Legislation includes the Water Resources Development Act of 2016, California drought legislation, and Flint, Mic., relief.

Omron Electronic Components is addressing the potential need to shut-down solar panels quickly in the event of an emergency incident. This DC relay is designed to be capable of rapidly interrupting 25A at 1,000Vdc in the event of an emergency. “Rapid photovoltaic (PV) shut-down is moving from being highly desirable to mandatory in some markets …

Read full article: Fast solar cell shut-down will be mandatory, says relay firm

Analog Devices is collaborating  with the China Electric Power Research Institute (CEPRI) to develop smart electrical grid technologies. The joint research programme will investigate technologies that will improve the reliability of electricity substations in a smart power grid. It will aim to identify specific reliability issues, jointly create innovative solutions, hold technical workshops, and draft international standards. Rick Hess, executive vice president, Analog …

Read full article: ADI works with China institute on smart grid standards

ARM has acquired Allinea Software which specialises in development and performance analysis tools that maximize the efficiency of software for high performance computing (HPC) systems. Currently, 80% of the world’s top 25 supercomputers use Allinea’s tools, with key customers including the US Department of Energy, NASA, a range of supercomputing national labs and universities, and …

Read full article: ARM buys Allinea

GloFo has added eight new partners to its growing FD-SOI FDXcelerator Program, including Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE), Amkor, Infosys, Mentor, Rambus, Sasken, Sonics, and QuickLogic. The new partners join Synopsys, Cadence, INVECAS, VeriSilicon, CEA Leti, Dreamchip, and Encore Semi to provide a suite of services that will enable GloFo customers to implement FD-SOI SoC designs …

Read full article: GloFo adds FD-SOI partners

The SEMI book-to-bill ratio stayed negative for the second month in a row as November turned in a ratio of 0.96. The ratio turned negative in November at 0.91 after being 1.05 in September, 1.03 in August, 1.05 in July and 1.0 in June. November bookings were $1.55 billion – 4% up on October’s $1.49 …

Read full article: SEMI b-to-b stays negative

There are twice as many 200mm IC manufacturers as 300mm manufacturers, reports IC Insights, while the outlook for 450mm wafers is fading. Rankings of IC manufacturers by installed capacity for each of the wafer sizes are shown in Figure 1. The chart also compares the amounts of capacity held by the top 10 leaders. Figure …

Read full article: 2x more 200mm IC makers than 300mm.

IBM and BMW are to investigate how cognitive computing in cars to make driver assistance systems more intuitive and personalised for each driver. It is planned to transfer machine learning techniques used in computers and mobile handsets to vehicles with driver assistance systems learning the habits of their drivers. The system will also incorporate external data such as weather conditions, route, traffic and …

Read full article: IBM + BMW + IoT = learning cars

Hot on the wheels of the IBM/BMW announcement on cognitive computing, connected car technology is expected to be a major attraction at the CES 2017 consumer electronics exhibition in Las Vegas next month. Hardware and software companies see the connected vehicle as perhaps the most lucrative IoT application, but they know it will be a …

Read full article: CES: Connected cars drive into Las Vegas

Ambiq Micro, the firm developing sub-threshold transistor-based ARM Cortex-M series processors, has come up with an IoT device with a power consumption of under 10µA/MHz. Called Apollo 2, the firm claims the chip has the potential to double the battery life in wearable devices. Scott Hanson, founder and CTO, Ambiq Micro, writes: “Our sub-threshold technology will bring a similar pace …

Read full article: Ambiq Micro intros first sub-threshold ARM IoT chip