Thursday, June 9, 2011

BaySpec Introduces Palm-Sized 1064nm Handheld Raman Analyzer

BaySpec introduced a palm-sized, dispersive handheld Raman analyzer based on 1064 nm excitation. The 1064-Mini uses BaySpec's proprietary high throughput Volume Phase Grating (VPG)TM technology, ruggedized packaging, battery operation ahttp://www.bayspec.com

Qualcomm Acquires Rapid Bridge -- an IC Design House

Qualcomm agreed to acquire substantially all of the assets of Rapid Bridge LLC, a San Diego-based developer of advanced techniques for semiconductor designs. The company's technology reduces complexity in integrated circuit (IC) development at advanced technology nodes to enable greater design flexibility and optimized die size and power consumption. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.qualcom.com
http://www.rapidbridge.com/

AT&T Summarizes T-Mobile Acquisition Benefits in FCC Filing

AT&T formally filed papers with the FCC supporting its proposed acquisition of T-Mobile USA and responding to critics.



AT&T's top argument is that the merger will give it the scale, spectrum and other resources to deploy LTE to more than 97 percent of the U.S. population. The company says consumers will benefit because the expanded capacity will provide "a more robust platform for the next generation of bandwidth-intensive mobile applications while improving consumers' overall service quality through faster data speeds and fewer dropped and blocked calls."



If the merger is approved, the company promises to make an additional investment of more than $8 billion to expand LTE deployment and to integrate the AT&T and T-Mobile USA networks.



AT&T also argues that the merger will create jobs and investment, help bridge the digital divide, and help achieve the Administration's rural broadband objectives, all without the expenditure of government funds.



The FCC filing includes endorsements of the merger from ADTRAN, Avaya, Brocade, Corning, CWA, Facebook, KPCB, Microsoft, Oracle, Qualcomm, RIM, Yahoo!, many state governors and politicians, and others.http://www.mobilizeeverything.com/fcc.php

New M-PHY and UniPro Specs for Mobile Devices

The MIPI Alliance announced two new specifications for data transport performance in mobile devices such as smartphones and full-function phones, tablets/netbooks, digital cameras and high speed memory storage.



The M-PHY v1.0 offers an optimized physical layer with high bandwidth capabilities. It is a flexible serial interface with a data rate range spanning 10 kbps to near 6 Gbps. It offers multiple transmission modes plus a low energy per bit threshold rate. In addition, M-PHY is optical friendly, enabling an optional low-complexity electro-optical signal conversion and optical data transport.



The M-PHY physical layer is designed as the primary interface for MIPI's transport layer UniPro. This connection is accomplished via UniPort-M, the actual port coupling the two layers. By specifying a dedicated port, MIPI can insure that high performance data transport is maintained.



The UniPro v1.4 specification builds on the physical layer to provide a unified, layered protocol stack. It is suitable for a wide range of component types including application processors, co-processors and modems, as well as different types of data traffic. UniPro is scalable from a single link to network architecture.http://www.mipi.org/mphyunipro

Virgin Media's 100 Mbps Broadband Cover 4 million Homes in UK

Virgin Media 100 Mbps broadband roll-out has now passed four million homes across the UK. Powered by Virgin Media's fibre optic network, the UK's leading broadband service is now available to over 100 towns across the UK. The company aims to expands the service across the remainder of its network of nearly 13 million homes by mid-2012.



Virgin Media is also currently trialling 200 Mbps services and has deployed a 1.5 Gbps cable broadband trial in East London.http://www.virginmedia.com/100

JouleX Secures $17 Million for Network-based Energy Management

JouleX, a start-up based in Atlanta, closed $17 million in venture funding for its enterprise energy management systems for data centers, distributed office environments and facilities.



The JouleX Energy Manager (JEM) is a network-based, "agentless" system that measures the energy consumption and utilization of all network-connected devices and systems to provide visibility into power usage across the enterprise. The system provides monitors, analyzes and controls energy usage of all network-connected devices and systems—no client-side agents or hardware meters required.



The company's current technology partners include Cisco, Intel, VMware, Juniper Networks, Enterasys and Siemens.



The investment capital came from new investors Sigma Partners, Flybridge Capital Partners and Intel Capital, in addition to existing investors Target Partners and TechOperators. JouleX plans to use the capital to expand its development and sales footprint into growth markets around the world.http://www.joulex.net

International Monetary Fund Hit by Cyber Attack

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is the latest victim of a cyber attack, possibly originating with a sophisticated "spear phishing" penetration, according to news reports. The data breach has been described as "major" and "extensive" although details have not been disclosed. As a precautionary measure, the World Bank has cut off direct network links with the IMF.



Recent high-profile cyber incidents in recent weeks include the RSA Secure-ID data breach, Sony, Google, Lockheed Martin and CitiGroup.http://www.imf.orf

Denmark's XENA Offers 10-40-100 Gbps Ethernet Test Module

Xena Networks introduced a tri-speed 10-40-100 Gbps Ethernet Test Module. It features a suite of test features for Layer 2 and Layer 3, including protocol testing, capture, histograms, service disruption measurements, multi-stream Ethernet generation & test and RFC 2544 benchmarking. This is augmented with 40/100G-specific features such as virtual lane swapping, skewing and PRBS testing.



The new tri-speed module will be available for both Xena's large (4U) 12-module XenaBay chassis, as well as the small (1U) single-module XenaCompact chassis. http://www.xenanetworks.com

Korea's "Make Everything Linked" Targets WDM-PONs

MEL (Make Everything Linked) is a start-up company founded in 2009 by former ETRI (the federally supported telecom research institute in Korea) researchers, announced the opening of an office in California and appointment of Dr. Donald P. Yu as its Chief Marketing Officer.



MEL's original technology is the wavelength reuse WDM-PON, where the optical signal modulated with downstream data is re-used so as to carry the upstream data through the Reflective Semiconductor Optical Amplifier (RSOA) in the CPE by a series of noble processes. As this scheme removes the Broadband Light Source (BLS), which constitutes a core element in competing WDM-PON technology offerings, it alleviates system complexity and operational burden inherent with the high-power dual BLS. With this RSOA-based "Reuse" scheme, MEL provides a simpler colorless DWDM architecture, offering significant cost-effectiveness and efficient wavelength resource utilization.



MEL's other key technology is the tunable external cavity laser (ECL) with waveguide Bragg gratings, based on Polymer and Silicon materials which support color-free OLT and ONU tunable transceivers (data rate up to 2.5Gbps 16 and 32-channels). An additional ECL technology is now commercially available, where the output wavelength is determined by a wavelength assigned patch cord (named as lambda-connector) while the SFP remains the same for up to 40 channels on ITU-T 100GHz spacing grid in either C-band or L-band.



Recently, MEL released hybrid PON products, which link WDM-PON as trunk with G-PON (or E-PON) as existing access network on the Physical Layer (OSI Layer 1). This provides an efficient, practical central office consolidation, offering opportunities for smooth migration of G-PON (or E-PON) to WDM-PON.



Dr. Yu is a former top executive at the Hanjin Information System and Telecommunication in Korea and now doing research at the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, University of California at Irvine as a visiting scholar. http://www.mels.co.krhttp://www.mel-wdmpon.com/

IBM Develops 10 GHz Graphene IC for Potential Wireless Applications

Researchers at IBM have created the first integrated circuit fabricated from wafer-size graphene and demonstrated a broadband frequency mixer operating at frequencies up to 10 GHz. The milestone is significant because it demonstrates the viability of integrating graphene transistors with other components on a single chip. Graphene, which consists of a single layer of carbon atoms packed in a honeycomb structure, possesses outstanding electrical, optical, mechanical and thermal properties.



The breakthrough is reported by IBM Research in the magazine Science. The project was funded under DARPA's Carbon Electronics for RF Applications (CERA) program.



The new broadband frequency mixer circuit consists a graphene transistor and a pair of inductors compactly integrated on a silicon carbide (SiC) wafer.



"Just a few days before IBM commemorates its 100th anniversary, our scientists have achieved a nanotechnology milestone which continues the company's century-long pursuit of innovation and technology leadership," said T.C. Chen, vice president, Science and Technology, IBM Research. "This research breakthrough has the potential to in-crease the performance of communication devices that enable people to interact with greater efficiency."



IBM noted that previously it has demonstrated standalone graphene transistors with a cut-off frequency as high as 100 GHz and 155 GHz for epitaxial and CVD graphene, for a gate length of 240 and 40 nm, respectively.http://www.ibm.com