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BlackBerry creates a research hub for self-driving cars
Just because BlackBerry is done making its own smartphones doesn't mean it won't be a big name in consumer tech. The company has unveiled the BlackBerry QNX Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Center (AVIC), a facility in QNX's Ottawa home that will be key to building the framework for self-driving cars. It's not crafting the autonomy code, but it will create the underlying platform. One of its first initiatives will have it team up with Renesas, PolySync and the University of Waterloo to build a concept vehicle to test on Ontario roads.
Sony, car makers halt production after Japan earthquakes
Southern Japan has been hit by two serious earthquakes in a matter of days, and those back-to-back disasters may have a significant impact on the tech industry. To start with, Sony has temporarily shut down factories making smartphone camera sensors in Kumamoto and Nagasaki over concerns of possible damage. The company has some inventory to help weather the storm, but it won't have an update until April 18th at the earliest. Any extended downtime could be a problem for the mobile world -- some of the biggest phone makers (including Apple) rely on Sony's sensors, and any significant snarls could hurt their ability to build phones.
Renesas to shutter the modem business it acquired from Nokia in 2010
Today, Renesas is announcing that it's going to "discontinue" the wireless unit it acquired from Nokia. Finnish state media outlet YLE is reporting that all 808 of Renesas' employees in Finland will be let go, of which more than two-thirds are located in the northern city of Oulu. Three years ago, Nokia decided to focus on designing and manufacturing mobile phones. It sold its wireless modem division to the Japanese semiconductor firm Renesas for roughly $200 million. The idea was, with wireless modem R&D moved out of the way, the company could concentrate on developing blockbuster handsets. Unfortunately, the sale took place half a year before Android phones outsold Symbian devices for the first time and Nokia announced that it was going to switch to Windows Phone -- this put Renesas in the awkward position of being a modem supplier to a company with collapsing sales. Nokia Siemens Networks has large offices in the same city where most of Renesas' employees are located. Though, engineers looking for a change of scenery might want to head south to Espoo where Samsung just opened its own R&D center.
Renesas announces big.LITTLE mobile processor with next-gen PowerVR Series6 graphics
If Samsung likes an open playing field, it'll not be best pleased by this latest announcement from Japanese chip maker Renesas. Uncannily named the "APE6", it directly copies the same big.LITTLE design of ARM cores found in Sammy's Exynos Octa. The are four Cortex-A15s paired with the same number of Cortex-A7s, allowing a phone or tablet to switch between the two quad-core configurations depending on its workload. Interestingly, whereas the Exynos Octa's GPU has been rumored to contain a last-gen PowerVR Series5 GPU similar to that found in the iPad and PS Vita, the APE6 will come with a more future proof Series6 "Rogue" design. We've already spent some time with this GPU and it'll be a good day when we can finally try it out in a finished device and stack it up against a rival bearing Samsung internals.
Linux Foundation forms Automotive Grade Workgroup, aims to open-source your ride with Tizen
It doesn't take much driving to notice that many in-car infotainment systems are custom-built and locked down tight. The Linux Foundation sees it differently and wants our cars to embrace the same notions of common roots and open code that we'd find in an Ubuntu box. Its newly-formed Automotive Grade Linux Workgroup is transforming Tizen into a reference platform that car designers can use for the center stack, or even the instrument cluster. The promise is to both optimize a Linux variant for cars and provide the same kind of years-long support that we'd expect for the drivetrain. Technology heavy-hitters like Intel, Harman, NVIDIA, Samsung and TI form the core of the group, although there are already automakers who've signaled their intentions: Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan and Toyota are all part of the initial membership. We don't know how soon we'll be booting into Tizen on the morning commute, but we'd expect in-car systems to take a step forward -- just as long as we don't have to recompile our car's OS kernel.
NVIDIA confirms no 'Project Grey' until 2013, Tegra 3 LTE later this year
While earnings calls are rarely the veritable dial-in party, sometimes they do toss up a juicy gambit or disappointing revelation. While NVIDIA was dishing out projections for Q1 2013, it pretty much quashed any hopes of seeing an in-house LTE Tegra chip in 2012. While we were assured that Tegra 3 LTE phones would come this year -- based on those partnerships announced back in February -- it was also stated that the thoroughbred Tegra LTE chip wouldn't be a reality until 2013. So, this pretty much ties in with what we had heard, but this time, from the horse's mouth.
NVIDIA's quad-core Tegra 3 chips get LTE support, radio makers GCT and Renesas on board
After yesterday's clarification that Tegra 3's architecture will now be known as 4-PLUS-1, NVIDIA's got something a little meatier to share. The outfit just announced that its quad-core chips are getting LTE support, with modem makers GCT and Renesas pledging support right off the bat. In a way, it's hard to believe Tegra 3 didn't already support 4G officially, given that the chip was detailed a whole five months ago. In any case, these partnerships feel somewhat transitional, given that NVIDIA's "Project Grey" Tegra chips will get integrated, NVIDIA-made modems in 2013, though it might be an exaggeration to say these current partnerships will be moot then. In the meantime, we'd love to get our hands on some quad-core, LTE handsets, but something tells us we'll get our fill in Barcelona.
Renesas MP5232 SoC promises dual-core processing and LTE connectivity for less cash
There's a trend underfoot to bring high-end smartphone capabilities down to a price that even Joe Sixpack is willing to swill. We saw evidence of this from MediaTek earlier in the week, and now the crew at Renesas is looking to join the race with its MP5232 system on a chip (SoC). This entrant touts a 1.5GHz dual-core CPU, along with HSPA+ and LTE radios on the same chip -- much like offerings from competitors Qualcomm and ST-Ericsson. Renesas estimates that with its SoC, a smartphone can be delivered to the customer for as little as $150 -- mind you, carrier subsidies should be able to swallow the rest. Renesas is also pushing its chip to tablet makers, and expects products with its internals to reach consumers in as little as six to nine months. If you're an OEM (or just wanna pretend), you'll find the full PR after the break.
Battery-less transmitters pave the way for wireless baby sensors
The radio waves that saturate the air around us may, or may not, give us headaches and cancer, but we can tell you for certain they're capable of powering tiny wireless chips. Renesas Electronics Corp has created a new ultra-low power wireless transmitter that can push data to both Bluetooth and WiFi receivers without the need for a battery or AC adapter. Instead of the typical tens of milliwatts, the little transmitters require only a few microwatts of power, which can be harvested from environmental radio waves through LC resonance. The creators envision adhesive sensors that send a baby's body temperature to laptops and ads that beam coupons to smartphones over short distances -- you know, the sort of stuff NFC can do, but without the specialized hardware.
Renesas shows off Terminal Mode smartphone integration on ARM Cortex (video)
Terminal Mode is something of a standard for smartphone connectivity with in-car systems, but as of now Nokia is the only one really diving in head first with the stuff, and Renesas is jumping right in after it. At the International Automotive Electronics Technology Expo the company showed off its Terminal Mode implementation, running on a Linux and ARM Cortex-powered SoC. As you can see in the video below it replicates the phone's interface exactly, which is something of a problem at this point. With any luck future Terminal Mode implementations will ditch the phoney UI and go with something a little more driver-friendly.
Nokia sells wireless modem business to Renesas in bid to refocus
Nokia just announced a $200M-ish deal to sell its wireless modem business to Japan's Renesas Electronics Corporation. The deal is part of a broader alliance to develop HSPA+ and LTE modem technologies while working together to research future radio technologies. Per the agreement, Nokia will transfer its wireless modem technologies for LTE, HSPA and GSM standards, "certain" related patents (interesting in light of the Apple lawsuits), and about 1,100 Nokia R&D staff to Renesas, the majority of whom are located in Finland, India, the UK, and Denmark -- assuming regulatory approval of course, something the two expect to receive by the end of the year. Why now? Well, according to Kai Oistamo, Executive Vice President at Nokia, "The alliance enables us to continue to focus on our own core businesses, connecting people to what matters to them with our mobile products and solutions." Sounds like somebody's slimming down in preparation for a fight. P.S. Though the 'Shop above only shows a Nokia USB modem, the agreement goes much deeper to cover the modem technologies used inside billions of Nokia handsets. So yeah, this is a fairly significant change of direction for Nokia.
Seven Samurai chipmakers set to take on Intel
You know, it's been nearly forty years since Intel introduced the first microprocessor, and even at this late date the company comprises a whopping eighty percent of the global market for CPUs. But not so fast! Like an electronics industry remake of The Magnificent Seven (which is, of course, an American remake of The Seven Samurai) NEC and Renesas have teamed up with a stalwart band of companies, including Hitachi, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Panasonic, and Canon, to develop a new CPU that is compatible with Waseda University professor Hironori Kasahara's "innovative energy-saving software." The goal is to create a commercial processor that runs on solar cells, moderates power use according to the amount of data being processed (a current prototype runs on 30% the power of a standard CPU), remains on even when mains power is cut, and, of course, upsets the apple cart over at Intel. Once a standard is adopted and the chip is used in a wide range of electronics, firms will be able to realize massive savings on software development. The new format is expected to to be in place by the end of 2012. [Warning: Read link requires subscription]
Renesas's 1080p-decoding processor coming soon to a cell phone near you
Plenty of modern cell phones have HD-quality screens on them, but few can manage any sort of high-definition video content at a respectable frame rate. That's set to change with the release of the Renesas SH7370, a chip we first got wind of back in December with its promise to offer 1080p video at 30fps in a package small (and efficient) enough to be included in a handset. The first units are now shipping to manufacturers, and while the size has increased (it's about 1cm square vs. the 6.4 x 6.5mm package previously discussed) it's still impressively small given its functionality: 1080p H.264 video decoding and encoding along with on-chip Dolby Digital 5.1-channel output. Overkill? Maybe for now, but you might change your mind when the first head-mountable satellite speakers with subwoofer seat cushions hit retail.
NEC and Renesas looking to join forces against semiconductor evil
We're always up for a good semiconductor merger, and it looks like NEC Electronics and Renesas are prepping the biggest one we've seen this week. The two companies have agreed to team up, creating a combined force of $13 billion in yearly sales, and the largest chip company in Japan -- Renesas was already the product of a chip merger between Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric. They'll still be behind Intel and Samsung in the overall game, but we won't hold that against them. Tokyo analysts believe this might lead to other "defensive" mergers by other Japanese chipmakers, but we'll have to wait and see. NEC and Renesas hope to finish talks by July and become a single company by April of next year.[Via Electronista]
Renesas aims to bring 1080p playback to your next cellphone
Believe it or not, this is far from the first we've heard of bringing high-def video to cellphones, and it's not even the first application to dabble in mobile 1080p. Still, we'll take all the innovation we can get in this space, and when the real Touch HD ever arrives, we'll be ready and waiting with Full HD capabilities. Announced at ISSCC 2009 in San Francisco, Renesas Technology is showing off an application processor that enables handsets to process 1,920 x 1,080 resolution video at 30 frames-per-second; the processor's core has a maximum operating frequency of 500MHz and supports MPEG-4 AVC / H.264, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 video formats. There's no telling when the 6.4- x 6.5-millimeter chip will be available en masse, but we need the HTCs of the world to get us a 1080p phone and a retina implant or two to read 0.2-size fonts before it even matters.
Panasonic, Renesas team to mass produce 32nm chips
We've seen some big names working on 32nm chips, and now we can add two more to the mix. According to Nikkei, Panasonic and Renesas have recently developed technology necessary to mass produce the little guys, using metal oxide film (instead of a silicon material) for the insulating layer and titanium nitride for the conducting layer. This has allowed the chips to consume less power, so the 32nm chips operate comparably to their 45nm siblings. Look for a street date sometime in 2011 -- but considering that Toshiba, IBM and others have set a target date of 2010 for their 32nm chips, and Samsung and Intel are aiming at 2009, Panny might be showing up to this party a little late.
DTS licenses DTS HD Master Audio technology to ten IC producers
Although Dolby's TrueHD may be a more well-known moniker, it looks like you'll be hearing (quite literally) a lot more of DTS in the coming months. The firm has landed a deal with no less than ten integrated circuit (IC) manufacturers to incorporate its DTS HD Master Audio and / or DTS HD High Resolution Audio technology (not to mention the DTS HD LBR and encoder / transcoder jazz) into forthcoming chips. These microchips -- designed by Analog Devices, Broadcom, Cheertek, LSI, Matsushita, MediaTek, NEC, Renesas, Sigma Designs, and Sunplus Technology -- will contain DTS's high definition audio standards and will eventually find their way into next-generation HD DVD and Blu-ray players, AV receivers, and pre-packaged home theater systems. Additionally, the technology could even slither into the PC and automobile markets. While neither specific end products nor release dates were mentioned, we do know that devices coming out "in 2007" will be sporting the new protocols, and hey, we've got no qualms when it comes to options in audio (or video).
Japanese chip makers team up for 45nm
Looks like Intel and Texas Instruments aren't the only ones with some chip bragging to do, since Toshiba and friends are joining forces to standardise a 45nm manufacturing method, and possibly even share manufacturing plants in the future. The deal marks the end of a plan by Toshiba, Fujitsu, NEC, Renesas to build an independent microchip foundry. The Japanese chip makers scrapped the plan because it supposedly wouldn't have made any money in the ultra-competitive space, but analysts aren't so sure this recent cooperative plan will help these smaller manufacturers compete against the big boys like Samsung, Intel and TI. Sony has agreed to team up in 45nm development with the four manufacturers, in continuation of a deal with Toshiba and NEC, but there's no word if any of these smaller outfits have made similar process breakthroughs to those that Intel and Texas Instruments were bragging about on Monday.
