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3/60October 24 , 2011 Electronic Engineering Times 3

CONTENTS OCTOBER 24, 2011

OPINION

4 Commentary: Where arethe jobs?

58 Last Word: Steve Jobssecret success: Wi-Fi

NEWS OF THE TIMES

7 ARMs tips big-littlestrategy for multicore

10 HP, Hynix target memristorlaunch in 2013

12 Bob Swanson on whylinearand Linear

still rocks

16 Apple sales come up short

COVER STORY

18 Chip counterfeit case

uncovers U.S. policy flaw

INTELLIGENCE

24 Inside IMEC

DESIGN + PRODUCTS

Global Feature:

Designing for auto safety

33 Processor strategies

34 Benchtop EMI scans

40 SW-intensive auto systems

42 Electrical systems

44 Planet Analog: Spice analysisof front-end RL drive for ECG

EE LIFE

53 Pop Culture: On jobs, layoffs

57 Drive for Innovation: Are yououtraged yet?

24An UBM Electronics Publication(516) 562-5000; Fax: (516) 562-5325Online: www.eetimes.com

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Copyright 2011 All Rights ReservedPrinted in the USAUBM plc, 600 Community Drive,Manhasset, N.Y. 11030

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4/604 Electronic Engineering Times October 24, 2011

COMMENTARY

In an op-ed piece for the New YorkTimes, Susan Hockfield, president of theMassachusetts Institute of Technology,spelled out the challenge, starting:

The United States became the worlds

largest economy because we invented prod-

ucts and then made them with new

processes. With design and fabrication

side by side, insights from the factory floorflowed back to the drawingboard. Today, our most

important task is to restart

this virtuous cycle of inven-

tion and manufacturing.

MITs president believesmanufacturing has thepower to fuel a U.S. recov-ery. But Im not sure thematter is so clear-cut.

EE Timeshas been cover-ing the global electronicsfor almost 40 years, and inthat time weve all wit-nessed the mass exodus ofmanufacturing facilitiesoverseas. The exodus certainly hasntstopped at mere manufacturing; off-shore production has ultimately led tooffshore innovation, with many compa-nies investing in design centers andR&D facilities outside the United Statesthat attract and nurture talented design

engineers abroad.When a U.S. high-tech companystarts logging more revenue from over-

seas markets, it feels justified in trim-ming its U.S. workforce. The explana-tion is always the same: We need tooperate in local markets to understandthose markets needs. We are a globalcompany; we need to design locally andmanufacture locally.

The global label is being used as a get-out-of-jail-free card. Companies remain

beholden to their customers in the glob-al markets and to theirshareholders back home.The one constituency towhom they are no longerbeholden is their engi-neers and other workersin the States, even thoughthey remain U.S.-basedcompanies.

How can we break thecycle?

Returning to Hock-fields op-ed piece, itshould be noted that shequalifies what she meansby manufacturing:

To make our economy grow, sell more

goods to the world and replenish the

work force, we need to restore manufac-

turingnot the assembly-line jobs of the

past, but the high-tech advanced manu-

facturing of the future.

Specifically, the MIT president advis-es that we hang our hats on advancedmanufacturing that relies on the mar-

riage of science and engineering in cut-ting-edge fields.

Now were getting somewhere.We at EE Timesdont pretend to have

all the answers; far from it. But in thesearch for cutting-edge fields thatcould create advanced manufacturingand engineering jobs, we may be able tohelp. Since April 2004, EE Timeshasbeen compiling and regularly revising alisting of emerging startups informallyknown as the Silicon 60.

The Silicon 60 includes startupsinvolved in semiconductor technolo-gies for analog circuits, memory, logic,power, microelectromechanical systemdevices, optoelectronics, EDA software,foundry manufacturing, semiconductor

production equipment, electronic sub-systems, displays, packaging and mate-rials. EE Timesselects the companiesbased on a mix of criteria, includingtechnology ingenuity, market focus,maturity, financial position, investmentprofile and executive leadership.

The Silicon 60 list presents a cross-section of excellence in the global elec-tronics industry, where continuoustechnological innovationcoupledwith new business modelshas drivengrowth and given birth to new ideas,

new companies and, as a consequence,new jobs.

EE Timeshas come out with a specialSilicon 60 Career Issue (http://e.ubmelectronics.com/Silicon60/index.html),offering insight into dozens of hot com-panies at which you might be temptedto seek employment. We report onavailable jobs and the skill sets required(please note that not all of the listedcompanies have openings). The reportincludes viewpoints from venture capi-talists on the current startup landscapeand poses five questions anyone shouldask before joining a startup.

Its not the whole answer to the jobcrisis. But the companies on our list arecommitted enough to good old ingenu-ity that theyunlike, say, Congresshave put their money where theirmouths are.

Happy hunting. p

By Junko Yoshida (junko.yoshida@ubm.

com), editor in chief of EE Times.

lJOIN THE CONVERSATION

http://tiny.cc/y7z8s

Where are the jobs? Thats the question of theyear. Its easy to blame the President, Congressand Wall Street, and indeed, in one way oranother, theyre all complicit. My addition tothe rogues gallery would be those big high-tech companies in the United States that are

sitting on hoards of cash but neither hiring norinvesting.

Where are the jobs?

We shed light

on jobs incutting-edgefields


5/60

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7/60October 24, 2011 Electronic Engineering Times 7

OF THE TIMESNews

ARM trots out little dog A7 processorBy Peter Clarke

PROCESSOR IP LICENSOR ARMHoldings plc has revealed a power-effi-cient Cortex-A7 processor core that itsays is intended to be used alongside itstop-of-the-range Cortex-A15 as part of aheterogeneous power-driven multicorestrategy.

The A7 is a dual-issue, eight-stagepipeline core that has been heavily opti-mized for power efficiency but supports

the same virtualization and extendedaddressing as the A15. As a result, ARM(Cambridge, U.K.) expects partners to

implement a big dog, little dog strate-gy so that cores are selected to run appli-cations based on the apps power effi-ciency needs.

Alternatively, the A7 processor canbe used alone in single- or dual-coreinstantiations to power an entry-levelsmartphone for price-sensitive markets,ARM said.

CEO Warren East, speaking at the

U.K. launch of the A7, said he expectedmulticore chipswhich could be dual-core A15 plus dual-core A7to be in

the market and powering smartphonesin 2013.

The big-little strategy allows low-per-formance basic and always-on tasks tobe run on one or more A7 cores, to max-imize battery life, while tasks requiringgreater performance would migrate tothe A15. This dynamic core selectioncan be made transparent to the applica-tion software and middleware running

on the processors, supported byadvanced ARM system IP, such as theAMBA 4 ACE Coherency Extensions.

MULTICORE

Paired with big dogA15, the A7 will let

ARM partners pursue astrategy that trades

performance for powerefficiency as the app

warrants, CEO WarrenEast said at the launch


8/60

NEWS OFTHETIMES

The movement of tasks between pairedA7 and A15 cores is triggered by thesame system that drives the dynamicvoltage and frequency scaling that hasbecome traditional in leading-edge sys-tem chips, the company said.

In a 28-nanometer process, the A7 isless than one-fifth the size of the Cor-tex-A8 in a 45-nm process, while provid-ing greater performance and muchgreater power efficiency, ARM said. Adual-core A7 processor at 28 nm wouldproduce about a 70 percent power sav-ings over a dual-core A9 processorimplemented in a 40-nm technology. Inother words, the A7 would consume

about one-third the power needed bythe A9.

ARM had two or three lead partnerson the development of the A7 and theassociated big-little strategy, East said,but he declined to identify them. Accord-ing to the company, ARM now has a

BIG-LITTLE FOR GRAPHICS?

As ARM Holdings plc rolled out its

Cortex-A7 core and attendant big

dog, little dog" flexible power/per-formance scheme last week, an

ARM executive revealed that a simi-

lar scheme was being considered

for its graphics processor cores.

We are looking at a little-big

approach for Mali, said Peter Hut-

ton, general manager of the media

processing division, who was involved

in the design of the Cortex-A7.

At present, ARMs big-little

scheme applies to the pairing of

the A7 and Cortex-A15, allowing

software to migrate between the

cores based on the processing per-

formance required.

ARM's Mali T-604 graphics

processor supports the OpenCL

parallel programming environment

and the notion of applying the GPU

to parallelizable general-purpose

processing tasks. Hand-coding and

manual partitioning currently have

to be done to break out code that

is suitable for running on a GPU.

The T-604 includes four shader

cores, each of which contains two

arithmetic pipelines, one texturing

pipeline and one load/store unit.

The four shaders share a coherent

L2 cache, an MMU, a tiler and a job

manager. The job management

block is a key component because

the shaders are multithreaded; the

job manager can dynamically move

threads among the shaders. Thusthere is already power/performance

scalability at the thread level inside

the Mali T-604.

In that regard, one could consid-

er the A7, A15 and Mali T-xxx,

which are likely to be implemented

monolithically, as a set of resources

that software should harness opti-

mally based on a set of defined

parameters, most notably minimum

latency and minimum power con-

sumption. Peter Clarke

Cortex-A15 vs. Cortex-A7 Cortex-A7 vs. Cortex-A15

performance energy efficiency

Dhrystone 1.9x 3.5x

FDCT 2.3x 3.8x

IMDCT 3.0x 3.0x

MemCopy L1 1.9x 2.3x

MemCopy L2 1.9x 3.4x

The same system thatdrives dynamic voltage

and frequency scalingtriggers task movementbetween paired cores

Performance and energy comparison of the Cortex-A7 and Cortex-A15.

Power consumption vs. performance for an A7 and A15 pair showingdynamic voltage and frequency scaling points.

Overdrive condition

HighestCortex-A15operatingpoint

Cortex-A15

Cortex-A7

Highest Cortex-A7 operating point

Lowest Cortex-A15 operating point

LowestCortex-A7operatingpoint

Performance

Power

8 Electronic Engineering Times October 24, 2011

Source: ARM


9/60

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NEWS OFTHETIMES


SEVILLE, SPAIN The memristortwo-terminal nonvolatile memory that

Hewlett Packard Co. has had in devel-opment since 2008 is on track to beon the market and taking share fromflash memory within 18 months,according to Stan Williams, senior fel-low at HP Labs.

We have a lot of big plans for it.Were working with Hynix Semicon-ductor to launch a replacement forflash in the summer of 2013 and also toaddress the solid-state drive market,Williams told an audience here at therecent International Electronics Forum.

A spokesperson for HP said there wasno definitive product road map yet formemristors but confirmed that HP hasa goal to see memristor products by theend of 2013.

The memristor metrics pertainingto energy to change a bit, read/write

times, retention and endurance are socompelling that flash replacement iseffectively a done deal, Williams said.So in 2014/2015, well be going afterDRAM and, after that, the SRAM mar-

ket, he said, suggesting confidencethat the memristor would become a

so-called universal memory.Williams declined to detail the

process technology, memory capacity ormemory-effect material with which HPand Hynix are working, though he saidthe first commercial offering would bea multilayer device. He said the part-ners had been running hundreds ofwafers through a Hynix full-size faband were very happy with the results.

When challenged over the cost of thetechnology, a potential barrier to itscompeting against flash, Williams said,On a price-per-bit basis, we could be anorder of magnitude lower in cost onceyou get the NRE [nonrecurring engi-neering cost] out of the way.

From theory to productThe memristorits name is a combina-tion of memory and resistorwasoriginally a theoretical two-terminaldevice whose electrical behavior wasderived by Leon Chua in 1971. Nearly40 years later, in 2008, HP researcherspublished a paper in Nature that tiedthe hysteretic I-V characteristics of two-

terminal titanium oxide devices toChuas memristor prediction.

What we found is that moving a fewatoms a fraction of a nanometer can

change the resistance by three orders ofmagnitude, said Williams. In fact,many nanodevices have inherent mem-resistive behavior.

HP has amassed some 500 patentsaround the memristor over the pastthree years. Williams also acknowl-edged, however, that phase-changememory, resistive RAM (RRAM) andother two-terminal memory devices areall memristor-type devices, and thatmany other companies are working onmetal-oxide RRAMs. Samsung now hasa bigger research team working on thetechnology than HP, he said.

Williams touted the crosspointnature of the memristor memoryswitch or resistive RAM device as pro-viding a memory capacity advantageover flash. Whatever the best in flashmemory is, well be able to double that,he said.

Implication logic and synapseWilliams said HPs technology meets or

exceeds the flash performance in allcategories. Read times are less than

MEMORY

HP, Hynix target memristor launch in 2013By Peter Clarke

wave of semiconductor licensees eagerto use the A7 core. Chip vendors Broad-com, Freescale, HiSilicon, Samsung,ST-Ericsson and Texas Instrumentsare listed as supporting the technology,as are system and software concernsCompal, LG Electronics, Linaro, OpenKernel Labs, QNX, Red Bend and Sprint.

We took the A15 to market lastyear because we needed to push theperformance envelope, said East. Butpower efficiency is the most impor-tant thing for ARM. The A7 is the mostefficient core yet.

Power-efficiency-driven selection of

resources has been used before, forexample in the area of graphics, but notfor general-purpose processor cores,said Tom Cronk, deputy general manag-er of the processor division.

The Cortex-A7 processor occupiesless than 0.5 square millimeter using a28-nm process technology and providesuseful performance at about a 1.2-GHzclock frequency in both single- andmulticore configurations.

Used as a standalone processor, theCortex-A7 will deliver sub-$100 entry-level smartphones in the 2013-2014time frame that will offer processing

performance equivalent to that oftodays $500 high-end smartphones,according to ARM.

While the A7 is aimed initially atsmartphones, East said the big-littlestrategy would be applicable in otherareas. He predicted that power-drivenresource allocation would eventually bedeployed in consumer electronics andany area in which complex processingmust coexist with power efficiency.

Tapeouts including the Cortex-A7 areexpected in the first half of 2012, withsystems-on-chip and products based onthem to follow in 2013, East said. p


11/60

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CALL IT CULTLIKE, and LinearTechnology wont take offense. Thecompanys commitment to analog isall-consuming. Its hundreds of analoggurus give concrete form to the tenetsespoused by its founders. And for the

faithful who gathered at the San JoseConvention Center on Oct. 22 for Lin-ears 30th anniversary bash, the celebra-tory anthem was, Linear Rocks.

Executive chairman Bob Swanson,who co-founded Linear in 1981 with

Bob Dobkin, was a featured speaker atthe gathering. In an interview withEE Timesbefore the event, Swansonsaid his message would be that Linearisnt a company with a few geniusesat the core, surrounded by thousands

NEWS OFTHETIMES

10 nanoseconds, and write/erase timesare about 0.1 ns. HP is still accumulat-ing endurance cycle data at 1012 cycles,and retention times are measured inyears, he said.

The memristor also has simplicitygoing for it, Williams said. It uses mate-rials that are already common in theworlds wafer fabs, making the manu-facture of CMOS-compatible devices arelatively straightforward process.

That raises the prospect of addingdense nonvolatile memory as an extralayer on top of logic circuitry. Wecould offer 2 Gbytes of memory per coreon the processor chip. Putting non-volatile memory on top of the logicchip would buy us [the equivalent of] 20years of Moores Law, said Williams.

Further out, Williams said, the mem-ristor could be used for computationunder a scheme called implication logic

in a fraction of the area consumed inCMOS by Boolean logic. In addition, amemristor device is a good analog ofthe synapse in brain function, the HPresearcher said.

As for HPs memristor business mod-el, Williams stressed that the companywould not be getting into the semicon-ductor components business but wouldinstead seek to commercialize and thenlicense the technology to all comers. p

Texas Instruments

Analog Devices

Maxim Integrated Products

National Semiconductor

Linear Technology

STMicroelectronics

Intersil

ON Semiconductor

Sanken

Fairchild Semiconductor

Others

Total Market

2376

3495

260

393

278

384

5849

7524

1530220986

526

715

534

699

841

1369

602

886

1674

2290

1265

1813

1097

1418CY2009

CY2010

Market share rankings for standard analog IC suppliers, 2009-2010Revenue, $ millions

Source: Gartners Annual Semiconductor Market Share Compilation, 2010, published in March 2011

Bob Swanson on why linearand Linearstill rocksBy Junko Yoshida

ANALOG



13/60

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NEWS OFTHETIMES

of helpers. This is a company with afew helpers, like myself and others inthe middle, surrounded by hundredsof geniuses.

Its the rare executive who publiclyspeaks his mind. But Swanson, whopassed the CEO torch to Lothar Maier in2005, didnt mince words during ourinterview, which touched on his ownhistory, including his 30 years at Linear;the company and its competitors; andthe changes that have swept the indus-try over the course of his career.

When Swanson and Dobkin startedLinear, the so-called digital revolutionwas just getting under way, and digitaltechnology was threatening to do away

with all things analog. Swanson lostsleep over the thought that hed starteda company in a crowded sectoralready hosting 50 or more competi-torswhose best days might alreadybe behind it.

In the early days, I remember goinginto Bob [Dobkins] office every day, ask-ing him if the talk about the digital rev-olution was true. And Bob, every time,assured me that analog would not goaway, Swanson recalled.

Today, nothing amuses Swanson

more than an analyst or reporter whoproclaims analog suddenly hot, or achip giant with a bloated portfolio thatpromises to reinvent itself as an analogpowerhouse. Such pronouncements arevindication of the decisions he andDobkin made back in 1981, when, as heput it, all we knew was analog.

Swanson recalled the time his teamdid a teardown on a Hewlett-Packardlab instrument that had been touted forits digital signal processing capability.Inside the HP box, the teardown teamfound one DSP and 92 analog parts. Bythe time Swanson turned over the man-tle to Maier, analog was again the indus-trys darling. After 30 years, the biggestsurprise for me was that the digital rev-olution turned out to be a friend of ana-log, he said.

The second surprise for Swansonand further vindication of the choicesmade by Linearwas that many in theanalog business today have embracedthe idea of high performance analog.

That was the marketing term weinvented at Linear when we were devel-oping precision analog ICs such as op

amps, Swanson said, We had to askourselves what it was that we wereafter. We identified that we were com-mitted to high-performance analog, andwe decided to callit what it was.

Steve Ohr, analyst for analog andpower semiconductors at GartnersTechnology and Service ProviderResearch group, said Linears strategyhas always been to stick with standardmultimarket building blocksampli-fiers, data converters, power manage-ment ICsbut design and build thekinds of parts whose specifications (typ-ically speed, precision and/or low pow-er consumption) are so finely tuned

that competitors find those specs diffi-cult, if not impossible, to duplicate.Its strategy of skimming the very

high end of the standard analog partsmarket has made Linear successful andis still valid today, Ohr added.

Rewinding the tapeBefore co-founding Linear, Swansonworked for Transitron, Fairchild andNational Semiconductor. I workedfor the companies when they were attheir best, Swanson noted, adding

that the experience had imbued himwith the spirit of winning rather thanjust surviving.

In 1960, Transitron had $60 million insales and was the second biggest chipcompany, after Texas Instruments,according to Swanson. I knew I wasworking for a hot company becausewhenever I went to a trade show, as soonas somebody noticed Transitron on myname tag, hed want to recruit me.

Several years into Swansons tenureat Transitron, Fairchild came courting.He took Fairchilds offer, having decid-ed that Transitron didnt treat peopleright; they behaved [as if] they had anendless pool of engineers coming into replace you.

Fairchild was an innovative compa-ny, said Swanson, but it wouldnt putup money fast enough to seed thegrowth. In 1968, as Fairchild wasimploding and key personnel were leav-ing to found startups, Swanson landedat National, where he started out as a

manufacturing guy. After completing atour of duty at Nationals fabs in Scot-land and in Germany, he was put in


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Other scopes


15/60

charge of Nationals flagship analogbusiness. It was an exhilarating experi-ence, said Swanson.

But by the late 1970s, analog was abusiness to milk at National, whichhad begun buying into the myth thatall problems electronic would one daybe solved digitally. National startedmaking watches, calculators and com-puters on a board, Swanson said, andwas trying to take on the Japanesein memories. I didnt like the odds.National was also taking on Intel inmicroprocessors. I didnt like mychances there either.

Swanson acknowledged that Nation-als waning interest in analog had beena factor in his decision to leave, but healso cited his disappointment withwhat he called the companys ridicu-lous management style. Under amatrix management system, Nationalmanagers had their hands on every-thing, but nobody was responsible forone thing, Swanson recalled. Theywere even changing my process at a fab,driving my yield to crash.

Swansons experiences at his three

earlier employers have informed hismanagement philosophy and are evi-dent in Linears continued use of spe-

cialized fabrication facilities (anunusual posture in the fabless era,Ohr noted), its emphasis on R&Dinvestment and its commitment toits engineers.

Asked what makes Linear unique,Ohr cited its engineering culture, inwhich individual creativity is encour-aged and applauded. And at a timewhen even analog companies like Inter-sil are responding to Wall Streets prod-ding to dump their fabs, Ohr said,Linears bipolar and specialized CMOSfacilities are knobs they can turn toextract ever more performance fromsuch devices as low-power 16-bit dataconverters with 100-MHz sampling rates;

lithium-ion battery charge controllersfor the automotive battery market; andthe Micro-Module dc/dc converters,which provide high-current outputs fordensely populated server cards.

The Micro-Module parts, Ohr added,address one of the sweet spots of thevoltage regulator market: point-of-loadconverters for big computers and enter-prise-level communications systems.

Independent thinkerDuring Linears first decade, the buzz

around the digital revolution madethe financial community skeptical ofanalog. At every analyst meeting onWall Street, Id spend the first 10 min-utes explaining why analog was notdead, then the next 10 minutes onwhat the future held for Linear, saidSwanson.

Hes the first to point out that heisnt a visionary, noting, I didnt havea vision for smartphones or MP3 play-ers. But Linear did see the impor-tance of portable, battery-poweredproducts for things like medical equip-ment or analytical tools. This was waybefore portable PCs became popular.The company capitalized on its earlyrecognition of the significance of mak-ing standard functions more power-efficient as devices shrink andintegration rises.

Thats not to say its all been smoothsailing. When the dotcom bubbleburst in 2001, Linears sales sank byhalf, to $500 million, triggering dramat-

ic action to reset the companys direc-tion by 2005.During that period, Linear took the

October 24, 2011 Electronic Engineering Times 15

Scope Lie #2

Your digital

scopes noise

specificationTodays digital scopes only provide

a 5 or 10mV/division setting and

use a digital zoom to get down to

a 1mV/division setting. This tactic

significantly increases noise while

lowering the accuracy. As a way to

reduce the noise, some oscilloscopes

limit bandwidth on low volts per

division settings, while others do notoffer the 1mV/division setting at all.

Try the scope that has a true,low noise performance and highly

accurate 1mV/division setting.




888-837-8772

The big surprisewas that the digitalrevolution turnedout to be a friend ofanalog Bob Swanson


16/60

NEWS OFTHETIMES

typical cost-cutting measures, but thebig decision was to unhinge ourselvesfrom the consumer electronics busi-ness, Swanson said. Given the CE sec-tors rise in influence during the pastdecade, that decision might seem coun-terintuitive. But what we learned isthat consumer electronics manufactur-ers always care about price per chip;they dont care about quality. Put moreaccurately, they arent prepared to paymore for quality.

Say theres consumer market demandfor a complex analog chip that fits in asmall space. Linear might get there firstand improve its chip with each new gen-eration, but in a few years, some com-

petitor will field a similar chip at halfthe price. The race is always to the bot-tom, and once dragged there, theres noway for us to protect our IP and continuethe business, Swanson said.

So Linear left the CE market to oth-ers and refocused on the industrial andautomotive segments. When the glob-al economic crisis hit in late 2008, wedidnt panic, said Swanson; the com-

pany stayed the course, focusing onmedium- to long-term business. By2011, Swanson said, we kind of madeour case by maintaining a 30 percentto 40 percent profit margin.

Between 2002 and 2010, according toGartner numbers cited by Ohr, the com-pound annual growth rate of the stan-dard analog IC market in which Linear


Scope Lie #3Your digital

scopes

update rateDigital scope manufacturers

boast update rates of 1+ million

waveforms/sec, but this spec

excludes measurements and mask

testing. These demanding scope

measurement tests slow down

the update rate of most digital

oscilloscopes. When conducting

a mask test at lower update rates,

per second could take anywhere

from minutes to hours.

Try the scope that maintains

extremely high waveform update

rates while performing a mask

test, and locates the error in

less than 30 seconds.




888-837-8772

ApplesquarterlysalescomeupBy Dylan McGrath

FINANCIAL

DESPITE RECORD SALES of MacPCs and iPads, Apple Inc.s sales for thequarter ended Sept. 24 fell short of ana-lysts consensus expectations.

Apple (Cupertino, Calif.) last weekreported sales for its fiscal fourth quar-ter of $28.27 billion, down about 1 per-cent from the third quarter and up 39percent from the fourth quarter of 2010.

The company posted a quarterly netprofit of $6.62 billion, or $4.64 pershare, down 9 percent from the previ-ous quarter and up 54 percent com-pared with the year-ago quarter.

Analysts were looking for more.According to Yahoo Finance, a groupof 44 analysts surveyed had expectedApple to report sales for the fiscal fourthquarter of $29.45 billion on average.

Gross margin for the quarter was 40.3percent, down from 41.7 percent in theprevious quarter and up from 36.9 per-cent in the year-ago quarter, Apple said .

For the fiscal year, also ended Sept.

24, Apple reported sales of $108.25 bil-lion, up 66 percent from fiscal 2010. Thecompany reported net income for the

Analysts had beenexpecting fiscalfourth-quarter sales

of $29.45 billion


17/60

plays was 10.5 percent; Linears CAGRwas 13.1 percent.

Swanson is proud to go against WallStreets wisdom. We have a disciplinenot to take a business for the sake ofgrowing sales, he said, adding thatonce you start selling more at lowermargins, you find your R&D becomingoverhead that needs to be cut. Linear is

the most profitable company in the ana-log market, said Swanson. But we havenever promised to Wall Street that weare the fastest-growing company.

Linear has also worked to keep itshead count stable. Our No. 1 goal ismaintaining a healthy business, whichin turn creates job security and a cul-ture of loyalty, Swanson said.

That culture, he believes, will help

Linear battle the two-headed giant of themerged resources of Texas Instrumentsand National. Innovation is not an armsrace, he said. TI may have 2,500 to4,500 analog circuit designers now,whereas I have only 250 to 300. But atLinear, we have innovative analogdesigners who are truly analog gurus.

Gartners Ohr, however, said TIsacquisition of National should be a con-cern for Linear. The future of analoglies with broadline companies likeTexas Instruments, with the engineer-ing and manufacturing resources to doboth standard analog and application-specific analog. This assessmentincludes ON Semiconductor, STMicro-

electronics, even Infineon.Further, Ohr noted, If you dont wishto be big, then you need to accept animage of yourself as a niche player, abillion-dollar-boutique.

But maybe thats what Linear wants.We have never been committed toprofitless growth, Swanson said.

If thats not a refreshing attitude,what is? p


Scope Lie #4

Your digital

scopes

analog triggerMost analog and digital scopes

utilize separate circuits for trigger

and waveform acquisition. These

circuits have different bandwidths,

varying sensitivities and diverse

characteristics which can cause

trigger jitter.

The R&SRTO digital oscilloscopedoes not split the captured signal

into a trigger circuit and acquisition

circuit, virtually eliminating trigger

jitter and enabling you to trigger

Try the scope with the digital

trigger, that triggers on the same

waveform you see on the screen.




888-837-8772

Sell more at lowermargins, Swansonsays, and your R&Dbecomes overheadthat needs to be cut

hort

year of $25.92 billion, up 85 percentover fiscal 2010.

Apple said it sold 17.07 millioniPhones in the fiscal fourth quarter,representing unit growth of 21 percentover the year-ago quarter. The companyalso said it sold 11.12 million iPads dur-ing the quarter, a 166 percent unitincrease over the year-ago period, and4.89 million Macs, a 26 percent unitincrease over the same quarter of 2010.Apple sold 6.62 million iPods, a 27 per-cent unit decline from the year-agoquarter, the company said.

Apple expects sales for the current

quarter (the first quarter of its 2012 fis-cal year) to grow to about $37 billionand expects diluted earnings per share

to reach about $9.30. Apples fiscal firstquarter includes 14 weeks, instead ofthe typical 13 weeks, the company said.

Last Monday, Apple reported it hadsold more than 4 million iPhone 4Shandsets within three days after theproduct officially launched on Oct. 14.

By contrast, it took Apple more than70 days to sell the first 1 million origi-nal iPhone handsets when the productwas launched in 2007.

Customer response to iPhone 4Shas been fantastic, we have strongmomentum going into the holiday sea-son, and we remain really enthusiastic

about our product pipeline, Tim Cook,Apples chief executive officer, said ina statement.p



Poison in the veinsBy Bruce Rayner

WHEN YOU TYPE www.visiontechcomponents.cominto your

browser, up pops a cheerful page that tells you, Sorry! Thissite is not currently available.Thats because last September, the feds shut the component

broker down, arrested owner Shannon Wren and administra-tive manager Stephanie McCloskey, and charged the pairwith conspiracy, trafficking in counterfeit goods and mailfraud for knowingly importing more than 3,200 shipments ofsuspected or confirmed counterfeit semiconductors into theUnited States, marketing some of the products as militarygrade and selling them to customers that included the U.S.Navy and defense contractors.

McCloskey pleaded guilty to the conspiracy charge last

November in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbiaand cooperated with the government. Wren died of an appar-ent drug overdose in May.

Last month, details of the case against McCloskey wererevealed in the 78-page memorandum in aid of sentencingthat the government filed with the district court. Thememorandum offers a rare glimpse into how a rogue brokeroperating out of a house on a quiet residential street inClearwater, Fla., was able to dupe the system, put countlessinnocents at risk and compromise national security fornearly five years.

COVER STORY

Chief of Staff

Executive Secretariat

Military Advisor

SECRETARY

DEPUTY SECRETARY

MANAGEMENTSCIENCE &

TECHNOLOGY

NATIONAL

PROTECTION

& PROGRAMS

POLICY GENERAL COUNSELLEGISLATIVE

AFFAIRS

PUBLIC

AFFAIRS

INSPECTOR

GENERAL

Chief

FinancialOfficer

FEDERAL LAW

ENFORCEMENT

TRAINING CENTER

DOMESTIC

NUCLEAR

DETECTION OFFICE

U.S. COAST

GUARD

OPERATIONS

COORDINATION

& PLANNING

CITIZENSHIP &

IMMIGRATION

SERVICES

OMBUDSMAN

CIVIL RIGHTS &

CIVIL LIBERTIESHEALTH AFFAIRS

INTELLIGENCE &

ANALYSIS

CHIEF

PRIVACY

OFFICER

COUNTER-

NARCOTICS

ENFORCEMENT

INTERGOVERNMENTAL

AFFAIRS

FEDERAL

EMERGENCY

MANAGEMENT

AGENCY

U.S. SECRET

SERVICE

U.S. IMMIGRATION &

CUSTOMSENFORCEMENT

U.S. CITIZENSHIP &

IMMIGRATIONSERVICES

U.S. CUSTOMS &

BORDERPROTECTION

TRANSPORTATION

SECURITYADMINISTRATION

Organizational chart for the U.S.Department of Homeland Security.U.S. Customs and Border Patrol fallsunder DHS jurisdiction.


19/60

How a chip counterfeiting case

exposed a potentially fatal flawin the U.S. governments abilityto keep fake parts out of the

defense pipeline

Damage done by VisionTech

The U.S. government has estimated the damage caused to 21semiconductor companies by VisionTechs importing of counterfeitchips over a multiyear period. The dollar values are based largelyon the manufacturers suggested retail pricing for the legitimateversions of counterfeit parts seized by Customs and Border Patrolin 35 separate incidents over more than three years.

Advanced Micro Devices $34,900.00

Altera $7,611.00

Analog Devices $75,580.66

Cypress Semiconductor $33,446.00

Freescale $40,021.00

Infineon Technologies $10,036.00Intel $100,889.50

Intersil $1,857.30

Linear Technology $32,018.75

Maxim $1,596.34

Mitel $2,645.93

National Semiconductor $5,943.80

NEC $24,842.07

Peregrine Semiconductor $2,640.00

Philips Electronics $1,639.50

Renesas $2,400.00

Samsung Electronics America $77,165.00

STMicroelectronics $18,619.21

Texas Instruments $92,899.58

Toshiba $2,424.00

Xilinx $22,235.76

Total $591,411.40Source: Governments Consolidated Memorandum in Aid of Sentencing and Motion

for Downward Departure Pursuant to USSG. 5K1.1, filed with the U.S. DistrictCourt in the District of Columbia on Sept. 9, 2011, and the U.S. Departmentof Justice.

Due to the type of counterfeit goods sold, the industries to

which sales were made, and the multitude of military, com-mercial and industrial applications into which these devicesmay be placed, defendant McCloskey did her part to set a tick-ing time bomb of incalculable damage and harm to the U.S.military, U.S. servicemen and -women, the government, all ofthe industries to which VisionTech sold goods, and con-sumers. She has effectively helped to release a poison into theveins of interstate and international commerce, U.S. Attor-ney Ronald Machen wrote in the memorandum.

The memorandum recommended McCloskey serve a four-and-a-half-year prison sentence and pay restitution to thetrademark owners for damages estimated at close to $600,000.The trademark owners named in the memorandum are a veri-

table whos who of the semiconductor industry.Of the estimated 3,263 shipments of semiconductors

imported by VisionTech between December 2006 and Septem-ber 2010, only 35 were confirmed as containing counterfeitsand seized at the border by U.S. Customs agents. Those 35shipments contained a total of nearly 60,000 counterfeit ICs,according to the governments memorandum.

The 3,228 shipments that were not seized made their wayinto the U.S. electronics supply chain through sales Vision-Tech made to more than 1,100 buyers in virtually everyindustry sector. Many of VisionTechs customers were otherbrokers, who resold the parts. While some of the counterfeitswere caught during manufacturer testing, hundreds of thou-sands, if not millions, of counterfeit parts are potentially stillfloating around in the supply chain or, worse yet, insideequipment thats being used today.

One of the counterfeit shipments contained fake parts soldto BAE Systems, which makes identification friend-or-foe (IFF)systems for the Naval Air Warfare Centers Aircraft Division.BAE purchased 75 devices from a broker who had bought theparts from VisionTech. The contractor had the chips tested at athird-party testing facility, which identified them as counter-feits. If those chips had found their way into an IFF system onboard a Navy vessel and the system had failed, the shipsdefenses would have been seriously compromised.

Another case involved the sale of 1,500 counterfeit Intelflash memory devices to Raytheon Missile Systems forincorporation in the Harm Targeting System (HTS), which is

Source : Test imony o f S IA p res ident Br ian Toohey be fo re the House Commi t tee onHomeland Secur i t y Subcommi t tee on Overs igh t , I nvest i ga t ions and Management



COVER STORY

installed on F-16 fighter planes to identify and track enemyradar systems. Raytheon installed the flash chips on 28 cir-cuit boards destined for HTS modules. The boards immedi-ately failed. After testing nine of the flash devices, Raytheonconcluded the parts were all counterfeit.

Flaw in the systemBut this story is not about VisionTech. Its about howthe VisionTech case exposed a flaw in the U.S. governmentstactics for catching counterfeit components at the border.Specifically, its about an interpretation of the U.S. TradeSecrets Act by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) thatprevents the agency from sharing detailed information abouta counterfeit part with the semiconductor company whosename is on the component. CBP is one of the Department ofHomeland Securitys (DHS) largest agencies.

Customs agents at U.S. borders are allowed to hold a ship-

ment of suspected counterfeit parts for 30 daysthe so-calleddetention phaseto determine whether they are indeedcounterfeits. After 30 days, agents either have to seize theshipment formally or release it to the intended recipient.During the detention phase, CBP must disclose to the ownerof a trademark the following information, if available: (1) thedate of importation; (2) the port of entry; (3) a description ofthe merchandise; (4) the quantity involved; and (5) the coun-try of origin of the merchandise, according to a written state-ment that CBP provided to EE Timeson Oct. 5.

The problem is that CBPs so-called redaction policy limitsthe information that can be shared with trademark owners. Inaccordance with that policy, Customs agents since mid-2008

have been taking photos of chips, blacking out the markings onthe package and sending the touched-up images to chip manu-facturers, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association.

The CBP statement explains that its position is foundedon the view that information protected by the Trade SecretsAct cannot be provided to a third party until after seizure.

In furtherance of CBPs position that no Trade Secrets Act-protected information is to be released until after seizure,CBP ... determined that any indicators, such as bar codes andserial numbers, that might inadvertently disclose such infor-mation were to be removed or obliterated before providing asample to a trademark owner.

Of course, its the very bar codes and serial numbers oblit-erated by CBP agents that chip companies would normallyuse to determine whether a detained chip is real or fake.Before 2008, when CBP was still providing unaltered photos,chip companies estimate they were able to resolve almost85 percent of CBP requests for confirmation of whether adetained chip was legit or counterfeit.

So how are chip makers expected to help CBP agents catchcounterfeit parts if they cant see the markings on the chips?And how does CBP reconcile its requirement to provide a

In a word, bad. And its getting worse.

Counterfeit computer hardware,

including chips, was one of the top

commodities seized in 2010 by U.S.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Seizures in the category were up fivefoldlast year over 2009, ICE reported.

Between 2007 and 2010, ICE

collaborated with U.S. Customs and Border

Patrol (CBP) on more than 1,300 seizures

that collectively involved 5.6 million

counterfeit semiconductor devices. The

fakes bore the trademarks of 87 Asian,

European and North American chip

companies. More than 50 seized

counterfeit shipments were falsely marked

as military- or aerospace-grade devices.

A 2010 U.S. Department of Commerce

report on counterfeit electronics in the

defense industry corroborated the trend.

Based on responses from component

manufacturers, the Commerce study

reported an increase of more than 150

percent in the number of counterfeit parts

showing up in military and governmentapplications between 2005 and 2008.

Counterfeiters range from negligent

brokers who dont test the parts they

import to criminals intent on deceiving

their customers. As the VisionTech case

shows, counterfeiters can make a lot of

money by buying cheap fakes and

reselling them for 10, 100 or even 1,000

times more than they paid for them.

And the counterfeiters are getting

bolder. In June, $852,000 worth of

counterfeit SanDisk portable memory

chips were discovered and seized by

federal agents at the Port of Long

Beach/Los Angeles, according to the Los

Angeles Times . CBP agents found the

chips hidden inside 1,932 karaoke

machines shipped from China.

For manufacturers, its essentialto have a formal and rigorous process

for inspecting and testing suspect

components. The components

themselves, shipping documentation and

packing labels must be inspected as the

boxes come off the receiving dock.

Suspicious parts should be tested with

X-ray inspection systems and high-

powered microscopes. If needed,

companies should have the chips

decapped either mechanically or

chemically to check the die markings.

Bruce Rayner

HOW BAD IS THE COUNTERFEITING PROBLEM?

Its one of the most perplexingissues Ive ever dealt with. Its anational security issue, and aclear and present danger ...We need to solve this problem,

period, and soon. Brian Toohey, president of theSemiconductor IndustryAssociation. The SIA insiststhat CBPs redaction policyhinders chip makers abilityto identify counterfeitparts during the 30-daydetention period forincoming shipmentsof suspected fakes


21/60

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COVER STORY

description of the merchandise to the trademark holder withits policy of obliterating information on a photo?

I dont understand whats behind this, said Jim Burger, a

longtime Washington-based intellectual property attorneywho represents semiconductor companies. Theres zerothreat to CBP in disclosing the information on the surfaceof a chip to the trademark owner. The information is not con-fidential and is not covered under the Trade Secrets Act. Theyare just hands-down wrong.

Indeed, CBP is unique in its interpretation of the TradeSecrets Act. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S.Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), among others,disclose detailed information to semiconductor manufactur-ers as part of their investigations of counterfeit cases.

Its one of the most perplexing issues Ive ever dealt with,said SIA president Brian Toohey. Its a national security

issue, and a clear and present danger.The VisionTech case confirms just how clear and present.

CBP began sending semiconductor companies sanitizedimages of devices starting in June 2008, when VisionTechscounterfeit operations were in full swing, according to thegovernments memorandum. The government does notknow how many shipments destined for VisionTech mayhave been detained at U.S. ports but were released when anauthenticity determination could not be made by the trade-mark holder, U.S. Attorney Machen wrote in the governmentmemorandum on McCloskeys recommended sentencing.

Given that CBP seized just 35 of the 3,263 shipmentsVisionTech made between 2007 and 2010, the number thatCBP could have detained and subsequently released becauseof a lack of authentication could have been anywhere fromzero to 3,228. Just one counterfeit VisionTech shipmentreleased into the supply chain as a result of CBPs redactionpolicy would have been one too many, several sources said.

SIAs Toohey has made the argument publicly. On July 7,testifying at a hearing before the House Committee on Home-land Securitys Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations andManagement, he made the case for CBP to revert to its pre-2008practice of sharing unredacted photos of detained parts.

Over the summer, letters on the topic were exchangedbetween members of Congress, the Homeland Security and

Treasury secretaries, and CBP Commissioner Alan Bersin, whowas pressed to explain and possibly amend the redaction poli-cy. The latest salvo was fired on Oct. 4 by Chairman Jason

Chaffetz and Ranking Member John Tierney of the NationalSecurity, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations Subcom-mittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Govern-ment Reform. The committee has opened a formalinvestigation into the CBPs policies and procedures regard-ing importation of counterfeit semiconductors.

We are concerned actions taken by CBP may serve to seri-ously undermine its ability to prevent the importation ofcounterfeit semiconductors, Chaffetz and Tierney wrote.Bersin was given until today, Oct. 24, to provide all docu-ments related to DHS and CBPs legal interpretation of theTrade Secrets Act as it pertains to CBPs redaction policy.

We need to solve this problem, period, and soon, saidSIAs Toohey. The only way to do that is if industry and gov-ernment work together to quickly and accurately identifysuspected chips before they enter the country. The industrystands ready, as we always have, to stop suspect ICs at our

borders by working collaboratively with CBP.The conflict will likely play out in one of two ways. In thefirst scenario, if Bersin refuses to budge on CBPs redactionpolicy, the only recourse would be for Congress to legislatea change in CBPs policy. It would have an ally in the Obamaadministration, which in March released a report on IPenforcement legislative recommendations that calls for Con-gress to give DHS authority to share information on suspectparts with rights holders during the detention phase. Rightsholders know their products better than anyone else and,thus, obtaining their assistance allows DHS, particularly itscomponent CBP, to more effectively identify and combatinfringing products, the report states.

CBP, meanwhile, told EE Timesit had already submitted pro-posed legislative language to Congress that would give CBP theauthority recommended by the administrations report.

The other scenario would be for Bersin to get over his con-cern about violating the Trade Secrets Act, pick up his pen andwrite a new directive that permits CBP to share unaltered pho-tos and samples of detained products with chip companies.

Legislation would likely take some time. A CBP policy shiftcould be accomplished overnight. In light of the clear andpresent danger, logic would dictate the latter. p

I dont understand whats

behind this. Theres zero

threat to CBP in disclosing the

information on the surface of

a chip to the trademark

owner. They are just hands-down wrong.

Jim Burger, a Washington-basedintellectual property attorney,on CBPs interpretation of theTrade Secrets Act and its resultantredaction policy

Additional resources

Ferreting out the fakes in the chip supply chain, EE Times

http://tiny.cc/2z69l

Hearing by the House Committee on Homeland Securitys

Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations and Management

http://tiny.cc/58uya

Defense Industrial Base Assessment: Counterfeit Electronics,

U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security,

Office of Technology Evaluation, June 2010 http://tiny.cc/w3unv

Obama administration white paper: Intellectual Property

Enforcement Legislative Recommendations

http://tiny.cc/k5eve

Consolidated Memorandum in Aid of Sentencing and Motion for

Downward Departure Pursuant to USSG 5K1.1, filed with U.S.District Court in the District of Columbia, Sept. 9, 2011


23/60



Intelligence

LEUVEN, BELGIUM The Interuniversity MicroelectronicsCenter recently hosted a press tour at its facilities to reveal

IMECs goals for an office tower now under construction anda third fab planned for later in the decade. Along the way,IMEC researchers offered status updates on everything from450-mm wafers and extreme-ultraviolet lithography to ultra-wideband and 60-GHz wireless.

IMEC CEO Luc Van den Hoveannounced plans to have a450-mm pilot line up and run-ning in 2015. Presumably, thatswhen IMEC believes a full line ofsemiconductor manufacturingequipment for 450-mm wafers

including the long-awaited

extreme-UV lithography sys-temsshould be available.

A U.S. consortium looking todrive the 450-mm wafer genera-tion recently announced plans fora pilot facility in New York. Vanden Hove said the move did notsteal any of IMECs thunder orpotential business for plowing theway to such a capability.

One group cannot solve all thechallenges of the 450-mm migra-tion, Van den Hove said, claimingthe U.S. announcement had notbeen a surprise and would have noimpact on IMECs plans. We haddetailed discussions with partners, fully knew their needs for450-mm wafers and had our plans worked out.

Our 450-mm timetable is more conservative than whatothers have announced, yet it is the most optimistic schedulewe can think of, Van den Hove added.

IMEC will start testing some 450-mm wafer tools as earlyas next year in its existing 300-mm facility, which wasexpanded just last year. A full 450-mm facility wont arriveuntil about 2015 and will cost at least a billion euros (about

$1.38 billion), Van den Hove said.The good news is that IMEC has land available on its leafycampus for the new fab.

The latest on EUV

Kurt Ronse (below), IMECs director of advanced lithography,gave an update on his experiences with the ASML NXE 3100EUV lithography system (next page, right).

The system was installed in IMECs 300-mm fab in Marchand uses a different light source (Ushio discharged-produced

plasma) than the technology deployed inthe handful of other machines in usearound the globe. IMEC has been runningwafers through it since June and thus farhas gotten results down to 18-nanometerline widths.

Throughput is the big issue. The systemcurrently only handles about five wafers an

hour. Thats up from one wafer every threehours at the start, but it will take as long asnine months to get to the machines ratedthroughput of 60 wafers an hour, Ronsesaid. Going to 450-mm wafers and keepingthe throughputs the same will requirehigher scanning speeds and acceleration, sosome of the biggest challenges are in devel-oping that staging technology, he said.I dont expect that the first prototype450-mm wafer EUV scanners with reason-able throughput will be available before2015 or 2016.

An even bigger hurdle, according to Vanden Hove, is getting a strong enough lightsource to handle the needed 100-wafer/hour

throughput for commercial systems. At least two companiesare competing to deliver such components now, Van denHove said.

Raising a towerand a budgetThe big local story at IMEC this year was the groundbreakingfor a 16-story office tower that will house 500 people andinclude some new labs.

The Leuven TV news crew turned out to interview Van den

Hove after the event (next page, bottom left), which attractedtechnorati from the area, including the manager of the localbranch of Alcatel-Lucents Bell Labs.

Inside IMECBy Rick Merritt

LEADING-EDGE RESEARCH

Kurt Ronse


25/60October 24, 2011 Electronic Engineering Times 25

A groundbreaking at IMEC drew thelocal press; the technorati came forresearchers updates on work with

technologies like extreme UV



INTELLIGENCE

The Flanders minister for innovation,Ingrid Lieten, was on hand at thegroundbreaking ceremony and promisedthe government would increase itsinvestment in IMEC by as much as 200million euros by 2014. Thats a substan-tial boost from the governments currentcontribution of about 45 million euros ayear, but its still far short of the billioneuros IMEC estimates it will need to cre-ate a 450-mm pilot line by 2015.

The mayor of Leuven, Louis Tobback,also voiced his support at the event.

Indeed, the mood at the groundbreak-ing was upbeat, as a packed crowdof partners and local politicians gath-ered for speeches, a champagne toast

and lunch.

Where the rubber meets

the road

Energy harvesting has found whatcould be its first high-volume applica-tion, according to one IMEC researcher.

All those tire pressure monitors man-dated in U.S. cars (and soon to berequired in new European and Japancars) currently use batteries, whichforce a return to the shop every three tofive years. No more, thanks to a proto-

type SoC from IMEC that integrates thepressure sensor with a block to harvest

energy from road vibrations. It turnsout potholes can be a good thing.

IMEC researchers demonstrated theso-called smart tire (below left) in anonline video.

The chip includes a small super-capacitor to store energy gathered fromroad vibrations. as well as a 315- to 434-MHz RF link to communicate tire sta-tus to the cars management system.

The group expects next-generationparts will integrate other features, suchas electronic product IDs. Strain sensorsand accelerometers are also being con-sidered to monitor overall tire safety.

So far, tire makers Pirelli and Conti-nental are showing interest, said Rob

van Schaijk (left), who manages thesmart-tire program at IMEC.

Ultrawideband redux

Ultrawideband got creamed in the mar-ket a few years ago when it failed tomeet the data rates and costs expectedas the transport for wireless USB. Ahandful of startups went belly-up inthe aftermath of the hype.

Now IMEC wants to bring the tech-nology back in a slightly different formfor a very focused application.

Researcher Kathleen Philips (below)described an impulse-response versionof UWB for use in linking stereo head-sets to MP3 players and smartphones.

The prototype 90-nm chip set thatIMEC has developed for the applicationpromises to deliver more throughputthan Bluetooth or ZigBee, with far lesspower consumption than Wi-Fi. The

Kathleen Philips


27/60

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INTELLIGENCE

group has written a paper describing its work that has beenaccepted for presentation at the International Solid-State Cir-cuits Conference in February. At the event, IMEC will haveworking demos to show the chips 1-Mbit/second bandwidthat 6-mW power consumption, Philips promised.

If all goes well, in 2013 the team will show a version of thechip set for use in indoor location-based services.

Lighting up fish brainsResearchers at the new Neural Electronics Research Flanders(NERF) center at IMEC aim to unlock secrets about how thebrain works. They hope their fundamental research will yieldnew treatments for brain disorders that today afflict millions.

Researcher Cameron Wyatt (above left) took reporters on atour of the NERF center that included its extensive farm ofzebra fish (above right), which assist in the neural investiga-tions. Zebra fish embryos, it turns out, are wonderful subjectsfor studying living brains.

NERF researchers expose the fish to certain tastes orsmells and then conduct fluorescent tests to observe which

areas of their brains light up, as if shot through with ripplesof lightning, as they sense the chemicals and express specif-ic proteins (top left).

Digital TV gets reconfiguredIMEC researcher Liesbet Van der Perre (below) has expandedher work in reconfigurable radio to digital TV, developing achip that can power TVs sold in any geography in the globe.Panasonic, Renesas and Samsung are partners in the so-calledgreen-radio program.

Over the past months, flex-ibility is becoming a realrequirement to cope with newstandards, said Van der Perre.The first radios we built hadcost and power overheadssuch that some companiessaid they werent goodenough, but now the costs andpower have come down to beon par with, or in some caseseven better than, ASICs.

The team is also working onreconfigurable chips for LTE,

which is specified across a frag-mented set of spectrum bandsglobally. And it is developing

Fish farmedat IMECsNERF centerare givingresearcherslike CameronWyatt insight

into brainbehavior

Liesbet Van der Perre


29/60

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INTELLIGENCE

chip sets to handle both 5- and 60-GHzversions of next-generation Wi-Fistandards.

Chips replace opticsFrancesco Pessolano (above) wants toreplace every piece of glass in visionsystems with silicon.

The IMEC program manager hasbroad ambitions for his Nvision initia-tive. For example, he wants to replacebulky camera lenses with thinner digi-tal mirrors and filters in everything

from consumer point-and-shoots tomedical endoscopes.

Glass is actually pretty bad foroptics. For every four glass lenses youuse to focus, you need 20 more to com-pensate, so you end up with somethinglarge, he said.

IMECs digital optics designs couldshrink a 550-mm camera lens down toabout 126 mm, he estimates. Prototypescould emerge by the end of 2012.

Chips could also help shrink the sizeand cost of todays hyper-spectral imag-

ing systems from table-sized equipmentthat costs as much as $50,000 to the sizeand cost of a consumer camera. Siliconalso can speed the processing by anorder of magnitude, Pessolano said,promising demonstrations in January.

Looking way down the road, Pes-

solano showed early demos of chip-based holographic systems that couldbecome alternatives to todays 3-DTVs. The monochrome demos showed3-D images of IMECs planned officetower as well as the IMEC logo (aboveand right).

The holography demos captured lotsof attention at the press gathering, butthe researchers tempered the enthusi-asm by warning the technology is along way from market.

IMEC proves chip prowessStephane Donnay, an IMEC programdirector, announced that the institutehad scored its first design-socket wins,having created three chips for ASMLsEUV scanners. The design wins are thefirst fruits of a program IMEC launchedlast year to make low-volume productsfor its partners.

The institute will also transferdesigns to foundries if the productsmove to high volume sales.

More design wins are in the works.

IMEC chips successfully passed severalqualification audits this year, and theinstitute expects to ship silicon in 2012

to five partners, Donnay said.The three chips done for ASML

include two positioning sensors thathelp align and focus the NXE 3100 sys-tems reticle. The third chip senses EUVlight doses and will be designed into thenext-generation NXE 3300.

The design win faced little com-petition. ASML is not expected tosell more than a handful of the pre-production EUV systems, so few compa-nies were interested in designingASICs for them.p

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THE CURRENT GENERATION ofmicrocontrollers provides the safety-critical developer a wide variety ofoptions when choosing products. Thevariety is perhaps most evident whenevaluating available processor safetystrategies for safety integrity. This is anarea where the best solution dependson the ability of the system developerto judge the strengths and weaknessesof the solution.

When considering common solutionsfor safe processing, there are a few com-mon architectures across product offer-ings. Most available CPU safetysolutions can be classified as single core,single core with hardware checking,dual-core lockstep, asymmetric dualcore or symmetric dual core. These clas-sifications are illustrated in Figure 1.

Watchdog-based solutions, thoughvaluable for program sequence and

deadlock monitoring, cannot providesignificant diagnostics of processingand thus are not considered here.

To begin our comparison, we mustestablish a few classes of evaluation cri-teria: software complexity, silicon com-plexity, safety analysis complexity andavailable performance for functionalsoftware execution.

Software complexity measures theeffort needed to integrate safety mecha-nisms into application software. Siliconcomplexity expresses the on-die hard-ware cost. Safety analysis complexitymeasures the difficulty of performingsafety analysis. Finally, available per-formance measures how much CPUperformance is available to the applica-tion relative to a single CPU withoutany implemented safety constraints.

Single-core CPU solutions are usedacross a wide range of products and arethe baseline for analysis.

A single-core solution must rely onsoftware-based diagnostics and meas-ures such as multiple execution of safe-ty-critical code in order to achieve safetyintegrity, resulting in high cost to soft-ware complexity. Silicon complexity islow, as there is no specific overhead insilicon dedicated to safety support. Safe-ty analysis complexity is high, as it ischallenging to prove that the imple-mented software can detect all relevantfaults. This is particularly true for tran-sient faults, which temporarily canchange the state of a flip-flop or registerbut are cleared by subsequent softwareexecution. Available performance is lowbecause of the overhead of software-based diagnostics, which can easily con-sume more than 30 percent of the totalCPU performance. Redundant execution

Karl Greb is the functional safety technologist for Texas Instruments Hercules

family of safety-critical microcontrollers. He is currently participating in thedevelopment of the ISO 26262 standard as TIs representative on the US TAG

and is also a member of the SAE Automotive Functional Safety Committee.

Single core

CPU CPU Checker CPU A CPU A0 CPU A1CPU BMasterCPU

CheckerCPU

Compare

Diagnostic

Single core

with hardware checker

Dual corelockstep

Asymmetric dual

core

Symmetric dual

core

DESIGN PRODUCTS+

Matching processor safety strategiesto your system design

By Karl Greb

GLOBAL FEATURE

The right solution for thetargeted application can be different

for every development team, evenwhen designing the same

type of end equipment


Figure 1. Visual representationof common CPU safety strategies.


34/60

of safety-critical code willfurther reduce availableperformance. TexasInstruments StellarisARM Cortex-M microcon-trollers implement a sin-gle-core CPU scheme.

Single-core solutionswith hardware checkingaddress many of theissues of the single-coresolution by replacing themajority of softwaremeasures with continu-ously or periodically oper-ating hardware checkers.Such a solution tradesreduced software over-

head for increased com-plexity of silicon. Safety analysis of thissolution is challenging. A lack of com-mon standards in design-for-safetymeans that the strategy of the hardwarechecker must be uniquely provedto each assessor. Available CPU per-formance is high, often with less than5 percent of the CPU overhead con-sumed for safety diagnostics. TIs Her-cules TMS470M ARM Cortex-M3microcontrollers are an example of asingle-core solution with periodic CPU

checking by hardware.Dual-core lockstep is essentially a

special case of a single-core solutionwith hardware checking. In a dual-corelockstep system, a partially or fullyduplicated processor core takes theplace of the CPU checking functionali-ty. Software follows a low-complexitysingle-core programming model withlittle to no software overhead for safetydiagnostics. Silicon complexity variesbased on implementation. Complexityranges from medium-complexity 1oo1D(single channel with diagnostic)

schemes, where a single core is alwaysthe master core, to higher-complexity

1oo2 (dual-channel) schemes whereeither core can act as master. The usershould take care to understand theimpact of additional failure modes pres-ent in more complex schemes. The lock-step concept is well-known in industryand trusted by assessors, reducing thesafety analysis complexity for the sys-tem developer. The vast majority ofCPU performance remains available forapplication usage, often approaching100 percent. TIs Hercules TMS570LS

and RM4x ARM Cortex-R4F-basedmicrocontrollers are examples of 1oo1D


DESIGN PRODUCTS+

Software Silicon Safety analysis Available Example TIcomplexity complexity complexity performance product family

Single core High Low High Low Stellaris

Single core Medium Medium Medium High Hercules

with hardware TMS470Mchecking

Dual-core Low Medium to Low High Hercules

lockstep High TMS570 and RM4x

Asymmetric Medium to Medium to Medium Medium to Concerto

dual core high high high

Symmetric Low High High Medium to OMAP4

dual core high

Source:TI

IN THE EFFORT to eliminate bottlenecks in the designprocess and accelerate time-to-market, design teams haveturned to very-near-field electromagnetic interference scan-ning technology. Very-near-field EMI scanning lets design-ers measure and immediately display emissions profiles ona computer through an on-site benchtop system.

The scan identifies both constant and time-based emis-sion sources. The real-time spatial and spectral graphs letdesigners immediately identify the specific location andspectral profile of the EMI problem. Or, conversely, the test

might confirm that the design in its current form presentsno problem.

Very-near-field testing allows board designers to pretestand resolve electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and EMIproblems without having to rely on results from a cham-ber. Generating test results in a chamber often results intime lags ranging from hours to days, as it usually requiresthe involvement of another department and a test engi-neer, and possibly travel to an off-site location.

In the example shown in this article, the test first evalu-ated the emission profile of a board with the spread-spec-trum clock generation (SSCG) feature turned off. Thesecond set of test results evaluated the same board and chipwith the SSCG turned on. The results verified the efficacy

of the new design, documented the benefits, accelerated

Benchtop EMI scans accelerate time-to-marketBy Stphane Attal

Stphane Attal is chief executive officer of Emscan

(Calgary, Alberta), a bench solutions provider for

magnetic near-field measurements. He has

founded and served as CEO of multiple startups.

Table 1. Comparison of CPU safety strategies for a high-safety-integrity design.


35/60

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dual-core lockstep solutions.Asymmetric dual-core solutions use

two processors of different hardwarearchitecture (heterogeneous multipro-cessing) to diagnose faults. Such solu-tions can achieve very high safetyintegrity, thanks to their ability todetect systematic issues in both CPUand software through diverse hardwareand software implementations. These

should be selected with the main andchecker CPUs having similar perform-ance. If the performance delta is toolarge, it may not be possible to executediverse implementations of the targetapplication, effectively reducing thedesign to two single-core systems. Thesoftware complexity is medium to highbecause of the need to generate soft-ware for two platforms.

Hardware complexity varies frommedium to high complexity, dependingon the CPU architectures chosen. Safetyanalysis complexity is medium. Whilethe system itself is complex, the tech-nique is well understood and acceptedin the industry. Available performancein a high-safety-integrity system ismedium to high with respect to the per-formance of a single master core. The

36 Electronic Engineering Times Octob

ee-times oct 27

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