HTC (High Tech Computer) has unveiled the new Android-powered smartphone, the Tattoo, targeting the consumer segment.The HTC Tattoo integrates Google's mobile services including: Google Maps, search, Google Mail, and Android market where users can download thousands of applications and games, HTC said.The Android-powered smartphone also comes complete with a variety of hardware features, including a 3.2-megapixel autofocus camera, 3.5mm stereo headset jack and expandable memory via microSD, HTC added.The HTC Tattoo will be available in Europe first at the beginning of October, and will roll out in markets around the world in the following months.HTC TattooPhoto: Company

First-tier motherboard makers Micro-Star International (MSI), Gigabyte Technology and Asustek Computer have launched their Intel P55-based motherboards.The P55 chipset supports Intel's Core i7-800 and i5-700 series CPUs and DDR3 memory.MSI's motherboards included its OC Genie technology for overclocking with the click of a button and DrMOS technology to provide better power efficiency.Gigabyte offers its 24-phase power volatage regulator module (VRM) technology and Smart 6 user-friendly software utilities.Asustek has adopted Hybrid Phase technology to deliver efficiency and stable power while operating and Express Gate technology for quick access of online applications.MSI P55-GD65 motherboardPhoto: CompanyGigabyte GA-P55-UD5 motherboardPhoto: CompanyAsustek P7P55D Premium motherboardPhoto: Company

Cypress Semiconductor has introduced new, fully-integrated TrueTouch touchscreen controllers, the TMA300 family, based on the PSoC (programmable system-on-chip) architecture. The new controllers offer best in class performance and unique features that are helping to accelerate the development of next-generation differentiated touchscreen-based user interfaces for applications in mobile handsets, portable media players, netbooks, notebooks, printers, digital still cameras, GPS systems and more.The TMA300 family represents the next generation of multi-touch all-point technology that Cypress pioneered in 2008. The integrated analog sensing engine offers the industry's fastest and most accurate touchscreen user experience. This responsiveness allows tracking of multiple fingers simultaneously with precise x-y locations and without user delays or problems with erroneous "ghost" responses. The family supports traditional gestures such as tap, double-tap, pan, pinch, scroll, and rotate, and also provides developers a unique platform to create custom gestures without being constrained to two-finger touch.Cypress offers the TMA300 family in a tiny chip-scale package (CSP) as well as in a thin 0.6mm QFN package. These package options give end customers a range of options for mounting the controllers on flex modules and/or directly on a printed circuit board with minimal area impact. The new devices also support input voltages from 1.7V to 3.6V, enabling very low power consumption for battery operated devices.Cypress has shipped millions of TrueTouch touchscreen controllers to date. The company was the first to introduce multi-touch all-point functionality and this proven technology has been in mass production since 2008.The TMA300 family will support a range of new features including low-cost 3mm passive stylus input, proximity detection that enables ear/face/palm rejection, water proofing and a "hover" feature that meets the touch requirements for operating systems such as Symbian, Android, Windows Mobile and Windows7. In addition, the new devices offer Cypress's legendary noise immunity with patented capacitive sensing technology that enables flawless operation in noisy RF and LCD environments.The flexibility and best-in-class performance of the TrueTouch solution allow customers to rapidly develop leading-edge solutions without having to buy turnkey modules. They have a choice of using touch sensors (glass or film) and LCDs from preferred partners, and can develop innovative mechanical designs ranging from flat to curved surfaces of varying thickness. Based on customer feedback, these features are unique in the industry, and combined with the performance of the TMA300 family, give the Cypress solution dramatic advantages over competing offerings."Our new multi-touch all-point TrueTouch family has been designed-in to multiple platforms by top-tier manufacturers," said Chris Seams, executive vice president of Sales and Marketing at Cypress. "Our customers continue to choose TrueTouch for its performance, flexibility and value.""Cypress's new multi-touch touchscreen controllers deliver the industry's fastest and most accurate tracking, and the excellent power consumption required by world-class consumer electronics devices," said Norm Taffe, executive vice president of the Consumer and Computation Division at Cypress. "These improvements add to the TrueTouch architecture's advantages of programmability and integration, as well as the flexibility to choose from a wide range of touchscreen module suppliers."AvailabilityThe new multi-touch all-point TrueTouch family includes the CY8CTMA300E device with 32 Kbytes of flash and the CY8CTMA301E device with 16 Kbytes of flash. Both products are offered in 36- and 48-pin QFN packages, and the CY8CTMA300E is also offered in a tiny 49-pin chip-scale package. The devices have been sampling since early 2009 with leading OEMs and have already achieved multiple design wins. Volume ramp-ups with leading OEMs have already started.Cypress TrueTouch TMA300Photo: Company

Lanner Electronics has announced the release of the VW-1104, a compact mobile DVR platform built on the Intel Atom CPU and offering Wi-Fi, 3G mobile and GPS communications along with four-channel H.264 video capture and compression.The VW-1104 is designed for installation in vehicles such as trains, buses and emergency vehicles where its combination of real-time communications and video technologies let customers build advanced intelligent transportation systems, said Lanner. Applications include fleet management systems with real-time surveillance video, or in-vehicle infotainment systems.The VW-1104 includes four BNC inputs for capturing CCTV video and an onboard codec chip to convert video streams to compressed H.264 video, allowing it to serve as a compact surveillance system that can be installed in moving vehicles, said Lanner.At the core of the platform is an ultra-low voltage Intel Atom N270 CPU, enabling low power consumption and a completely fanless system design for improved reliability essential for mobile deployment, highlighted the company."The Lanner VW-1104 crams an extremely wide range of features into a little fanless box," said Kevin Chen, Lanner video communications product manager. "Additionally, its ruggedized electrical and mechanical design ensures stable operation in harsh conditions, and its low power consumption, small size and fanless design make it a perfect platform for any industrial-grade video capture and delivery application."Multimedia features include HDMI and VGA video outputs, H.264 video compression and G.711 audio compression. As for communication features, the VW-1104 incorporates Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, 3G wireless supporting UTMS and WCDMA, and a GPS receiver for location tracking.The VW-1104's x86-based Atom processor speeds time to market for application developers, said Lanner, adding that the company also provides an SDK and reference software to help customers get started even more quickly. The EyeShot 2000 Control Panel software provides basic features for camera control, PTZ, file storage and streaming, as well as advanced features including motion detection, night detection and scalable video coding, said the company. The system supports Linux and Windows, and the SDK includes features for alarm I/O, streaming, RS-485 control and display.The Lanner VW-1104 is currently available for sampling.

Yageo has announced 3216 PIFA ceramic antenna catering to compact mobile device applications. Measuring 3.2mm x 1.6mm (3216) in dimension, Yageo's PIFA ceramic antenna features low profile fitting for multifunctional compact product design and signal transmission efficiency up to 90% almost on a par with traditional metal antenna.The 3216 PIFA ceramic antenna comes with an omni-directional system that supports central frequency of 2.45GHz with a maximum gain of 2.84dBi and a working temperature of -25 degrees C to 85 degrees C. Yageo claimed this new product is currently the smallest planar inverted-F antenna available in the market, and is designed to be isolated from environmental interference and achieve transmission optimization in miniaturized electronics applications particularly Bluetooth headsets, ultra-thin handsets or wireless mouse. Samples are available for customers with mass production underway.Yageo is looking to further enhance the yield and production lead time of 3216 PIFA antenna, and expects this product to contribute to 40% of chip antenna shipments within two years.

Sony recently launched its Vaio W series netbook in the Taiwan market and is cooperating with Chunghwa Telecom (CHT) to bundle the netbook with 3G services.The netbook adopts a 10.1-inch display that supports a resolution of 1366×768 and weighs 1.19kg, the company noted.The netbook includes Intel's Atom N280 CPU along with a 160GB hard drive and will be priced around NT$20,000 (US$609).In additional news, netbook sales in Taiwan reached 170,000 units in the first half of 2009 and are expected to surpass 300,000 units for the whole year. Sales through bundling with 3G services increased from only 30-35% in the second quarter of 50% in July, according sources at netbook vendors.Sony Vaio W series netbookPhoto: Company

AMD has announced the immediate availability of the new six-core AMD Opteron EE processor at 40W ACP.Delivering up to 31% higher performance-per-watt over standard quad-core AMD Opteron processors, the six-core AMD Opteron EE processor is tailored to meet the demands of customers who need strong performance, but must trim out every watt possible in a server system and reduce the data center's power draw, said AMD.Customers now have 15 low and very low power server processor choices from AMD, while all the CPUs feature AMD's Virtualization (AMD-V) technology and AMD-P features for advanced virtualization and power savings capability as standard power versions.The 40W ACP processor is currently being integrated in custom solutions programs and will be available from system builders for cloud and Web 2.0 customers where density and low power are key considerations, claimed AMD.AMD's new six-core Opteron EE processorPhoto: Company

SAN JOSE, CA., and ST. ALBANS, England, August 31st, 2009 - ARC International (LSE: ARK), a leading provider of consumer intellectual property (IP) to OEM and semiconductor companies worldwide, today announced that Freescale Semiconductor has licensed the MQX real-time operating system (RTOS) and TCP/IP software stacks. The license extends across Freescale's broad portfolios of 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit microcontrollers (MCUs); 16-bit digital signal controllers (DSCs); and 32-bit microprocessors (MPUs) based on ColdFire, Power Architecture and ARM cores. Freescale determined that by using ARC's MQX RTOS and other networking protocol stacks, they can provide highly integrated, comprehensive software solutions that help customers reduce development cost and get to market quickly. Freescale's decision to extend the license of MQX software for its MCU, DSC and MPU architectures demonstrates the company's confidence in ARC's software solutions to help them compete in a wide range of challenging markets. MQX software has helped Freescale customers bring embedded products to market for nearly 20 years in a vast array of applications, such as smart sensors, robotics, industrial switches, motion and temperature control systems, building surveillance systems, networking products, government and defense applications, and consumer goods. "Developers have come to rely on the benefits of using MQX Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) and other MQX software products in concert with their tools and with Freescale's widely used processing platforms to help them keep their development projects on track and in budget," said Harsh Kejriwal, VP Worldwide Software Sales at ARC International. "The combination of MQX software and Freescale silicon provides customers with comprehensive platform solutions for a wide range of system designs," said Aiden Mitchell, director of industrial and multi-market MCUs at Freescale. "The availability of MQX software across Freescale's processing portfolio gives customers enormous design flexibility. Since we offer MQX software bundled with our silicon, customers gain an exceptional software value that also helps them speed time to market and accelerate their success with proven hardware and software solutions." ARC's MQX software platform includes MQX RTOS, an optimized TCP/IP networking stack, device drivers, RTOS-aware debugging, performance and profiling tools and a board support package for the relevant Freescale development boards. ARC's MQX software platform integrates seamlessly with Freescale's CodeWarrior Development Studio for ColdFire microcontrollers and Power Architecture technology, allowing developers to rapidly accelerate the development of reliable, high performance industrial control and networking products. CodeWarrior Development Studio provides integrated, task-aware debugging and monitoring of TCP/IP networking stack objects.

OmniVision has launched the OV2710, a native 1080p CMOS image sensor designed to deliver high-definition video conferencing and recording for camcorders, notebooks, netbooks, and other mobile applications."Consumer and business applications incorporating video capability are growing at a rapid pace, and these applications are used predominantly in places where lighting conditions are often far from ideal. This makes image quality and low-light performance key drivers to the success of these products in the market," said Nick Nam, senior product marketing manager at OmniVision. "With the OV2710, OmniVision is offering a full 1080p true HD video solution for design into mainstream consumer products."The 1/3-inch OV2710 offers a 1920×1080 array operating at 30 frames per second using a 3-micron OmniPixel3-HS pixel, delivering low-light performance of 3300 mV/(lux-sec), dark current of 6 mV/sec and a peak dynamic range of 69dB. This allows the OV2710 to operate in low-light situations well below 15 lux, suitable for applications including notebooks, netbooks, PC cameras, digital video camcorders, DSCs, handsets and other ultra portable devices, said OmniVision.Competing 1080p HD video solutions are based on reducing high-resolution sensors to a 1080p display resolution through either cropping, or merging pixels by binning. However, cropping reduces the field of view, while binning degrades image quality, color reproduction and picture sharpness, said OmniVision. Furthermore a higher resolution sensor will need a much smaller pixel size than a 2-megapixel sensor to achieve the same optical format; and shrinking pixels generally degrades low-light performance.The OV2710 supports multiple platform architectures and controllers with both parallel and MIPI interfaces and allows system designers to leverage the same opto-electrical design across various products and multiple market segments. The OV2710 will enter into mass production in September 2009.

Fairchild Semiconductor (NYSE: FCS) brings designers of power supplies, lighting, display and industrial applications a new generation of 600V Super-Junction MOSFETs -SupreMOS. The combination of their low RDS (ON) and total gate charge brings a 40 percent lower Figure of Merit (FOM) compared to Fairchild's 600V SuperFET MOSFETs. These devices, the 165-milliohm-maximum FCP22N60N, FCPF22N60NT and FCA22N60N, and the 199-milliohm-maximum FCP16N60N and FCPF16N60NT offer best-in-class reverse recovery characteristics di/dt and dv/dt bringing higher reliability for resonant converter, LLC and phase-shifted full-bridge topologies found in switch mode power supply (SMPS) designs.Compared to SuperFET MOSFETs, these 600V Super-Junction MOSFETs offer a low gate charge for the same RDS(ON) , offering excellent switching performance and delivering 20 percent less switching and conduction losses, resulting in higher efficiency. They provide low input and output capacitances, improving efficiency at light load conditions. These features enable power supplies to meet ENERGY STAR 80 PLUS Gold classification for desktop PCs and Platinum classification for servers.These products are part of Fairchild's comprehensive portfolio of MOSFETs that offer designers a wide range of breakdown voltages (-500V to 1000V), state-of-the-art packaging and industry-leading FOM to deliver efficient power management anywhere electronic power conversion is needed. Price (each, 1000 pcs.) Item Price FCP22N60N US$1.60 FCPF22N60NT US$1.60 FCA22N60N US$1.80 FCP16N60N US$1.50 FCPF16N60NT US$1.50 Note: Availability: Samples available nowSuper-Junction MOSFETs-SupreMOSPhoto: Company