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By: Javier Valle, General Manager Space Power Products, Texas Instruments

Learn about our collaboration with NASA and industry leaders in developing radiation-hardened, plastic packaging for space electronics, known as QML Class P, to power missions with size, weight and power in mind.

As curiosity and innovation drive space exploration forward, constraints for size, weight and power continue to tighten. To design for space, you have little to no room for error. And increasing space exploration activities by public and private entities, whether in Earth’s orbit or way beyond, requires continued collaboration and improvements.

Recently, our company worked with NASA and other industry experts to lead the development of a new plastic packaging standard for space electronics, known as Qualified Manufacturers List Class P (QML Class P). Electronics in space must meet government standards set forth in the QML, ranging from radiation-tolerant or radiation-hardened devices in either ceramic or plastic packaging. The QML provides assurance that parts will operate as intended in the harsh environments of space.

“The QML Class P packaging standard enables more advanced computing in space, such as how satellites and other spacecraft can autonomously process data and make decisions in orbit as opposed to beaming data back down to Earth,” said Javier Valle, product line manager for space power at our company. “More processing capability also requires greater power. With TI’s QML Class P portfolio, we increase the efficiency of the power supply while reducing the size of the overall package, resulting in much higher power density.”

The QML exists with its many classes to ensure predictability in designs, meeting qualification and certification according to government standards, but new standards such as Class P are introduced as our knowledge and use cases advance. The QML Class P standard enables the use of radiation-hardened plastic packaging for power-management, processor, communications and high-speed integrated circuits (ICs) in satellites, rovers and other spacecraft.

Ceramic packaging has often been the go-to, reliable option, as it meets a variety of government agency specifications in the United States. Manufacturers of ceramic-packaged space electronics have released ICs to the market under a qualification known as QML Class V.

Until QML Class P, there had been no standardized, radiation-hardened equivalent for plastic packaging.

Earlier forms of plastic packaging standards have also been especially vulnerable to a process known as outgassing. Outgassing describes a process when the harsh temperature and vacuum conditions of space vaporize organic compounds, which can deposit onto electronics causing them to fail. Depending on the severity, the effects of outgassing can interrupt or completely end missions.

Advancements in manufacturing and testing procedures have helped address the consequences of outgassing and other environmental concerns in space. However, these improvements can vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, and consequentially, were not enough to reassure space operators about the reliability of new, unfamiliar technologies without standardization.

In repeatedly hearing from customers that the industry needed a QML standard for plastic packaging, our company assembled a group of more than three dozen experts from industry and standardization bodies.

Space operators can now easily transition from a radiation-tolerant electronic design using our Space Enhanced Plastic portfolio to a radiation-hardened design with our QML Class P portfolio, without any hardware change given our pin-to-pin compatibility.

TI’s QML Class P certified portfolio offers solutions across the entire spacecraft electrical power system (EPS), from solar panels all the way to point of load power supplies, and the portfolio is growing.

As we continue to navigate the future of space exploration, designing for space brings unlimited possibilities and solutions as endless as space itself. We have more than six decades of experience in creating solutions for space, and we look forward to helping you engineer the next frontier.

The post Setting a new standard for electronics in space appeared first on ELE Times.

At Electronica and Productronica 2024, ELE Times caught up with Mr. Babu Ayyappan, Managing Director of Uchi Embedded Solutions. He shared insights about their focus on embedded systems and IoT development, quality assurance, and experiences at the event.

ELE Times: Let’s start by understanding what Uchi Embedded Solutions does and the product portfolio you have displayed at the event this year.

Mr. Babu Ayyappan: Good evening. At Uchi Embedded Solutions, we focus on tools and components for embedded systems and IoT development. It’s a niche field. For instance, an embedded system developer may require tools like debugging and programming tools. We cater to that segment. In IoT development, the process often begins by selecting the chip for development. One of the key products we are promoting is the ESP32 chip, which is widely used in IoT applications. These two segments—embedded systems and IoT—are our primary focus areas.

ELE Times: You’ve mentioned embedded solutions and IoT. Are there any specific trends or changes you’ve observed in these fields over the years?

Mr. Babu Ayyappan: I wouldn’t say there’s anything drastically new, but these fields have always demanded high-quality products. Embedded system developers often face challenges in selecting the right tools because of the plethora of options available in the market. We try to address this by offering global tools that are economical and come from well-known, reliable brands. At events like this, we aim to promote these quality products and grab the audience’s attention.

ELE Times: Can you elaborate on your sales network and distribution channels?

Mr. Babu Ayyappan: Certainly. As a distribution company, we’ve partnered with about 12 vendors from countries like Taiwan, the UK, the US, Germany, and China. We keep our product lines limited to around 12, focusing on quality over quantity. Operating from Bangalore, we manage our sales across India. Thanks to modern connectivity, this model works efficiently. For marketing, we employ a one-man-show approach in major cities like Pune, Mumbai, and Delhi, where we have residential engineers covering the market. This setup works well for us.

ELE Times: Quality and safety are always critical when it comes to components. How does Uchi ensure these aspects in its products?

Mr. Babu Ayyappan: As a distributor, our primary responsibility is to bring quality products to India. We carefully select companies based on their market reputation and business practices. Today, with globalization, anyone can purchase products from anywhere. However, the same product—say, a branded product from Espressif—can be sourced from multiple suppliers. At Uchi, we work directly with authorized distributors. We don’t go through third-party mediators to save costs or speed up imports because we can’t vouch for their practices. By maintaining direct relationships with trusted suppliers, we ensure we import only quality products. That’s the extent of control we have as a distributor in a vast global market.

ELE Times: How has your experience at this year’s event been? Did it meet your expectations, and what are your future plans?

Mr. Babu Ayyappan: Exhibitions serve multiple purposes for us. They allow us to meet customers we might not otherwise encounter, reconnect with existing ones, and engage new prospects. Consistent participation also strengthens our brand reputation, signaling industry commitment. While immediate ROI isn’t always guaranteed, the long-term benefits make the effort worthwhile. Overall, it has been a rewarding experience.

The post Uchi Embedded Solutions at electronica and productronica 2024: Pioneering Tools and Components for Embedded Systems and IoT Development appeared first on ELE Times.

Edge computing has naturally been a hot topic at CES with companies highlighting a myriad of use cases where the pre-trained edge device runs inference locally to produce the desired output, never once interacting with the cloud. The complexity of these nodes has grown to not only include multimodal support with the fusion and collaboration between sensors for context-aware devices but also multiple cores to ratchet up the compute power.

Naturally, any hardware acceleration has become desirable with embedded engineers craving solutions that ease the design and development burden. The solutions vary where many veer towards developing applications with servers in the cloud that are then virtualized or containerized to run at the edge. Ultimately, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for any edge compute application.

It is clear that support for some kind of hardware acceleration has become paramount for success in breaking into the intelligent embedded edge. Company approaches to the problem run the full gamut from hardware accelerated MCUs with abundant software support and reference code, to an embedded NPU.

Table 1 highlights this with a list of a few companies and their hardware acceleration support.

Table 1: Various company’s approaches for hardware acceleration.

Synaptics, for instance, has their Astra platform that is beginning to incorporate Google’s multi-level intermediate representation (MLIR) framework. “The core itself is supposed to take in models and operate in a general-purpose sense. It’s sort of like an open RISC-V core based system but we’re adding an engine alongside it, so the compiler decides whether it goes to the engine or whether it works in a general-purpose sense.” said Vikram Gupta, senior VP and general manager of IoT processors and chief product officer, “We made a conscious choice that we wanted to go with open frameworks. So,whether it’s a Pytorch model or a TFLite model, it doesn’t matter. You can compile it to the MLIR representation, and then from there go to the back end of the engine.” One of their CES demos can be seen in Figure 1.

Figure 1:  A smart camera solution showing the Grinn SoM that uses the Astra SL1680 and software from Arcturus to provide both identification and tracking. New faces are assigned an ID and an associated confidence interval that will adjust according to the distance from the camera itself. 

TI showcased its TMS320F28P55x C2000 real-time controller (RTC) MCU series with an integrated NPU with an arc fault detection solution for solar inverter applications. The system performs power conversion while at the same time doing real-time arc fault detection using AI. The solution follows the standard process of obtaining data, labeling, and training the arc fault models that are then deployed onto the C2000 device (Figure 2).

Figure 2: TI’s solar arc fault detection edge AI solution

One of Microchip’s edge demos detected true touches in the presence water using its mTouch algorithm in combination with their PIC16LF1559 MCU (Figure 3). Another solution highlighted was in partnership with Edge Impulse and used the FOMO ML architecture to perform object detection in a truck loading bay. Other companies, such as Nordic Semiconductor, have also partnered with Edge Impulse to ease the process of labeling, training, and deploying AI to their hardware. The company has also eased the process of leveraging NVIDIA TAO models to adapt well-established AI models to a specific end-application on any Edge-Impulse-supported target hardware. 

Figure 3: Some of Microchip’s edge AI solutions at CES 2025. Truck loading bay augmented by AI in partnership with Edge Impulse (left) and a custom-tailored Microchip solution using their mTouch algorithm to differentiate between touch and water (right).

Aalyia Shaukat, associate editor at EDN, has worked in the design publishing industry for six years. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology, and has published works in major EE journals as well as trade publications.

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The post CES 2025: Approaches towards hardware acceleration appeared first on EDN.