Front End I News Lockheed jet fighter deal looks set to create thousands of jobs
A new deal to make components for the F-35 fighter jet programme could see thousands of jobs created in Lancashire and across the UK. The deal is being seen as a major boost for Britain's largest defence contractor BAE as well as for the wider aerospace industry. Work will primarily be carried out at the BAE Systems site at Samlesbury, Lancashire, where the fuselage and other structural components will be made but other locations to benefit include companies with sites at Denham in Buckinghamshire, Birkenhead in Wirral, Lostock in Lancashire, Wimborne in Dorset, Bristol and Southampton. Components for the 3,000-strong fleet of jets will be built by companies up and down the UK before the planes are final assembled in the United States. Deliveries
of the plane are expected to begin in 2015.
According to Lockheed Martin, the
project's lead contractor, the design and manufacture of this fifth generation aircraft could create and sustain over 25,000 jobs in the UK over the next 30 years. The project, which is truly enormous, is set to involve 130 firms from across the country and is projected to increase the UK’s GDP by £29bn over the next 25 years.
The Joint Strike Fighter planes are expected to be used by the Ministry of Defence to replace Harrier and Tornado jets and test aircraft are expected to be handed over to the UK in June. Australia, Italy, Canada and the Netherlands have already made orders, but the majority will be acquired by the US.
ARM Holdings unveils Flycatcher as it looks to move into the ‘Internet of things’
ARM Holdings, the British technology group, has produced a low-power computer chip capable of connecting traffic lights, parking meters and fridges to the internet. The Cortex-M0+ processor is the world’s most energy-efficient microprocessor and has been optimised to deliver ultra low-power, low-cost MCUs for intelligent sensors and smart control systems in a broad range of applications. Codenamed Flycatcher, the
semiconductor is being seen as ARM's bid to expand its presence from smartphones and tablet computers, where its designs feature in 100% of the devices on sale today, and in to the "internet of things", the 50bn objects we use every day and which are being forecast to be connected to the internet by the end of the decade. There are an estimated 12.5bn internet connected devices at present and many of
these are phones or computers. By 2025, according to IT firm Cisco, there could be over 1 trillion such devices.
The Cortex-M0+ has been designed for devices which cannot be attached to an electricity supply and so must run off batteries. According to the company the new product is 50% less power-hungry, cheaper and faster at processing information. The new processor builds on the successful low-power and silicon-proven Cortex-M0 processor which has been licensed more than 50 times by leading silicon vendors, and has been redesigned from the ground up to add a number of significant new features. These include single-cycle IO to speed access to GPIO and peripherals, improved debug and trace capability and a 2-stage pipeline to reduce the number of cycles per instruction (CPI)
and improve Flash accesses, further reducing power consumption. The Cortex-M0+ processor takes advantage of the easy-to-use, C friendly programmer's model, and is binary compatible with existing Cortex-M0 processor tools and RTOS. Along with all Cortex-M series processors it enjoys full support from the ARM Cortex-M ecosystem and software compatibility enables simple migration to the higher- performance Cortex-M3 and Cortex-M4 processors. The product will see ARM pitching for a
share of the $15bn micro-controller market. At the moment the group's royalty revenues from such units runs to $16m out of total royalties of $335m, but forecasts expect this to more than double to $37m by the end of 2012.
New debug platform brings breakthrough in productivity
IC design software specialist, SpringSoft, has launched the third generation of its debug automation software. The Verdi3 is an open platform that combines personalisation, customisation, and enhanced interoperability to create a powerful debug cockpit, and is built on a next-generation software architecture that offers significant performance and capacity gains.
According to the company because of
the increasing complexity and size of digital ICs, as well as the sophisticated methodologies used to verify them, debug solutions need to be re-tooled to maximise user productivity and better reflect the way engineers work. In response the Verdi3 platform is able
to offer a two-fold performance increase with 30% smaller files than the previous
4 March 2012
generation, and enables users to personalise the debug environment and integrate custom applications created with the Verdi Interoperable Apps (VIA) platform for rapid and reliable deployment. With the new Verdi3 software, SpringSoft has been able to upgrade the underlying structure of its de facto industry standard fast signal database (FSDB) to both improve the raw speed of data retrieval and provide more efficient access mechanisms across the debug platform. Advancements include a multi-threaded FSDB reader, a new FSDB 5.0 format with compact file size, and parallel dumping of logic simulation results. In addition, a new robust SystemVerilog (Verilog-2009)- compliant language parser optimises performance during SystemVerilog design and testbench debug operations with
Components in Electronics
better error handling and multi-threaded incremental save capabilities that reduce compile time and memory utilisation by as much as 30% and 75%, respectively. SpringSoft has also rewritten the ‘look and feel’ of the Verdi environment with a new Qt-based GUI. Engineers can choose to deploy the Verdi software directly out of the box, simply re-configure the layout of Verdi desktop, or even build a custom cockpit for their SoC debug flows. Commenting Mark Milligan, vice
president of corporate marketing for SpringSoft said, “Our third generation platform is compelling because teams can now tailor the debug environment around how they work and take advantage of increased debug performance and scalability to handle even larger, more complex designs.”
The companies have formed a partnership that will be able to offer the complete spectrum of technologies and services to meet a range of different needs, from design support, through to the integration of state-of-the-art technologies as well as assembly and component procurement.
Simulation Technology: Fujitsu Laboratories has developed the world's fastest simulation technology for systems using the ARM computing core used in mobile phones and other electronic devices. This technology is able to faithfully reproduce hardware operations with cycle-for- cycle real-time accuracy. The platform runs simulations that allow for cycle-level simulations with low system overhead, based on a just-in-time compiler. The end result is that a standard PC environment can simulate at the cycle level an ARM multicore system running at faster than 100 MHz, which represents a hundredfold speedup over previous simulators.
www.cieonline.co.uk
Oscillator technology: eoSemi has developed an innovative new silicon oscillator technology, and is shipping pre-commercial versions of its first product. The company said that it was working with a small group of key strategic customers and partners. The ATOC (Accurate Timing Oscillator Circuit) technology offers all-CMOS silicon alternatives to the costly, bulky quartz crystal oscillators that are used in almost every consumer electronic product. Because its devices can be made using standard semiconductor manufacturing technology, the products are easier to integrate, more robust and consume less power, according to the company.
Solid-state lighting: Arrow Electronics, Cree, Haeusermann and Kathrein Austria have launched LEDagon, a new LED lighting solution. The reference lighting system showcases a variety of solid-state lighting technologies including thermal management solutions, innovative printed circuit boards, sensors and other electronic components in a straightforward manner that is easy to understand.
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