Leading semiconductor test equipment supplier Advantest Corporation's (TSE: 6857) VOICE 2017 Developer Conference this past May marked the event entering its second decade with 113 technical breakout sessions, two Partners' Expos, 29 technology kiosks and multiple networking opportunities for members of the semiconductor test industry.This year's 11th edition featured dual sessions on May 16-17 in Palm Springs, Calif., and on May 26 in Shanghai, China, where the event had been held once before. Altogether, more than 450 people attended the events, over half of whom represented Advantest customers and partners.At the US event, there were 88 technical presentations while the China conference had 25 papers. Forty-five% of the papers in Palm Springs and 60% in Shanghai were either written or co-authored by customers. In total, VOICE 2017 featured technical papers from 22 companies representing 12 countries. The papers were reviewed by a technical committee that included 41 Advantest customers from 19 companies.VOICE is made possible by the organizational work of a Steering Committee, made up of volunteer representatives from Advantest and its customers, and the support of event sponsors, which reached a new high of 25 companies this year including 10 new sponsors. Industry organizations including SEMI, the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA), VLSIresearch, IC Insights and IHS also returned to support VOICE in 2017.Best paper awardsAt each VOICE conference, attendees vote to select the best technical presentations. This year, VOICE went paperless with all voting and feedback done with the mobile app. At the US event, Edwin Lowery, Shiyang Deng and Aether Lee, all from Advantest, won for their paper on "Instrument Synchronization in SmarTest 8: RF to MX to DC to Digital." In China, Zhaoyang Wang of NXP and co-authors Lydia Jiang, Kai Kang, Qiannan Ren and Peng Wang from Advantest were recognized for their presentation on "Testing Automotive Airbag System Devices on the V93000."VOICE 2018VOICE 2018 will take place in the US and Taiwan; watch for more details coming soon at https://voice.advantest.com.
Digital transformation in manufacturing is one of the key topics for the upgrading and transformation of Taiwan industries. It also shows new types of business models are emerging and leveraging the disruptive technologies. While industry 4.0 being welcomed overwhelmingly by the governments around the globe such as "Made In China 2025" and "Internet Plus", the enterprises learn to quickly response to the market using the powerful features of product lifecycle management (PLM) software and advanced IT technology for analyzing the data gathered by smart sensors.Faced with the obstacles to Taiwan's continued industrial development, the supply chains and ecosystems are providing the quick adjustment for introducing end products, making a quick grab for market share or return on investment because there is an urgent need for many companies.However, building the culture of digitalization in various organizations are not easy tasks. The current digitalization investments from enterprise may not reflect the real revenue growth yet. Companies worry more about how things going for the Industry 4.0 development. In this interview, we invite Mr. Leo Liang, Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Greater China, Siemens PLM Software, to talk about his observation and viewpoints of smart manufacturing.The disruptive innovations can profoundly affect the functioning of existing industries by changing company's value chains. And the Internet of Things (IoT) technology is one of the major driving forces to enable innovation breaking the information barriers between supply chains and ecosystems. Leo highlights, lower cost manufacturing is no longer the only thing. The recent focus shifts in thinking- of understanding consumers' needs. Through the innovative PLM software systems, it transforms the needs to a realistic product and enables the power for change. Uber, AirBnB and several business innovations like mobile payment services have uncovered many good examples for great benefits in different business sectors.Siemens PLM Software provides complete product portfolios to demonstrate real values of digital transformation through Digital Twin. Digital Twin is not only a tool set of computer simulation models that provide the means to design, validate and optimize products in the virtual world. Today, Leo talks continuously, Digital Twin expands to manufacturing process or production facility. These technologies use data from sensors that are installed on physical objects to represent their real time status, working condition or position to help fabricating the new production lines to provide the flexibility for achieving the goal of smart manufacturing.MindSphere industrial clouds fulfill the needs of enterpriseAdvances in IT technologies of Siemens PLM Software have made it possible to broaden the scope of the Digital Twin to include many more capabilities, information, inputs and outputs from new product initiatives to flexible factory design. For strengthening enterprises new product development to the market much faster than ever, Siemens build MindSphere, an open IoT operating system (PaaS) and cloud infrastructure for industry. The large volumes of data generated during the production process in the Manufacturing Execution System (MES) level by IoT sensors or legacy systems need to be saved, and analyzed in real time and turned big data into smart data. And the open architecture will allow for a whole new dimension of services leveraging cloud solutions to capture process parameters, machine conditions and presented the statistical results using smartphone. This contributes to improved asset management and energy efficiency through data analysis and simulation.Meanwhile, combining with end products and delivering to end users, it will help to track real response of consumers. The collected information will link to MindSphere cloud platforms to make product design, manufacturing process improvement and exploring better use cases as a Closed Loop Manufacturing system for further increasing productivity, flexibility and shorter times to market.MindSphere enables manufacturing companies to streamline and digitalize their entire business process through the cloud technology, seamlessly integrating with the systems to develop important decision. Gathering real time manufacturing parameters to monitor the details of each process can begin at any point in the factory, from product design to service, and can extend digitalization gradually, depending on current needs of companies. MindSphere allows analyzing production assets and products as they perform and providing the insights into the entire value chain for continuous optimization. This will help customers of Siemens PLM Software to develop consistent data models and streamline the manufacturing process, product development and shorten the time to market.Taking the machinery maintenance as an effective ROI example, downtime is a serious threat to any manufacturing business. Through MindSphere cloud services, maintenance managers take preventive measures before crises occur in order to maintain machine tool and spare parts availability, Leo adds. It will turn passive maintenance to preventive maintenance strategy and gain results showing in financial reports.Acquiring Mentor Graphics to extend product offerings for servicing more industriesTo further accelerate the innovation for Siemens' customers and help them find the paths to digital transformation to drive production efficiencies and optimize the operation of their products in the markets, Siemens has made a significant move into the software space with acquisitions including UGS, LMS, Camstar, Polarion, and CD-adapco in the past few years. With recent acquisition of Mentor Graphics, Siemens will continue its proven paths of new technology into the industry's product lifecycle management software suite. Mentor Graphics is a leading EDA solution provider with well established electronics IC, systems design, simulation and printed circuit board manufacturing solutions. The combination provides mechanical, thermal, electronic and embedded software tools to the companies that develop products and strengthen the core competence.Comparing with other industries within the sectors including financial, insurance and retail services, manufacturing industry has more challenges while going digital transformation. Most of original traditional solutions for factories are not fully digital offerings. Even today, collecting control information of some legacy systems or machinery is still difficult to get. The industry shifts are creating new business models and moving from delivering a product to delivering smart, connected products as a service to customers. This trends of connected products and connected customers help fuel innovation. And Siemens PLM Software provides complete solutions and tool sets to work with customers to push toward digitalization of all aspects of manufacturing.Leo also highly suggests enterprises continuously to develop new products with new ideas leveraging the cloud technology for fast responding user's versatile tastes and preferences. The momentum needs to maintain both in manufacturing process and product design.With Siemens PLM Software solutions, manufacturing companies have better insight into every process's performance. All the software tool sets and product portfolio of Siemens offerings are proven and integrated practices in Siemens factories. This will benefit Siemens's customers bridging the gap to digital transformation and save the time for developing time-to-market products.Leo Liang, Siemens PLM Software Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Greater China, outlines the digitalization challenges for enterprises
Indium Corporation has released Indium11.8HF-SPR (T5-MC) Solder Paste - a new air and nitrogen reflow, no-clean, Pb-free solder paste designed to meet the fine feature printing requirements of mobile manufacturers.Indium11.8HF-SPR specifically addresses the move toward type 5 powder. This new solder paste delivers unprecedented stencil print transfer efficiency on the broadest range of processes, while maintaining industry-leading reflow performance.Indium11.8HF-SPR benefits:- Halogen-free per IEC 61249-2-21 test method EN14582- High-transfer efficiency through small apertures (≤ 0.66AR)- Long stencil life (>12 hours)- Eliminates hot and cold slump to inhibit bridging and solder beading defects- Avoids the potential for HIP and graping defects with a unique oxidation barrierIndium Corporation is a premier materials manufacturer and supplier to the global electronics, semiconductor, thin-film, and thermal management markets. Products include solders and fluxes; brazes; thermal interface materials; sputtering targets; indium, gallium, germanium, and tin metals and inorganic compounds; and NanoFoil. Founded in 1934, Indium has global technical support and factories located in China, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the USA.For more information about Indium Corporation, visit www.indium.comIndium Corporation.
Microsemi Corporation (Nasdaq: MSCC), a leading provider of semiconductor solutions differentiated by power, security, reliability and performance, announced the availability of its Switchtec PAX advanced fabric Gen3 PCIe switch providing high-performance fabric connectivity for scalable, multi-host systems and just a bunch of flash (JBOF) supporting single root input/output (I/O) virtualization (SR-IOV), NVMe and multi-function endpoints. The new device will be showcased in Microsemi's booth #213 at the Flash Memory Summit Aug. 8-10, 2017.Hyperconverged systems are evolving towards composable/disaggregated infrastructures (C/DI) such as rack scale architecture to meet the rapidly changing demands on resources and storage capacity of next-generation applications. PAX advanced fabric PCIe switches provide a scalable, low latency and cost-effective solution to the disaggregation of computing, networking, graphics processing units (GPUs) and storage resources. These PAX PCIe switches, which are flexibly interconnected with configurable high-speed fabric links, virtualize PCIe domains and SR-IOV endpoints. System development is simplified through a fabric application programming interface (API) and the ability to utilize off-the-shelf NVMe host drivers, significantly reducing time-to-market for complex multi-host systems."As we work closely with industry leaders, it became clear there's demand for Microsemi to expand our PCIe switch portfolio to support next-generation disaggregated architectures," said Derek Dicker, vice president and business unit manager for performance storage at Microsemi. "Our PAX advanced fabric PCIe switch is pin-compatible to our PSX storage and PFX fanout PCIe switches, providing our customers a simple upgrade path to building SR-IOV-enabled and composable disaggregated systems while supporting our ability to gain market share."According to market research firm IDC, the total worldwide addressable opportunity for vendors with C/DI is US$34.5 billion in 2017. The firm also expects this opportunity will grow at a modest compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.4% and reach US$45 billion in 2020. Microsemi's Switchtec PAX advanced fabric PCIe switch is well-aligned to these growth trends, as it enables customers to leverage the device for the development of next-generation C/DIs.Microsemi's Switchtec PAX family comprises switches from 96 lanes to 24 lanes, providing:- High-performance PCIe fabric connectivity overcoming the limitations of the PCIe Specification for rack scale multi-host systems- Multi-host sharing of SR-IOV and multifunction endpoints- Virtualization of PCIe domains and SR-IOV NVMe solid state drives (SSDs)- Software development kit (SDK) for virtualization of other SR-IOV endpoints, and for enclosure management- The most flexible port bifurcation in the industry, from x2 to x16 lanes per port- The highest port density, with up to 48 ports- Advanced error reporting- Error containment for surprise-plug and unplug to prevent system crashes- Advanced diagnostics and debug features to identify, diagnose and fix problems- Separate Refclk Independent SSC (SRIS) for cabled PCIe and lower cost system designsProduct AvailabilityMicrosemi's Switchtec PAX advanced fabric PCIe switches are sampling now to lead customers. For more information, visit https://www.microsemi.com/products/storage/switchtec-pcie-storage-switches/switchtec-pcie-advanced-fabric-switches or contact sales.support@microsemi.com.
Fifth-generation wireless technology (5G) is attracting a lot of public attention. These industrial communication standards are under developing and preparing to launch for the public services from 2020. Japan, China, Korea and Taiwan governments set several 5G action plans aiming to gain the leadership in the deployment of 5G networks. There are some substantial investments in new infrastructure and testing results show the possibility to provide 5G services earlier in some cities.The business opportunity for 5G is massively related to Internet of Things (IoT), an evolution that will take the internet applications into new territories including self-driving vehicles, robotics, biomedical medicine, automated factories, smart cities and the development of massive sensor networks in various public services. It will speed up the velocity to change our daily life and gain benefits from offering convenience in the modern cities.In the other hand, it has the critical importance of electromagnetic (EM) field interactions in human body recently. The new developed type of medicine to use specific frequencies modulate cellular function to restore or maintain health been recognized. The development of biomedical electronics and advanced medical solutions will be the next big steps for Taiwan technology industries.Nearly all of these wireless technologies put radio frequency energy right on the human body, increasing exposure to radio waves among us. The interaction between human and electromagnetic fields have been highly considered by research institutes and technology industries. Auden Techno Corp and IEEE EMC Taipei Chapter join together to host the event named "Next generation smart life with Bio-electromagnetics and advanced telecommunication technology forum" at Evergreen International Convention Center of Chang Yung-Fa Charity Foundation on July 6th 2017, featuring a variety of technology sessions and various afternoon sessions with three major tracks. This is also the second consecutive year that both organizations to host this event together.The morning sessions with keynote speeches covering several main themes of IoT education program, Electromagnetic measurement system for 5G millimeter wave frequency bands, Bioelectronic medicine for seizure treatments and 5G massive MIMO design and verification.Auden Techno Corp, founded 1981, provides long time R&D services to help customers to build and manufacture antenna systems to fit the requirements of mobile communications, automotive electronics, smart home and industrial applications. For providing better service to the customers with complete front-end design, pre-development testing and product authentication, Auden invests several compliance testing laboratories cross Taiwan straits including the first SAR (specific absorption rate) testing Lab in Taiwan. By actively leveraging the testing lab efforts and RF technology core strength, Auden tries to help Taiwan ICT industry to shorten the gap to develop bioelectronics medical devices aiming the professional medical solutions especially the business opportunities of FDA regulated Class 3 medical devices.NTU advanced IoT education programs cultivate young talentsThe keynote speech of Professor Ruey-Beei Wu is focus on the education programs for cultivating the young talents aiming IoT and cloud solutions. Professor Wu served as the President of the Institute for Information Industry (III), Taiwan government funded software technology research and development institutes. He is very familiar with Taiwan ICT industries. His presentation starts from the technology trends and current stage of IoT development. While market research revealing smart services as a key success factor of IoT innovation, he highlights the importance of cultivating cross-domain experience for Taiwan young talents. And it is the sure pursuit for the universities to enable industrial collaboration and offer training programs for the innovative talents.As changing application landscape makes it vital for the IoT services to continuously evolve and pursue greater achievements through innovation and education. According to the research reports, the big five IoT applications are manufacturing, healthcare, retail, energy and transportation. Wu points the smart manufacturing services will have the best opportunity in Taiwan. He started to design IoT education programs in the Department of Electrical Engineering of National Taiwan University (NTU) since 2016. This cornerstone program includes the 42-hour classes for introducing of IoT industry and the last 12 hours for term report and corporative project demonstration. In the program, there is one 12-hour session called hands-on design involving different creative IoT ideas and design implementation. The students use open source software and some simple hardware development kits to build a working system such as car parking automatic billing service. Those creative ideas mostly come up with their own experiences in everyday life. The final term report session is even more excitements for the students to compete and learn by demonstrating the design implementation. Through this program, students could learn IoT software programming, web interface and technology to access sensors making them become to be a creator or innovator in IoT, not just a simply consumer, Wu highlighted.In 2017, the new courses with development of IoT capstone programs, Professor Wu kicks off on special project program to let students to choose the various topics with more fun in developing new system concepts and information infrastructures. These advanced IoT education programs have been widely recognized and try to set cooperative plans to integrate with high school summer camps or experimental programs. It starts from small ideas of everyday living environment and gains the experience to show students for developing the specific services to solve the specific problems. These programs will also help the next emerging technology development like artificial intelligence or immersive reality.Upbeat SAR testing systems for 5G frequency bandsThe 5G mobile device RF exposure and equipment authorization requirements under 6 GHz frequency bands have under developed in FCC and IEEE. Especially the standards to provide additional guidance for SAR measurements that addresses devices operating in the sub-6 GHz range and how RF exposure compliance should be reported and the availability of testing systems are all urged to kow by industries and technology community. The chipset makers, system design houses are introducing different implementation to try to take lead in the industry. The standards, regulated compliance, testing instrument are the key to verify the design they have.Professor Niels Kuster founded IT IS Foundation and Schmid & Partner Engineering AG(SPEAG). Both organizations have developed instrumentation, methods, and procedures for international standards to ensure that SAR measurement standards are implemented for evaluating compliance of wireless products with electromagnetic exposure guidelines.Auden cooperated with SPEAG for 20 years and represented in Taiwan and China market to introduce SPEAG series testing instruments or systems including cSAR3D, EM Phantom, DAK, TDS and Sim4Life systems.The keynote speech of Professor Kuster gets participants' attentions on the topic named "Novel Electromagnetic System for Demonstration of Compliance of 5G Millimeter Wave Near-Field Sources with Safety Guidelines". His presentation is trying to demonstrate the results for audiences to show recent development of electromagnetic systems for measuring SAR and power density in millimeter wave (MM wave) environments.Professor Kuster highlights the status of current SPEAG systems measure SAR to 10GHz. Using the existing design of E-field probe and maintaining the same Phantom surface is in the SPEAG systems. But the calibration system needs to be redesigned for fitting the new requirements. The draft proposal sent to FCC and had early discussion. It will have a draft to be released in October 2017.The SAR testing systems with frequency bands between 10 to 110 Ghz have started to design and evaluate in SPEAG. The calibration systems and E-field probes will have brand new concept to implement. And the simulation algorithm and testing optimization is also addressed and good results in the beginning stage. The schedule to release the draft will be the end of 2017.There are several cool topics in the forum to get attentions. Professor Jyh-Yih Hsu, National Chung-Hsing University - Department of Applied Economics, talks the topic of exploring business models in the development of IoT and big data analytics. His speech provides the unique angle of Taiwan manufacturing service providers strengthening in the semi-automation management scope and establishment of production know-how in various sectors. He observes the unique position of Taiwan manufacturing with the capability of flexible and adaptive manufacturing process to win the orders from international brands.In the MIMO antenna design session, Mr. Kin-Lu Wong, Professor of NSYSU Antenna Lab, presented the testing results of various antenna design for mobile devices in the sub-6 GHz spectrum bands. His presentation shows ways to more efficiently access the radio spectrum over the design with 4 or even 8 to 12 antennas in the new smartphone models or other mobile devices.The motivation behind his study is the exponential growth in wireless applications. The effective bandwidth will need to reach at least 2 Gbps for improving the user's experience in the 5G era. The momentum in designing, testing and implementing these various kinds of systems will be continuing to take bold steps within the coming years. Although the standards still under associating with different organizations, it might not be that far away because some companies are talking they will have 5G systems up and running by 2020. We will follow these trends and continue to see the new things to change our everyday life in the future.Afternoon session hosting three parallel tracks to provide further viewpointsThere are three parallel tracks and total 18 discussed topics to choose from participants in the afternoon sessions. In the 5G communication track, Professor Cheng-Nan Chiu, Communications Engineering Department of Yuan Ze University, as a moderator to introduce speakers to give speech covering topics of 5G technology roadmaps, measurement methods, antenna applications from LTE-M to NB (Narrow Band) IOT & LPWAN Technology. Professor Niels Kuster also gives another presentation named "Combined HPC-enabled computational platform with an advanced scanning system for evaluating performance and EMC in the near- and far-field of 5G Millimeter Wave Transmitters.In the Biomedical Application and Electromagnetic track, the moderator JianJang Huang, professor of Communications Engineering Department, Yuan Ze University, invites speakers from Taiwan National Health Research Institutes to address topics of Application and Safety test of Electrical Stimulator, Aesthetic Medicine and Phased array dipole antenna for cancer treatment modality. Dr. Erdem Ofli, Product Head (IT'IS Foundation and ZMT) also give his speech of "Simulation Platform and Validated Hardware Solutions for Active Implant MRI Safety Assessment According to ISO/TS10974".The IoT and application track, hosted by Professor Ding-Bing Lin, invites speakers from ITRI, Institute for Information Industry and UL. The topics include IoT in mass transportation systems, THREAD and IoT development, big data analytics and platform. The participants have the chance to get to know the trends of IoT and digitalization development of different industries.With the share the viewpoints of invited talented speakers and professors, this forum is trying to provide the technology development of 5G, Bio medical and electromagnetic. And the hottest topic of IoT development to help Taiwan technology industries and research institutes to explore the further opportunities of Taiwan.Prof. Dr. Ding-Bing Lin, the Chairman of IEEE Taipei Chapter EMC SocietyDr. Yu-Bin Chang, the Chairman of Auden Techno. Corp.Auden bridging electromagnetic development and IoT solutions
Clientron Corp., a world leading provider of POS systems, announced it will be displaying its full range of POS product innovations to comply with multi-payment solutions and various POS peripherals at RetailNOW 2017, the largest annual gathering of the POS Ecosystem, from grocery and hospitality to retail and other specialties, which will take place on Aug. 7-8.During this show, Clientron will present the innovative Duo650, which is distinguished from common POS by featuring two upright touch displays bonded back-to-back to enhance the experience of interaction between consumers and clerks. The touch control function on the customer display also enables customers to perform some operations such as seat selection at movie theaters or airport check-in counters. Furthermore, stores can use the displays for advertisements to boost their return.Another focus of the show will be Clientron's all new multi-functional Bello series featuring high integration with 12" / 15" / 15.6" touch screen options, supporting dual customer displays as well as a built-in NFC smart card reader with EMV L1/ L2 for user experience enhancement. Bello just won the"Taiwan Excellence Award 2017" this year for its innovation and the best quality design, which makes it stand out from numerous products as the best choice for POS applications.In addition, Clientron will showcase its butterfly light-weight POS terminal Wing650 with a flexible dual-hinge stand; the mainstream Ares650 and the high performance Ares756 powered by the Intel Skylake Core i3/i5/i7 quad-core processors with an advanced ultra-slim system design. Moreover, we will be exhibiting the most economical POS terminal PT3200, which is equipped with an Intel power efficient quad-core processor to offer a fanless system with a long life span that carries an affordable price tag. Also at this event, a variety of extended POS peripherals will be exhibited."Seizing the booming opportunity for multi-payment solutions, Clientron delivers flexible integrated POS systems and customer-centric design services that support retailers to meet the ever-changing demands of their customers and improve overall business operation," said Kelly Wu, President & CEO of Clientron Corp.To know more about Clientron's design, manufacturing capabilities and services, please visit Clientron at booth #740, Paris Las Vegas. Clientron website: www.clientron.comClientron to show its all new POS terminals at RetailNOW 2017
Gorilla Technology, a global provider of video intelligence and IoT technology, today announced the launch of a range of cloud-based solutions within a single platform enabling restauranteurs to easily manage store operations. With Gorilla's technology, the restaurant business can improve in-store communication, efficiencies and customer satisfaction through real-time data analytics extracted from smart signage, staff management systems, and video surveillance feeds.At the RLPSA Conference, Gorilla will be demonstrating its latest developments and implementations to the restaurant business:- Smart RetailSeamlessly manage in-store analytics extracted from video feeds, advertising content to deliver personalized experiences with analysis of customer behavior, feedback collection, traffic and people flow in queuing area.- Attendance Management and Mobile LearningCentralized management system to effectively track and enable physical and remote clock-ins/out hours with two-factor authentication and accurately identify authorized staff in a secure environment. Deliver training remotely using mobile learning solution to keep staff informed and up-to-date on company announcements or news.- Smart SurveillanceGroundbreaking real-time analytics technology for asset protection to monitor, track, analyze, perform watch lists for VIPs or unwelcome guests, intrusion detection in restricted areas, and alert staff to guard against loss and shrinkage."Gorilla offers all-in-one solution of in-store analytics, staff management, and video surveillance to help restaurant owners manage every aspect of their business with less manual effort, which allows them to focus on increasing profitability and catering to guests,"said Dr. Spincer Koh, CEO, Gorilla Technology.Visit Gorilla Technology at the Annual RLSPA Conference at the M Resort, Booth#100 in Las Vegas from July 31 to Aug 01 to learn more about the restaurant management solution.About Gorilla TechnologyGorilla Technology, a privately held company established in 2000, is a global leader in video intelligence and IoT technology. It develops a wide range of video-centric and content management applications including smart retail, smart school, smart enterprise, smart surveillance, and broadcast media. With VeMo technology, Gorilla applies its machine learning and deep learning algorithms, enabling automation of digital streams processing and comprehensive video analytics to create value-added services for expanding business opportunities.Gorilla's video intelligence solution transforms the restaurant business with innovative technology.
According to WHO statistics, air pollution causes an alarming mortality rate of two million premature deaths a year around the world. Gaseous pollutants and particulate pollutants are the main sources of air pollution. Gaseous pollutants generally include volatile chemical contaminants or malodorous substances that could lead to cancer. Particulate pollutants are atmospheric particulate matter (PM) and those that are 2.5 microns in diameter and less are especially harmful as they can penetrate into alveoli and through vascular walls into people's blood circulatory system, jeopardizing the respiratory, cardiovascular, and nervous systems.An observation of Google Trends shows the number of searches for air purifiers in Taiwan has grown a whopping 270% in the period from 2015 to 2017, an indication that people in Taiwan are placing increasing importance on air quality. In light of this, CHD Tech, founded in 2005, is leveraging its extensive experiences in building semiconductor clean rooms accumulated over the years to craft air quality management solutions in the hope of effectively eliminating invisible health hazards including chemical contaminants (e.g. formaldehyde) and PM.Optimal air filtering performance is achieved along with meticulous spatial designNicholas Su, executive assistant to general manager, CHD Tech, indicated clean room project budgets generally start from tens of millions of NT dollars and could run up to NT$100 million. Business owners usually retain 10% of the amount as final payment after CHD Tech's project passes closing inspections including stringent acceptance checks on leakage, cleanness, and other criteria. The technological know-hows in building clean rooms are similar to those for making non-industrial air purifiers so CHD Tech uses the same foundry-grade supplies to craft total air quality solutions that rise above conventional home appliances. Not just selling air purifiers or ventilation systems, CHD Tech also carefully designs the details such as equipment installation and return air path and uses professional instruments to conduct on-site checks and provide customers complete air quality inspection reports.CHD Tech's air solutions mainly comprise AP-550 air purifier and AW-450 fresh air system, respectively handling critical internal and external circulation, said Su.AP-550 is designed with a HEPA filter that spreads out to 16.9 meters in length, equivalent to the height of a six-story building, and an 8.8 square meter area, five times that of a common air purifier on the market. More importantly, AP-550 achieves airtight seal and continuous filtration with its aluminum frame, double-sided airtight design, and mesh screen, compared to conventional products that generally use paper frames without airtight design and therefore deliver less-than-optimal filtration effects due to leakage.In addition to the HEPA filter, AP-550 comes with two extra filters??an activated carbon filter and a pre-filter. In particular, the activated carbon filter weighing 1.7 kg absorbs odorous substances with granular activated carbon and formaldehyde with aluminum oxide and zeolite, significantly removing harmful chemicals. On the other hand, most products available on the market only have a small amount of activated carbon powder on non-woven fabric and therefore can hardly generate comparable filtering effects due to the minimum number of absorption pores. It should also be noted that AP-550 is designed with laminar air flow, different from the turbulent air flow of conventional models, so with its air outlet positioned at the height of 123cm, it can ensure clean air in the layer where people breathe. Furthermore, by separating the air paths of the upper air outlet and the lower air intake, AP-550 enables optimal interior circulation so users can enjoy a clean and healthy surrounding whether standing, sitting or lying down.AW-450, drawn from the concept of a clean room make-up air unit (MAU), purifies outdoor air using industry-leading air washer technology to first filter out water-soluble chemical contaminants and then eliminating non-water-soluble pollutants such as PM with a HEPA filter and sends clean air to the indoor environment. One may be curious about whether a ventilation system functions the same as a heat exchanger in theory. A heat exchanger maintains a stable temperature through heat transfer without filtering out bacteria or PM and thus is quite different from a ventilation system, explained Su.Ventilation systems with laminar air flow and air washer achieve powerful filtration of pollutantsPutting the combination of AW-450 and AP-550 to use will deliver the double benefits of cleansed outdoor air and repurified indoor air, eliminating over 90% of PM and over 80% of chemical contaminants in the air.Su further pointed out CHD Tech also provides accessory units such as the SAR900 fan filter unit available with different duct configurations to help with indoor air purification or outdoor air cleansing. CHD Tech is also introducing the AP-204 PM air purifier suitable for a 23 square meter indoor space (calculated based on the rate of 4 air changes per hour), priced at a little more than NT$10,000, to meet the air purification needs of small areas. Despite its compact size compared to AP-550, AP-204 also comes with a HEPA filter enabling over 90% PM removal and a far superior CP ratio compared to other air purifiers on the market.CHD Tech is accumulating use cases of its air solutions. One example is the use of CHD Tech's AP-550 air purifier in the laboratory of the Department of Engineering Science and Ocean Engineering, National Taiwan University. Experiments in the lab generate a significant amount of ceramic dust over time which contains harmful substances potentially causing cancer, such as lead. This prompted the institution to search for industry or clean room class air purifiers in the hope of effectively reducing PM10/2.5/1.0 particles. Upon careful evaluations, CHD Tech's AP-550 was selected.According to measurements obtained using an Aerocet 831 aerosol mass monitor, the concentrations of PM2.5 and PM10 in the lab were respectively 126?gg/m3 and 147?gg/m3 before the use of AP-550, at least two times higher than the legal limit (35?gg/m3). After putting AP-550 to use, Aerocet 831 readings taken at the air outlet showed zero PM2.5 and PM10 concentration, an amazing 100% removal rate.A second success story happened at the Taoyuan Shulin Elementary School. Neighboring petrochemical factories in the Guanyin Industrial Park on three sides, the school has long been situated in an environment full of industrial air pollution. Caring for the health of the students and teachers, CHD Tech decided to donate several units of AW-450 and AP-550 to the school to help cope with the different requirements of outdoor ventilation and indoor circulation. On-site measurements at the school using a HAL-HPC300 handheld particle counter and an aeroQUAL Series 200 formaldehyde gas monitor showed an indoor formaldehyde concentration of 0.42ppm, 4.25 times higher than the legal limit (0.08ppm), indicating a dire need for improvement. With the AW-450 and AP-550 units in operation, formaldehyde concentration dropped to 0.02ppm, a removal rate of 95.24%.One more application scenario of AP-550 was in a soap factory of a biotechnology company, where the soap scraping operation causes dust to rise in the air, resulting in a constantly high PM2.5 concentration. A measurement taken by CHD Tech at the site indicated a concentration level of 93?gg/m3. The factory then introduced AP-550 and thereby successfully reduced PM2.5 concentration by over 91% to 8?gg/m3, an experience that others can draw from.CHD Tech now mainly relies on its sales team along with word-of-mouth marketing to promote its air quality management business and plans to incorporate online marketing in the future to strengthen its expansion, commented Su. Target markets will include hospitals, clinics, postpartum care centers, chemistry labs or pharmaceutical labs where concentrations of PM or harmful chemicals are generally higher and therefore there is a greater need for air purification.AP-550 air purifierAP-550 air purifier
Implementation of cloud infrastructure is occurring at a phenomenal rate, outpacing Moore's Law. Annual growth is believed to be 30x and as much 100x in some cases. In order to keep up, cloud data centers are having to scale out massively, with hundreds, or even thousands of servers becoming a common sight.At this scale, networking becomes a serious challenge. More and more switches are required, thereby increasing capital costs, as well as management complexity. To tackle the rising expense issues, network disaggregation has become an increasingly popular approach. By separating the switch hardware from the software that runs on it, vendor lock-in is reduced or even eliminated. OEM hardware could be used with software developed in-house, or from third party vendors, so that cost savings can be realized.Though network disaggregation has tackled the immediate problem of hefty capital expenditures, it must be recognized that operating expenditures are still high. The number of managed switches basically stays the same. To reduce operating costs, the issue of network complexity has to also be tackled.Network DisaggregationAlmost every application we use today, whether at home or in the work environment, connects to the cloud in some way. Our email providers, mobile apps, company websites, virtualized desktops and servers, all run on servers in the cloud.For these cloud service providers, this incredible growth has been both a blessing and a challenge. As demand increases, Moore's law has struggled to keep up. Scaling data centers today involves scaling out – buying more compute and storage capacity, and subsequently investing in the networking to connect it all. The cost and complexity of managing everything can quickly add up.Until recently, networking hardware and software had often been tied together. Buying a switch, router or firewall from one vendor would require you to run their software on it as well. Larger cloud service providers saw an opportunity. These players often had no shortage of skilled software engineers. At the massive scales they ran at, they found that buying commodity networking hardware and then running their own software on it would save them a great deal in terms of Capex.This disaggregation of the software from the hardware may have been financially attractive, however it did nothing to address the complexity of the network infrastructure. There was still a great deal of room to optimize further.802.1BRToday's cloud data centers rely on a layered architecture, often in a fat-tree or leaf-spine structural arrangement. Rows of racks, each with top-of-rack (ToR) switches, are then connected to upstream switches on the network spine. The ToR switches are, in fact, performing simple aggregation of network traffic. Using relatively complex, energy consuming switches for this task results in a significant capital expense, as well as management costs and no shortage of headaches.Through the port extension approach, outlined within the IEEE 802.1BR standard, the aim has been to streamline this architecture. By replacing ToR switches with port extenders, port connectivity is extended directly from the rack to the upstream. Management is consolidated to the fewer number of switches which are located at the upper layer network spine, eliminating the dozens or possibly hundreds of switches at the rack level.The reduction in switch management complexity of the port extender approach has been widely recognized, and various network switches on the market now comply with the 802.1BR standard. However, not all the benefits of this standard have actually been realized.The Next Step in Network DisaggregationThough many of the port extenders on the market today fulfill 802.1BR functionality, they do so using legacy components. Instead of being optimized for 802.1BR itself, they rely on traditional switches. This, as a consequence impacts upon the potential cost and power benefits that the new architecture offers.Designed from the ground up for 802.1BR, Marvell's Passive Intelligent Port Extender (PIPE) offering is specifically optimized for this architecture. PIPE is interoperable with 802.1BR compliant upstream bridge switches from all the industry's leading OEMs. It enables fan-less, cost efficient port extenders to be deployed, which thereby provide upfront savings as well as ongoing operational savings for cloud data centers. Power consumption is lowered and switch management complexity is reduced by an order of magnitudeThe first wave in network disaggregation was separating switch software from the hardware that it ran on. 802.1BR's port extender architecture is bringing about the second wave, where ports are decoupled from the switches which manage them. The modular approach to networking discussed here will result in lower costs, reduced energy consumption and greatly simplified network management.
Torex Semiconductor has enhanced the XD6121/XD6122/XD6123/XD6124 series of voltage detectors for in-vehicle applications. Featuring a watchdog function based on a CMOS process, these detectors achieve high accuracy and a low quiescent current.The XD6121/XD6122/XD6123/XD6124 series newly launched by Torex outputs a signal with a delay time set by an internal delay circuit with no need for external components. The output type is L level on detection (VDFL).In order to maintain device stability (redundancy) in in-vehicle applications, a single IC is often used instead of an internal microcontroller with a watchdog function or voltage detection function. With this product, there is no need for external components to set the delay time, and this provides a significant advantage for customers in terms of lowering the quiescent current and space savings. In addition, the product complies with AEC-Q100 (Grade 3), according to Torex.A watchdog ON/OFF function is incorporated, and the watchdog function can be turned OFF while maintaining the voltage detection function by setting the EN/ENB pin to L or H level. This contributes to further lowering of the quiescent current when the function is stopped.The EN/ENB pin is internally pulled up to VIN or pulled down to VSS, and can be used in the OPEN state while the watchdog function is used. This helps the customer design redundancy.The detected voltage can be set to 1.6V, 2.2V, 2.3V, 2.4V, 2.9V, 3.0V, 3.1V, 4.4V, 4.5V, or 4.6V by laser trimming. Six types are selectable from 50ms to 1.6s for the watchdog timeout time. Five types are selectable from 3.13ms to 400ms for the release delay time. The product is housed in the versatile SOT-25 package.About Torex Semiconductor Ltd.Torex Semiconductor is a provider of CMOS power management ICs targeted toward battery powered and energy efficient applications. Torex specializes in CMOS analog technology, with LDO voltage regulators, voltage detectors and DC/DC converters making up our core product offering. Torex website: http://www.torexsemi.com/XD6121/XD6122/XD6123/XD6124 Series, SOT-25 (2.8 x 2.9 x h1.3mm)
