Development of a Breakthrough Technology for Achieving Low Voltage Operation in System LSI by TOSHIBA
System LSI constitute the core components of digital products, where their operation voltage has a major impact on an overall power consumption of a product. However, up to now, voltage scaling of cutting edge system LSI has presented a big technological challenge due to loss of stability in memory function of its embedded SRAM which occurs at low voltage. The smaller size of the memory cell transistor of SRAM makes SRAM susceptible to transistor variability at low voltage in comparison to other logic circuits. In order to overcome this issue, Toshiba has developed a SRAM circuit technique which results in a low voltage operation in system LSI, paving the way in reduced power consumption in digital products. Read more
Development of World’s First Inverter Driven Commercial Freezer with CO2 Refrigerant by SANYO
Conventional CO2 refrigerant circuit become supercritical plus the coefficient of performance (COP) drops to less than HFC based refrigerant circuit when operating under high ambient temperatures such as summer temperature of above 30 degrees Celsius. In response to overcome this problem, Sanyo Electric developed a world’s first inverter driven commercial freezer with CO2 refrigerant. The new freezer was developed based on Sanyo’s patented split cycle which uses company’s proprietary Two Stage Rotary CO2 Compressor resulting in significant improvement in COP exceeding the performance of HFC based refrigerant circuit. Read more
Development of Laser assisted Ink-Jet Technology for Fine Wiring by AIST
With ever increasing product specification plus the decreasing product cycles in electronic device manufacturing require on-demand design and production technology capable of high-mix low-volume production as well as cost reduction. Significant part of the device cost is due to the assembly process which occurs when electronic devices are built into the final products with at most precision without causing any damage to the device characteristics. In addition to this, the current semiconductor micro-processing technology is becoming increasing difficult to apply to such large area devices such as flat panel displays due to high cost of vacuum processes. Read more
Development of New Technology in Preventing Movie recording Piracy
This new technology would probably put an end to movie piracy, well may be for a while at least. The newly developed technology specifically targets the individuals who record movies at the movie theater by their camcorders. National Institute of Informatics (NII) Associate Professor Echizen and Sharp Cooperation developed a technology for preventing pirates from recording films at movie theaters. This technology focuses on the differences of sensory perceptions between humans and devises through use of near-infrared signal as noise signals which is not harmful to human as well as being invisible to human eyes capable of adding noise to shooting video through CCD/CMOS device. Read more
Development of new technology capable of converting 2-Dimentional media to 3-Dimentional media by NICT
National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) has developed “gCubik+i” system capable of picking up an image from a two dimensional media and converting it to a three dimensional image where the image can be manipulated interactively. “gCubik+i” has been developed based on NICT’s “gCubik” system which is a graspable cubic auto stereoscopic display. Although, previously only pre-calculated specific three dimensional images could have been displayed, this time by using newly developed three-dimensional image generating algorithm, “gCubik” is enable to calculate and display the three-dimensional images in real time. Through this development the system is not only capable of displaying different models or moving three dimensional images instantly, it is also capable of interactive operations freely such as rotating and moving models. Read more
Development of new technology in production of Carbon separators for PEFCs by SDK
Showa Denko K.K has developed a Bipolar-type Carbon separator for PEFC capable of increasing ouput density of polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFCs). Lowe cost and lighter weight of the newly developed separator has been achieved through substantial changes in the process and raw materials by SDK. This has resulted in 30% increase in output density compared to PEFCs previously developed by SDK. Read more
Development of new technology in reducing wire bundles into a single cable by AIST
The most time consuming step in production process for industrial machinery is in wiring components due to increasing number of sensors, actuators and motor-drivers that are used in such machinery where the number of signal cables in connecting them sometimes surpass a thousand. In order to overcome this issue serial bus technologies such as CAN have been long used in automobile industries but several apparent issues in this technology has prevented it in use in other fields such as industrial robots or semiconductor manufacturing equipment. One of such issues is the lack of robustness to noise where switching actuators ON/OFF will generate noise in cables resulting in communication failures. Another reason is contributed due to communication delays that occur frequently which impede real time operation. Based on this need AIST has developed a low cost, Noise-proof, wire-saving technology in reducing wire bundles to s single cable for use in industrial robots and semiconductor manufacturing equipment. ASIT through this development has achieved the three major demands from the industrial machine industry which are namely cost, robustness to noise and real-time communication capability. Read more
Development of new technology in suppressing Polarization-Mode Dispersion by OKI
In an intensifying effort for worldwide implementation of 40G/100G Ethernet standard and accelerating pace to achieve 100Gbps-class high-speed optical communications, the issue of PMD which is the major cause of communication quality loss in these systems is becoming increasingly a major concern. In Japan alone over 50% of current optical fiber networks which is a total length of network’s backbone if approximately three hundred thousand kilometers are of a type influenced greatly by Polarization-Mode Dispersion (PMD). Read more
New technology to improve energy conversion efficiency of LEDs
The use of high efficiency LEDs using compound semiconductors as a prospective energy saving light source for lighting and display application such as flat panel TVs is gaining popularity around the world aiming in replacement of the conventional light bulbs and fluorescent lamps. It is estimated that widespread utilization of LED lighting alone could one day reduce the global electricity consumption by 10% making the improvement of energy conversion of LEDs a crucial task. Read more
