SiFive, a San Francisco start-up, has said it intends to reverse the industry’s rising licensing, design and implementation costs. It has developed customisable, open-source SoCs built on the free and open RISC-V instruction set architecture. “The semiconductor industry is at an important crossroads. Moore’s Law has ended, and the traditional economic model of chip building …

SiFive brings open-source SoCs

Arduino continues to impress as a platform for makers. For instance, Plum Geek Robotics has developed a DIY programmable light – with the oft-stated intention of teaching young people – the Plumduino.

Plumduino choice for robotics enthusiasts

Check out the Circuit Playground from Adafruit, which is meant to help practice programming on real hardware without the need to solder components in place.

Adafruit’s Circuit Playground gets on a roll

There’s no truck with democracy in the Tory party. Leadsom was forced out because she was going to win the vote of the 150,000 party members and become PM. Steve Bell, the president of the Conservative Party’s National Convention, which represents the party’s voluntary associations, and who is a member of the 1922 Committee, said …

The Smoke-Filled Room

Mentor Graphics has added analogue/mixed-signal (AMS) and high-speed signal analysis to its PADS PCB deign and layout tools. This includes a cloud-based circuit exploration/simulation environment and user community which is available free for all PADS users. Dubbed PADS AMS Cloud, it will be used to create and share analogue and mixed-signal designs in an online …

Mentor creates cloud community for PCB designers

NI has introduced a programmable PXIe module which is a vector signal transceiver with a 1GHz bandwidth. It is a 6.5GHz RF vector signal generator and analyser which can be programmed using LabVIEW to create specific designs or test configurations. The NI PXIe-5840 VST has a user-programmable FPGA with high-speed serial and parallel digital interfaces …

NI gives programmable PXIe module 1GHz bandwidth for 5G

Plexus plans to invest in its manufacturing facility at Kelso in Scotland. A new building for environmental stress screening (ESS) at the manufacturing facility is needed to support the contract manufacturer’s business in the defence, security and aerospace sectors, as well as for those in the oil and gas industry. “With today’s need for increased …

Scottish manufacturer sees hi-rel market growth

Qualcomm announces the successor for the processor found in devices such as the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge smartphones.

Qualcomm targets Snapdragon 821 processor at flagship Android devices

What is going to happen to Atmel’s 8bit AVR microcontrollers now that Microchip has bought the company? Nothing bad, is the short answer, according to Microchip’s strategic marketing manager for 8bit MCUs Lucio Di Jasio. “There is a new generation of AVRs coming in the summer, if anyone doubted it,” he said. Long-time Microchip employee …

Microchip to boost 8bit AVR range following acquisition

Revolution Lighting nabs major project and places shares privately while Acuity adds to its smart lighting technology portfolio and Seoul Semiconductor wins patent actions.