Google has launched its second-generation Nexus 7 and the Chromecast, a device that can be plugged into TVs, PCs, smartphones or tablets for watching online content.The Chromecast is priced at US$35 and works with Netflix, YouTube, Google Play Movies & TV, and Google Play Music, with more apps like Pandora coming soon.Once Chromecast is set up, users can use their phones, tablets or notebooks to browse and cast content to their TVs, play and pause, control the volume, and more. But unlike other streaming solutions, users can still multitask – send emails or surf the web – while watching. It works across platforms – Android tablets and smartphones, iPhones, iPads, Chrome for Mac and Windows (more to come), so users' personal devices are also their remote control.In addition to apps like Netflix, users can use Chromecast to bring a broad range of content available on the web to their big screen, thanks to a new feature in the Chrome browser that allows them to project any browser tab to their TV. From sharing family photos to enjoying a video clip from their favorite news site.Together with Asustek Computer, Google has upgraded the original Nexus 7 with a high-resolution panel and made the device lighter. The tablet is also capable of having more than nine hours of HD video playback and 10 hours of web browsing or reading. The Nexus 7 now features stereo speakers and virtual surround sound from Fraunhofer, giving users rich and immersive audio.The new Nexus 7 is the first device to ship with Android 4.3, the latest version of Android. In Android 4.3, Google introduced restricted profiles, which let users limit access to apps and content. For example, restricted profiles enable parental controls, so certain family members are prevented from accessing mature content. Likewise, retail stores can use tablets to show off product information, and shops can use tablets as point of sale systems. Android 4.3 also now supports Bluetooth Smart technology, opening the door to mobile apps that connect to new devices like fitness sensors. Android 4.3 is rolling out to Nexus devices starting today.The Chromecast is now available for US$35 on Google Play plus Amazon and BestBuy's online shops. It will be available in Best Buy stores across the US starting July 28. For a limited time, users also get three months of Netflix included.The new Nexus 7 starts at US$229, and is available in the US beginning July 30.Google Chromecast TV stickPhoto: CompanyGoogle second-generation Nexus 7 tabletPhoto: Company

Nvidia has unveiled its new flagship technology, the Nvidia Quadro K6000 GPU along with the launch of a new line of professional graphics GPUs for mobile workstations, delivering performance on mobile platforms.The Quadro K6000 GPU delivers five-times higher compute performance and nearly double the graphics capability of its predecessor, the Nvidia Quadro 6000 GPU, and features the largest and fastest graphics memory available currently, claimed the GPU company.The Quadro K6000 GPU is based on the Nvidia Kepler architecture with key performance features and capabilities include 12GB GDDR5 graphics memory, 2,880 streaming multiprocessor (SMX) cores, support for four simultaneous displays and DisplayPort 1.2 and ultra-low latency video I/O and support for large-scale visualizations.Nvidia also revealed a new flagship professional graphics GPU for workstation notebooks, the Quadro K5100M GPU. The Quadro K5100M anchors a new line of workstation notebook graphics that includes the Quadro K4100M, K3100M, K2100M, K1100M, K610M, and K510M GPUs.The Nvidia Quadro K6000 will be available beginning this fall from Dell, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Lenovo and other major workstation providers; from systems integrators, including BOXX Technologies and Supermicro; and from authorized distribution partners, including PNY Technologies in North America and Europe, ELSA and Ryoyo in Japan, and Leadtek in Asia Pacific.The new Quadro mobile workstation graphics product line will also be available beginning this fall from major mobile workstation OEMs.Nvidia Quadro K6000 graphics cardPhoto: Company

As the massive growth of information technology services places increasing demand on the datacenter, Intel has outlined its strategy to re-architect the underlying infrastructure.The company also announced additional details about its next-generation Intel Atom processor C2000 product family (codenamed Avoton and Rangeley), as well as outlined its roadmap of next-generation 14nm products for 2014 and beyond.To help companies prepare for the next generation of datacenters, Intel revealed its plans to virtualize the network, enable smart storage solutions and invest in innovative rack optimized architectures.Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of the Datacenter and Connected Systems Group at Intel highlighted Intel's Rack Scale Architecture (RSA), a design that promises to increase the utilization and flexibility of the datacenter to deliver new services.Rackspace Hosting, an open cloud company, has announced the deployment of new server racks that is a step toward reaching Intel's RSA vision, powered by Intel Xeon processors and Intel Ethernet controllers with storage accelerated by Intel Solid State Drives. The Rackspace design is the first commercial rack scale implementation.As part of its strategy, Intel revealed new details for the forthcoming Intel Atom processors C2000 product family aimed for low-energy, high-density microservers and storage (Avoton), and network devices (Rangeley). This second-generation of Intel's 64-bit SoCs is expected to become available later this year and will be based on the company's 22nm process technology and the Silvermont microarchitecture. It will feature up to eight cores with integrated Ethernet and support for up to 64GB of memory.The new products are expected to deliver up to four times the energy efficiency and up to seven times more performance than the first-generation Intel Atom processor-based server SoCs introduced in December, 2012. Intel has been sampling the new Intel Atom processor server product family to customers since April and has already more than doubled the number of system designs compared to the previous generation.Intel also outlined its roadmap of next-generation products based on its forthcoming 14nm process technology scheduled for 2014 and beyond. These products are aimed at microservers, storage and network devices and will offer an even broader set of low-power, high-density solutions for their Web-scale applications and services.The future products include the next-generation of Intel Xeon processors E3 family (Broadwell) built for processor and graphic-centric workloads such as online gaming and media transcoding. It also includes the next-generation of Intel Atom processor SoCs (Denverton) that will enable even higher density deployments for datacenter operators. Intel also disclosed an addition to its future roadmap - a new SoC designed from the ground up for the datacenter based on Intel's next-generation Broadwell microarchitecture that follows today's Haswell microarchitecture.An Intel executive shows off second-generation 64-bit SoC for microservers.Photo: Company

Sharp Imaging and Information Company of America (SIICA), a division of Sharp Electronics, has announced the release of a new 20-inch (19.5" diagonal) Full HD multi-touch monitor, the LL-S201A.The LL-S201A features Sharp's Interactive Display System and is ideal for use in business, medical and education environments as a complement to the AQUOS BOARD display, said Sharp.The 20-inch touchscreen LCD panel delivers 1,920 by 1,080 Full HD resolution with performance-enhancing UV2A technology to help prevent light leakage for bright whites and deep blacks.It also features a 10-point multi-touch screen and Palm Cancellation Function, which Sharp said can prioritize the touch of the pen over the touch of peoples' hands in order to provide smooth writing while the hand rests on the screen.The LL-S201A weighs 5.1 pounds, is approximately 1-inch thick, and features a narrow half-inch bezel along with a full-flat screen, said Sharp.

Compal Broadband Networks, CBN has signed a multi-year frame agreement with Com Hem under which it will deliver its CBN CH7284E advanced Docsis cable gateway for the roll-out of Com Hem's new ultra high speed broadband service.The CBN CH7284E advanced Docsis cable gateway is the most compact 16x4 gateway on the European market to enter effective commercial deployment, combining Docsis network speeds of 800 Mbps with real-world wireless speeds well over 500 Mbps based on its embedded 3x3 11ac based Wi-Fi technology.Besides its tremendous speed capabilities and stylish slim enclosure design, the CBN CH7284E provides a whole range of advanced feature sets like Wi-Fi Home-spots, L2oGRE tunneling, home automation and smart meter support, full band capture tuner with remote diagnostics, as well as full IMS compatibility. This combination of raw speed power with an advanced feature set makes it the ideal product for the challenges that MSO's face today and their needs for support of a wide range of sophisticated applications at very high speed."The partnership with Compal Broadband Networks enables Com Hem to take our ultra high-speed strategy to the next level and enable even higher broadband speeds for our customers. Compal's CH7284E advanced Docsis cable gateway offers the latest technology and we are proud to, together with Compal's technology, be one of the first providers in the world to offer such high speeds over cable," says Henri Caddeo, CTO at Com Hem.Alex Wang, CEO of Compal Broadband Networks CBN: "We are very happy and proud to be able to support Com Hem in the roll-out of their new ultra high-speed broadband service. Compal Broadband Networks will continue to lead the cable gateway business with a strong and innovative product portfolio well adapted to the needs of our customers."About Com HemCom Hem is one of Sweden's leading suppliers of television, high-speed broadband and fixed-telephony. Approximately 37%, nearly 1.78 million, of Sweden's households are connected to Com Hem's network, with access to the market's broadest range of television services. Com Hem offers attractively priced, high-quality and comprehensive services for television, high-speed broadband and fixed-telephony. The company was established in 1983, is controlled by BC Partners and has approximately 950 employees and its head office in Stockholm. For further information, visit: http://www.comhem.se/About Compal Broadband NetworksCompal Broadband Networks, Inc. CBN is part of the global Compal group. Combining its extensive experience in Cable Voice and Broadband products with its innovative Wireless and in-home Gateway technologies, CBN offers a full line of cable modems, gateways, media gateways, set top boxes and digital connected consumer appliances, such as TV's, Wi-Fi Repeater's, Android based tablets and Smart TV Dongles. As a result of its extensive connected home integration approach, all of CBN products interface with each other seamlessly, allowing people to live a convenient and better life while using CBN products. For more information, visit http://www.icbn.com.tw/The CBN CH7284E advanced Docsis cable gateway

Indium Corporation and Duksan Hi-Metal Co., Ltd. announce a formal agreement to facilitate the global supply of an advanced alloy technology used to manufacture solder balls (spheres) for semiconductor packages. SACM, a novel alloy composition developed by Indium Corporation, provides the foremost reliability performance in terms of both drop-shock and thermal cycling.Solder joint architectures that utilize both SACM solder paste and SACM solder balls realize the maximum value of this alloy technology. Duksan Hi-Metal, the second largest solder ball supplier in the industry, provides cost-effective manufacturing capability for SACM solder balls, coupled with world-class quality."We couldn't be any happier with our selection of Duksan Hi-Metals as our strategic partner to bring SACM balls to market," said Chris Bastecki, Indium Corporation's Associate Director of Electronics Assembly Materials. "The challenge of effectively and repeatedly incorporating the proprietary dopant into SACM solder balls is quite complex. The engineers at Duksan have demonstrated great skill and capability with their ability to scale the process up to a viable commercial process within a short period of time.""We are very pleased to be able to offer our customers SACM technology," said Perry Kim, Director of Sales for Duksan. "Our customers are continuously challenged to improve reliability, avoid the need for board level underfills, and extend the use of semiconductor packages to larger die sizes. If we can enable our customers to realize these improvements through the cost-effective application of SACM solder balls, we are happy to help."Indium Corporation is a premier materials manufacturer and supplier to the global electronics, semiconductor, solar, thin-film and thermal management markets. Products include solders, preforms, and fluxes; brazes; sputtering targets; indium, gallium, and germanium metals and inorganic compounds; and NanoFoil. Founded in 1934, Indium has global technical support and factories located in China, Singapore, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the USA.Duksan Hi-Metal Co., Ltd. was established in 1999 and manufactures solder balls for BGA and CSP assemblies. Headquartered in Korea, they have business relationships with customers in China, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Singapore, and Europe. Duksan is ISO 14002:2000 certified.For more information about Indium Corporation, visit http://www.indium.com/ or email abrown@indium.com.

Imagination Technologies, one of the top three global semiconductor IP (SIP) vendors, grandly held its annual Summit in Hsinchu and Taipei recently. After completing the acquisition of MIPS early this year, the company demonstrated its full determination of expanding market presence with its comprehensive graphics, video, CPU, communication IP, as well as cloud IP solutions at the summit.In addition to disclosing the latest design trends for smart mobile devices and consumer electronics, key partners, including TSMC and MediaTek, were also invited to make keynote speeches. The summits had attracted hundreds of engineers participating and received very warm responses."This is our first Asia road show after acquiring MIPS", said Maxwell Lin, Director of Sales, Imagination. "Eyeing Taiwan's strong design capabilities, we particularly organized two summits here, showing our firm commitment to the local market.""Many people may not be familiar with Imagination. However, from our partners for this event, including TSMC, MediaTek, Cadence, and Synopsys, you can see that Imagination is a company with great technology advantages and potential. We play an important role in global SIP market, and are dedicated to providing leading IP solutions to meet customers' demands for designing innovative and differentiated new devices."Maxwell Lin, Director of Sales, ImaginationThird-Party SIPs Drive the Development of SoCTony King-Smith, EVP Marketing of Imagination had the keynote speech on the topic of "From Crystal Ball to Reality: The Impact of Silicon IP on SoC Design", sharing with the attendance about the latest SoC design trends and the important role that third-party SIPs plays."From IP concept to SoCs and to end products, there is a long innovation path of 4-6 years", King-Smith said. "Therefore, in order to plan a clear path for the future, companies must understand real trends for industry and business evolution, consumer behaviors, and technology trends. And our mission is to help customers grasp future trends and provide practical advice across the whole design chain, so that they can really develop products that consumers want."He stressed that, consumers are everything. Products are only successful if consumers buy them. However, the expectations are changing, cultures and values are different among different markets. As a result, developers need an up-to-date, socially aware and globally cultured viewpoint, which further increases the challenge of developing products.Talking about the rise of SoCs and the rapid technology evolution, King-Smith made the video decoder as an example, "The first generation video was multi-chip, 480i solutions. And now, the current gen video decoder can support 1080p, multi-standards with only 1-2mm2 IP."With more integrated functions into a smaller single chip, the development of SoCs has profound influences over the entire industry. Because SoCs are getting more complex and expensive, it's critical to get them right at the very beginning.Since SoCs are key enablers in taking a vision into reality, it's vital for chip vendors to keep abreast of the latest SoC design trends. King-Smith pointed out that one architecture does not fit all applications any more. The off-load engines, or on-chip accelerators, have become as important as the CPU, and are now new category of processors.It is inevitable that heterogeneous SoCs that integrate CPU, GPU, VPU (video processing unit), and RPU (radio processing unit) will be the mainstream in the future. Processors for each key function should be highly tuned to provide an optimized blend of programmable, configurable and fixed function hardware, so that SoCs with optimized performance, power and area will be made possible.Imagination has a comprehensive range of IP portfolios for control, graphics, video and radio functions, with each processor designed to be the best. These class-leading functions can join together to create optimal system solutions.Take the GPU as an example. Due to its parallel and scalable architecture, the GPU has become increasingly important in SoCs. For some applications, the GPU is expected to occupy the largest area of many SoCs. In addition to powering the latest user interfaces and applications, with the development of OpenCL, RenderScript and FilterScript, the enormous processing potential of GPU compute will be unlocked in the future.According to King-Smith, Imagination leads the innovation of GPU technology and will introduce ray tracing functions in its latest gen product. With inherent support of the behavior of light, there won't be the fundamental trade-off of beauty or functionality in the future, every mobile device will be able to deliver rich image realism.As for the CPU IP market, King-Smith emphasized the company's plans to enhance CPU leadership by leveraging its MIPS portfolio. King-Smith said that MIPS has complete processors from low-end microcontrollers to multi-core, multi-thread high performances cores. He said, "With our advantages in mobile GPU market and know-how, we will be able to create highly integrated solutions. We are confident that Imagination will become another key choice in CPU IP market in the near future."Tony King-Smith, EVP Marketing, ImaginationTechnology Outlook, Challenges and OpportunitiesIn his keynote speech, Carlos H. Diaz, Director Advanced Devices Technology and TCAD Divisions, TSMC R&D, talked about the challenges and opportunities the semiconductor industry is facing in the near-to mid-term.He said that the quest for a better life continues to drive high-tech industry innovation. Electronics is increasingly becoming more human-centric due to portability, intuitive interfaces, energy efficiency and availability.Mobile convergence, cloud computing, augmented reality, the Internet of Things and ubiquitous connectivity will drive the next-wave of innovations. However, all these technologies must overcome the common product requirements for battery life, bandwidth, reliability, cost and performance/watt.As human-machine interfaces become more important in mobile devices, the performance of the GPU has seen a significant improvement in recent years, from only supporting 480p resolutions at 30fps to 60fps dual screen Full HD or 4K rich gaming. Though GPU performance has increased by 80 times, its die size has only increased by 15 times.Diaz said the mobile GPU has become a key driver for process technologies, and TSMC has enabled the rapid evolution of power-efficient mobile applications. It is expected that GPUs will be able to achieve 100~200 GFLOPS of performance by 2013/2014 in the 20nm process node, and further enhance to 200~400 GFLOPS in 2015 with 16nm FinFET process technology.Density, power, performance and chip complexity are, and will continue to be, the key challenges in advanced CMOS technology. Process/processor co-optimization of GPU designs is vital to maximize performance at minimum power and area (PPA).Optical lithography technology, will continue to be pushed to its limits in 10/7 nm nodes with immersion and multiple patterning techniques. EUV is considered key to advanced logic CMOS technology patterning in 10nm and beyond, but significant challenges still need to be overcome in source power and mask blanks among other issues.Diaz pointed out that, as planar transistors can't be further shrunk, in order to keep improving device performance and reducing power consumption, the industry has aggressively moved into three dimensional FinFET structures.Carlos H. Diaz, Director Advanced Device Technology and TCAD Divisions, TSMC R&DForeseeing the Macro Level TrendsJohan Lodenius, Corporate Vice President and the Chief Marketing Officer at MediaTek, explored the mega trends that will cause profound influences over our daily lives. "The rise of a new 5B strong middle-class in emerging countries like China and India will bring a huge social, economic and demographic transformation for the planet", he said.The trend will dramatically shift consumers' spending power. The Asia Pacific region will take the lead and there will be significant growth in South America and Africa. One of the impacts will be, Lodenius stressed, "For the first time ever, most people will be internet connected and have equal access to rich media." And the second impact is to unleash unprecedented new opportunities, socially, culturally and in all fields of research, commerce and education."Along with the rapid progress of mobile computing technology, we are just at the beginning of the world's greatest revolution ever. The Internet breaks geographic boundaries. As a result, various kinds of cooperation models and new trends will be able to emerge and develop rapidly."There will be the bandwagon effect under this trend. As more people join, the network becomes more valuable. Meanwhile, driven by common OS/multimedia platforms for video, audio and positioning functions, consumers have more similar requirements for desired performance and feature levels. Therefore, he believes that the gap between high-end and low-end products will shrink and prices will keep declining, thus creating a larger "sweet-spot" market.Also, the Internet has changed consumer purchasing behavior from product push to consumer pull. Enterprises should all pay attention to these macro-level trends.In terms of device evolution, there will be an accelerated absorption of traditional products into fewer, higher volume segments. Single-function devices, such as cameras, MP3 players, and radios will be integrated into tablets and smartphones, making these mobile devices ubiquitous.The second resulting device trend is that there will be a huge expansion of cloud-connected Internet of Things (IoT) devices to be widely used in healthcare, lighting, energy, security, home, and transportation, bringing mass benefits to the society and people."IoT is a stunning opportunity for growth", Lodenius said. "It is estimated that the world population will be 7.2 billion by 2015. But the amount of connected devices will be 25 billion units. By 2020, the two numbers will further increase to 7.6 billion and 50 billion."Though the opportunity is huge, there are lots of challenges to overcome, including device management across a wide range of devices, upgrades and lifetime management for remote devices, compliance to global spectrums and policies, and meeting the fundamental requirements of cost and power, interoperability, etc.According to Lodenius, there are many different business and operation models in the IoT market. Some companies adopt vertical market approaches to move in. But MediaTek will focus on the development of a horizontal market and will strengthen cooperation with different segments, forging the solutions they need. In particular, MediaTek believes it should be able to provide integrated hardware and software solutions to be competitive in the IoT market.Johan Lodenius, Corporate Vice President and the Chief Marketing Officer, MediaTekComprehensive MIPS CPU SolutionsPaul Evans, Senior Business Development Manager of Imagination, introduced MIPS's complete product lines from lowest power to highest performance, and Imagination's latest roadmap after the acquisition of MIPS."The MIPS architecture has been developed for many years, with the concept of truly embracing the philosophy of RISC (reduced instruction set computing). Being simple and elegant, it not only can provide low power and high performance, but also perfectly align with the industry shift to code portability", he said.The MIPS CPU portfolio covers classic M14K, 34K, and 1074K families, and the new Aptiv generation cores that were announced last year are also shipping now.According to different market requirements, the Aptiv generation cores include three families: proAptiv, interAptiv, and microAptiv. proAptiv is featured by peak performance efficiency, an ideal solution for high-end mobile, home entertainment and networking devices. interAptiv and microAptiv target at middle and entry-level applications, emphasizing their efficiency & cost and size & cost advantages respectively."proAptiv has industry leading performance", Evans stressed. "According to the newly released CoreMark data, proAptiv has higher CoreMark/MHz compared to competitors' solutions, as well as superior performance/mm2 efficiency."In particular, the die size of proAptiv is smaller, so that it can achieve a quad core in area of competing dual core. It means that silicon vendors can keep silicon costs under control, or make use of the additional area to integrate more functions on SoC.Evans made an announcement at the Summit that a new single core CPU IP has been added in the interAptiv family. The new product is designed for small footprint, parallel processing intensive applications. With reduced area and dynamic power consumption, it is perfect for networking baseband, communications, and protocol layer processing.There is also now a floating point version added to the microAptiv family while the proAptiv core is now shipping.The high-performance proAptiv, multi-threaded interAptiv and compact microAptiv families of cores, are all available in refined, validated configurations offering industry-leading low power and efficiency for today's designs.Additionally, Imagination also unveiled latest MIPS CPU roadmap. New MIPS Series5 "Warrior" CPU family of CPUs will be available soon.Evans pointed out that MIPS Series5 will create a new family of processors from high to low end that will set new standards for CPU IP cores. The industry wants a choice of CPU IP. The launch of "Warrior" will complement Imagination's product portfolios. With full binary compatibility from low end 32-bit to high end 64-bit, we will be able to provide customers with solutions that offer better flexibility, efficiency, and power consumption.Paul Evans, Senior Business Development Manager, ImaginationUsing PowerVR VPU to Realize HEVC ApplicationsDriven by the requirements for higher resolution displays, the HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) standard is making progress rapidly. Chris Longstaff, Senior Business Development Manager of Imagination, explained how the company's PowerVR VPUs can help customers realize high quality 4K/8K applications.HEVC is designed to deliver comparable video quality to content encoded in the current H.264/AVC standard, at approximately half the bitrate. The standard is in final draft this year with ongoing development for 4:4:4, 4:2:2 profiles, SVC profiles, and 3D extensions. At present, software based implementations of decoders and encoders are already started.It is estimated that first full hardware HEVC codec enabled SoC devices will be available next year. And by 2015, there will be OEM products including full hardware HEVC acceleration in the market. Eyeing the potential of HEVC applications, Imagination has announced its new PowerVR D5500 multi-standard 10-bit HEVC decoders is licensing now, and 10-bit HEVC encoder will be available soon.Imagination is the first company that delivers complete IP solutions for 10-bit color depth. Longstaff said that the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has recognized that 8-bit color depths are not enough to satisfy consumer demand for the highest possible quality; therefore the ITU Recommendation ITU-R BT.2020 mandates the use of at least 10 bits for ultra-high definition TV (UHDTV) systems.He stressed that, in many applications, 10-bit support is no longer optional, but mandatory. SoC designers for DTV, automotive, and other areas must be implementing 10-bit now, otherwise, their products will be uncompetitive or obsolete at launch. Compared with other solutions, Imagination's PowerVR VPUs can provide higher performance at lower power consumption for 10-bit applications.Additionally, since there are many standards in use today and many standards have a very long life, Longstaff pointed out the importance of multi-standard support. Take MPEG-2 as an example, it is still the preferred video codec of many providers today, so multi-standard solutions are required.As 10-bit is mandatory for several automotive applications and consumers demand increased color fidelity to go with the increased resolutions, Longstaff believes that 10-bit will play a rapidly growing and important role in areas including UHDTV, tablets, and cameras.Chris Longstaff, Senior Business Development Manager, ImaginationImagination's Ecosystem Growing StronglyAs the top three SIP vendor, Imagination keeps building strong ecosystems and providing comprehensive support and services for licensees. Amit Rohatgi, Vice President of Segment Marketing, Imagination, said that the company's PowerVR Insider ecosystem is one of the world's top developer communities, with 40,000 global members. There are already over 1 billion PowerVR based devices shipped and more than one million applications developed.On the other hand, after acquiring MIPS, Imagination continues the momentum of building the existing MIPS ecosystem and aims to enhance interaction with the Android community to further expand its market presence.According to Amit Rohatgi, MIPS initiated the Android on MIPS program several years ago and already achieved fruitful results. MIPS has taken the lead to launch multiple Android digital home devices and tablets. Early this year, Samsung also introduced a MIPS based set-top box (STB), the world's first certificated non-mobile Android device.Last year, Google provided native support for MIPS architecture, which is a big milestone for MIPS' Android efforts. Now the MIPS architecture is 100% compatible with Android, tools, debug, Google Play, Widevine libraries, and the Android Compatibility Test Suite (CTS). Imagination is also working closely with Google on optimizations.Now, Imagination is making efforts to move towards 100% application compatibility. Rohatgi said, "Currently, 91/100 top free apps on Google Play run successfully on MIPS platforms. Imagination is on track to hit 95% app compatibility by end of this year."It is expected that OpenCL will drive the rapid growth of graphic computing and make applications such as augmented reality, emotion detection, and video content analysis more popular. Therefore, Imagination is expanding its middleware relationships and launching the PowerVR Insider Gaming Middleware Program. As for embedded systems, Imagination will also continue and expand the existing MIPS ecosystem of more than 100 partners.At last, Rohatgi stressed that Imagination has a world class support team with over 50 years of combined experiences. He said, "With our ecosystem, we will help customers reach the goals of product optimization and differentiation."Amit Rohatgi, VP Segment Marketing, ImaginationPowerVR Graphic: Performance Through EfficiencyImagination is a leader in the GPU IP market, with 50% market share across all embedded GPUs and near 80% share for GPU IP. Kristof Beets, the company's Senior Business Development Manager, introduced the low power advantage of the PowerVR GPU family and its future directions."Mobile device graphics performance is increasing at an ever faster pace, but how to keep power consumption under control is essential", said he. "With tile based deferred rendering (TBDR) technology that only renders what is visible, PowerVR GPUs are designed for low power and system level efficiency. Its PowerGearing technology can enable the required performance and manage different power consumption levels to reach the balance of overall SoC power consumption."Therefore, PowerVR GPU compute delivers high performance with minimal CPU load, which means lower power. Also, with excellent bandwidth efficiency, it can allow OpenGL ES 3.0 to achieve higher performance, lower bandwidth with minimal CPU loading. For the ecosystem, it will also enhance the SDK/tools optimal utilization efficiency.Beets stressed that power efficiency and thermal impact are highly related, because the heat and thermal panic risk caused by high power consumption will reduce performance. According to test results from Anandtech.com, PowerVR has more stable low power and performance compared with competitors.Imagination will continue the low power advantage of PowerVR, and keep driving the development of GPUs by incorporating new technologies such as heterogeneous system architecture, ray tracing, and ever more power efficiency.Kristof Beets, Senior Business Development Manager, ImaginationEnsigma & Flow: Connecting Everyone to EverythingWith mobile Internet and IoT devices, connectivity has become an essential function for various kinds of devices. In response to this trend, Imagination provides Ensigma RPU and Flow cloud IP solutions to meet the multiple standards communications requirements for SoC and the cloud applications."Based on software defined radio (SDR) technology, Ensigma RPUs help customers integrate more communications functions into SoCs with lower cost", Volker Politz, VP Business Development, said. "Ensigma RPUs can support more than 30 standards for TV, radio, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth."He explained that the RPU has completely different characteristics compared to the CPU and the GPU. Imagination's RPUs combine programmable and configurable engines to handle complex dataflow at various speeds. Even for the standard like 802.11 ac 2x2 Wi-Fi, it can be realized by less than 3mm2 die size at 28nm node. And the power is very low, making it perfect for high bandwidth applications."We have been developing RPUs for several years, and believe that ultimately this funtionality will go on-chip just as GPUs have done", Politz said. "Now we're seeing this trend being acknowledged by our partners and the technology has been adopted by several licensees."Imagination just announced its latest Ensigma Series4 RPU with four different versions for supporting all connectivity standards, TV, and broadcast radio standards. Series4 RPUs are available for licensing now.As for Flow IP, it's an M2M cloud solution with Web services-based application programming interfaces (APIs). It can provide baseline services for device and user registration and authentication, also the payment, key value store (KVS), multimedia content services and more.Flow can integrate easily into existing cloud based technologies, so that customers accelerate time-to-market by building upon existing client and service-side platform. It can be widely used for a wide range of M2M applications, including consumer, healthcare, home surveillance, industrial, toys and more.Volker Politz, VP Business Development, ImaginationOperators Super Service: Embedded VoLTE, Video over LTE and RCSAs mobile operators around the world are rapidly deploying LTE networks, it is forecasted that number of VoLTE connections will reach 76 million by 2016. However, both the voice and video over IP services are facing the challenge finding a single integrated client to address the requirement for multiple platforms. "This is what HelloSoft IP from Imagination can help", said Mike Hopkins, the company's Senior Technical Marketing Specialist.According to Hopkins, consumers may use different operating systems, connectivity technologies (LTE, 3G, or Wi-Fi), and end devices to conduct voice or video communications, which make the single client application more important.Meanwhile, packet losses are inevitable in mobile networks, because real-time operation does not allow for extensive retransmission or buffering. Another issue is that latency is introduced at each stage of the chain, resulting in echoes and delays of up to 500ms.In order to cope with these challenges, the media engine of HelloSoft is equipped with enhanced voice quality management (EVQM) and dynamic video quality management (DVQM) to cater for packet losses. The media engine has high performance, even at a packet loss of over 30%, its algorithms can still sustain excellent voice and video quality.Moreover, Imagination also supports RCS (rich communication suite), a solution designed to be interoperable between all mobile operators and devices, to enrich calls with multimedia sharing functions. It's already available on Android, with an iOS version under roadmap.Hopkins emphasized that Imagination's solutions deliver the standards-compliant seamless cross-network user experience required in modern communication. With low audio/video latency, the highest level of QoS (quality of service), multi-platform support, low power consumption, and wide standards support, the HelloSoft solutions will bring key differentiation factors for customers' products.Mike Hopkins, Senior Technical Marketing Specialist, ImaginationImagination Summit 2013Imagination Summit 2013

BioBusiness Asia, the event that global investors and biotech companies look forward to each year, take place July 17 and July 18. The theme for BioBusiness Asia 2013 is "Connect to the Global Value Chain," and invited to this year's event are authoritative figures in the industry including Andy Liu, President of Asia Pacific and China of IMS Health, the world's leading provider of biopharmaceuticals information, Ken J. Lee, Quintiles East Asia's Head of Site Services Asia, and many other global biotech experts.These individuals will shed light on how Taiwan can best connect to the global biotech value chain, as well as future development opportunities and challenges, thereby helping the industry to look for investment opportunities not only in the Asia-Pacific region, but also throughout the world. In addition, a large increase will be seen in the number of participants in this year's partnering meetings, including individuals from the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and mainland China. It is hoped that the event will provide an opportunity for companies and investors to pair up, thus further underpinning investment and growth in the sector.Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) Chairman Ching-Yen Tsay stated that BioBusiness Asia has already become an important date on the annual calendar for members of the biotech industry and the venture capital community. Each year, biotech experts from the world assemble in Taiwan to share their observations on the latest trends and successes in the industry, enabling industry representatives and venture capitalists attending this interactive platform to act on opportunities. In the spirit of this year's theme "Connect to the Global Value Chain," experts from a variety of fields have been invited to attend, including the influential venture capital firm Burrill & Co. and US biotech marketing and distribution network regulatory expert - landsglobal, LLC. Also, a representative from IMS Health will analyze the world's biotech manufacturing environment. Participants will come away with a comprehensive understanding of the latest happenings in the biotech venture capital industry, the climate for the industry to thrive, and the regulatory environment. This will help Taiwan's biotech industry to connect to the global biotech industry in the shortest time possible.ITRI Biomedical Technology and Device Research Laboratories General Director Richard Shau, who is the moderator of this year's event, stated that Taiwan's biotech industry over the past several years has mainly been involved in preliminary R&D. Now, however, products being developed by a number of local biotech manufacturers have moved from the developmental phase into Phase II or even Phase III clinical trials. This makes the industry here much more attractive to international venture capitalists, he added. BioBusiness Asia, according to Dr. Shau, has become an important platform for interaction between venture capital funds and Taiwan's biotech industry. In a bid to get a head start in entering the mainland Chinese market, Quintiles, the world's largest clinical trial services firm, is participating in the event for the first time. It desires to embark on cooperation with Taiwan's biotech and drug manufacturers via the BioBusiness Asia platform, while the local industry is hoping that Quintiles can help it enter the market for new drugs in Europe and North America, he said.Dr. Shau furthermore stated that the global biotech industry is quickly moving from strategic alliances to fast acquisitions. Amid the increasingly heated competition within the local and foreign biotech industries, companies are pursuing solutions to ensure their sustainability and survival, he said. IMS Health's Andy Liu, Dr. Shau said, will analyze the state of the global biotech industry and impart knowledge with respect to forging strategic cooperation and strategic alliances. In addition, major international drug makers in recent years have become increasingly interested in Chinese herbal medicines. Consequently, arrangements have been made for Dr. Fang-Rong Chang, a world-renowned expert in new Chinese herbal medicines, to discuss the strategies and methods adopted by international drug manufacturers in developing new drugs using Chinese herbal medicines, Dr. Shau said.Meanwhile, Alice M. Chiang, the CEO of Teratech Corp., will share her experiences and explain developmental trends in and challenges facing the world's ultrasound industry. She will also examine how Taiwan should best utilize its electronics industry, and specifically its key competitive strengths in flat panels, components, and semiconductors, to delve into and secure a piece of the medical imaging pie. Also, Yuan-Hua Ding of Pfizer will, from the R&D standpoint of a leading pharmaceutical manufacturer, discuss the direction of R&D among multinational drug companies, and the strategies and concepts they are promoting. He will also provide suggestions on how Taiwan's biotech firms, despite their limited R&D resources, can engage in cooperation with major international drug makers and together develop blue ocean opportunities.On the July 18th, Arrangements have made for PhytoHealth Corp., which specializes in botanical new drugs, Amcad, a developer of innovative non-invasive detection devices, and Aurora Image Technology, the world's fourth largest maker of medical imagery equipment, to attend the partnering meetings and explain their latest products and technologies. What's more, Japan's six major drug companies are sending delegations to this year's event, which not only highlights the increasingly close interaction between Taiwan and Japan, but also exhibits their desire to use the Bio Business Asia platform to enhance their interaction with their Taiwan counterparts and move into the global biotech market.

As industrial automation adopts an Ethernet-based network, production processes in factories can achieve intelligent manufacturing and benefit from real-time monitoring and remote management. However, these benefits also introduce new security loopholes for industrial process control networks, increasing their vulnerability against cyber attacks. Therefore, establishing a protection mechanism for industrial process control networks has become imperative.In the past, industrial process control networks used proprietary protocols and were isolated from the public network. The advent of intelligent manufacturing, along with the proliferation and cost reduction of Ethernet and networking, industrial process control networks are gradually converging to Ethernet-based open networks. However, once industrial process control networks are exposed to the public network, security loopholes may be exploited. To prevent production lines from malicious interference, industrial process control networks require protection by industrial firewalls.Safeguard Industrial Process Control Networks with Deep Packet Inspection"Although commercial firewall technology has advanced significantly and received widespread adoption throughout the years, they are not designed to protect industrial process control networks. Due to the application differences between a commercial and industrial process control network, it requires an industrial firewall to secure sensitive and critical data exchanged in industrial process control networks and provide a deeper level of management and protection of nodes," explained Hadwin Liu, director of product management, NEXCOM's Network and Communication Solutions Business Unit.Liu further explains that the enterprise network is made up of three layers, which are intranet, plant network and industrial process control network, or process control network for short. Industrial firewalls' main purpose is to protect the industrial process control network, which monitors and controls all the internal nodes and ensures that all the nodes are functioning in optimal condition. Although the network bandwidth at this level is not excessively demanding, the transmitted data is highly valuable, such as monitoring variables used to assess the level of alkalinity in wastewater treatment plants, or control variables used to control industrial robots in factories. Therefore, industrial firewalls need to support various Fieldbus protocols such as PROFINET, as well as provide deep packet inspection in order to inspect and analyse the header and payload encapsulated at different layers of the packet to ensure integrity.In contrast, commercial firewalls do not support Fieldbus protocols and they focus on inspecting packets that are based on common communication protocols such as email, file transfer and web browsing, making them unsuitable for industrial process control networks.For example, at an automotive assembly line, the industrial robots function as network nodes that operate according to the control command received. If the packets sent to them contain suspicious instructions, such as instructing the industrial robots to perform actions that are not part of the standard operating procedures, the automotive manufacturer may suffer huge financial losses due to the mass production of inferior products caused by compromised nodes. By incorporating industrial firewalls, any suspicious packets can be identified and blocked, preventing the control command from being tampered with and ensuring the industrial robots are operating as programmed at all times.The security of industrial process control networks is strictly managed due to the specialized nature of the production nodes. Since these nodes only execute a limited set of applications, industrial firewalls use a whitelist to specify which applications can traverse in and out of the network, while blocking all others. Commercial firewalls, on the other hand, use a blacklist to provide security at the entry point of the company's network, and will only block applications specified in the list. Hence, industrial firewalls are more effective at protecting industrial process control networks.In addition to a whitelist, virtual private network (VPN) is also another important feature for industrial firewalls. As industrial process control networks are converging to Ethernet, information will be exchanged in an open network environment. To ensure the information received from a remote site is complete and authentic, VPN will create a private channel on the public network and encrypt all the information within, even if the data is eavesdropped during transmission, the data will be difficult to decrypt and tamper with.Delivering Uninterrupted Production in Harsh EnvironmentsThere exists a diverse range of industrial automation applications, such as oil fields in hot deserts, steel plants that are exposed to scorching heat and wind farms in salt fog environments. To withstand these extremities, industrial firewalls require a rigid and robust design to maintain reliable operation under high temperature, high humidity and high salt environments. Moreover, a heavy emphasis on stability with low or no downtime is required from each production node especially during critical production processes. Thus, industrial firewalls must provide high availability by featuring redundant mechanism that can resume operation within a short amount of time to provide constant protection of the industrial process control network.Using Ethernet, intelligent factories are able to monitor and manage the entire plant operation from a remote location in real time. From a managerial point of view, Ethernet-based intelligent factory is a valuable asset to improving a business' manufacturing and management efficiencies. However, from a security point of view, any security breaches cannot be tolerated. Ever since the cyber attack on Iran's nuclear power plant in 2010, industrial users have realized the importance of industrial process control network security. In the quest of protecting the value of production nodes, industrial firewalls are recognized as the key solution. With great development potential, the future of industrial firewalls is bright ahead.About NEXCOM: Founded in 1992, NEXCOM has five business units which focus on vertical markets across industrial computer, in-vehicle computer, multimedia, network and communication, and intelligent digital security industries. NEXCOM serves its customers worldwide through its subsidiaries in seven major industrial countries. NEXCOM gains stronghold in vertical markets with its industry-leading products including the rugged fanless computer NISE series, the in-vehicle computer VTC series, the network and security appliance NSA series and the digital signage player NDiS series. http://www.nexcom.com/It requires an industrial firewall to secure sensitive and critical data exchanged in industrial process control networks and provide a deeper level of management and protection of nodes.

iWatt, a provider of digital-centric power management integrated circuits (ICs), has debuted its new 8-channel LED backlight driver designed to deliver better screen performance and lower cost in next-generation 2D and 3D LCD TVs. The iW7019 gives designers a rich set of integrated features to improve picture quality and render a more lifelike viewer experience. These include both head and tail-mode pulse width modulation (PWM) dimming to reduce motion blur, and high-resolution, 12-bit local dimming to improve contrast ratio. The iW7019 also integrates a DC-to-DC boost controller with 10V gate drive, high-voltage current sinks, and iWatt's patented BroadLED digital current regulation technology that eliminates the need for costly LED binning.The rich features of the iW7019 make it an ideal choice for edge-lit, direct-lit, and segment-edge-lit LED LCD TV designs. It drives up to eight parallel LED strings at 85V (maximum) per channel and can sink up to 200mA per string for 2D and 450mA per string for 3D TV applications. A wide, 9V to 28V input supply voltage range makes the iW7019 compatible with existing TV power systems, so there is no added expense for a separate voltage rail. Comprehensive dimming modes provide maximum flexibility to support both patterned retarder (PR)(1) and shutter glass (SG) (2) 3D TV technologies, as well as 2D TV with just one IC."We believe the iW7019 delivers the richest set of on-board features of any 8-channel backlight driver currently on the market," said Athar Zaidi, iWatt's vice president of marketing for DC-DC products. "Ultra-high integration, advanced digital control, BroadLED technology, and comprehensive dimming modes address the key performance, size and cost issues in LCD TV design."iWatt's BroadLED digital technology lowers system costs by reducing the voltage offset (Vf) between mismatched LED strings. Backlight driver ICs need to drive multiple strings of LEDs, however, each LED has a different forward voltage. This voltage offset has traditionally been managed by "binning," where LEDs are sorted for similar forward voltages, but this adds significant cost. BroadLED technology senses the voltage mismatch between the multiple LED strings and adjusts each string's Vf as needed, enabling the use of loosely binned LEDs to reduce system costs. The difference in string voltages also produces higher power dissipation. BroadLED technology eliminates up to 90% of this wasted power, while maintaining ±2% current matching.In addition to BroadLED technology, the iW7019 incorporates a number of additional features to reduce system costs. The integrated DC-to-DC boost controller provides a 10V gate drive, enabling the use of lower-cost power FETs (field-effect transistors), while the integrated, high-voltage current sinks eliminate the added cost of external high-voltage FETs. An on-chip frequency synthesizer lowers cost by relaxing the timing accuracy requirements on the video system timing controller. The digital control engine in the iW7019 generates the PWM wave form, manages all fault readouts, and reports faults, removing the need for expensive microcontrollers. Additional savings come from the 85V capability on drain sensing, which eliminates external diodes usually required for LED short-circuit fault management, as well as cascodes or zener clamps typically required for protection.The iW7019 provides comprehensive and flexible dimming modes, including 16-bit SPI for high-bandwidth PWM local dimming, single direct PWM dimming with configurable phase shift, 8-bit analog dimming, and hybrid dimming. The PWM dimming range is 0% to 100%, with 12-bit resolution. Precise control of the PWM output position and the PWM duty cycle offer the flexibility to support both PR and SG 3D technologies, while hybrid dimming lets users mix PWM and analog dimming modes to maximize system efficiency. Phase-shift dimming allows the use of smaller output capacitors, eliminating audible noise, improving electromagnetic interference (EMI), and lowering cost.The PLL engine on the iW7019 reduces both motion blur and waterfall noise by synchronizing PWM dimming to the video signal (Vsync), supporting both head- and tail-mode dimming. Individual brightness control of each LED string facilitates local dimming, where dark areas of the display can be dimmed or turned off to improve contrast ratio.Comprehensive, built-in protection features include over-voltage, over-current, and UVLO protection on the boost controller, with open/short fault protection, and over-temperature shutdown for the LED drivers. LED short level fault detection is resistor-programmable via a single pin at four levels: 3V, 6V, 9V, 12V. When a fault is validated, the iW7019 can be programmed to turn off the entire IC or just the LED string associated with the fault.The iW7019 comes in a 44-pin thin QFP package with an exposed die pad and supports 200mA per channel within a 50° temperature rise. It is also available in a 32-pin SOP that supports 175mA per channel within a 50° temperature rise. The pin-outs for both packages are optimized for single-layer PCB layout.Pricing, availabilityThe iW7019 LED driver is available now in production quantities and is priced at US$1.80 in 1,000-piece quantities, for either the 44-lead TQFP or 32-lead SOP package.The iW7019 gives designers a rich set of integrated features to improve picture quality and render a more lifelike viewer experience