taiwanese startups, clinical resources, venture capitals and big-name medical device companies from Europe and the US, Show Chwan Medical Group put together the third BEST Asia Innovation Program in an effort to combine business, engineering and surgical technology - 3 essential elements for R&D innovation in medical devices.The third BEST Asia Innovation Program is powered by IRCAD Taiwan, the Institute of Image-Guided Surgery (IHU), Karl Storz, Medtronic, BE Accelerator, the Biomedical Technology and Device Research Laboratories of ITRI, Hiwin Technologies, INTAI Technology and MedicalTek. The program came with a collection of additional features including a 1-year online course as well as a 1-week onsite course, which takes on a bigger responsibility than just a training camp for youngsters. It is also a matchmaking platform at international level for academic-industry collaborations. Students, engineers, physicians and entrepreneurs, over 200 participants from around the world attended the program this year.The program is on its third year since 2017. Every year, domestic and foreign experts with backgrounds in healthcare, engineering and business are invited. This year in particular, the program worked closely with the BIODESIGN team including thought leader, James Wall from Stanford Beyer Center of Biodesign (US); Atsushi Nakagawa from Tohoku University (Japan); Cheng-Li Sung from the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology (China); S Perretta from IHU (France); Dennis McWilliams; Founder, Apollo Endosurgery (US); William Tai, Partner, AMED Venture (US); Avi Yaron, Founder, VisionSense (Israel) and Stefano Stramigioli, the grandmaster of robotics (Netherlands), etc. The program was also joined by Wayne Huang, Director, IRCAD Taiwan; Arthur Chen, Executive Director, BE Accelerator and BIODESIGN fellows, Tien-Jen Liu, Po-Hao Huang, Kai-Che Liu and Hsiao-Wei Tang. The event this year saw richer representation of experts and academia participation offering broad insights into corporate venture building, minimally invasive surgical strategies and the industry trend.Show Chwan Medical Group and its international strategic partners ended the program strong with a symposium, which took place at the Windsor Hotel. The symposium focused on discussing how accelerators and capitals' investments came to drive innovation in the medical device industry. At the final session of the symposium, a memorandum of understanding serves to establish and implement joint efforts to bridge the gap between the field of business, engineering and medicine, was officially signed by IRCAD Taiwan, ITRI and BE Accelerator. Chi-Wan Lin, Director of the Biomedical Technology and Device Research Laboratories of ITRI underscored the value of the collaboration in which BE Accelerator will take on the role as VC, ITRI as the industrial innovation partner and IRCAD as the surgical innovation hub. Under the MoU, three parties will undertake efforts to strengthen the linkages between clinical practice, business and industry.The 3rd BEST Innovation SymposiumA MoU signed between ITRI, IRCAD Taiwan and BE AcceleratorPhotos: Company

Indium Corporation will feature its proven Indium3.2HF Solder Paste for LED manufacturing at Touch Taiwan Display International, August 28-30 in Taipei, Taiwan.The use of high-power LEDs, MicroLEDs, and MiniLEDs is growing exponentially due to light quality, energy efficiency, and reliability. These attributes are directly related to design and assembly methods and materials. Indium Corporation's Indium3.2HF Solder Paste provides:• Consistent printing performance• Long stencil life• Outstanding slump resistance• Excellent wetting ability• Superior fine-pitch soldering ability • Water-washable flux residueIndium Corporation also provides a myriad of materials for LED manufacturing, such as IndiTri or indium trichloride for manufacturing common MOCVD precursor materials, metal-based thermal interface materials (TIMs), gold-tin solder preforms and pastes, and ultra-low voiding solder pastes.See Indium Corporation's experts at the show or visit www.indium.com/LED to learn more.

To help potential users, target users and partners better understand how the Open Compute Project (OCP) organization can benefit data centers, edge computing and other applications, the OCP Foundation, Cloud Computing and IoT Association in Taiwan (CIAT)/OCPT, Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and Taipei Computer Association co-hosted the first annual OCP Taiwan Day at the Taipei International Convention Center alongside Computex 2019.The theme of the event, "The road to 5G, AI and edge computing," gave a clear picture about what the event would focus on – collaborated research achievements and open source contributions OCP and its members have made over the years in 5G, AI and edge computing. Executives and experts from the open source community, including OCP, ITRI, Microsoft, MiTAC, Delta, Open Networking Foundation (ONF), Edgecore, Intel, Wiwynn and Yahoo JP, gathered at the event to provide insights into a myriad of topics encompassing the results of OCP projects and subprojects, AI edge computing, smart cloud innovations and building smart, efficient, and green data centers.Open source contributions meet four tenets - efficiency, openness, scalability and impactAccording to OCP community director Archna Haylock, the organization leads a host of projects and subprojects, including: the Open Networking Linux (ONL), Open Network Install Environment (ONIE), Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI) and Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC) subprojects under the Networking Project; the Advanced Cooling Solutions (ACS), Power Shelf Interoperability (PSI) and Open Rack V3 subprojects under the Rack & Power Project Group; the Archival Storage and Cloud HDD Fast Fail Read subprojects under the Storage Project; and the PCIe 3.0 Mezzanine Card, Open Accelerator Infrastructure (OAI) and Open Domain-Specific Architecture (ODSA) subprojects under the Server Project.More subprojects under the Data Center Facility Project, Telco Project and Hardware Management Project include Modular Data Center (MDC), openEDGE and Open RMC. OCP also drives additional projects in High Performance Computing (HPC), Open System Firmware (OSF) and Security. All OCP projects are contributed by the OCP ecosystem comprising organization members, integrated solution providers, suppliers and sales channel operators.The OCP community continues to grow and now includes hundreds of corporate members. Thousands of engineers are engaged in the 10 OCP projects. Sunlai Chang, senior vice president and CTO, Wiwynn, noted OCP requires that all members self-examine their open source design contributions and workshops to ensure they meet the four core OCP tenets: efficiency, openness, scalability and impact.Emily Hong, president and CEO, Wiwynn as well as chairperson, OCP Taiwan (OCPT), noted that OCPT, launched May 23, 2013, is among the organization's first few international chapters. Playing a critical role raising the IT community's awareness in Taiwan, OCPT focuses on coordinating industry efforts toward open design, promoting education and driving cross-industry contributions to all OCP projects.ITRI was authorized to set up an OCP Certification Lab in 2014. Instead of "OCP Certified" marks, OCP-recognized products began to receive "OCP Accepted" or "OCP Inspired" marks in mid-2017 for the purpose of expanding the OCP application scope. The OCP Marketplace was also established in 2017.Edge cloud drives 5G upgrade and AI edge computing becomes a focus of open source developmentRajeerv Sharma, director, software & technologies, OCP, commented that by 2020, the number of connected devices will surge to 20 billion and IoT will generate 115 YB of data while collecting 1,587 EB of data. The amount of data growing at an astounding rate will drive demand for edge computing. The number of IoT devices supporting data processing at the edge of the network will top 5.6 billion by 2020.Edge computing arises from such demand. According to Gartner, edge computing is part of the distributed computing topology, wherein the data generated or used by devices and users is processed at the edge. Chi-Long Wang, team leader, data center architecture and cloud application software, Information and Communications Research Laboratories, ITRI, said cloud computing and edge computing are not mutually exclusive approaches but actually complement each other, rather than compete against each other.Edge computing has become a force driving 5G upgrade. According to a Gartner report, by 2020, 30% of the service providers delivering 5G services will also offer edge computing services and 50% of enterprise data will be created and processed outside of traditional data centers or cloud. Edge virtualization and its use on edge cloud will be a fundamental force driving 5G development.According to Wang, eye-catching opportunities will actually come from the combination of AI and edge computing, which will be built on the basis of 5G or high-speed wired/wireless network, edge data centers performing computation and deep learning neural network image processing applications. Development tool kits available for such purposes include Intel OpenVINO for inferencing and Google Edge TPU for predictive maintenance, anomaly detection, machine vision and other widespread uses. AI edge computing can be applied in smart surveillance, image-based remote patient monitoring in smart hospitals, AI-based medical image analysis and new-generation smart retail and smart manufacturing.Murugasamy Nachimuthu, principal engineer, Intel, noted that Intel has made several innovations openly available to drive edge computing advances, including remote management, open firmware and simplified firmware, firmware resilience as well as rack and power management.Open source design extending from hardware to firmware security enables flexible boot up mechanism for heterogeneous systemsAccording to Wei-Yang Ding, chief technology officer, Microsoft Taiwan, Microsoft joined OCP in 2014 and introduced its next generation rack-level solution – Project Olympus within OCP's Server Project in 2016. By engaging community collaborations, Project Olympus enabled a new open source hardware development model through a modular architecture with which the designs of components including the rack, universal power monitoring distribution unit, air blocker, accelerator and universal motherboard are made open to the public as they are being developed.In 2017, Microsoft further introduced Project Cerberus - the next phase of Project Olympus. Project Cerberus extends open source hardware development to include security implementations for open source firmware and I/O devices. The hardware root of trust is finally expanded to encompass peripheral I/O devices. Project Cerberus specifications are open to the public. All Project Olympus motherboards are deployed with Cerberus security. Furthermore, Project Denali, launched in 2018, redefined the rules for large-scale flash storage and introduced new EDSFF-based SSD designs.The latest Project Zipline announced in 2019 is Microsoft's cutting-edge compression algorithm suitable for both traditional data sets such as system logs and modern data sets such as IoT remote sensor data. Project Zipline is particularly tailored to usage models including network data processing, edge computing, IIoT and big data analytics.System firmware today typically runs on server nodes installed on racks in cloud centers and is mostly of closed architectures. When different silicon solution providers each have their own boot-up process and silicon interface, the need to have "Single Implementation" can hardly be satisfied. Also, with the current firmware development model being unable to keep up with the needs of many cloud hardware manufacturers, OCP's OSF Project comes into play.Sharma said that we need a silicon interface firmware module (SIFM) that can flexibly support the start-up mechanisms of wide-ranging heterogeneous systems. With SIFM, users can boot up Linux systems from Coreboot (formerly LinuxBIOS) through the help of Intel or AMD. Users can even boot up Windows systems via open-source Linuxboot.OCP saves DC power and footprint and accelerates deploymentOCP is working on the planning and promotion of its Rack and Power Project, of which the OpenRMC subproject focuses on rack management. In more detail, the rack management controller (RMC) is a dedicated hardware device managing a plurality of racks both on the computation level and the rack level. The controller supports all network packet interface specifications, including Redfish, Swordfish, I2C, WebGUI, IPMI and SSH.Commenting on the reason and importance for data centers to incorporate OCP, Hancock Chang, MiTAC OCP Technical and System Lead, pointed out OCP delivers excellent power usage effectiveness (PUE) and low PUE reduces OPEX. An OCP server reduces OPEX by 35% and saves data center footprint by 50% compared to a conventional rack server. With its tool-less design, OCP servers can accelerate data center deployment.MiTAC contributed the OCP ESA specification in July 2018, which supports EIA standard equipment and OCP solutions in the same rack without the need to rebuild conventional server rooms or data centers. Furthermore, it achieves energy and cost savings, speeds up implementation, enables interchangeability and gives users the freedom to choose suppliers.Richard Chan, Delta technology director, spoke about the company's DC facility development strategy and said Delta's requirement on data center infrastructure management (DCIM) is moving from real-time monitoring and management at present to overload prediction based on machine learning and PUE modeling and optimization. To lower CAPEX and OPEX, Delta demands WBG devices to achieve 98% PSU and UPS efficiency and improves overall DC efficiency through the battery management system. For availability and reliability enhancements, Delta is upgrading from the current use of redundancy design and warning system to predictive maintenance implementations leveraging machine learning, big data analytics and proactive maintenance. For quick deployment, Delta is transitioning from pod-based data centers to containerized high-density power modules.Nachimuthu noted Intel is committed to developing optimized high-density cloud platforms and offers them to the OCP community through open source contributions with Inspur. Intel has also introduced a solution to improve data center thermal management efficiency with a power trend predictor, which is contributed to the OCP DC Facility Project.Intel also open sourced its own Platform Resource Manager (PRM), Firmware Support Package (FSP) and Coreboot through the OSF Project. There is also Storage Disaggregation based on the NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-of) architecture made available by Intel.According to Sunlai Chang, senior vice president and CTO, Wiwynn, its two-phase immersion cooling system is capable of supporting the operation of up to 100 OCP TiogaPass server motherboards. The overall system design enables easy maintenance and eliminates the need for fans, heat sinks and facility air conditioning. It achieves not only lower PUE but also 40% more saving on energy costs compared to existing water cooling systems. Furthermore, integrated with 48V and Power Pooling technologies, Wiwynn's solution can reduce 12V power transmission loss by 93%.Open source developments drive continuous availability of high-quality 5G network applications and servicesONF researcher Charles Chan noted ONF is an operator-led open source initiative aiming to promote the integration of telecom edge cloud, open source software, distributed hardware and cloud technologies. CORD is ONF's flagship project for such purpose. Another noteworthy point is the availability of the new reference design known as SEBA (SDN enabled broadband access) built on the CORD platform.ONF also leads the development of a myriad of open source modular components, including VOLTHA, which abstracts the passive optical network (PON) network to appear as a programmable Ethernet switch to an SDN controller, Trellis, which manages multi-purpose leaf-spine fabric architecture, and NG-SDN, the next-generation software-defined network matching innovative services with programmable pipeline and unified interface.George Tchaparian, president and CEO, Edgecore, remarked the advent of the 5G era spurs AI and edge computing developments, which in turn trigger massive demand for bandwidth earlier than expected. Adoption of 5G communication, AI and edge computing will also bring new expectations and needs for network services with continuous availability and high quality. This will also boost operation efficiency and drive the development of ultra-low latency and smart applications. To keep CAPEX at bay while putting appropriate infrastructure in place, it is imperative that businesses plan their strategies along the lines of openness, white-box business model, hardware disaggregation and automation.According to Sunlai Chang, 5G brings OCP benefits to a wide variety of new applications. OCP will work with other organizations including the Linux Foundation (LF) and ONF to make a stronger impact. Telecom operators will embrace openness, allowing existing equipment to commercialize. OCP will benefit three 5G specifications - enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), massive Machine Type Communications (mMTC) and Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC). Edge computing products developed in accordance with OCP OpenEDGE spec can expand 5G and edge computing user ecosystem and enrich the options.In 2015, Microsoft announced its networking OS Azure Cloud Switch (ACS) specifically for software-define network (SDN), which supports the OCP Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI). The specification has been officially accepted by OCP as a standardized C API to program ASICs. In the following year, Microsoft was the first to take part in OCP SONiC for the purpose of enabling its SDN software to easily manage all hardware components on the network. It then open sourced the innovative breakthrough in network switch operation and management.Built on SAI, SONiC allows network operators to fully leverage rapid advances in silicon, CPU, power supply, port density as well as optical network and speed while ensuring ROI for their investment in a unified software solution for cross-platform operations. SONiC is the first solution to separate switch software into multiple containerized components. It enables fine-grained failure recovery and in-service upgrades with zero downtime.With the container design, operators can minimize the efforts needed to add new components and incorporate third-party, self-developed or open-source software. They can also customize SONiC to suit specific use scenarios. Going forward, Microsoft looks to have data centers fully support SONiC and further expand it to network and wide-area network access control.OCP enables significant cost reductions at Yahoo!Japan, completely unshackled from vendor lock-inKazuhide Fujimi, server infrastructure engineer from Yahoo!Japan, noted that in order to reduce costs for hardware installation and management, Yahoo!Japan decided four years ago to embrace OCP. As the OCP market and ecosystem mature, the unit costs of OCP servers and racks have come down sharply. The company started massive adoptions about two years ago, and so far over 4,000 computing nodes at its three datacenters run on the OCP architecture.Over the last four years, Yahoo!Japan has not only enriched its experience and technological know-how using the open-source architecture, but also saved substantial amounts, including 29% in cost reductions for server units, and a 18% decrease in rack costs. And because OCP completely avoids vendor lock-in, the company has a lot of flexibility in purchasing hardware peripherals and components. As it takes longer lead time to deploy OCP servers and racks, and the OCP racks are wider in length than standard ones, careful planning for the server room is needed. Currently Yahoo!Japan maintains a mixed-rack deployment strategy, but will gradually increase the proportion of OCP in the future.

As more telecoms turn on 5G networks in 2019, consumers are eagerly awaiting firsthand, real-world 5G usage experiences. With a global presence that delivers extraordinary user experiences by offering immersive sound and imaging solutions, Xperi presented its latest audio, imaging and semiconductor solutions at Computex 2019. The company continues to expand its reach through several advanced releases and product updates based on artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. In a recent interview, Geir Skaaden, Xperi's Chief Products and Services Officer talks about three major product focuses showcased at Computex.There are three main opportunities that leverage Xperi image AI solutions and immersive sound solutions through AI, as well as across all of its brands and technologies. The first focus is face detection technology, which is integrated into LG's 2019 flagship smartphone utilizing Fotonation Image AI technology and Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensors. This feature provides a user-friendly interface on LG phones, while also allowing for greater convenience and increased security for financial transactions.The second opportunity centers on Xperi solutions for smart IoT devices. There is an ongoing trend around the industrial convergence between smart IoT devices and traditional mobile phones and laptops. Offering both image AI and audio solutions, Xperi is working with mobile device manufacturers and IoT solution providers to facilitate this convergence and bring new products to market.The third opportunity focuses on the gaming sectors. Gaming PCs and smartphone devices continue to evolve with enhanced sound technologies to deliver immersive entertainment experiences. Xperi's DTS immersive audio product offerings bring compelling sound effects to powerful gaming laptops, smartphones and other gaming devices, which serve to maintain the company's strong product differentiation and leadership.Image AI performs on leading edge of Face ID with ToF sensorsWhile face ID technology in smartphones is one of the more important features for enabling flagship models given the current technology hype, cost remains an issue. Structured light sensors are expensive. Through Xperi's FotoNation image AI solutions, manufacturers can access cost effective ToF sensors to maintain the same level of accuracy and allow banking services to use the system to authenticate specific transactions.The ToF sensors represent a 34% cost advantage when compared with a structured light sensor approach, Skaaden notes. With the right level of accuracy, face detection is the most user-friendly technology enabling biometric identification. This is why Fotonation Image AI technology has been so successful in helping smartphone brands to maintain leading market positions. Investing in AI technology for more than 15 years, Fotonation has built its own AI models with specific training image data sets and image AI technology that continuously seeks to improve accuracy to desired levels.With powerful algorithms and code optimization capability, the engineering teams of Fotonation provide tailored products for its customers by leveraging AI inferencing engines, edge computing technologies and low-power consumption embedded system design to assist powerful application processor of smartphones and achieve higher performance.The features of FaceSafe, Xperi's facial biometrics solution, will continue to penetrate the market covering PCs, laptops and other intelligent IoT devices as use cases expand and drive increased uniqueness demands for other devices. Skaaden predicts that the upcoming CES and MWC exhibitions will show even more innovative products coming into the market.Taiwan ecosystem partners playing important rolesDTS immersive sound product offerings bring powerful branding effects for customers by providing a new level of quality in 3D sound experiences for the everyday consumer. The enhanced user experience created by immersive sound technologies will allow new 5G smartphones and mobile devices to take full advantage of high speed data transfer rates and smarter edge technologies, Skaaden added. One of the unique benefits aligns with the trend of cloud gaming services shifting gears to boost the use of edge devices and create more immersive effects for the gaming experience. A lot of big mobile gaming titles with smart edge technologies are expected to enter the market, providing a higher level of quality in immersive sight and sound experiences.Smart edge technology that enables better gaming experiences is made possible by lowering latency and improving accessibility at a more affordable cost to gamers. When workloads run at the edge of the network instead of being sent to cloud servers for processing, data need only travel the minimum necessary distance, reducing associated lag time and enabling more interactive and immersive experiences. Further, DTS immersive sound products have current strength in the Windows platform. As the 5G PC concept gains market adoption, this will also help android systems to access the mobile gaming segment, benefitting from the full features of immersive sound effects. Xperi is watching these opportunities closely with some potential customers continuing to apply immersive sound technology to deliver intelligent edge solutions at the gaming sector.The new development trends for Xperi are increasingly targeted for AI related use cases. A variety of applications include functionality like detecting how many people and each individual in a room through image recognition technology, which is becoming a more interesting and hotter use case under development. Meanwhile, additional emerging solutions enable intelligent music playback features when recognizing the person in the driver seat. Such kinds of smart and fun applications that provide interactive control and overcome human interface challenges are attracting global brands and Taiwan ecosystem partners. As he talks optimistically about future business opportunities, Skaaden believes these convenience enhancing features will meaningfully benefit from Xperi image AI and immersive sound technologies.Furthermore, the Taiwan electronic industry has a very unique market position for connecting these cooperation programs as global brands pursue OEM/ODM orders with Taiwan electronics manufacturers. This makes the Taiwan electronics industry and supply chain a leading place for global market growth. That's why Xperi invests in dedicated engineering support teams locally in Taiwan to work with Taiwan ecosystem and chipset design vendors to support its long-term strategic relationship with Taiwan partners. With 5G and AI enabled technologies evolving to play an important role in driving future growth for electronics industries, Xperi will continue its efforts to help Taiwan partners to provide a robust user experience for high consumer satisfaction and looks forward to broadening and deepening its partner relationships.

Digi-Key Electronics, a global electronic components distributor, has opened a new office in Shanghai to support record growth in the company's China market. The new office is one of two in China and will enable Digi-Key to continue to maintain a strong presence in the growing China market.Digi-Key's new Shanghai office will house several employees who will serve Digi-Key's whole China RMB business. The office is located on the 32nd floor, Office Tower 1, Raffles City Changning, No.1133 Changning Road, Changning District."Our teams in Shanghai and Hong Kong have experienced the highs of supporting crazy growth over the last two years. Now dealing with uneven market conditions in general has given us a chance to catch our breath and continue improving our local presence in the region," said Dave Doherty, president/COO of Digi-Key. "Our continued commitment to the China market has not wavered one bit. We are excited to announce our move to new offices in Shanghai. We take 'the long view' with our strategic initiatives in the region and continue to invest in the future of the China market."As a recognized leader in electronic components distribution, Digi-Key continues to expand their global footprint. With over 4,000 international employees, 18 international offices, and shipping to over 170 countries worldwide, Digi-Key is deeply committed to serving international customers with regional support in sales, customer service and technical staff.Along with the expansion of their workforce and international offices, Digi-Key is expanding capabilities to ship components to makers around the world as quickly as possible. Digi-Key currently offers more than 8.7 million products, with over 1.7 million products in stock and available for immediate shipping and delivery in as little as 72 hours.Digi-Key also has extensive online resources to help makers bring their innovations to life, including the DK IoT Studio, EDA and design tools, datasheets, reference designs, instructional articles and videos, multimedia libraries, and much more.Digi-Key opens Shanghai office

Leading semiconductor test equipment supplier Advantest Corporation has partnered with MultiLane Inc. to develop instrumentation that extends the V93000 platform's ability to cost-effectively test the next generation of digital high-speed interfaces. The Multilane instruments provide test data rates up 112Gbps in PAM4 and 56Gbps in NRZ with scope analysis capabilities with 50GHz bandwidth.By working closely together, the two experienced test equipment companies have developed a highly integrated solution that brings these high-frequency resources very close to the device under test (DUT) and significantly enhances signal integrity and test accuracy.The companies combined resources to provide truly innovative solutions ideal for testing the next generation of devices for applications including data centers and artificial intelligence (AI). The new instruments, to be sold and supported by MultiLane, expand the V93000's digital and analog top-end frequency limits to levels critical for development of the newest communications infrastructure. Breaking the mold of traditional automatic test equipment (ATE) solutions, this collaboration allows use of the ATE DUT board with MultiLane's high-frequency instruments on the bench as well as use of bench-type measurement and characterization tools on the ATE.An integrated software environment maintains the flexible, interactive aspect of bench instruments while adding hooks to control and manage the instruments in high-volume production environments."By working together, MultiLane and Advantest have grown and enhanced each other's capabilities, providing our customers with the wide-band 112-Gbps PAM4 test capabilities that are so critical for data center and AI growth plans," said Juergen Serrer, executive vice president of the V93000 Business Unit within Advantest Corporation's ATE Business Group."MultiLane is excited to bring our products to Advantest's semiconductor-test-focused customer base and to bring the V93000's rich feature set to MultiLane's communications-focused customer base. As our traditional customers expand their integration levels, the V93000 will provide them with many fully integrated capabilities to improve the testing of their products and speed their time to market," said Fadi Daou, CEO of MultiLane, Inc.Both Advantest and MultiLane are actively discussing the new instruments with multiple customers.

China-based IC design firm Sage Microelectronics (Sage Micro) recently raised CNY240 million (US$35 million) in capital investment, which will be used toward the development of high-end controller chips for enterprise-class data storage and server products.China's economic growth has long been fueled by its flourishing housing market. Investors prefer to bet their money on tangible assets such as machinery equipment and real estate and look down on the value knowledge industries like the semiconductor sector can create. In fact, China has always relied heavily on imported semiconductor chips. Concerned over such dependency on foreign supply, the China government is taking the initiative to change things around with its unique "state-led movement." It looks to build semiconductor plants across the country as a way of fostering a domestic IC industry. However, as China-based IC design firms still have a hard time securing investments from venture capital funds, they don't stand a chance in the competition against international companies. The fact that privately operated Sage Micro was able to raise a large sum of capital in this round of funding in addition to the launch of the Shanghai Stock Exchange's tech-focused STAR Market signifies the China government's clear determination toward incubating domestic technological firms with core competence.Founded in 2011, Sage Micro has risen to become China's leading brand of storage controller chips. Its R&D team has created a wealth of IC design intellectual property (IP) in computer interface and solid state disks (SSD) in more than a decade, a rare achievement among its peers. Over its eight-year history, Sage Micro has been recognized as China's High and New Technology Enterprise, integrated circuit design firm, designated producer of commercial cipher products, Zhejiang Province Enterprise Research Institute and Zhejiang Province Key Laboratory. As a matter of fact, Sage Micro's mobile storage, SSD, and storage array controller chips are being used by international leading storage manufacturers, making it a key supplier of chips used in storage cards, USB drives, external hard disk drives (HDD), SSDs, large-scale storage arrays, computer bridge circuits, high-speed server bus and accelerators. As one of the very few China-based IC design firms capable of exporting semiconductor solutions, what Sage Micro has achieved is truly commendable. With the additional US$35 million capital in place, Sage Micro will use the fund to promote collaborations with international strategic partners and jointly develop high-end controller chips for enterprise-class products, according to information the company has made public. The deal not only indicates that international leaders are paying attention to the China market and recognizing Sage Micro's technological strength but also that Chinese investors are starting to take notice of the value IC design firms can bring. Companies with core technological competence are coming into play and the market can expect more Chinese IC design firms to rise up over the next couple of years.Established by a team of Silicon Valley veterans, Sage Micro acquired Initio Corp, a Silicon Valley design house with complete bridge controller IC technologies and product offerings. Through the acquisition, Sage Micro gained access to physical layer and protocol layer interface technologies including SD/MMC, PATA, SATA, SAS, USB2.0/3.0 and PCIe, which are applied to storage cards, motherboards, hard disks and disk arrays. Its customer base has also expanded to include leading international hard disk manufacturers and computer companies. Being the first in China to introduce an SSD controller chip, Sage Micro brought its first SATA SSD controller chip to reality in 2012 - China's first locally developed multi-core SSD controller chip. In 2014, Sage Micro unveiled the world's first SSD controller chip supporting up to 5TB capacity at Flash Memory Summit (FMS). At that time, a standard 2.5" SSD with 9mm thickness came with maximum 10TB capacity. The jump of five times in capacity wowed the market and set a new SSD industry record. Furthermore, Sage Micro is one of the lead providers of storage bridge controller chips in today's global market.Leveraging its core IC design technologies, Sage Micro provides a full spectrum of self-managed and self-controlled solutions including large-scale data storage, encryption modules and controlled self-destruction SSD. Its solutions are certified by the China Office of State Commercial Cryptography Administration (OSCCA) and comply with the US NIST/FIP-140 standards to enable robust data security at the chip level. At home and broad, Sage Micro is considered an expert in storage controller technologies with the ability to develop unique solutions. The company's CEO Dr Jerome Luo is among the organizers of FMS held in Santa Clara every year and he also hosts forums in China, which are part of his efforts to help China's storage industry synergize with the international community.Commenting on the company's Internet strategic planning, Dr Luo noted, "Sage Micro gears its efforts toward enterprise-class SSD controller chips and disk array controller chips. Competition in these high-end controller segments is at the global level and it requires extensive technological know-how." Leveraging the technological strength built up through years of development, Sage Micro is working on disk array controller chips, which will be the core designed with intricate technologies to power massive-scale data storage comprising hundreds and thousands of hard disks. In addition to existing partnerships with manufacturers of bridge controller chips and hard disks, Sage Micro will further engage in collaborations with new storage device suppliers to drive the research and industrialization of enterprise-class SSD, large-scale disk arrays and server peripheral bus controller chips. No Taiwan-based firms have ventured into these market segments while China-based IC design houses lack sufficient IP in these areas so a few industry giants, such as Broadcom and others, hold key technologies and dominate the market. Manufacturers of large-scale data storage including those based in China have no choice but to purchase critical controller chips from the small number of companies that are monopolizing the market.Take the flash memory controller chip market for example. With the China government actively advocating and promoting development in this sector, many firms have debuted controller chips that are purportedly developed in house. In fact, dozens of firms have emerged in the past couple of years but few of them have the real core competence to move forward to volume production. China's IC design industry has yet to build up solid technological strength, particularly lacking extensive IP in specific fields. Some of the so-called in-house developments are actually complete IC designs sold by international fabless firms in the form of total solutions to Chinese companies or organizations which then package and market them as domestically produced chips. However, this does not mean China-based firms have nothing to show for their efforts. There are companies that stand out. For example, DRAM controller chip developer Montage successfully went public on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's STAR Market. GigaDevice as a NOR flash vendor got IPO successful, too. With state-backed investments into flash memory production lines, Tsinghua Unigroup is making good progress. Sage Micro is set become a rising star in controller chips for computer peripherals, large-scale data storage and servers.Amid escalating US-China trade tension, China is ramping up efforts toward "hard technology" developments, especially targeting the semiconductor industry. The launch of the Shanghai Stock Exchange's STAR Market is aimed to encourage IC firms first and foremost. Accordingly, it is not surprising that Sage Micro, with robust IC design capabilities accumulated through years of efforts, was able to win favor with investors. Not many IC design firms in China have built up extensive semiconductor IP as their American competitors normally do. Both its Silicon Valley based subsidiary and Taipei based technical support team kept Sage Micro's culture not isolated with the global semiconductor industry and market. As an expert in computer peripheral interface and storage controller chips, Sage Micro is among the very few Chinese firms that are able to expand internationally. It is only a matter of time before Sage Micro goes public on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's STAR Market. This may very well be the reason why investors suddenly became so interested and scrambled to pour funds into Sage Micro.Sage Micro founderSage Micro CEO Dr Jerome Luo headed several research projects of large-scale communication systems and integrated circuit technologies in China and has received multiple awards from provincial and central governments for driving technology advances. He worked as a senior IC designer in Silicon Valley in 2001 and co-founded Baleen Systems Inc. in 2003. Dr. Luo returned to China in 2011 and established Sage Micro. Based on his successful experiences in leading research teams in China and decade-long overseas career, Dr. Luo is a seasoned veteran in IC design planning and the application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) industry. The fruits of the research projects he headed have commercialized into ten product lines that are in volume production. More than 30 papers have been published in domestic and international academic journals and more than 40 patents have been granted around the world. Dr. Luo is also enthusiastically devoted to pro bono work for the data storage industry. Not only does he serve as the director of Micro-Electronic Research Institute (MERI) in Hangzhou Dianzi University (HDU) but he is also one of the organizers of the renowned Flash Memory Summit (FMS). In the past six years, he invited more than 20 Chinese flash memory experts to speak at FMS and more than 10 international experts to present at local storage forums and academic events in China.Sage Micro provides a comprehensive range of storage chip solutions, targeting cloud storage, personal storage and industrial applications.Sage Micro CEO Dr Jerome Luo

The idea of IoT has been around for more than a decade and after years of market development, a wide range of applications are recently coming into reality. The industry now has growing needs for IoT solutions and particularly focuses attention on NB-IoT, which can help developers quickly build high-performance platforms based on current network infrastructure. At AMobile Solution Forum, executives of IoT solution expert AMobile Intelligent and industry leaders shed light on the development of NB-IoT technologies and applications in their engaging presentations.Speaking at the event, Jasmine Chang, Deputy CEO, AMobile Intelligent, noted with information technologies (IT) rapidly advancing and networking being a critical trend of IT industry development, today devices are connected not only within an industry but also across industries, enabling different industries to interconnect and thereby create all kinds of applications to make people's life more intelligent. However, to get more and more things connected, wide-ranging technologies and applications are being developed. From the technological point of view, sensor, gateway, database for big data, cloud platform, and even upcoming 5G communication and blockchain technologies each attempt to address different aspect of IoT. It is unlikely that an individual firm will be able to develop all solutions independently so building up an industry ecosystem will be the only approach to IoT development.Not only does IoT encompass wide-ranging technologies but it also brings never-before-seen applications across different fields. IT products used to focus on consumer devices. With the advent of the smart era, IoT is being put to use in automotive systems, transportation, warehousing, logistics, retail, energy, healthcare and manufacturing. Each of these areas imposes its own system requirements and industry-specific know-how is imperative in order to develop the ideal solution. This is the reason why AMobile Intelligent joins forces with MediaTek, Arbor, Honeywell, Wistron, and Konka Group to form close partnerships, through which AMobile Intelligent will be able to integrate professional expertise of different fields and thereby optimize IoT platforms for customers.Enabling optimal energy efficiency and system performance, NB-IoT holds promising potential for widespread applicationsTo build the ideal architecture, every element of the system needs to be optimized. Communication technologies have reached maturity. In fact, network bandwidth and performance today is already too powerful for applications that are not bandwidth-hungry and data-intensive but include a large number of nodes. For this type of IoT applications, NB-IoT is a suitable communication standard. According to Garry Ganis, general manager, Arbor Technology, Australia, among LPWAN technologies for IoT connectivity, aside from NB-IoT, LoRa is also one of the communication standards that catch market attention. NB-IoT enables better transmission performance compared to LoRa but the two standards have distinctive characteristics and are suitable for applications in different fields. LoRa will be used in equipment condition monitoring and energy management, such as predictive diagnostics of end devices in factories and new-generation super-capacitor uninterruptible power supplies (UPS). NB-IoT will mainly be used in sensors, smart meters, asset tracking, smart parking and smart agriculture.Ganis further pointed out NB-IoT has been successfully applied for asset tracking with many use cases in smart grid, gardening, water management and sharing economy. Featuring simple design and installation, NB-IoT builds a network system and expands the area where data can be collected so that users across different fields can quickly develop an IoT architecture suited to their needs.Elaborating on what Ganis was talking about, Hector Lin, executive vice president, AMobile Intelligent, noted system integrators have been putting NB-IoT to use in different application scenarios based on NB-IoT's unique features. For example, IoT systems are used in smart agriculture to monitor and control pH level, humidity and lighting in farm environments. A large number of sensors are used to detect vacant parking spaces in parking lots, monitor shelf space at warehouses and check air quality in cities. Achieving a low power consumption and deep signal penetration, NB-IoT is an ideal choice to connect the network of sensors.AMobile Intelligent offers a spectrum of value-added services to meet different application requirements and customer needs, including private label service, semi-custom design and ADMS manufacturing model. Private label service encompasses customization of software, button colors and brand logo. For semi-custom design, AMobile Intelligent provides the internal motherboard design and customers decide the casing material and style as well as the internal sensors. ADMS manufacturing includes OEM and ODM service models, wherein AMobile Intelligent has modularized the essential components such as the battery, CPU, RF device, sensor and power supply to enable quick assembly and shorten time-to-market to meet customer demands.AMobile Intelligent products have been put to use in a variety of systems across different fields. With advances in technologies and increases in applications, IoT architectures continue to evolve, among which edge computing and distributed processing are the most important trends in recent years. According to Joey Yeh, product sales manager, AMobile Intelligent, with edge computing, the data collected at the bottom layer of the IoT model can first be consolidated, filtered, selected and processed before being sent to the upper cloud layer. Edge computing can reduce bandwidth usage at the communication layer and ease computational load at the upper system layer, thereby boosting overall performance.Building an industry ecosystem, AMobile Intelligent strengthens partnershipsIn addition to its own executives, AMobile Intelligent also invited leaders of its key partner firms, including MediaTek and Honeywell, to speak about IoT technological trends at the forum. According to MediaTek product manager Jo Wang, market research reports indicate 150 million NB-IoT devices will be shipped by 2020, representing 50% of the IoT market. MediaTek also offers highly-integrated NB-IoT solutions to help customers build high-performance IoT products. Honeywell BD Director Kai Figwer gave an in-depth look into sensor technologies used in IoT. Although sensor technologies have matured and are widely used in different application scenarios, they will have to further evolve to keep up with burgeoning applications in different industries arising from advancing IoT development. Not only do sensors have to be more precise and stable but they also need to have communication capabilities. In view of the fact that NB-IoT will be an important communication standard going forward, Honeywell is fully prepared for NB-IoT opportunities.With the history of IoT development, worldwide industries have gained sufficient understanding of IoT and are beginning to engage IoT technologies in their operations. As everything becomes connected, NB-IoT, featuring low energy consumption, easy development, deep signal penetration and long transmission range, will rise to be the main communication standard used in various types of sensors and smart meters. In response to emerging market demand for NB-IoT solutions, AMobile Intelligent offers a complete portfolio of products and services to help customers address design and manufacturing needs so as to speed up time-to-market and capture massive IoT opportunities.At AMobile Solution Forum, Hector Lin, executive vice president, AMobile Intelligent, noted NB-IoT is an ideal choice to connect the network of sensors.NB-IoT will be a communication standard going forward, Honeywell BD Director Kai Figwer said.