Via Technologies has launched gen 2 of its signature mini-motherboard standard. Mini-ITX 2.0, an evolutionary update to the seven-year-old 170×170mm form-factor, introduces new and emerging buses and interfaces such as PCI Express, SATA, Gig-E, and HD A/V, while preserving backwards-compatibility with the original standard.
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Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh have demonstrated a robotic arm being operated by a monkey’s brain activity. Signals transmitted by a microcontroller implanted in the monkey’s brain enable the animal to robotically feed itself pieces of fruit in an effortless and natural manner.
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Market researcher Gartner Inc. has come out with its prognostication of the top ten disruptive technologies for the next five years. Included on the list are multicore processors, social networking, web mashups, cloud computing, augmented reality, and more.
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Microsoft is offering a Windows CE certification “Preparation Kit” as a free download on its developer website. The kit, implemented as a 335-page book, provides valuable technical information for developers wanting to know more about Windows CE, regardless of whether they plan to take Microsoft’s certification exam.
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Two competing stackable PCI Express standards are being unveiled this week at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose, Calif. Targeting slightly different slices of the market, the mutually incompatible standards threaten to disrupt next-generation embedded device design much as 4-track/8-track, Beta/VHS, and HD-DVD/Blu-ray rivalries impacted consumer electronics.
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Eight “revolutionary” embedded technologies have been selected to be showcased in the “Disruption Zone” at the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) April 14-18 in San Jose, Calif.
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Microvision will showcase a tiny laser projector — small enough to be embedded in a mobile phone — at the CTIA Wireless show next week in Las Vegas. The company claims its mobile pico-projector technology produces highly focused DVD-quality WVGA (848×480 pixels) images of up to 100 inches in size (depending on distance).
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Developers thinking of using Linux as an embedded operating system won’t want to miss the annual Embedded Linux Conference in Silicon Valley next month. The event features keynotes and technical sessions on topics such as Maemo, real-time performance, power management, embedded graphics and multimedia, mobile phone technologies, fast boot, and much more.
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Embedded chipmaker STMicroelectronics (ST) has announced commercial availability of a portable “lab-on-chip” claimed capable of detecting all major influenza types within two hours — including the Avian Flu strain H5N1.
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MIT’s Technology Review magazine has just published its annual list of the top ten emerging technologies. Dubbed the TR10, these “revolutionary innovations” are “poised to have a dramatic impact” on computing, medicine, nanotechnology, our energy infrastructure, and more, say the magazine’s editors.
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The EU will channel more than 2.5 billion Euros into Europe’s embedded computing industry over the next decade, to compete more effectively against the U.S. and Asia. More than 90 percent of all microprocessors are used in embedded — not desktop — applications, according to the European Commission.
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Intel and Micron Technology have unveiled a high-speed NAND flash memory technology claimed to offer up to five times the performance of conventional flash memory. The new high-speed flash reportedly can achieve read and write speeds of 200MB/sec and 100MB/sec, respectively.
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Trolltech, the originator of Qt, which forms the basis of the Linux KDE desktop environment, is being acquired by Nokia, the world’s number-one mobile phone vendor. Nokia expects its acquisition of Trolltech to accelerate its cross-platform software strategy for mobile devices and desktop applications, and to enhance its Internet services business.
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While the x86 architecture reigns supreme in the PC market, a range of other CPU architectures are generally preferred in embedded devices due to cost, space, and power constraints. One of these — the ARM architecture — has now shipped in more than 10 billion devices.
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Via Technologies is readying a compact, storage-oriented mainboard optimized for home server applications. The NAS7800 is powered by a Via C7 processor and is sized to stack with optical and hard disk drives.
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Flash filesystem (FFS) specialist Datalight Inc. will soon release a commercial Linux FFS claimed to provide 400 percent faster write performance and 500 percent faster mount speed compared to JFFS2. The new FFS will target Linux-based mobile phones, set-top boxes, and other embedded devices.
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An industry tradeshow focused on multicore microprocessors and related technologies will take place April 1-3 in Santa Clara, Calif. The Multicore Expo will feature keynote talks, panel discussions, in-depth technical sessions, case studies, and a vendor expo.
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Redpine Signals Inc. has introduced what it claims is the first handheld device-oriented single-chip controller to conform to the IEEE’s 802.11n Draft 2.0 standard. The “Lite-Fi” RS9110 consumes under 250 mW during receive operations at the maximum link rate of 65 Mbps, according to the company.
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Startup Bug Labs, which aims to turn the task of constructing smart devices into a non-technical, lego-like affair, will begin accepting orders for its Linux-powered electronic building blocks later this month for shipment starting Mar. 17.
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A team of electrical and computer engineering students at Calvin College is developing an electronic stethoscope based on an embedded Freescale system-on-chip (SoC) running Linux.
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In his Jan. 7 keynote talk at CES in Las Vegas, Intel CEO Paul Otellini focused on the continuing disruptive influence of the Internet on consumer electronics and entertainment. These changes create business opportunities for “those who embrace it,” he suggested.
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Kopin Corp. claims its new fingernail-sized display is the world’s smallest SVGA resolution (800 x 600 pixel) color LCD. The 0.44-inch diagonal CyberDisplay SVGA LVS microdisplay targets PC- and HD-related video eyewear applications.
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Over 4 billion embedded systems and devices shipped worldwide in 2006 and the market is expected to grow significantly through 2009, Venture Development Corp. (VDC) reports. These devices increasingly contain out-sourced commercial and open-source embedded operating systems, the market analyst firm adds.
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A University of California Berkeley research team claims to have created the world’s smallest radio, a fully functional radio receiver built from a single carbon nanotube one ten-thousandth the diameter of a human hair.
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Intel has just unveiled a tiny solid-state disk (SSD) that it says is “smaller than a penny and [weighs] less than a drop of water.” The Z-P140 SSD uses a parallel-ATA (PATA) interface and targets handhelds, digital entertainment devices, and embedded systems.
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