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Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in the USA have fabricated blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs) down to an unprecedented 250nm in size, a critical step for next-generation technologies like ultra-high-resolution displays and advanced optical communication. However, their study reveals a significant challenge: a sharp ‘efficiency cliff’ when these LEDs are scaled to submicron dimensions...

Automakers have always raced to get the latest models to market. The shift to software-defined vehicles (SDVs) has turned that race into a sprint. It’s not a simple shift, however.

Building cars that can evolve constantly demands an overhaul of development practices, tools, and even team culture. From globally distributed engineering teams and cloud-based workflows to virtual testing and continuous integration pipelines, automakers are adopting new approaches to shrink development timelines without compromising safety or quality. These shifts are enabling the industry to move faster.

In older vehicles, after a car leaves the factory, code is rarely changed over its lifetime. In contrast, SDVs are designed for continuous improvement. Manufacturers can push over the-air (OTA) updates to add features, fix bugs, or enhance performance throughout a car’s life.

However, delivering continuous upgrades requires development cycles to speed up dramatically. Instead of a process measured in years for the next model refresh, software updates often need to be developed, tested, and rolled out in a matter of months—sometimes less. The cadence of innovation in automotive is shifting, and time-to-market for each new enhancement has become paramount.

Figure 1 Software-defined vehicles (SDVs) are designed for continuous improvement. Source: NXP

This new pace is a profound change for automakers, and calls for a far more agile, software-centric mindset. Companies that successfully shrink their cycle times can deliver constant improvements; those that cannot risk their vehicles quickly becoming outdated.

Distributed teams, unified development

Managing the massive, distributed development teams behind SDVs is another challenge when it comes to speeding up software delivery. Where a car’s software was previously handled by small in-house teams, today it takes hundreds or thousands of engineers spread around the globe.

This international talent pool enables 24-hour development, but it also introduces fragmentation. Different groups may use different tools or processes, and not everyone can access the same test hardware. Without a coordinated approach, a large, distributed team can prove a bottleneck rather than a benefit.

Automotive manufacturers are tackling the issue by uniting teams in cloud-based development environments. Instead of each engineer working in isolation, everyone accesses a standardized virtual workspace in the cloud pre-configured with every necessary tool. This ensures code runs the same for each developer, eliminating the “works on my machine” syndrome.

It also means updates to the toolchain or libraries can be rolled out to all engineers at once. Onboarding new team members becomes much faster as well—rather than spending days installing software, a new hire can start coding within hours by logging into the cloud environment. With a shared codebase and common infrastructure, a dispersed team can collaborate as one, keeping productivity high and projects on schedule.

Virtual testing: From months to minutes

Rethinking how and when software testing happens is critical to the acceleration of SDV development. In the past, software testing depended heavily on physical prototypes—electronic control units (ECUs) or test vehicles that developers needed to use in person, often creating idle time and long delays that are unacceptable in a fast-moving SDV project. The solution is to virtualize as much of the testing as possible.

Virtual prototypes of automotive hardware enable software development to begin long before physical parts are available. If new hardware won’t arrive until next year, engineers can work with a digital twin today. By the time actual prototypes come in, much of the software will already be validated in simulation, potentially accelerating time to market by months.

Figure 2 Virtual prototypes can be developed in parallel to hardware development. Source: NXP

Even when real hardware testing is required, remote access is speeding things up. Many companies now host “hardware-in-the-cloud” labs—racks of ECUs and other devices accessible online. Instead of waiting their turn or traveling to a test site, developers anywhere can deploy code to these remote rigs and see the results in real time. This approach compresses the validation cycle, catching issues earlier and proving out new features in weeks rather than months.

Embracing CI/CD for rapid releases

Accelerating time-to-market also requires the software release process itself to be reengineered. Modern development teams are increasingly adopting continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines to keep code flowing smoothly from development to deployment. In a CI/CD approach, contributions from all developers are merged and tested continuously rather than in big infrequent batches.

Automated build and test systems catch integration bugs or regressions a lot sooner in the development process, making fixes a lot easier to handle. This reduces last-minute scrambles that often plagued traditional, slower development cycles. With a robust CI/CD pipeline, software is always in a deployable state.

Of course, moving at such speed in a safety-critical industry requires care. CI/CD’s built-in rigor ensures each change passes all quality and safety checks before it ever reaches a car.

Driving into the future, faster

The push to accelerate vehicle software development is reshaping automotive engineering. Building cars that are defined by software forces automakers to adopt the tools, practices, and culture of software companies. Investments in cloud-based development environments, virtual testing frameworks, and CI/CD pipelines are quickly becoming the norm for any automaker that wants to stay competitive.

Ultimately, as cars increasingly resemble computers on wheels, time-to-market for software-driven features has become a make-or-break factor. The race is on for automakers to deliver new capabilities faster than ever, without hitting the brakes on safety or quality.

Those who successfully integrate distributed teams with cloud-first workflows, leverage virtual testing, and adopt continuous delivery practices will be perfectly placed to win over automakers with vehicles that keep improving over time.

Curt Hillier is technical director for automotive solutions at NXP Semiconductors.

Razvan Ionescu is automotive software and tools architect at NXP Semiconductors.

Related Content

• SDVs: Big Picture and Challenges
• Why the Cloud Is Essential for SDV Development
• Unveiling the Transformation of Software-Defined Vehicles
• Software-defined vehicle (SDV): A technology to watch in 2025
• Architectural opportunities propel software-defined vehicles forward

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Вихованка PhD-програми КПІ Оксана Григор'єва – радниця з гендерних питань командування ЗСУ kpi пн, 06/30/2025 - 02:03

Added a "slightly" bigger capacitor (the red thing) because the old one was ripped of The radio works now again submitted by /u/Darcy_Wu_NR1 [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/gucci_millennial [link] [comments]

You can’t hear it, but it sounds beautiful 😍 AI had helped with some issues. Learned A LOT. Gemini told me to add a 1000uf cap to the Bluetooth module bc it kept on disconnecting at high power, and it worked, and I feel like it sounds better now. I’m gonna 3d print a housing and mount them under my desk as conduction speakers. Total project cost was 9 dollars. 1$ Bluetooth board, 2$ amp, and 6$ for 2 3 watt 4 ohm speaker drivers repurposed from a random speaker off eBay. submitted by /u/Fit_Antelope_1045 [link] [comments]

Powered by a $0.10 RISC V MCU we can do surprisingly accurate whistle detection! Using a timer to make sure whistle sequences are done within a time frame we can do simple whistle pattern recognition for a switch! Great quick project! submitted by /u/Separate-Choice [link] [comments]

I designed a simple board that lets you transmit audio directly from your computer onto the commercial FM band. no code, no drivers, just plug and play. This was a fun personal project and not meant to be an actual product (you can find similar boards on AliExpress for around $5). It’s also my first ever SMD assembly, and it was pretty fun working with SMD components (SSOP was a bit difficult). The board uses a TI PCM2704 chip to stream audio over USB from the host device. That audio is then passed to a KT0803 FM transmitter chip, which broadcasts it over FM radio. I added I²C breakout pins, which can be used reprogram the KT0803's settings like transmitting frequency, mode, and calibration parameters. Github page for the project (Includes the demo with sound) - https://github.com/Outdatedcandy92/FM-Transmitter submitted by /u/FirefighterDull7183 [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/AutoModerator
[link] [comments]

I think I salvaged it from an old VCD player. Pretty cool. submitted by /u/BobBolzac [link] [comments]

Some background here https://antiqueradios.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=306396 "Prior to the introduction of integrated op amps, it was extremely difficult to build stable DC amplifiers. By passing the signal through a chopper, the DC voltage can be passed through a feedback stabilized AC amplifier and then converted back to DC afterward. Chopper stabilized DC amplifiers--using electromechanical devices--have been around since the late 1940s at least." "HP's photoconductive choppers eliminated the inevitable problems with contact adjustment and wear in the electromechanical ones, but they required higher input voltages to overcome the "on" resistance of the photocells." Enjoy! submitted by /u/99posse [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/nph278 [link] [comments]

Науково-технічні конференції на ПБФ набирають обертів kpi пт, 06/27/2025 - 17:22

Участь КПІ ім. Ігоря Сікорського у панельній дискусії щодо розвитку наукових парків в Україні kpi пт, 06/27/2025 - 16:41

SuperLight Photonics of Enschede, the Netherlands — a spin-off from the University of Twente that is developing a photonic integrated circuit (PIC) wideband laser light source for measurement and detection applications — has unveiled the SLP-1050 compact, high-performance light source, purpose-built for demanding high-speed measurement applications...

Motivations for bolstering backup

Last March, I documented my travails striving to turn a 2018-era x86-based Apple Mac mini into a workable system in spite of its diminutive, non-upgradeable 128 GByte SSD’s internal capacity:

Eight months later (last November), I discussed how, motivated by the lightning-induced last-summer demise of one of my network-attached storage (NAS) devices:

I actualized longstanding aspirations to bolster my backup stratagem in order to better protect my precious data from failed hardware and other catastrophes (a virus or hack, for example).

Updating the initial approach

This writeup acts as an update to the initial approaches (and results) that I documented in the two prior pieces. Available-capacity optimization first. For pretty much the entirety of the time I’d owned the Mac mini, each time I needed to install an update to the currently installed version of MacOS and/or the Safari browser, I’d first temporarily need to uninstall a few particularly large apps to free up sufficient SSD space, then install the update, and then reinstall the apps afterwards. This got, as you can probably imagine, really tedious really quickly.

Salvation came by accident. Microsoft is pushing users to convert from the “Legacy (also referred to as “Classic”) Outlook” PIM (personal information management) app, along with the “Mail”, “Calendar”, and “People” apps originally bundled with Windows 10, to “New Outlook”. The latter successor is a PWA (progressive web app) that, simplistically speaking, acts as a locally installed “wrapper” for the cloud-based version of Outlook. Since the initial public release of “New Outlook” a couple of years ago, Microsoft has evolved the Windows variant of the app to optionally support local storage of some-to-all user data, thereby enabling access when offline. The MacOS version, conversely, still does only limited, temporary local caching.

Why is this important? As Microsoft has increasingly focused its development attention on “New Outlook”, I’d been noticing an increasing prevalence of bugs in “Legacy Outlook”, along with lengthening delays until they were eventually fixed. A month or so ago, after upgrading my MacBook Pro to MacOS 10.15 “Sequoia”, I also noticed that the “Legacy Outlook” search facility (which leverages Apple’s Spotlight system service) was no longer giving me results. Frustrated, I decided to “throw in the towel” and switch to “New Outlook” instead. I eventually ended up switching back to “Legacy Outlook”, after realizing that the lack of a locally stored full sync of my database would be unpalatable for offline use while traveling, for example (after doing so, by the way, Spotlight-based Outlook search magically started working again). But in the process, I learned something that in retrospect should have been obvious (but then again, what isn’t?).

After converting to “New Outlook”, I came across a settings option to delete “Legacy Outlook” data. Doing so freed up nearly 30 GBytes of storage capacity. This improvement was a nice-to-have on my laptop, which has a 512 GByte SSD (with ~25% still free even after converting back to “Legacy Outlook”). On the Mac mini, which I subsequently also converted to “New Outlook” and where the “Legacy Outlook” database represented ~25% of the SSD’s total capacity, it was a fundamental breakthrough. Regarding the database’s formidable size and in my (slight) defense:

• I use Outlook for my “day job’s” multiple accounts’ emails, contacts and calendars
• I’ve been employed there for three months shy of 14 years as I write this
• Note that this payload includes not only emails (and calendar entries and contacts) but also email file attachments, which in my organization are frequent and can be sizeable
• I’m an admitted digital packrat (which has saved me numerous times in the past, as I’ve been able to pull up archived content to substantiate or refute my own memory)

Due in part to the storage capacity savings (alas, unlike with my Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird profiles, for examples, there doesn’t seem to be a straightforward way to relocate the “Classic Outlook” profile to an external drive), coupled with the fact that the Mac mini is perpetually sitting on my desk and connected to broadband (and that if broadband goes down, my email-related productivity won’t be the only thing that suffers), I’ve kept “New Outlook” on it. The freed-up room on the SSD enabled me to also full-version upgrade the Mac mini from MacOS 10.14 “Mojave” to MacOS 10.15 “Sequoia”, delivering another (modest, in my case) benefit.

As with Adobe Creative Suite, which lets you optionally install apps to a different (attached, obviously) storage device (as long as you install them one at a time, that is), with MacOS 10.15 you can optionally install App Store-sourced programs elsewhere as long as they’re 1 GByte or larger in size…because, after all, Apple doesn’t want to discourage you from buying more profitable-to-them computers with larger internal storage capacities, right? In my particular case, that relocation was only relevant for Luminar AI, 2.64 GBytes in size. But I’ll take it.

Backup Expansion

Last November’s write-up on storage backup showcased the “3-2-1 rule”. Here again is Wikipedia’s concise summary:

The 3-2-1 rule…states that there should be at least 3 copies of the data, stored on 2 different types of storage media, and one copy should be kept offsite, in a remote location (this can include cloud storage). 2 or more different media should be used to eliminate data loss due to similar reasons (for example, optical discs may tolerate being underwater while LTO tapes may not, and SSDs cannot fail due to head crashes or damaged spindle motors since they do not have any moving parts, unlike hard drives). An offsite copy protects against fire, theft of physical media (such as tapes or discs) and natural disasters like floods and earthquakes.

That said, as I noted then in the introduction to my stratagem explanation:

As you’ll see in the paragraphs to follow, I’m not following the 3-2-1 rule to the most scrupulous degree—all of my storage devices are HDD-based, for example, and true offside storage would be bandwidth-usage prohibitive with conventional home broadband service.

While I can’t vouch for what storage technologies my more recently added “cloud” backup providers are using, they are off-site, so I feel pretty good about that. First off there’s my four-drive QNAP TS-453Be NAS, which, as I mentioned last time, holds “my music and photo libraries, along with decades’ worth of other accumulated personal files”:

The other two NASs on my LAN are purely used for backup purposes (both from computer sources and of each other’s contents), so losing them isn’t the end of the world. But the TS-453Be’s stored information is pretty darn important. What I learned is that QNAP’s HBS 3 Hybrid Backup Sync utility supports backups not only to USB- and Ethernet-connected local external storage but also to a variety of “cloud” storage services, among them Microsoft OneDrive. Also, since mine’s an Office 365 Family plan, I can associate it with up to five additional Microsoft accounts (beyond my own), each of which gets up to 1 GByte of OneDrive storage.

So, I created a second Microsoft account for myself, associated with a different email address of my many, and with its OneDrive storage capacity devoted exclusively to TS-453Be backups. HBS 3 backups are incremental—files that haven’t changed since the previous backup aren’t unnecessarily backed up again—so the bandwidth (and destination storage) “hit” wasn’t excessive after the initial backup session. I do one “cloud” backup a month (LAN backups are weekly), further limiting the incremental impact on my monthly 1.2 TByte usage allocation from Comcast/Xfinity (with added-cost unlimited usage always an option if ever needed). And I run them at midnight, when slumber means I don’t notice their LAN-bandwidth packet presence.

The other particularly important storage device here at the home office is the SSD inside my current “daily driver” computer, a 2020-era x86-based 13” Apple MacBook Pro.

Here, my cloud storage solution involves a highly regarded service called Backblaze, whose periodic Drive Stats storage reliability reports I’ve mentioned before. At the end of last year, Backblaze ran a promotion on its Personal Backup service tier: two years for $151.20 (normally $189), with Extended Version History (enabling access to older backed-up versions of files, too) also included. The incremental-backup Backblaze client app constantly runs silently in the background and by default focuses its attention only on data files, to optimize both its use of cloud storage and upload bandwidth, and under the assumption that you can reinstall programs if necessary. Except for the initial backup, along with the ~30 GByte data file outcome of my previously mentioned more recent reinstall of “Classic Outlook”, bandwidth usage has been scant. And functionality has to date been flawless. Highly recommended!

Thoughts on the concepts I introduced in my first two posts and augmented with this one? Sound off in the comments!

—Brian Dipert is the Editor-in-Chief of the Edge AI and Vision Alliance, and a Senior Analyst at BDTI and Editor-in-Chief of InsideDSP, the company’s online newsletter.

Related Content

• Workarounds (and their tradeoffs) for integrated storage constraints
• Beefing up backup
• Lightning strikes…thrice???!!!
• Fairly evaluating HDD reliability
• Apple’s fall 2024 announcements: SoC and memory upgrade abundance

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Microchip has added secure code signing, firmware over-the-air (FOTA) updates, and CRA compliance to its ECC608 TrustMANAGER authentication IC. Additional enhancements include remote management of firmware images, cryptographic keys, and digital certificates. These capabilities help developers meet the cybersecurity requirements of the European Union’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) and prepare for similar regulations expected to emerge in other regions.

The ECC608 TrustMANAGER pairs with Kudelski IoT’s keySTREAM Software as a Service (SaaS) to securely store and manage cryptographic keys and certificates across IoT ecosystems. FOTA services support real-time firmware updates, enabling remote vulnerability patching and helping devices comply with evolving cybersecurity regulations.

Further enhancing cybersecurity compliance, Microchip’s WINC1500 Wi-Fi network controller in the TrustMANAGER development kit is now RED-certified for secure, reliable cloud connectivity. The EU’s Radio Equipment Directive (RED) sets strict requirements for network security, data protection, and fraud prevention. Starting August 1, 2025, all wireless devices sold in the EU must meet RED cybersecurity rules.

The ECC608 TrustManager is available for purchase from Microchip and its authorized distribution partners.

TrustManager product page

Microchip Technology 

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The SKY63104/5/6 family of jitter-attenuating clocks and the SKY62101 clock generator simultaneously generate ultra-low jitter clocks for synchronous Ethernet and spread-spectrum PCIe. Built on Skyworks’ fifth-generation DSPLL and MultiSynth technologies, these devices support flexible input-to-output frequency mapping and enable single-IC clock tree designs for demanding networking, data center, and industrial applications.

Typical DSPLL RMS jitter is as low as 18 fs (12 kHz–20 MHz at 625 MHz), with total output jitter around 55 fs RMS—well suited for 224G PAM4 Ethernet SerDes. The devices also meet spread spectrum clocking requirements for PCIe Gen 1 through Gen 6.

The jitter attenuators and clock generator provide 12 outputs in a compact 8×8-mm QFN package with wettable flanks. The SKY63104 includes one DSPLL with two MultiSynths; the SKY63105 has two DSPLLs and one MultiSynth; and the SKY63106 features three DSPLLs with no MultiSynth. Output frequencies span 8 kHz to 3.2 GHz, with configurable formats including LVDS, HCSL, LVPECL, LVCMOS, S-LVDS, and CML. Output-to-output skew is tightly controlled at ±50 ps, with per-output delay adjustable in 50-ps steps.

SKY63104/5/6 product page 

SKY62101 product page 

Skyworks Solutions 

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EPC Space has announced the EPC7030MSH, a radiation-hardened 300-V GaN FET for high-voltage, high-power space applications. It supports front-end DC/DC converters in satellite power systems, power conversion for high-voltage distribution buses, and electric propulsion platforms requiring high-performance switching.

With a maximum RDS(on) of 35 mΩ and a typical gate charge of 25 nC (30 nC max), the EPC7030MSH delivers a continuous drain current of 50 A at 5 V and a single-pulse drain current of 150 A for 300 µs. According to EPC Space, these specifications place it among the highest-performing rad-hard FETs in its class.

The EPC7030MSH is rated for 300-V operation at a linear energy transfer (LET) of 63 MeV·cm²/mg and maintains single-event effect (SEE) immunity up to 250 V at an LET of 84.6 MeV·cm²/mg. It is also immune to total ionizing dose (TID) effects under both low and high dose rate conditions.

Engineering models of the EPC7030MSH cost $236 each in quantities of 500 units, while rad-hard space-qualified devices are priced at $349 each.

EPC7030MSH product page

EPC Space 

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ST’s L9800 combines eight low-side drivers with diagnostics and protection in a compact leadless package for tight automotive spaces. The ISO 26262 ASIL-B-compliant device drives resistive, capacitive, or inductive loads—such as relays and LEDs—in body-control modules, HVAC systems, and power-domain controls.

Output channels can be controlled via the SPI port or two dedicated parallel inputs that map to selected outputs. These inputs enable emergency hardware control of two default channels even if the digital supply voltage is not available. This allows the L9800 to enter limp-home mode, maintaining essential safety and convenience functions during system failures, such as microcontroller faults or supply undervoltage.

The L9800 enhances vehicle reliability with real-time diagnostics and per-channel protection against open-circuit, short-circuit, overcurrent, and overtemperature faults. Diagnostic signals are accessible over the SPI bus, which also allows access to internal configuration registers for device setup. Additionally, the driver ensures safe operation during engine cranking, supporting battery voltages as low as 3 V.

Housed in a 4×4-mm TFQFN24 package, the L9800 low-side driver costs $0.52 each in lots of 1000 units.

L9800 product page 

STMicroelectronics

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