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14 January 2016

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12
COVER IMAGE: jackie2k/stock.adobe.com
COMMENT 5
Could the move to electric
batteries be putting peoples’
health at risk rather than
saving the environment?
NEWS
Neophotonics starts shipping
400G capable ClearLight
CFP2-DCO transceivers to
end customer trials 7
Sound specialist Dirac
and NXP Semiconductors
announce audio collaboration
at this year’s CES 8
Oxbotica and Navtech
to launch radar-based
navigation and perception
system in 2020 9
A new piezo driver chip from
Boreas looks to advance
realistic haptic feedback in
automotive HMIs 10
www.newelectronics.co.uk 14 January 2020
CONTENTS VOL 53 NO 01
20 24
28 30
COVER STORY 12 SECTOR FOCUS 24
Delivering innovation Bridging broadcast
Understanding how to find and then to invest in Savvy broadcasters are using software to reap the
innovation is critical if businesses are to achieve benefits of emerging technologies, whilst making
success. By Neil Tyler the most of existing assets. By Charlotte Hathway
INTERVIEW 18 SYSTEMS DESIGN 26
Delivering security ASIC anyone?
Silicon Labs’ newly appointed Chief Security Officer, Has the world got the taste again for ASICs?
Sharon Hagi, talks to Neil Tyler about security and Socionext explains the advantages associated
product development with this technology
EMBEDDED DESIGN 20 INDUSTRY 4.0 29
Unseating C Staying agile
Despite a commanding position can Modern Jos Martin takes a look at some of the key
C++ and Rust convince embedded developers to trends expected to impact Industry 4.0 in the
switch from C? Chris Edwards investigates year ahead
SHOW PREVIEW 22 RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT 30
Southern Manufacturing & Electronics Spurring innovation
Southern returns to Farnborough next month, Machine learning is booming so companies
bringing together the UK’s rich ecosystem of SMEs need to be aware of effective patent protection
MISSION STATEMENT
‘New Electronics keeps designers and
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 COMMENT COBALT
CONUNDRUM

Saving the environment,

but at what cost?
COULD THE MOVE TO ELECTRIC BATTERIES BE PUTTING PEOPLES’ HEALTH
AT RISK RATHER THAN SAVING THE ENVIRONMENT?

A
recent landmark legal case, brought in the US against some of the world’s
biggest technology companies, looks to address the horrific conditions
associated with mining cobalt.
Cobalt is an essential component in the manufacture of batteries for
electric vehicles, and the legal action being taken in the US is part of a much wider
campaign that is looking to cut the amount of cobalt used in batteries. The case is being
brought by the parents of children said to have died in its mining and it is hoped that the
case will help to address the health and environmental issues being seen at the sharp
end of the global supply chain.
Child abuse and the use of forced labour in mining and supplying cobalt is well
documented. What is of concern is that the demand for cobalt is expected to soar from
70,000 tonnes in 2019 to over 300,000 tonnes this year reflecting the growth in electric
vehicles and as more manufacturing facilities come online.
Tesla, cited in the legal action, has responded by pledging to remove the use of
cobalt in its next generation of vehicles but have yet to provide any details as to how this
“Reducing the
will be achieved.
Apple, Google, Dell and Microsoft have also been named in the US lawsuit. use of cobalt
So what to do? The DRC, which accounts for 75 percent of the world’s supply of is certainly
cobalt, is talking about regulating the 1,000s of artisanal miners that are supplying this going to be a
vital mineral and there have been a number of supply chain auditing projects set up.
Could technology provide a solution to this problem?
challenge, but
In South Korea, SK Innovation are looking to produce cathodes incorporating just it is one that
10% cobalt, compared to the current 30%, while companies like Johnson Matthey and needs to be
BASF are working on lower-cobalt chemistries.
In fact a host of British companies are looking to develop lithium sulphur batteries
addressed.”
which are said to have five times the energy density of current technology.
Reducing the use of cobalt is certainly going to be a challenge but it is one that
needs to be addressed.
In the DRC, Zambia and Cuba lung disease and heart failure have been linked to
high levels of exposure to cobalt and there is a possible link to cancer too.
The mines are also causing environmental damage in the form of water pollution,
contaminated crops and a loss of soil fertility.
We are seeing a massive increase in battery production but the dangers of exposure
to cobalt require better safeguards, especially where people and their habitats are most
at risk.
Could the rush to embrace battery technology to solve one problem – the climate
crisis – create another, destroying the lives of those at the bottom of the supply chain?

Neil Tyler, Editor (neil.tyler@markallengroup.com)

www.newelectronics.co.uk 14 January 2020 5

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 NEWS 400G TRANSCEIVERS

400G transceivers deliver

Editor Neil Tyler
neil.tyler@markallengroup.com

Deputy Editor Charlotte Hathway

charlotte.hathway@markallengroup.com
Contributing Chris Edwards
Editors John Walko
editor@newelectronics.co.uk
Art Editor Andrew Ganassin
andrew.ganassin@markallengroup.com
Illustrator Phil Holmes
Sales Manager James Creber
james.creber@markallengroup.com
Publisher Peter Ring
peter.ring@markallengroup.com
Managing Jon Benson
Director jon.benson@markallengroup.com
Production Nicki McKenna
Manager nicki.mckenna@markallengroup.com
New Electronics editorial advisory panel
Trevor Cross, chief technology officer, Teledyne e2v
Pete Leonard, electronics design manager, Renishaw
Pete Lomas, director of engineering, Norcott Technologies
Neil Riddiford, principal electronics engineer, Cambridge
Consultants
Adam Taylor, embedded systems consultant
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32Tbits per fibre
NEOPHOTONICS HAS STARTED SHIPPING ITS FIRST 400G CAPABLE CLEARLIGHT
CFP2-DCO TRANSCEIVERS FOR END CUSTOMER TRIALS. NEIL TYLER REPORTS
NeoPhotonics, a designer and manufacturer of advanced hybrid photonic integrated circuit based
modules and subsystems for bandwidth-intensive, high speed communications networks, has
shipped its new 400G capable ClearLight CFP2-DCO transceiver for end customer trials.
The industry’s first transceiver module is able to deliver as much as 32 Terabits of capacity per
fibre by using internal optics that can support 80 channels of 64 Gbaud data at 75GHz wavelength
channel spacing combined with the latest generation of 7nm node DSP (digital signal processing)
technology.
This product effectively increases the capacity of an optical fibre by as much as 50 percent over
standard systems at comparable distances.
The ClearLight CFP2-DCO is the first in a series of coherent module solutions based on
NeoPhotonics’ patented Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) platform, which will enable cloud
operators and carriers to create optical interconnects with significantly greater capacity and density
with reduced complexity in the high-capacity DWDM (“dense wavelength division multiplex”) optical
networks being used in hyper-scale cloud and telecom infrastructure applications.
The module incorporates several industry solutions from NeoPhotonics in a pluggable module,
including its new extended tuning range Ultra-Narrow Linewidth Tunable C++ LASERTM Micro-ITLA.
It also features the company’s high bandwidth 64 Gbaud C++ ICRTM Receiver and C++ CDMTM
Modulator.
For Long Haul and Regional applications, the module utilises 64 Gbaud and QPSK modulation
to deliver 200G per wavelength transmission. This is made possible by an industry-leading OSNR
of less than 14dB and enhanced performance to enable substantially longer reaches than standard
32 Gbaud, 16 QAM systems.
“This new module joins our ClearLight CFP-DCO transceiver line, which has been shipping since
2017, and is our first in a series of DCO Modules for 400G transmission, providing the benefits
of extended C++ tuning range,” said Tim Jenks, Chairman and CEO of NeoPhotonics. “This series
uses our leading 64 Gbaud Silicon Photonics or Indium Phosphide PICs, together with our new
Tunable C++ LASER Micro-ITLA. This will increase the capacity and distance performance in a
network well above that currently available in systems today.”

AImotive unveils ISO Element acquires PCTEST

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26262 certified simulator
AImotive, has announced that its aiSim
simulator for automated driving development
has achieved ISO 26262 tool certification - the
standard for functional safety, governing the
development of all automotive systems.
The validation of automated driving systems
is critical and a purpose-built simulation suite
with a toolset designed to accelerate the
development of automated driving technologies
not only reduces development costs but
increases safety by enabling the repeatable
testing of various scenarios and corner cases.
The aiDrive automated driving software suite
is modular and hardware setup agnostic and is
compatible with sensors of all types ensuring
its modules can be deployed in a wide range of
automated driving systems.
Element Materials Technology has acquired
the connected technologies business, PCTEST
Engineering Laboratory (PCTEST), significantly
strengthening its position in testing and
certification services within the connected
technologies market.
PCTEST is a leading research and
development, certification, and testing business
that has built a strong position in the mobile
device, wearables, and network connectivity
regulatory and compliance sector.
The acquisition signals the creation of an
entirely new Connected Technologies sector
in Element that will serve a wide range of
customers from its 17 combined laboratories
across the US, UK, Germany, China, Japan
and Korea providing a full suite of connected
devices testing and certification services.

www.newelectronics.co.uk 14 January 2020 7

 NEWS AUDIO COLLABORATION
60GHz in-car
automotive grade
Radar-On-Chip
Vayyar Imaging, a specialist in 4D radar
imaging technology, has unveiled the world’s
first 60GHz automotive-grade MIMO radar-on-
chip (ROC).
The 60GHz solution offers the complete
functionality of the company’s existing
79GHz reference-design and will enable the
automotive industry to meet global EU NCAP
and US Hot-Car needs.
Vayyar’s solution displays the dimension,
location, breathing pattern and movement
of people, utilising proprietary 4D point-
cloud VOXEL imaging. This high-resolution,
high-performance ROC enables complete
classification of the car’s environment,
regardless of line-of-sight, bad lighting or
harsh weather conditions, offering much
higher levels of in-cabin safety.
Vayyar’s high-resolution, high-performance,
low-cost solution is the first of its kind
providing manufacturers with a sensor that
meets global regulatory requirements. The
60GHz solution offers manufacturers and Tier
1 suppliers the same ROC functionality as
the 79GHz version providing full flexibility to
start global mass-production preparations.
Commenting Ian Podkamien, Director
of Automotive Business Development at
Vayyar said, “Compared to other options,
our radar-on-chip is far more advanced,
robust, mature and cost-efficient, leading
to faster and more effective interior sensor
implementation. Our comprehensive In-Car
Evaluation Kit is available on both 60GHz and
79GHz versions, with the same software and
performance.”
Vayyar’s automotive-grade radar-on-a-chip
(ROC) has up to 48 transceivers and an
internal DSP for real-time signal processing.
Its low-cost sensor can be easily integrated
into the existing automotive framework, and
due to its multi-functionality, reduces the
number of sensors needed as well as the
amount of wiring required, providing more
value while reducing the overall vehicle cost.
For deployed vehicles, more functions
can be added over time, with simple OTA
software upgrades.
The solution is ready for mass production
and deployment, having undergone intensive
CPD and SBR test cases over the past year.
8 14 January 2020 www.newelectronics.co.uk
Dirac and NXP announce
collaboration
SOUND SPECIALIST DIRAC AND NXP SEMICONDUCTORS ANNOUNCE AUDIO
COLLABORATION AT CES. NEIL TYLER REPORTS
Swedish sound specialist Dirac and NXP Semiconductors are to collaborate, combining a
powerful audio chipset with a digital audio platform.
By equipping NXP’s i.MX 8M family of chipsets with Dirac’s digital audio platform, OEMs will
now be able to develop devices with maximised, immersive and adaptive sound.
Dirac’s digital audio platform includes both its digital audio solutions and a suite of tuning
tools which can be selected by the OEM to customise a product’s sound experience, while the
tuning tools ensure consistent sound quality across a product line allowing the OEM to adjust
the sound experience based on brand preferences.
The Dirac-enabled NXP chipsets are intended for a new generation of smart speakers and
soundbars that look to prioritise high-quality sound, in addition to home theatre receivers and
automobiles, for example.
“NXP has strong relationships with category-leading brands in some of the most dynamic
consumer market segments,” said Mathias Johansson, Dirac’s co-founder and CEO. “By
teaming up with NXP, Dirac has accelerated its growth in the smart speaker and soundbar
channels and is now uniquely positioned to redefine these growing markets by enabling smaller
products with a level of sound that could once only be delivered through much larger devices.”
“The consumer market is demanding higher quality audio across the entire product spectrum,
including smart speakers and soundbars,” said Martyn Humphries, vice president and general
manager, i.MX applications processor for consumer and industrial for NXP. “Collaborating with
Dirac allows NXP to offer an advanced audio solution that meets the industry’s rising standards
and makes it much easier for our manufacturer customers to enable their products with a
premium sound experience, without adding any development costs.”
Nexeon positive about SUNRISE Project
Nexeon, which is developing silicon feedback from customers has been very
materials for next generation Li-ion positive, according to the company.
batteries, has announced that it is sampling The SUNRISE project is on target to
silicon-enhanced batteries to potential develop materials based on silicon as a
customers for evaluation. replacement for carbon in the cell anode
The company has reached the halfway and is looking to optimise cell designs for
stage in its £10million SUNRISE project, specific applications.
and has already produced silicon battery Silicon-enhanced batteries with longer
materials that have performed better than life and higher energy density will be of
expected. Initial benefit in consumer electronics
products and static energy
storage applications.
A prototype reactor has
been built and is operational,
and progress has been
made to ramp up production
capability.
The work is supported
by £7million in Innovate
UK funding, and the other
partners in the project are
polymer company Synthomer
and UCL.
 NEWS RADAR-BASED
NAVIGATION

Oxbotica and Navtech Voice codec capability

available to Raspberry
announce joint product Pi users
CML Microcircuits has unveiled the
RADAR-BASED NAVIGATION AND PERCEPTION SYSTEM TO BE LAUNCHED EV6550DHAT, a Raspberry Pi Hardware
IN 2020. NEIL TYLER REPORTS Attached on Top (HAT) compatible evaluation
and development board that makes its
Oxbotica, a specialist in vehicle autonomy, CMX655D ultra-low power voice codec
and Navtech, a radar solutions company, available to hobbyists, developers and product
have announced the joint product manufacturers.
development of a radar-based navigation The Raspberry Pi single board computer
and perception system to be launched in has become a key platform for rapid
2020. hardware and software development and
The product and the partnership the EV6550DHAT brings the features of the
marks an important milestone in CMX655D voice codec to the Raspberry Pi
Oxbotica’s plans to take its software community. It has been developed for digital
from development towards commercial voice and sensor applications and integrates
deployment. the entire signal chain, from dual matched
The multi-module localisation system (radar, vision and laser) will digital MEMS microphone interfaces to a
allow users to deploy autonomy in both on-road and off-road locations, whether in mines, ports 1W Class D speaker driver, incorporating
or airports and whatever the weather conditions where standard GPS or lidar is not possible. decimation, filtering, signal processing and
The product will not be reliant on any external infrastructure and will be able to operate on digital gain, supported by an I2S/PCM audio
its own or be fused with other location services driven by GPS, lidar or laser vision as part of interface and SPI control interface.
Oxbotica’s modular and integrated approach. CML has created the EV6550DHAT to
Oxbotica has already successfully tested its proprietary algorithms in a variety of make evaluating and developing with the
environments and conditions as part of its Localisation module development and wider full-stack CMX655D as accessible as possible. The
autonomy solution. This will be twinned with Navtech’s expertise in autonomy sensors bringing HAT is compatible with any Raspberry Pi with
that technology to market around the world. a 40-pin extended GPIO connector and can
Commenting Ozgur Tohumcu, Oxbotica CEO, said: “This collaboration with Navtech is a key be completely powered by the Raspberry Pi,
milestone in bringing autonomy especially to off-road domains such as mines, ports, or airports however it also supports an external power
where existing lidar or GPS may not function effectively due to weather or operating conditions source if other HATs or peripherals are being
such as dust, rain, or snow.” used and limiting the total power available
“Despite the potential of radar very few companies have successfully developed the from the host USB interface.
necessary algorithms to use it properly. Oxbotica are leaders in this area and together with our “The Raspberry Pi is the perfect
high-performance radars sensors we believe the resulting system will deliver a step change in platform to demonstrate the features and
the performance available for all weather all environment localisation and perception,” said Phil capabilities of the CMX655D with little or
Avery, CEO of Navtech. no development effort,” commented David
Brooke, Product Manager, CML Microcircuits.
“The EV6550DHAT is our first HAT and the

imec spin-off to develop next-gen AR glasses
MICLEDI Microdisplays, an imec spin-out,
has raised 4,5m euro in seed capital to
develop microLED displays for next generation
Augmented Reality (AR) glasses.
MICLEDI is looking to enable AR for
everyday personal use - smart glasses that
are small, lightweight, with long battery life,
and at reasonable cost. To make this happen,
MICLEDI is developing, what it says, is the
world smallest and brightest displays. The
key innovation behind MICLEDI is the new
integration technology for microLED on 300mm
wafers developed in collaboration with imec.
MICLEDI Microdisplays was founded by Dr.
entire team has been excited by the prospect
of bringing advanced voice codec capability to
Soeren Steudel and Dr. Alexander Mityashin, the Pi.”
both researchers from imec and they have The EV6550DHAT’s open source software
been joined by Sean Lord, an experienced is accessible via many third-party apps and
executive in the semiconductor industry, as projects including GTK3+. GEANIE and GLADE.
CEO.
“AR glasses may replace our smartphones
in the future and display technology is a key
enabler for such a transition. Today’s display
technologies cannot fulfil the specifications
needed for next generation AR glasses. At
MICLEDI we are tackling this challenge and
have developed displays that are 100x brighter
than commercial alternatives,” said Dr.
Steudel.

www.newelectronics.co.uk 14 January 2020 9

 NEWS ANALYSIS
B oréas Technologies, a developer of ultra-
low-power haptic technologies, chose
to demonstrate the BOS1211, a low-power
high-voltage piezoelectric driver integrated
circuit (IC) to enable high-definition (HD) haptic
feedback in automotive human machine
interfaces (HMIs) at this year’s Consumer
Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.
Boréas’ BOS1211 is seen as playing a
critical role in satisfying growing demand
for clear tactile feedback in automotive
environments.
“Haptic feedback is as old as the human
experience, which is why we find it so
satisfying to know that an object responds
to our touch,”
said Simon
Chaput, founder
and CEO, Boréas
Technologies.
“The advent of
the digital world
has increased our
need for haptic
feedback, and
that’s why we’re
seeing multiple
Tier 1 automotive
manufacturers
replacing buttons and touchpads with
haptic-feedback touchscreens as well as
top automotive suppliers embedding haptics
into their new display products. Our piezo
haptic solutions are intended to provide
automotive manufacturers and suppliers with:
performance, small size, enduring reliability,
and unparalleled power efficiency.”
According to Chaput the push for haptics in
cars is mostly about safety.
“This is in part being driven by research
that shows touchscreens as the most
effective input device in many situations,
10
HAPTIC FEEDBACK
Delivering better cockpit design
A NEW PIEZO DRIVER CHIP LOOKS TO ADVANCE REALISTIC HAPTIC FEEDBACK IN
AUTOMOTIVE HMIS. NEIL TYLER REPORTS
with haptic significantly reducing the glance knobs and buttons of one-hundred years ago
duration required to operate this type of to the flat screens that came to market over
interface. As such, haptics increases car the last twenty years, clear and responsive
safety. It’s a big reason why we are working haptics marks the next important interface
with so many automotive manufacturers on advancement in automobiles.”
haptic user interfaces for touchscreens and “Piezo actuators, in theory, are the most
steering wheels.” efficient mechanisms for converting electrical
Chaput believes that there has been a to mechanical energy but they require a high-
significant shift voltage (e.g.60V or 120V),” explained Chaput.
when it comes “Current solutions are bulky and inefficient. At
“Haptics to conversations Boréas, we have created a very efficient driver
increases car about automotive that is small, low-power and can generate the
safety. That’s design/ high voltage required by piezo actuators.”
performance. More than 52.8 million automotive touch
why we are “Ten years ago, panels will be on the market by 2020,
working with so that discussion according to IHS Markit’s Center Stack Display
many Tier One was focused on Production Forecast.
car performance At the same time, however, more drivers
companies”
such as engine are using voice commands to make phone
Simon Chaput power. Today, calls and send texts, and are receiving
car commercials navigation instructions via audio. Although
are all about handsfree HMIs sound safer for drivers,
technology integration in cars, which is where research from Stanford University has
Boréas comes in. We allow car manufacturers concluded that drivers receiving haptic
to create better cockpit industrial design feedback respond better than those receiving
while providing a natural and much safe audio feedback.
user experience for both the driver and There’s a biological reason for this in that
passengers.” haptic feedback represents a smaller cognitive
Boréas is partnering with TDK, a leading load than audio cues when driving, when
supplier of piezoelectric haptic actuators and drivers can be aurally or verbally distracted.
its IC has been designed to support TDK’s While research on whether tactile vs.
family of 120V PowerHap piezo actuators. auditory or visual stimuli leads to more
“Touch HMIs in cars are evolving,” said distracted driving is on-going, it does suggest
Stefan Benkhof, head of product marketing that the cognitive load on the human brain is
at the TDK Piezo Business Unit. “From the less when that feedback is tactile.
14 January 2020 www.newelectronics.co.uk
 Come and
see us on
Stand H155
W
hen we look to define
innovation we tend to focus
on how it helps to create
value from ideas. There should be no
limits as to where innovation comes
from, whether inside a business or
from competitors or, for that matter,
what is happening in the broader
market as a whole.
Businesses need to have the ability
to pick up on ideas and trends and
turn them into something that has
potential commercial value.
It can be a very long and risky
process that requires not only an idea
but investors, suppliers, customers
and end users.
So what does it take to be
innovative?
For a start, most successful
businesses need a roadmap and a
strategy that lays out where and how
innovation is going to help them get to

DELIVERING
where they need to be.
Critically, businesses also need
to create an atmosphere in which

creativity is possible, encouraged
and welcomed. That requires making
people feel comfortable in developing
and sharing ideas. Collaboration is
critical in that networking with people
inside and outside of the organisation
helps to create, what many refer to as
an environment of ‘Open Innovation’.
Innovation is often associated with
start-ups and small businesses, there
are plenty of incubators and business
accelerators available to help, but
what does a larger company have to
do to be considered innovative? Too
often big organisations play it safe, so
their focus tends to be on doing what
they do, but only better, and product
or service innovation becomes more
incremental as the organisation tries
to manage risk and maintain stability.
The list of big companies
considered to be innovative contains
INNOVATION
Understanding how to find and invest in innovation is
critical for business success. By Neil Tyler
own accelerators or incubators to drive
innovation.
In order to succeed, large
companies have to look beyond the
safe and secure and embark on long
shots that could bring them much
greater advantages. There needs to
be a balance between taking risks
and playing safe and that’s a tough
balancing act.
How do businesses go about
managing innovation? What processes
do they have in place and how
a culture of innovation and risk-
taking that has enabled it to sustain
leadership over many years in its core
signal conditioning and conversion
markets.
It has a history of developing
ideas and moving into new areas
from digital signal processing to
developing the first commercial MEMS
accelerometers.
The company’s Chief Technology
Officer, Daniel Leibholz has been
appointed to develop and lead the
jackie2k /stock.adobe.com

the likes of Apple and Samsung, but
also banks and supermarkets that
are using technology to improve their
performance and to deliver enhanced
products and services to their
customers. Many have set up their
supportive are they when it comes
to turning ideas into successful
innovations that create value?
Analog Devices
Analog Devices (ADI) has nurtured
company’s long-term technology
strategy for applications across its
end markets. It involves working
closely with ADI’s business units
and manufacturing operations and
he is responsible for identifying,

12 14 January 2020 www.newelectronics.co.uk


sourcing, and cultivating new
business, technology and research
opportunities, as well as developing
foundational technology capabilities
in support of the future needs of the
company’s markets and customers.
“ADI has invented and improved
manufacturing technologies and
has often pushed into unexplored
directions,” he says, “and it continues
to be on the lookout for new ideas
whether that’s from inside or outside
the company.
“Innovation is about taking a
creative idea or concept and turning
it into a product or service that
supports an identified need, providing
a commercial or societal impact in a
measurable way.
“For a company like ADI that type
of innovation will be reflected in its
revenues and margins and for our
customers it will be about solving a
specific problem and creating value.”
According to Liebholz the heart
of innovation is to, “understand the
problem you are trying to address and
whether your technology will have a
measurable impact.”
Currently we are in a period of
great technological innovation and
there’s been an explosion in advanced
cloud and analytic capabilities, for
example, all of which depend on data
derived from the analogue world.
“This growth means that innovators
need a place where they can develop
ideas and disruptive technologies. ADI
has established the Analog Garage,
a corporate incubator program, that
provides entrepreneurs with a path
to develop, explore and scale new
technologies and new business
models,” Liebholz explains.
The Garage looks to recognise
new technologies such as sensors
and connected devices, machine
learning and AI, engaging with start-
ups, universities, and company
employees. Any employee can apply
for a grant and use staff scientists
in the Garage to validate their ideas
– much like how a venture capitalist
works.
www.newelectronics.co.uk 14 January 2020
“The Garage is intended to
provide the support needed to solve
tough problems, collaborating in a
‘learn fast, roll-up your sleeves and
experiment environment’.”
Over 350 pitches have been
received over the past five years, since
the Garage was established, with
around 10 percent being successful.
According to Liebholz, ADI is looking
for ideas that will have a real impact
and which are not simply incremental.
“You have to understand the
problems you are trying to address. At
the heart of innovation are problems
and the technology you develop will
need to have a measureable impact.
For ADI , for example, that could mean
providing improved levels of signal
identification, measurement, or power
efficiency. It is about our customer’s
systems benefitting materially so we
are looking for innovations that will
have a real impact.”
According to Liebholz, the most
impactful form of innovation comes
when there is an overlap between ADI
and its customers.
“Understanding the systems
challenges of our customers while
they have, at the same time, an
appreciation of the technology we can
provide is critical. Often both are seen
in a static way with improvements
tending to be limited or at the margin.
“It is when we are dealing with
something more abstract that we can
rethink a problem. It is then possible
to supply technology that will help
the customer radically rethink their
COVER STORY INNOVATION
systems and architectures.
“Conversely, an abstract enough
problem means that we can rethink
how we go about solving it at a
technical level. When you are
innovating at the chip and system level
that, from my experience, is when
you are truly able to deliver innovative
systems.”
Continued engagement with
customers is also critical.
“ADI has created “You need a good antenna to pick
the Garage up on trends,” suggests Liebholz,
incubator “and we try to hold regular meetings
programme with our larger customers to discuss
to provide their future plans. Their purpose is
entrepreneurs to better understand the technology
with a path to we can provide them with and help
develop, explore us better understand the challenges
and scale new they face. For example, how are they
technologies and applying the latest technologies, such
new business as machine learning?”
models.” According to Liebholz these
Daniel Liebholz technology scouting meetings enable
ADI to make connections to new
teams and designers within their
customers and to then link them up
with other parts of ADI that, perhaps,
they may not have engaged with.
“It’s a long journey but made easier
where roadmaps exist. The cross
linkages that we form are essential
to creating and driving innovation.
Below: Analog It’s about better understanding
Devices has a long and exchanging ideas as well as
history of developing questioning each other in an open and
ideas and moving frank way, so we can look to solve
into new areas problems.”
13
 COVER STORY
Collaboration is crucial
Located in Silicon Valley, PARC (Palo
Alto Research Center) is a scientific
research and Open Innovation
company that’s been at the heart of
some important recent technological
developments.
“Collaboration is crucial and we
bring leading scientists, engineers
and designers together to form teams
across a series of Focus Areas that we
believe are the future of technology,
science and innovation,” explains
Marcus Larsson, the VP of global
business development at PARC.
PARC is a Xerox company and
provides custom R&D, technology,
expertise, best practices and
intellectual property to companies,
start-ups and government agencies.
“Our Open Innovation approach
means that we are able to combine
scientific creativity, interdisciplinary
collaboration and business drive,”
says Larsson.
PARC works across a number
of different industries focussing on
Artificial Intelligence and Human-
Machine Collaboration, Internet of
Things and Machine Intelligence,
Digital Design and Manufacturing,
Microsystems and Smart Devices.
“Creativity and science are at
the heart of our mission to reduce
the time and risk associated with
innovation that is looking to solve
complex problems.”
PARC looks to form a custom,
multi-disciplinary team for every project
or partnership it gets involved with.
“Continuous evolution keeps us
at the cutting edge of innovation
and it enables us to rapidly build
and combine the right capabilities,”
explains Larsson.
“Our work is guided by the
ambitions of our clients and the
stage of innovation they’re at will
define how they work with PARC.
We have a well-defined engagement
process to ensure that they get
what’s needed from any partnership
– whether that’s early stage concept
exploration and validation, proof of
14
INNOVATION
concept and prototype development,
or commercialisation of existing PARC
technologies.”
Launched last year, PARC unveiled
a shared cleanroom-as-a-service
centre that was designed to enable
partners to develop and test new thin-
film electronics and optoelectronic
devices.
Equipped with a wide range of
tools, it allows for unique processes
such as deposition, wafer bonding
and sputtering. In addition, clients can
draw on PARC’s expertise in working
with semiconductor thin-film materials
including amorphous silicon, metal
oxides, low-temperature polysilicon
and microelectromechanical systems
(MEMS).
“Many large technology
manufacturers have advanced
cleanrooms in place, but very few
facilities are readily available to those
who need small and medium-sized
research and development capabilities
to develop next-generation electronic
devices,” Larsson suggests.
Encouraging innovation
“ADI has a diverse portfolio of
customers, two hundred are strategic,
with whom we have a close working
relationship and our engineers engage
with them on a number of high profile
designs,” explains Liebholz.
“But when we talk about innovation
we also have to pay a lot of attention
to smaller companies and the role
of the Garage, mentioned earlier, is
critical here in helping companies
develop the capabilities they need to
reach a point when their ideas become
viable.”
Innovation often looks to address
current customer needs.
“Businesses tend to focus on
roadmaps that are one year out from
generating revenues and we need to
look five to ten years out at developing
new technologies and products.
But that takes time. It’s about de-
risking that process and ensuring
any offerings are viable,” Liebholz
explains.
“Within ADI company engineers
meet at events around the globe
where tracks, demos and papers are
presented and discussed. We bring
our engineers together to both learn
but also to celebrate.”
ADI also has a technology advisory
council that takes ideas from within
the company’s various technology
groups, assesses them and then
looks to support them going forward.
Critically, the key measure of
success when it comes to innovation
is the level of adoption and the
financial return.
“Business margins and return on
investment are critical factors and for
industrial or communication products
we can tell pretty quickly if it has
been embraced. ADI is constantly
looking at financial metrics to see
if we are capturing value. Discipline
and rigour are crucial when looking at
and considering innovation and new
technology.”
The measure of success will be
determined by the company’s overall
revenues, which reflect the vintage of
a company’s innovation, according to
Liebholz.
“At the moment technology
companies are being massively
creative; a huge amount of work is
taking place, but we also need to be
aware of how companies support new
products, how they go about getting
“We bring them designed in and what support is
leading scientists, required.
engineers “For larger companies that can be
and designers a trap, as if product support needs to
together in grow that can lead to engineering time
Focus Areas and resources being misdirected from
that we believe innovation.”
are the future ADI is certainly a standout example
of technology, of how bigger companies are looking
science and to innovate, but too many large
innovation.” companies are failing – they are too
Marcus Larsson risk averse or simply struggling with
time constraints.
In order to benefit from innovation
more companies need to put in place
processes that tap into new ideas
and creative thinking, from wherever
it comes.
14 January 2020 www.newelectronics.co.uk
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www.newelectronics.co.uk 14 January 2020 15

AM Skinner Solicitors.indd 1 16/09/2019 16:18

AAEON single board computer
UPS-P4-A10-08128
AAEON single board computers
(including UPS-P4-A10-08128) have
become an indispensable element of
applications requiring an efficient and
compact device with x86 architecture
other than an industrial computer.

Areas of application:
The UPS-P4-A10-08128
unit performs great in
advanced systems,
wherever the high
computing power offered
by small-sized devices is
needed. Such requirements are
increasingly being applied to applications
from the industrial automation segment.
Also Internet of Things (IoT) devices that
are not end nodes, such as e.g. data flow
control and conversion network gateways,
are built using single board computers.
Computer UPS-P4-A10-08128 (Up Square,
UP2) will work well in this role. Another
area of application involve real-time image
analysis and processing. The UP2 single
board computer can cooperate with an
mPCI-e card containing system that is
part of a neural network (e.g. the Intel®
Movidius® MyriadTM graphic processor).
In such situation, its computing power
increases significantly, enabling data
analysis and processing directly at edge
node nodes (edge computing). Thanks
to this, processing time is shortened and
costs associated with data transfer as well
as servicing and leasing of computing
centers are minimized. In this way, a single
board computer becomes a key part of the
item detection system (e.g. products of
a specific brand in a vending machine or
license plates for cars entering a guarded
parking lot), identification of persons (e.g.,
sex and age of people visiting the store
at a given time of
day). In the end, it can
become a control unit in an
autonomous vehicle that analyzes
and processes camera images. The
number of applications is limited only by
the ingenuity of the designer.
Single board computers are often used
in small lot production, where it is required
to reduce the design time until the product
is released on the market. In addition,
the cooperation with Linux and Windows
operating systems makes the creation of
electronic devices easier for programmers
who, having at their disposal a large
number of libraries and drivers present in
the operating system itself, do not need
to engage into the issues concerning the
device’s hardware layer.
Advantages
An important advantage of a single board
computer are its small dimensions, which
translates into the size of the final device.
UPS-P4-A10-08128 computer works
in a wide temperature range, and flash
and operational memory in the form of
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and vibrations.
An important advantage is also low
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lower energy demand, but also to greater
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Thanks to the interfaces mounted on the
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external devices.
The AAEON UPS-P4-A10-08128 single
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until 2024. The device is CE/FCC Class A
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16 14 January 2020 www.newelectronics.co.uk

 ADVERTORIAL FEATURE AAEON

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(compatible with Raspberry PI), DP 1.2, HDMI 1.4,
RJ45 magnetically shielded x2, SATA, USB A x3,
USB B micro and mPCI-e.

www.newelectronics.co.uk 14 January 2020 17

 INTERVIEW SHARON HAGI
Delivering
security
Silicon Labs’ CSO, Sharon Hagi, talks to Neil Tyler
about security and product development
T
he new CSO at Silicon Labs, Sharon Hagi, has responsibility
for overseeing the company’s cybersecurity strategies and
having worked as VP of Security at Ethoca and as Chief
Technology Strategist at IBM Security, he has a wealth of
experience when it comes to the development of security solutions.
Hagi started his career in embedded software development and
moved into security after a start-up he worked for - Secure Computing
- was acquired by McAfee, where he was then involved with an
innovative firewall project.
Hagi’s approach to security comes from a quantitative perspective,
as opposed to a qualitative one, which he developed while addressing
financial risk management in the financial services industry.
“A lot of risk assessment tends to give things a granular rating
which is often based on biases and people’s feelings, which
can be notoriously inaccurate. I’m a big proponent of leveraging
quantitative risk assessment techniques, such as Open FAIR, where
you take some of the concepts used for many years in financial risk
management and apply them to operational and cybersecurity risk
mitigation programs.”
In the 1990s financial institutions were seen as pioneers in
understanding and reducing risk, today we are facing the same issues
with the Internet of Things. Why?
“While we are dealing with a different group of stakeholders,
the subject matter is still much the same. The early e-commerce
platforms didn’t have a consistent set of requirements, so everybody
was doing their own thing. Because of time-to-market pressures many
chose to do the bare minimum,” Hagi suggests.
“It’s only when the industry rallied around the issue and made
a standard and imposed consequences for non-compliance that
e-commerce started to flourish.”
According to Hagi, without standards and the pressure financial
institutions and the payment processors were putting on the
merchants, e-commerce wouldn’t have developed in the way it has.
“Today, organisations developing solutions for the IoT space don’t
have that imperative. While people are looking for all kinds of different
regulatory frameworks, we’re not seeing consistent treatment from
vendors to actually secure those environments,” he argues.
18
Hagi, however, believes that things are changing for the better.
“Everybody acknowledges the importance of security but, for many,
the issue is not knowing where to start, or what’s sufficient.”
According to Hagi, “Standards and regulations are needed to lay
down the foundations of what is minimally acceptable and there
needs to be a rigorous application of risk management.
“When you’re developing a product, companies should sit down
with security professionals and figure out what the risk model and
possible threats are. In what ways could that system be attacked
and what sort of things should you be doing, in terms of security, to
prevent that from happening?
“That’s the kind of activity that I think the industry has to get
behind in order to be more effective in terms of delivering security.”
Security and product development
While he’s not calling for a revolution, Hagi believes that the industry
needs to inject security activities into the product development
process.
“At Silicon Labs we are starting to make product features available
for our customers to help develop security around their products.
“But there is another issue. Do they actually know how to take
advantage of all of this stuff that we’re putting in hardware, the
software stacks and the gateways to develop compelling applications
that have security infused at the right level?”
Hagi says he is looking to address this as part of his new role at
Silicon Labs.
“I’m looking at how we are structuring our product strategy and
how we help customers address these challenges.
“Customers need to understand security at the very early stages
of the product design process. How do we then transition that into
engineering, product testing and operational requirements where the
product and security is continuously updated to reflect the rapidly
evolving threat landscape?
“I hope I’m able to bring a different perspective and a new set of
skills to this role, as we look to take security to the next level.”
One of the biggest challenges for businesses is how they connect
thousands of IoT products to existing security infrastructures.
“Do we need entirely new systems to monitor and manage
IoT risk? Or should we build products that are intrinsically able to
integrate effectively into existing monitoring management and incident
response capabilities,” asks Hagi.
“We’re talking about things like root of trust and the ability to
store keys securely. When you’re looking at applications you can code
them in such a way that they function basically with the software-only
mechanisms. That’s what companies and manufacturers have been
doing.
“In order to take advantage of hardware features you have to
consciously create implementations that call on specific APIs and
SDKs to function in certain ways. They are built in ways that are taking
advantage and delegating things like encryption and authentication
and key generation and all that through those hardware layers.”
Securing manufacturing processes is also critical, according to
14 January 2020 www.newelectronics.co.uk

Hagi.
“After the chip or product leaves the factory, the opportunities to
achieve high assurance bootstrapping of identities diminishes. They’re
still possible, but you don’t have that high security opportunity to do
that and it’s going to cost more to actually bootstrap an identity. The
lowest cost opportunity to bootstrap an identity is to be as close as
possible to the foundry and we’re looking at this as well.
“Silicon manufacturers bootstrap things like silicon identities and
that gives you trust in a specific chip. You then have to give access
to customers, so that they can leverage those hardware-grounded
identities to authenticate against a set of cloud-deployed services
www.newelectronics.co.uk 14 January 2020
and applications and gateways and networks using their issued
credentials.” According to Hagi, the manufacturing processes involved
in getting a chip from a wafer to it being packaged into a SOC, for
example, involves very careful orchestration.
“You’re introducing delays, so you have to make sure that you are
able to inject secrets into those devices, into the chip and the die as
well as into the device in aggregate without impacting your costs too
much.”
Once the device is deployed then you bring in elements of
monitoring and threat intelligence and correlation of activities that the
IoT device can measure and report on, explains Hagi.
“Is the device being subjected to some kind of an anomalous
activity which is an indication of an attack and if it is an attack,
what do we do about it? What are the response options? How do we
orchestrate that?”
Hagi believes that attacks are likely to affect fleets of devices, so
how do you coordinate a response across a relatively large number of
connected devices?
“This is a challenge that we haven’t really been facing because
security, so far, has been about a threat actor attacking a server or
attacking a singular target. It has been very rare to see attacks that
in aggregate impact a large number of devices all at once,” Hagi
explains, “and in IoT, that prospect is real and we have to figure out
what to do about it.”
Hagi argues that companies need to build mechanisms so that
devices can actually receive updates securely and from a trusted
source and be able to enact on that.
“It’s also about, perhaps, identifying a signature of an attack
and then updating the device to recognise locally that signature and
rejecting a connection attempt or being able to cope with it until, if you
will, a more established fix or patch is available. Basically, you need to
be able to respond right away.”
Companies need to understand the whole process behind incident
response orchestration and coordination, argues Hagi.
“The IoT is becoming more automated, with the development of
microservices architectures and agile infrastructure where code is
being updated on a minute-by-minute basis.
“We have to create IoT devices agile enough to be updated on that
frequency. It’s a very difficult challenge when you’re thinking about
highly constrained devices and mesh networks that don’t have a lot of
battery power.”
Silicon Labs has recognised that the IoT will not flourish without
security. It is now a real priority and it requires organisational focus
and direction.
“That was really the mission that they put in front of me,” said
Hagi. “We have to make sure that we not only build the most secure
products on the market, but we also enable our customers to leverage
our capabilities within the hardware and software stacks to build
secure solutions.”
Security requires a high degree of coordination and collaboration,
according to Hagi. “I’m hoping the industry will collaborate to get us
to that level where we can buy, as consumers, an IoT product and be
confident that it’s secure.”
19
Modern languages have
another go at unseating C
Can Modern C++ and Rust convince embedded developers to switch? Chris Edwards investigates
T
he world of embedded systems
programming is littered with
the remains of languages that
promised to be better than C but,
for whatever reason, failed to gain
traction.
If you take a look at Barr Group’s
annual survey of language use in
embedded, C continues to enjoy a
commanding lead, used by close to 70
per cent of respondents. Remarkably,
usage of C++, which was created a
decade after C, apparently peaked in
2006 before dropping back to around
20 per cent, though its penetration
has increased slowly since the middle
of the current decade.
Inertia is one reason for the
seemingly slow pace of change.
Anders Holmberg, chief strategy
20
officer at IAR Systems says: “There’s
so much code out there written in C
that nobody really wants to rewrite
in another language, as that will risk
introduce new bugs into the code
base. So even if a design in updated
with new features, the code base is
very likely to still be C.”
Another thing that C has had in
its favour is the ubiquity of tools that
support it. Today, no-one attempts to
launch a microcontroller architecture
without some kind of C compiler,
build and debug support. However,
circumstances are changing that are
easing the switch to other options.
Holmberg points to the increasing
use of operating systems such
as Windows, Linux and Android in
embedded, where development
14 January 2020
tends to favour C++. This tends to
push teams towards C++ in order to
maintain a common code base for
the bare-metal or RTOS-based code
as well. “This trend is partly driven by
the fact that most cross-compilers for
embedded, at least the ‘big names’,
now solidly support C++14 and often
most of C++17.”
The migration could go further
by a trend in toolchain design to
make compilers more modular. The
prime open-source example of that
is the Low-Level Virtual Machine
(LLVM) toolchain which has been
embraced by companies such as Arm
and, more recently, Wind River. As
well as supporting recent iterations
of C++, Michel Chabroux, senior
director of product management at
Wind River, points to LLVM as being
instrumental in the company’s ability
to support C alternatives, such as
the Rust language, as well as making
it easier to run prototype code on
a development host through the
WebAssembly intermediate format the
compiler can generate.
One big advantage of Rust
claimed by its advocates is that it
streamlines for the programmer the
way dynamic memory allocation is
handled compared to C or C++ without
resorting to the garbage-collection
strategies used by Java or by Go,
Michael Traitov/stock.adobe.com
another C-like language from the
world of cloud computing. Without
garbage collection, there is no need to
periodically halt the runtime to search
for memory to clean up.
Rust enforces checks on how
memory is allocated and accessed
at compile time that. In principle,
www.newelectronics.co.uk

this makes it easier to avoid memory
leaks, a variety of race conditions
and other task-terminating flaws. For
situations where programmers need
greater control, Rust has an ‘unsafe’
keyword to use on blocks where the
compile-time checks are disabled. In
an embedded-systems context, Rust
is not completely safe when it comes
to memory handling using the default
constructs. With direct-memory access
(DMA), it is entirely possible to get
hardware to corrupt the heap using
its scope-based allocation system
even with the protections turned on.
Niall Cooling, CEO at training company
Feabhas, points out that it is unlikely
any software language will ever
deal with the potential mismatches
between system design and software
behaviour.
Chabroux says Rust has attracted
attention from some big names:
“Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Intel and
others have or are starting to use Rust
in low-level subsystems.”
But such high-profile users may not
move the needle much in the wider,
highly fragmented embedded-systems
space. Cooling notes: “Rust has the
potential to be the third language in
embedded but I can’t see it replacing
C or C++ anytime soon.”
Holmberg says the overall support
for Rust in embedded systems is not
mature and there can be significant
differences in what is available for
a target architecture. “On the other
hand, there are people out there
who feel that C++17 and C++20 are
way too complex, with new language
features bolted on left and right.
I think it might be a very strong
contender against C++ as the syntax
www.newelectronics.co.uk 14 January 2020
EMBEDDED DESIGN
is a bit leaner and it does not have the
burden of the C heritage built into the
language.”
Joe Fabbre, global technology
director at Green Hills Software, says
having already decided to introduce
support for C++17 in addition to
C++14 the company is looking at Rust
and its use in embedded systems “We
are generally encouraged that there
is demand for language support that
makes writing safe and secure code
more practical and scalable.”
Modern C++
Although it is evolving rapidly and
acquiring features that may not
be entirely useful in an embedded
context, Modern C++, which is the
blanket term for versions of the
language standardised after 2011,
is attracting greater attention now
because it deals with many of the
memory-protection and code-quality
issues from which C programs can so
often suffer.
Cooling points to a number
of features which make Modern
C++ attractive from a code-quality
perspective. One of the earlier
additions was the smart pointer.
Though it is possible to wind up with
issues caused by the way in which
some functions are implemented in
the standard template library, the
smart pointer wraps a class library
around the basic pointer that takes
care of releasing memory when it is no
longer needed.
The static_assert keyword makes
it possible to embed compile-time
checks in the source code to perform
tasks such as checking that a
function is called properly: echoing
LANGUAGES
the contract-based programming of
the Eiffel language. Similarly, the
constexpr keyword is used to perform
some computations at compile time
so that programmers can maintain
more readable code. Cooling says the
2017 and 2020 versions of C++ are
pushing a wider range of expressions
to compile time, which should
improve quality. He also points to the
“There’s so much standard attributes which provides
code out there more information to the compiler so
written in C, that that it can issue meaningful warnings
no one out there if a function does not comply with
really wants to the attributes declared for it by the
rewrite in another programmer.
language.” “It seems to be a general trend
Anders Holmberg in bigger or more mature software
development organisations to move
towards more formalised coding
guidelines, enforced by static-analysis
tools. One of the reasons for that
is that even a ‘small’ project might
contain several 100,000 lines of code,
so it’s simply impossible to uphold
quality standards without tools,”
Holmberg says.
Compilers such as LLVM and its
Clang front-end can go further by
adding custom parsing engines to
the compilation process. One system
described at the LLVM Developers
Meeting last year tried to identify
situations where a program might
access a null pointer and crash. Such
checks are prone to false positives
because they lack runtime information.
But improved heuristics may improve
the accuracy of the checks over
Below: The Barr time and reduce the number of
Group’s graph of unnecessary warnings.
language use over For safety-critical systems,
time, published last programmers have used rule decks
year such as MISRA for many years, often
enforced by static tools used ahead
of compilation. Such guidelines often
rule out things like dynamic memory
allocation because they are so fraught
with problems. More advanced static
checks will make it easier to soften
those guidelines and continue to take
advantage of the low-level control of C
and, once again, slow the migration to
new languages.
21
Southern Manufacturing 2020
Southern Manufacturing & Electronics returns to Farnborough next
month, bringing together a rich eco-system of engineering SMEs
operating across the UK.
S
outhern Manufacturing &
Electronics (11th to 13th
February 2020) returns to the
Farnborough International Exhibition
and Conference Centre next month.
With its trademark diversity
of suppliers, it is an event that
not only attracts some big-name
manufacturers, but also the rich eco-
system that makes up the engineering
SMEs operating across the UK.
Southern has established itself as
one of the UK’s leading shows in this
space and now, in its third decade,
looks to address multiple sourcing
issues in a very time-efficient way.
A free seminar programme,
running in two lecture theatres over
all three days of the show, covers a
wide-ranging agenda, from advanced
materials, additive manufacturing and
Industry 4.0 to real-world examples of
business transformation and Lean.
The programme gives delegates the
opportunity to gain insight at the very
highest level into many of the biggest
issues facing industry today. All
sessions are completely free to attend
and open to all visitors to the show.
Southern Manufacturing &
Electronics provides a UK and a major
pan-European showcase for new
technology in machinery, production
equipment, electronic production and
assembly, tooling and components as
well as subcontract services across an
impressively wide range of industry.
Below we take a look at just a
snapshot of the many exhibitors at
this year’s show.
binder – Stand C110
binder is a specialist in the design
and production of circular connectors
22
for a whole variety of applications
across many sectors. At this year’s
show binder will be showing the latest
examples from its comprehensive
range of connectors including M5, M8
and M12 connectors designed for the
growing sensors and controls market
and connector systems specifically for
the medical and food and beverage
sectors.
Products to be featured include the
707 M5 connector series which now
includes an over-moulded connector
on PUR cables with 3600 shielding.
These are among the smallest sensor
connectors currently available and
will suit a wide variety of applications
across many industry sectors including
materials handling, conveyor systems
and automation in general, as well as
camera and security systems.
Other connectors on display will
include: the M12 A coded, moulded
connectors which incorporate both
power and signal/data contact
and the Series 570 ELC (for Easy
Locking Connector) for use in medical
applications where the need for
constant mating and un-mating is an
important consideration.
binder has designed the connector
to be capable of more than 5000
mating cycles which is enough to
satisfy the operating requirements of
many medical system applications.
ByteSnap – Stand E30
Vehicle-to-Grid and electric vehicle
charge point solutions are being
showcased this year. ByteSnap’s
smart communications charge point
controller and dumb charger will be on
display.
Also on the stand - a 1.8m-tall
traffic sign running on ByteSnap’s
flexible OpenGL framework, SnapUI.
The demo drives the sign’s bank of
160x64 LEDs. The SnapUI can be
used for prototyping and production
and the demo shows SnapUI’s ease of
use on challenging output devices.
CamdenBoss – Stand G310
CamdenBoss will be exhibiting a
wide range of enclosures from small
electronics enclosures to POS kiosks.
The company’s Sales and Design
teams will be on hand to discuss
CamdenBoss – design, prototype and manufacturing
Stand G310 requirements including moulded and
fabricated solutions from concept to
production, along with demonstrations
of the company’s latest moulded NPI
and mobile/static ESD production
storage solutions.
Smartboxx will be showcasing the
latest case studies, all manufactured
with our ‘no tooling’ process, along
with CamdenBoss’s Core range
including, standard plastic and die
cast casings, and a huge range of
E-mech components.
ByteSnap – Cosel – Stand C170
Stand E30 Cosel will be showcasing its Medical,
Smart & Configurable Power supplies.
14 January 2020 www.newelectronics.co.uk

With the ever-growing demand of IoT,
power supplies are a fundamental
aspect to many equipment
manufacturers.
Cosel will be showing a range
of single output and configurable
output power supplies which offer
digital communication as standard.
Connected by UART or PMBus, this
allows users to monitor and control up
to 85 commands on the power supply
including digitally adjusting output
voltage, Constant Current - Constant
Voltage Mode, life expectancy and
much more.
These smart power supplies come
with the very latest standards and
are also approved for use in medical
devices that require MOPP.
In addition optional features are
available including: Conformal Coating,
Low Leakage Current and Smart Fans.
E-tec Interconnect - Stand K115
The company’s expanding range of
waterproof and flexible interconnects
will be available to view at Southern
Manufacturing this year.
This will include highly reliable
IPX7 rated wire to wire waterproof
connectors, available in 2mm pitch
with 2, 3, or 4 contacts.
Flat Flex Cable Jumpers allow for
optimum flexibility between PCBs
without compromising performance
in pitches between 1.00mm and
5.08mm.
Available in either PET or highly
durable Nomex insulator, a high level
of reliability can be achieved across
different environments.
E-tec will be showing a
comprehensive range of interconnect
solutions including: sockets,
connectors, assemblies, terminal
blocks, RF products and special
adaptors for converting chip packages.
E-tec also specialise in test
sockets, burn-in sockets and
programming sockets based on
standard and custom designs. These
can be found in a variety of application
fields such as aeronautics, military,
www.newelectronics.co.uk 14 January 2020
SOUTHERN ELECTRONICS
medical, communications, automotive,
multi-media and many others.
Eurotherm – Stand H15
As part of the Schneider Electric
business, Eurotherm is a leading
global supplier of Temperature Control,
Process Control, Measurement
and Data Recording Solutions and
Services.
Eurotherm supports customers
across a wide range of commercial
and regulated industries. For
customers requiring calibration
services, SAT, warehouse mapping
and temperature uniformity survey
(TUS) services, Eurotherm have a
global sales and service network
of highly qualified engineering
personnel who are skilled in these
key compliance procedures, together
with the EcoStruxure Manufacturing
Compliance Advisor.
This is a smart compliance solution
that increases profitability across
industry by reducing equipment
testing costs; increasing operational
productivity and optimising process
equipment so as to be audit ready.
Selwyn Electronics - Stand E70
Selwyn is showcasing their extended
range of connectors and cable
assemblies, with a particular focus
on waterproof connectors. The Micro
Series range of circular connectors
has been increased to include smaller
diameter bodies and IP67 rating.
With a current rating up to 10A for
the mixed contact version, and 2A
2020 SHOW PREVIEW
Eurotherm – for the standard contact version,
Stand H15 they offer a low cost, robust and
reliable connection for a wide variety
of applications when small size and
water sealing is required.
Selwyn will also be showcasing
a wide range of connectors and
cable assemblies include Circular
connectors, BGA sockets and
adapters, waterproof connectors,
custom connectors and cable
assemblies.
As the UK distributor for ODU
Connectors, they will be showing
the complete range of ODU
products, metal and plastic circular
connectors, ODU Mac modular
rectangular connectors, and the latest
Hermetically sealed and high voltage
products.
TestWorks Group – Stand D150
TestWorks Group will be showcasing
its Design, Automation, Manufacturing,
Test and Software capabilities.
TestWorks Group is an ISO
9001:2015 accredited company
and is a National Instruments Silver
Alliance Partner, Beckhoff Systems
integrator and have partnerships with
Omron Automation, Automata, Hiwin
TestWorks Group – Mikrosystem and SensoPart.
Stand D150
The free seminar programme at
Southern Manufacturing & Electronics
2020 runs over all three days of the
show. A complete listing of sessions
can be found at
https://www.industrysouth.co.uk
Registration is free.
23
BRIDGING BROADCAST
Savvy broadcasters are using software to reap the benefits of
emerging technologies whilst making the most of existing assets.
Charlotte Hathway reports
I
t’s no secret that the way people
watch TV has evolved rapidly over the
last decade. Today’s viewers expect
quality, convenience, and innovation,
and broadcasters must rise to that
challenge to compete in an increasingly
complex ecosystem.
Success rests on balancing new
investments with making the most
of existing devices, services and
infrastructure. In this climate, FPGAs
are coming to the fore.
Rob Green, Senior Manager, Pro AV
& Broadcast at Xilinx, explained, “You
can use an FPGA or programmable
devices for whatever application
you want. That might be creating a
different interface standard, for video
processing or compression, as a
wireless base station processor, or as
a consumer TV video processor.
“The same device can be
reprogrammed using software in
different ways. Broadcasters really like
this, because rather than building a
specific device for that function, they
can use these devices to innovate and
to play with video quality and to make
the device do exactly what they want.”
FPGAs are being used across
every stage of production from the
digital video camera and pre- or post-
processing of the captured video
and audio content, through to video
compression, editing and distribution.
There are a lot of options here, and
broadcasters are looking at FPGAs
that can deliver high performance,
flexibility, obsolescence proof and low
development costs.
In broadcast, it’s common to see
camera, sensor and display technology
improvements trickling across the
whole production workflow, pushing
24
production to innovate and make
the most of those improvements.
This drives a requirement for higher
bandwidth, better video processing
capabilities, or the use of compression
as a larger number of frames per
second or a deeper colour, for
example, mean more data being sent.
This is where the ongoing move to
IP networks for broadcast comes in.
A new standard, SMPTE ST 2110, is
being adopted across the industry as
the way to send digital video over an
IP network, largely due to it being open
and interoperable.
In the UK, the BBC’s Research
& Development’s IP Studio team
provides regular updates on what the
broadcaster is doing to prepare for
future requirements. In a November
blogpost, authored by Peter Brightwell,
Lead Engineer at BBC R&D, the team
discussed improving the networking
and compute technologies that are
used in broadcast facilities, the
mechanisms to connect, control and
these, and how we can benefit from
cloud computing.
In a follow up conversation,
Brightwell explained, “One area we’ve
been working on is moving broadcast
production facilities to IP working,
and we’ve simultaneously moved to
distributing content using IP. There’s
a lot more flexibility and capacity for
new content, and potentially scope for
cost savings as you can use generic
components more easily.”
This chimes with the view of Xilinx’s
Green. He said, “Video over IP gives
[broadcasters] a lot of benefits in
terms of operational efficiency. You
can use equipment anywhere on the
network. It doesn’t have to be specific
to a particular application. You can
put lots of channels within the same
ethernet link. To move from HD to 4K
to 8K, you just need faster ethernet,
you don’t need a new standard like you
do with DisplayPort or HDMI or any of
those other connectivity evolutions.
“I think we’ll all go to IP, eventually,
so there won’t be lots of different
interfaces into your PC, monitor or
anything else. It’ll all be IP based,
packetised, and probably internet-
based.”
That, of course, won’t happen
overnight. Green suggested that shift
will be a gradual one. “I’d say within
10 years. It’s not going to be quick.
There’s going to be lots of legacy
standards.”
Understanding resolution options
Broadcasters are also experimenting
with what will come after HD.
Streaming services like Netflix, Hulu,
Amazon are focusing on 4K, and there
is some demand for 8K. This year’s
Olympic Games, held in Tokyo, will
deliver coverage with 8K at the start
of the chain. It remains to be seen
whether that quality will be delivered
outside of Japan, but these projects
will push the technology forward.
Xilinx’s Green explained why
“To move from deeper and higher dynamic range
HD to 4K to 8K, requirements are being spotlighted.
you just need He said, “Arguably, HD HDR (high
faster ethernet, definition high dynamic range) is better
you don’t need than non-HDR 4K. It’s not just a fact of
a new standard bigger frame sizes providing a higher
like you do with quality picture. It’s a combination of all
DisplayPort or of these. HDR is probably the one that
HDMI or any customers and consumers will see
of those other a much more impactful difference to
connectivity their viewing habit.”
evolutions.” He explained that when we talk
Rob Green, Xilinx about “high dynamic range, there’s
14 January 2020 www.newelectronics.co.uk

lots of different formats of that, this
is [about] making the blacks blacker,
and the whites whiter and everything in
between much better in terms of video
quality”.
This demand for resolution
improvements is one reason video
compression is rising in importance.
Green explained, “If you want to go to
8K, you might need 100GbE (gigabit
ethernet). If you don’t have that
already installed, it will cost money to
be put in. The alternative is that you
compress the video and put it over
your existing infrastructure, which is
probably 1GbE or 10GbE.”
Broadcasters need to consider
what compression technique is
suitable for the application. Permanent
compression might be acceptable,
or there could be a need to return
the video to its initial format. This,
Green says, depends on the codec
used. “There are some codecs like
the MPEG based ones, which do quite
high compression. That’s more for
your streaming from the internet to the
home or from a camera out in the field
to a broadcast truck or something like
that.
“But there are other codecs, which
we refer to as mezzanine compression,
that do very lightweight compressions.
They just squeeze it enough to get it
into the network capability. Some of
those are visually lossless and some
of the mathematically lossless, so you
get back the pristine data that you put
in the front end.”
www.newelectronics.co.uk 14 January 2020
Using cloud in the right way
Cloud computing is becoming
vital to keeping pace with evolving
requirements for production, storage
and distribution techniques. Following
a trial in Salford, the BBC is building
a larger on-premise cloud in London.
Brightwell explained that this “will be
a bigger build, and it will be connected
to the internet, where previously
the little cloud in Salford was only
accessible on our R&D intranet. We’ll
be concentrating on what it means
to make it more widely available and
secure.
The benefit of that initial pilot,
Brightwell explained, was that the
project team could “understand the
technical issues that are involved in
operating a cloud” so the larger cloud
can be “specific to the types of work
[needed] for broadcast production”.
So, why not just throw everything
up to the cloud? Green explained “the
cloud has a perception that it’s cheap.
It’s a cheaper service to use, because
you’re not buying any equipment, but
actually, if you’re using it a lot, it’s
more expensive than buying your own
piece of equipment. If you’re doing live
news or sports 24/7, you would never
put that in the cloud because it would
be way too expensive. You would have
your own piece of equipment to do
that. It’s just a matter of balancing the
costs.”
For the BBC, automation is another
area that shows promise. Brightwell
explained, “Consider a small music
SECTOR FOCUS BROADCAST TECHNOLOGY
festival, where you have to take quite
a lot of equipment out on the road
to make a programme. We would
like to look at what it might mean to
have less infrastructure on site and
be able to connect up to a broadcast-
friendly automated cloud. Previous
events could provide a starting point,
so everything is automatically set up
with the editing software and graphics
“We would like that you need. A lot of manual set-up
to look at what is required at the moment, so the
it might mean idea that computers could handle the
to have less tedious stuff and people can get on
infrastructure on with the more creative parts of the job
site and be able is [worth exploring].”
to connect up Like other industry segments,
to a broadcast- machine learning and artificial
friendly intelligence are opening up
automated new possibilities for broadcast
cloud.” technologies. Xilinx’s Green,
Peter Brightwell, expects to see machine learning
BBC used to detect faces within video.
Broadcasters can then retain video
quality around the face, but can then
throw away more information in the
background. This would mean less bits
would be streamed over the network,
which could deliver significant cost
savings.
Green see these technologies
delivering benefits elsewhere in
the production chain, with similar
techniques being used to control
cameras. He gave the example of a
football match where players could
be tracked in the same image, and
that data could also be tagged during
the broadcast. This could generate
automated replay, with machine
Left: Xilinx’s Vivado learning used to track events, like
hardware design goals scored or penalty decisions. The
suite director of the show would then have
a highlight reel instantly available to
them when required.
Technology moves from prototype
to adoption much faster than in the
past, so it could be a matter of just
a few years before we’re starting to
see these concepts being used widely
by broadcasters. What is clear is that
software holds the key to striking
the balance between old and new
investments.
25

Has the world got the taste again for ASICs?
Socionext discusses the advantages associated with this technology
A
SICs - Application-Specific
Integrated Circuits - came about
in the 1980s, as decreasing
costs for IC technology, new design
methods and powerful new software
tools emerged.
Previously, designing
semiconductors was the exclusive
domain of a number of very
specialised semiconductor
manufacturers, who had the means to
set up semiconductor production as
well as the technical expertise in IC
technology, production and design.
In subsequent years, the
semiconductor industry developed
rapidly and with the launch of
hardware description languages
as well as logic synthesis enabled
the now standard complex circuits
comprising several million logic gates
to be implemented on an ASIC.
CMOS (Complementary Metal
Oxide Semiconductor), the dominant
semiconductor technology, was also
undergoing continual miniaturisation
resulting in increased integration
density ao that by the mid-1980s,
CMOS technologies enabled minimal
structures of 1um to be implemented
on an IC. Today’s CMOS can offer
minimal structure sizes of 7nm.
Nevertheless, there are signs
26
ASIC
anyone?
that the speed of miniaturisation is
slowing. The minimal dimensions of
current transistors in the single-digit
nm range indicate that the simple,
planar CMOS production process
no longer functions at every point.
Transistors have now become so
small that physical effects such
can dominate and impair transistor
performance.
Manufacturers compensate for
this with innovative new production
methods and technological
innovations. From 16nm, for example,
all mainstream CMOS processes
work with FinFET transistors, which
reduce the short-channel effect in
CMOS. From 7nm, a very short-waved
ultraviolet light (EUV) is also used with
a wave length of 13.5nm to illuminate
the masks.
As a result, the costs for the
respective latest semiconductor
technology have continually risen in
recent years and ASIC customers have
started to feel the impact of increased
development costs.
In fact, developing ASICs for the
latest semiconductor technology only
makes economic sense if high unit
volumes are expected. Of course,
this also means that an ASIC with
the latest technology can be used by
14 January 2020
significantly fewer customers than was
previously the case. As a result, the
ASIC industry has undergone a number
of significant changes in the past
decade. The number of ASIC providers
has fallen and it appeared that ASICs
would only remain of interest to a
minority of users. However, things
appear to be changing.
Why? Many applications are
currently evolving in a direction which
is predestined for ASIC, as they are
so innovative or the requirements are
so specific that there are no suitable
standard products available.
The automotive market is set
to become one of the largest ASIC
growth markets. The amount of
electrical components installed in cars
is increasing significantly driven by
demand for driverless cars, or at least
automated advanced driver assist
systems (ADAS), which is triggering
rapid developments in the field of
sensors (radar, lidar, optical sensors)
and in artificial intelligence.
Consumers now expect a variety
of communication, information
and entertainment equipment in
their vehicles such as smartphone
connectivity, displaying on-board and
environmental data as well as in-car
entertainment.
www.newelectronics.co.uk

Demand for wireless
communication, between different
road users and between vehicles and
the road is also increasing.
All in all, these applications will
make the automotive market one of
the key drivers of ASIC technology in
coming years.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is now being used
in various products, such as digital
home assistants, smartphones and
robot vacuum cleaners.
It is also set to play an even
greater role in the automated
processing of video data in real time,
for example in the field of security
monitoring. These systems usually
only have a limited power supply and
are not allowed to get too hot as they
are kept in encapsulated housing. As
a result, efficiency (i.e. processing
power per mW) plays a significant
role here – giving ASICs a significant
market opportunity.
The Internet of Things has been
identified as a growth driver and today
there is a clear trend, where more
and more devices are being upgraded
using smart electronics and connected
in networks using either wired or
wireless technology. Low power is
a particularly important issue here.
Thanks to the integration of an RF and
digital part on an ASIC, highly efficient
IoT implementations are now possible.
In the field of production
automation, a quiet revolution has
taken place. Industry 4.0 is based on
the digitalisation of production. This
field is diverse and offers a wide range
of ASIC applications such as PLC
control systems, encoders and servos
as well as human-machine interfaces.
Alongside new markets, ASIC
technology is also being driven by
the broad selection of semiconductor
processes that are now available. It
does not make sense to select the
latest technology for all products.
Instead, it is important to tailor the
process to the application.
If a customer wants a purely digital
www.newelectronics.co.uk 14 January 2020
SYSTEMS DESIGN
ASIC with several million logic gates
and fast interfaces such as DDR5, a
7nm ASIC is likely be a good choice.
For the above-mentioned applications,
however, other technology drivers are
often more important. If a customer
wants to implement a flash memory
on the ASIC, for example, it generally
makes sense to choose “older”
technologies up to approx. 40nm, as
flash is currently only available for
these.
Furthermore, the integration of the
digital part, the analogue part and
the RF part is becoming increasingly
important. This also has a major
influence on the selected technology.
Today, foundries offer RF and mixed-
signal extensions for their CMOS
processes, which can be used to
implement special semiconductor
structures and passive components
for RF and analogue applications.
RF and analogue circuits do not
necessarily benefit from minimum
transistor geometries. As a result,
larger CMOS process nodes of 180nm
to 40nm are generally chosen for
these kinds of applications.
Also, an ASIC does not need to be
developed completely from scratch.
The market for IP blocks is very
extensive today and an ASIC user
can purchase numerous standard
functionalities as intellectual property
(IP) and then focus exclusively on
developing their own “user logic”.
The use of IP ultimately saves
development costs and time and
reduces the design risk.
ASICs are considered a benefit
for applications that require a high
ASICS
integration density. The widest range
of functions (digital, analogue, RF) can
be implemented on a single ASIC. This
can reduce the bill of materials and
ASICs always have lower unit costs
compared with field-programmable
gate arrays (FPGAs). The user naturally
pays for this in the form of increased
development effort and costs.
Developing a ASIC therefore makes
sense for larger volumes, where the
savings in unit price compensate for
the initial development costs.
However, some customers choose
ASIC for entirely different reasons.
User-specific functionality can be
implemented by definition in an
ASIC. These may be functions that
are not available in a certain form
on the market or which enhance
the unique selling points (USPs)
of an in-house product. An ASIC
can therefore contribute towards
clearly differentiating a product from
competitors.
The use of an ASIC in their product
also offers customers a certain degree
of security that their product cannot
be easily copied. Since ASICs are
customer specific by definition, they
cannot be simply purchased on the
open market, which deters potential
copycats.
There is also the option of using
protective measures to prevent an
ASIC from being reverse engineered,
thus making it impossible, or
extremely difficult, to copy the ASIC.
Since product piracy has been on the
rise for years, this is a key factor for
some customers in developing an
ASIC.
Today, ASICs maintain an important
position in the semiconductor market.
Increased development costs do
not inevitably mean that ASIC is
only for the big players. A variety
of semiconductor technologies are
now available which allow affordable
designs.
Furthermore, in recent years, new
markets have been formed which
are predestined for the use of ASIC
components.
27
W STAYING AGILE
ith Industry 4.0 well under
way, 2020 is expected
to be a pivotal year, with
engineers, designers and other
professionals benefitting from the
latest developments in technology,
from artificial intelligence to robotics.
But as the tech improves, and as
more possibilities for what employees
can achieve with it arise, they will also
be expected to do more.
The pace of change needed to
succeed in the 2020s will not slow
down any time soon, so it’s vital
to stay agile and constantly be on
the lookout for ways to both drive
efficiency and improve quality. Here
are the top trends for the next 12
months that electronics designers
need to be aware of in order to stay
ahead of the curve.
Model-based design will be crucial
AI-driven systems are on the rise
driven by new AIs being trained to
work with a broader variety of types of
sensor including Radar, Lidar, inertial
measurement units for a wider variety
of systems including aircraft engines,
industrial plants, autonomous vehicles
and wind turbines. The behaviour of
an AI model has a substantial impact
on the overall system performance,
so electronics designers need to
be aware that developing one is no
mean feat and is only set to get more
difficult and designs become more
complex.
28
Jos Martin looks at some of the key trends
expected to impact Industry 4.0 in 2020
Technology can make the
process of creating AI models much
easier though. Model-based design
represents an end-to-end workflow that
reduces the complexity of designing
AI-driven systems. Designers will
look to model-based design tools
so that they can simulate, integrate
and continuously test these AI-
driven systems, ensuring they are
accurate and successful. Being
able to simulate is important for
understanding how the AI interacts in
a system, and integration is critical to
allowing designers to speedily identify
weaknesses in the AI training datasets
or design flaws in other components.
Simulation makes it easier to adopt
AI
According to recent findings from
Gartner, 14% of global CIOs have
already deployed AI, but almost
half (48%) are planning to deploy
it by 2020. There are, however, a
number of challenges electronics
designers face before implementing
it successfully into their work. One of
the biggest challenges, according to
Gartner, is lack of quality data, as if
14 January 2020
there is not enough data to work with,
the AI is likely to fail.
Fortunately, software can be used
to simulate data and supplement
existing data from normal system
operation so that AI models can be
trained accurately, increasing the
likelihood of a successful project
outcome. In particular, data from
anomalies or critical failure conditions
is key, something especially true for
predictive maintenance applications,
such as accurately predicting
remaining useful life for a pump on an
industrial site. Being able to simulate
failure data is extremely useful as
creating data from physical equipment
would be expensive, inefficient and
destructive. Software can generate
data from simulations representing
system failure behaviour.
Standardised industry protocols will
emerge
Industry-wide standards like OPC UA
TSN will come to fruition, helping
electronics designers, engineers and
manufacturers ensure interconnectivity
so that equipment from different
vendors interoperates seamlessly.
www.newelectronics.co.uk

We will also see the disappearance
of inflexible cables and the influx
of 5G and other wireless protocols.
Standardisation will become more and
more important throughout 2020 and
beyond, with the continuing growth
of IoT, as machines are not only
connected with each other but also to
cloud systems where there is arguably
near limitless calculation power
available.
Embedded devices become easier
to deploy
Typically, artificial intelligence has
used 32-bit floating-point mathematics
as available in high performance
computing systems like data centres,
clusters, GPUs and others. This
meant designers could achieve more
accurate results and easier training
of AI models, but that low power,
low cost embedded devices that
used fixed-point mathematics – such
as electronic control units (ECUs)
in vehicles and other embedded
industrial applications – were ruled
out. However, thanks to recent
advances in software, there are
plenty of tools available for 2020
that support AI inference models
with different levels of fixed-point
mathematics. The key benefit here
is that organisations can deploy AI
on these lower power devices and
incorporate the technology into their
designs.
Cloud and edge computing drive
calculation power
From the workshop to the lab to the
factory floor, AI-based algorithms will
dynamically optimise the throughput
of the entire production line while
minimising the consumption of energy
and other resources. Cloud computing,
along with edge computing – whereby
organisations process data on the
edge of their network where data is
generated as opposed to in a central
server or central data-processing
centre – is playing a key role. The
rapidly increasing calculation power
of industrial controllers and edge
www.newelectronics.co.uk 14 January 2020
computing devices are truly paving the
ground for new software functionality
on production systems.
Predictive maintenance is also set
to improve as it incorporates data not
only from one machine or site but also
from multiple locations and across
equipment from a variety of vendors.
The algorithms can be deployed on
non-real time platforms as well as on
real-time systems like programmable
logic controllers.
Electronics designers can achieve
more
One of the most profound changes in
the electronics industry in 2020 will be
on the people behind the components
and machinery. As AI becomes
an increasingly important part of
the agenda, demand for AI skills
will grow, and it won’t just be data
scientists that will be sought after.
Engineers, scientists and designers
will need to be proactive in training
themselves – or putting in a case
to their employers to be trained and
become ‘citizen data scientists’ – non-
data science professionals that have
the knowledge and ability to work on
machine and deep learning projects.
Artificial intelligence is offering plenty
of opportunities for improvement, but
it is vital staff have the know-how to be
able to fully capitalise on it.
SECTOR FOCUS INDUSTRY 4.0
Reinforcement learning starts being
taken seriously
Reinforcement learning (RL) is possibly
“With Industry most famous for its ability to beat
4.0 well human beings at the game Go – which
underway, 2020 recently hit headlines after it beat
is expected to South Korean Go champion Lee Se-dol
be a pivotal year and led to him announcing retirement,
with engineers, concluding that it is now “an entity
designers that cannot be defeated”. However, in
and other 2020 it will go from gaming to enabling
professionals real-world industrial applications,
benefitting particularly control design, robotics,
from the latest autonomous systems and more. RL will
developments in increasingly be used as a component
technology.” to improve larger systems, with key
enablers including easier tools for
electronics designers to build and train
RL policies, generate large simulation
datasets for training of models, code
generation for embedded hardware
and easy integration of RL agents into
system simulation tools.
One example of how RL can be
used is to improve driver performance
in an autonomous driving system. By
adding an RL agent to improve and
optimise performance, AI can enhance
the controller in the system leading
to advancements such as reduced
Author details: fuel consumption, faster speed or
Jos Martin is quicker brake response times. RL can
Senior Engineering theoretically be implemented into any
Manager at part a full autonomous driving system,
MathWorks from a vehicle dynamics model to
an environment model to image
processing algorithms and camera
sensor models.
While developments in technology
are putting pressure on organisations
to adapt and invest in training and
skilled professionals, electronics
designers should look on the bright
side, considering all the positives that
will arise as the tech advances further
in 2020.
If professionals work together to
capitalise on these opportunities, they
will be able to realise projects faster,
more efficiently and with a higher
success rate. It is already an exciting
time to be an electronics designer but
by the end of 2020 that statement will
ring even more true.
29
SPURRING
INNOVATION
While innovation is booming in machine learning
companies need to be aware of the importance of
effective patent protection, as Karl Barnfather and
Harry Strange explain
N
ew research data has
confirmed that innovation
activity linked to machine
learning (ML) is gathering pace
in Europe, potentially allowing
businesses to realise value from their
investment in artificial intelligence (AI)
technologies sooner rather than later.
Research conducted by European
intellectual property firm, Withers &
Rogers, has revealed that a record
number of patent applications linked
to machine learning were published
by the European Patent Office (EPO)
in 2019. The actual number of patent
publications related to this field
has increased from around 1,000
publications in 2016, to around 3,000
publications in 2019 – an increase of
more than 200 percent in the space of
three years.
This activity is being fuelled by
growing cross-sector interest in the
potential of AI technologies to drive
value by improving business’ process
and workflow efficiency.
For electronics manufacturers
and other OEMs, the main area of
potential lies in automation, which is
already possible to a limited degree
using traditional computers. Now,
with the rise of AI and the application
of machine learning, it has become
possible to automate much more;
generating far greater enterprise
value. While much progress has been
made to date in the development
of algorithms and their application
30
to solve real-world problems, many
experts believe we are only beginning
to see the impact of this field of
science.
To help strengthen the industry’s
understanding of the direction of
ML-related innovation, Withers &
Rogers has developed a means
of categorising individual patent
applications according to their chief
area of focus. There are essentially
five categories of ML-related
innovation – data processing methods;
underlying algorithms; training
methods; computing platforms; and
the field of application.
Close analysis of the data by
category indicates that the largest
number of patent applications filed
at the EPO, are directly linked to
real-world applications, where a ML
invention has been developed for use
in solving a specific problem. This is
unsurprising as a critical test of patent
eligibility is an invention’s technicality
and its ability to solve a technical
problem.
One of the biggest areas of
growth for innovation activity linked
to machine learning in recent years is
ML-specific hardware. Over 13 percent
of all ML-related patents published
by the EPO over the last three years
have been directed to the ‘computing
platform’ category. Whilst the majority
of these patent applications have
been made by big names such as
Intel, Nvidia, and Qualcomm, a
significant proportion are from newer
players such as Graphcore, Kalray,
and Cerebras.
This high level of interest and
investment in hardware, which is
purpose built for machine learning
approaches such as deep learning, is
expected to continue.
Patent applications
In the case of the underlying
algorithms, many of these are
inventive in their own right and
it is good to see that over 16
percent of all ML-related patent
applications published by the EPO
over the last three years fall into the
‘algorithm’ category. Importantly,
these applications are not just being
filed, the data shows that many of
these applications are also being
granted. This means it is possible for
companies to obtain patent protection
for innovative ML algorithms, provided
the applications have been well
drafted, address technical problems
and provide technical details of the
algorithm’s implementation.
Greater knowledge of the success
of such patent applications should
help to spur on innovation activity.
New guidelines published by the
sdecoret/stock.adobe.com
European Patent Office (EPO) on
1st November 2019 will also help
to smooth the way for innovators to
secure patent protection for AI and ML
inventions.
Karl Barnfather The new ‘Guidelines for
14 January 2020 www.newelectronics.co.uk

Examination’ contain specific advice
about how AI and ML-related patent
applications should be assessed by
the EPO. This guidance has introduced
greater clarity and will make it easier
for innovators and their IP advisors
to secure the commercial protection
required when preparing to bring
inventions to market.
In the past, a lack of certainty
surrounding the EPO’s approach to
the examination of AI and ML-related
applications may have discouraged
some innovators from seeking patent
protection.
Based on the new guidance
however, it is now clear that as long
as innovators can demonstrate that
their invention provides a technical
solution to a technical problem, it will
be assessed and examined in the
same way as other inventions. This
means that the valuable commercial
protection that accompanies a granted
patent is within their grasp.
One of the areas where the
guidance has brought greater clarity
is the description of how an AI or
ML-related invention might make
a technical contribution. They can
achieve this either through their
end use or by demonstrating that
the underlying technology makes a
technical contribution in its own right.
The guidance takes the example of
a neural network, which might qualify
for patent protection when used to
operate a heart-monitoring device
www.newelectronics.co.uk 14 January 2020
RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
capable of detecting an irregular
heartbeat as this use demonstrates
a technical contribution. Alternatively,
a neural network could also achieve
patent protection without reference
to any real-world application, as long
as its architecture is considered
inventive and solves a technical
problem.
Whilst the increased clarity Harry Strange
surrounding the EPO’s approach to
assessment will certainly help, the
success or failure of individual patent
applications in this field of R&D is
likely to be determined by the way in
which they have been drafted. For this
reason, innovators should continue
to take care to provide detailed
evidence of their invention’s technical
contribution. A good test to apply
to every patent application is ‘is it
inventive?’ Or in other words, ‘is this
more than a routine development of
the sector?’ Ultimately, the decision
to grant the patent or not will rest on
its ability to answer this question.
When preparing a patent
application for a new algorithm for
example, it is important to describe
it in sufficient detail, so that a skilled
person could implement it based Author details:
on the information provided in the Karl Barnfather
patent specification and standard and Harry Strange
sector knowledge otherwise known are attorneys
as ‘common general knowledge’. at European
Meeting this ‘sufficiency’ test is intellectual
obviously more challenging when property firm,
talking about algorithms and Withers & Rogers
IP
computational methods and it is
important for the innovator to invest
time in ensuring their patent attorney
fully understands the technology at
the outset.
Innovators should also consider
the best approach to securing
commercial protection. A granted
patent automatically gives them a 20-
year period of exclusivity in which to
leverage their invention to the full and
build up a market for their product.
Other strategies are sometimes
considered e.g. keeping the invention
a trade secret. However, it is
important that innovators understand
the commercial risks they are taking.
A ‘trade secret’ is not an
enforceable right in the same way
as a patent, as no monopoly is
provided, and a business would
not be able to sue a competitor for
infringement if the invention leaked
to the marketplace. It is also entirely
possible that a competitor develops
the same invention at the same time
and if they apply for patent protection
first, this could block your route to
market altogether.
In summary, there is a tremendous
opportunity for innovators operating
in the field of machine learning and
the full potential of these inventions
is only just being realised. With the
right intellectual property strategy and
commercial understanding, innovators
can secure a stake in this rapidly
evolving marketplace.
31
 12TH MARCH 2020
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