Joe Alderson reports from Embedded World 2012 in Nuremberg:

With a rare chance to leave the Farnell/element14 stand and take a trip around the rest of the exhibition, the final day of Embedded World 2012, intended for students and academics, really brought home the incredible level of knowledge among young engineers who are just finishing university and heading out into the work-a-day world.  Young engineers were present at many of the stands, demonstrating proficiency with the applications they were showcasing. Many of them had started with simple 8-bit MCUs, using boards like the Arduino Uno, and were now experts working with products from ARM, Intel, AMD, Microsoft and too many others to list.

Looking at the young people at Embedded World I was reminded that society has now seen multiple generations of computer gamers and, I’m relieved to say, these gamers have left a positive impact on today’s technology. One outgrowth of gaming-driven technology could be seen in the Microsoft exhibit, where the Xbox manufacturer was demonstrating projected touch screen technology (think of the film Minority Report), while plenty of the autonomous RC cars demonstrated elsewhere ran real-time 3D models and transmitted back camera feed from multiple angles.

One of the many great student projects that I saw included object recognition and augmented reality gaming, where real world objects were used as walls in virtual games with computer generated balls bouncing between them. Other young engineers, this time having constructed a giant chess playing robot guided by ultrasound, were keen to demonstrate how they had integrated Atmel’s 8-bit MCU and ubiquitous demo board (I’ll leave you to guess which one) into the motor control system.

As I checked out more and more development boards, their increasing level of connectivity really struck me and it’s no surprise that the Embedded World internet backbone was creaking under the weight of many thousands of web-connected demo boards, laptops and mobile devices. A mighty download speed of 9 kb/s made it quite challenging to get a true measure of the functionality of some of the more powerful development kits as they were running apps that relied on APIs from various Internet locations. However, given the popularity of touch screens (both capacitive and resistive) across so many different applications, I think it’s safe to say that the next 2 – 3 years will see massive growth in every day devices making use of this technology.

At the Philips stand, even the humble washing machine was interfaced with wireless connectivity and a touch screen in order to monitor and improve motor efficiency. I’d initially thought that the idea would be to implement smart control of the washing machine so that it could be activated remotely, but the real goal was increasing energy efficiency and extending the product’s life span.

This drive towards energy efficiency and green technology really impressed me at Embedded World this year, with many of the exhibiting companies placing emphasis on what you can do with only a couple of Watts, rather than what you can do by cramming a massive heat sink on your processor. Of course for this reason ARM seemed to be everywhere at Embedded World 2012. From the autonomous Zeppelin circling above the press area to the smart vending machine on the ARM stand to well over half of the development boards that we were showcasing, ARM cores were the most outwardly obvious sign of the emphasis shifting from energy hungry processors to silent, powerful and well designed cores.

Copper based ICs have reached nano-meter densities, with wire so small, that no current seizes to flow. The University of Cambridge professors John Robertson and Santiago Esconjauregui have devised a possible future solution. They are growing Carbon Nanotube in greater density than ever before, up to 5 times the most current working technology.

Through the annealing step, the deposit of catalyst onto a substrate are heated creating groupings of nanoparticles. The next step grows the nano-tubes. Normally, this process does not yield tubes that can carry sufficient amounts of current for use in ICs. But in the professor's case that place multiple deposits and annealing, produces bundles of nano-tubes capable of handling the current necessary. They claim that even higher densities are possible.

This is good step towards Carbon Nano-Tubes replacing copper in microchip manufacturing, but controlling the positions and laying out an actual circuit with Robertson and Esconjauregui's achievement has not been shown. And, they are only 2 people.

Which brings me to a realization. With so many people working with carbon nanotube and like technology, they all need to be pulling in the same direction. A global initiative will take us all into the future, now. Just a thought.

Eavesdropper

“As electronics become more advanced, we are approaching the point where conventional materials like copper can’t take the heat. For computing to go faster and electronics systems to become more capable, better cooling solutions such as GE’s prototype substrate will be required to allow this to happen,” says Dr. Tao Deng, a senior scientist at GE Global Research.

GE and DARPA are teaming up to create a new "Phase-Change" material that in its prototype form demonstrated 2x thermal conductivity of copper at 1/4th the weight. The material is also able to withstand 10x gravity environments. Since this is a military endeavor, the gravity requirement means this will be used about aircraft. An additional unique feature brings "surface engineered coatings that both repel and attract water." Condensation will become less of an issue. Often, waterproof coatings on PCBs are used in military devices, but could wear away or peal under certain circumstances.

Dr. Tao Deng's blog has just started, I will keep an eye on this one to bring more breakthroughs and announcements as they happen.

Eavesdropper

The XIM 3 stand for XBOX Input Machine version 3. For those  who do not know, the XIM 3 allows for a keyboard, mouse, joystick, and other USB based devices to be adapted to the console. But that is not the end of the device's features. In many games a little autoaim functionality is added to help the player aim using a controller, since the controller is not the most precisely controlled input device. The XIM 3 has onboard software called "Smart Translators" that takes a particular game's aiming and movement actions and attempts to remove any autoaim and movement aids to give a PC like keyboard and mouse feel. Let's take a look at this achievement from the inside.

The device is stylish and does not feel cheap. The casing, a dense plastic, sits the screen at an angle allowing the player to see the information while seated as if at a desk, within the LCD's viewing angle. 3 A type USB ports are on the back for, presumably, a keyboard, mouse, and XBOX controller. The XBOX controller is needed, ultimately, for sending the control signals to the console. The XBOX addresses a controller and expect signals. The XIM piggybacks on the controller signal. A mini usb port is present for a connection to the XBOX console itself. A barrel plug for a power adapter is also present, which may be needed at a user adds a USB hub for more devices.

The XIM 3 shell is held together with 2 visible screws and two underneath foot-pads. Inside shows the screen ribbon cable connected to the mainboard on the base. The screen model number is SG100331. Ribbon cable is marked TS8001S FKJ40010 V1.0. The LCD is a QVGA panel

The mainboard has a model name HDDC3C02 made by HDDC inc. No information could be found on the company or model number. However, the central microcontoller is a NXP - LPC1768FBD100 LPC1768FBD100. A cortex M3 100Mhz 32 Bit ARM processor with 65KB RAM and 512KB program memory space. On the mainboard is a Texas Instruments TUSB2046B TUSB2046B 4-port Full-Speed USB Hub, hence XIM3's 4 ports. (The hub requires 3.3V, the assumption is that the NXP ARM is also run at the same voltage.) Also present is a MAX3421EE USB peripheral host controller with SPI interface. This controller digital logic and analog circuitry necessary to implement a full-speed USB peripheral, or in this case the T.I host controller. (Supply voltage for the MAX chip is also 3.3V) Not to surprise anyone, but a LD33 F022 (3.3V) linear voltage regulator powers the whole system. My only complaint about the system are the experience I had with the 3 main USB ports. It was easy to bend a pin out of place, impeding cable inserts. However, I bent the pins back in place, and all was well.

There is no additional memory, so the entire program sits in 512KB. Overall, it is an impressive design, circuit, packaging, and the code must be exquisite. This is an example of only one person accomplishing an amazing feat on his own. Inspiration to all of us and our ideas.

XIM 3 units are finally available at the XIM Technologies website on a regular basis. When the XIM was first released, the attention and web traffic was so great that it crashed the servers. After the website's servers were upgraded, "OBsIV" the creator of XIM, would only open the store privately for short periods, like 5 minutes. The only way to the store was knowing the direct address, and was not available from the home page. Some people were using other services, like "alertbox," to monitor when the site would open. Eventually, everyone who desperately wanted one, now has one. For the record, the one pictured above was purchased in a 5 minute window in February.

Want to know how the device performs in games? I will relate my experiences in an up and coming post.

Cabe

A complete computer system in 1 cubic millimeter. Onboard is a low power microcontroller, memory, battery, wireless radio, solar cell, and a pressure sensor. This system is meant to be an implantable eye pressure monitor for glaucoma patients. I'm sure a patient would feel this think, despite the size. Think about getting a splinter. Created by three professors from the University of Michigan, Dennis Sylvester, David Blaauw, and David Wentzloff, the project was presented at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco.

"Our work is unique in the sense that we're thinking about complete systems in which all the components are low-power and fit on the chip. We can collect data, store it and transmit it. The applications for systems of this size are endless," Sylvester said.

Blaauw said, "When you get smaller than hand-held devices, you turn to these monitoring devices." He continued, "The next big challenge is to achieve millimeter-scale systems, which have a host of new applications for monitoring our bodies, our environment and our buildings. Because they're so small, you could manufacture hundreds of thousands on one wafer. There could be 10s to 100s of them per person and it's this per capita increase that fuels the semiconductor industry's growth."

Wentzloff, speaking of the onboard antenna, "This is the first integrated antenna that also serves as its own reference. The radio on our chip doesn't need external tuning. Once you deploy a network of these, they'll automatically align at the same frequency."

The system uses an aggressive sleep mode scheme. It wakes every 15 minutes to take readings at about 5.3 nanowatts. The battery charges in 1.5 hours of sunlight, or 10 hours of indoor lighting. But if it is implanted, how can this happen? It can store up to a week's worth of data.

See more about the team at their personal sites.
David Wentzloff: http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~wentzlof/
David Blaauw: http://blaauw.eecs.umich.edu/people.php?u=professor
Dennis Sylvester: http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~dennis/

Eavesdropper