Manufacturing Bits: Feb. 26
Google Wants Faster Glass MPUs
At last week’s IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco, the presentations reached new highs and lows.
Clearly, Google grabbed the spotlight, when the Internet search giant demonstrated Google Glass, an Internet-enabled pair of eyeglasses. The futuristic glasses take the industry one step closer to wearable computing and augmented reality. For example, the glasses can “hand over a virtual object” from one person to another, said Babak Parviz, who heads the Google Glass project at the company.
The glasses also sport a camera, audio, a multi-mode radio and GPS. But to enable the technology, the IC industry needs to step up to the plate. “We need quite a bit more processing power,” he said during a panel at ISSCC. “We need to do this with significantly less power consumption.”
Source: Google
Google isn’t talking about the details or the chips inside the glasses. The company is holding an essay contest in order to win the first wave of the glasses. The catch: If you are chosen, the winners will need to pre-order a Glass Explorer Edition for $1,500 plus tax and attend a special pick-up experience in person in New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles.
Seeing Red
At ISSCC, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Delft University of Technology demonstrated a novel optical sensor for the analysis of the composition and of the origin of geological formations.
Intended for next-generation Mars rover missions, the time-gated single-photon diode (SPAD) camera is designed for use in laser Raman spectroscopy and laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS). A sensor that integrates this camera into a time-resolved laser spectrometer can determine the chemical composition of minerals in on-surface planetary exploration.
Raman spectroscopy is a non-destructive, label-free optical analysis technique, according to researchers. But Raman signature often is overwhelmed by a strong fluorescence background, prompting the need for CCDs or streak cameras. Still, these devices are bulky and unsuitable for space flight.
One solution to the problem is SPAD technology. The 0.35-micron CMOS high-voltage sensor consists of 16 groups of 64 x 8 SPAD arrays with fast readout interfaces. The camera has a 700-picosecond shutter speed. The sensor has a 44% fill factor and has a 28% photon detection probability at 475nm and 250ps resolutions.
3D Brain Sensor
Also at ISSCC, National Chaio Tung University, China Medical University and Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE) described a brain neural sensing microsystem based on a 3D-like device using through-silicon vias (TSVs). The proposed device is geared for brain function investigation and neural prostheses.
Based on a 0.18-micron process, the chip measures 5 x 5 mm square. A MEMS neural microprobe array and a low-power CMOS readout circuit are fabricated on two sides of the same substrate. The device has a 150um probe height and a 200um TSV height. A total of 480 microprobes is divided into a 4 x 4 sensing area, forming 16 channels. Some 16 TSVs are processed in a front-side via-last flow.
—Mark LaPedus
Tags: Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, AMD, ASE, China Medical University, Delft University of Technology, Google, Google Glass, ISSCC, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, laser induced breakdown spectroscopy, NASA, National Chaio Tung University, Raman spectroscopy, TSVs