German development tool vendor SEGGER Microcontroller has acquired all intellectual property assets of Bristol startup Somnium Technologies.
Somnium had developed a linker that enabled the entire toolchain compiled and optimised for a particular device: Somnium uses TVS for pre-launch testing.
SEGGER had just completed a new linker just when Somnium’s technology came onto the market, but was sceptical of the technology claims. It is at odds to point out that its linker is complete and contains no technology derived from Somnium.
There are no firm plans to unite the two linkers right now, and the company is now looking to pick up Somnium customers (and presumably offer them the new linker).
www.segger.com
A major Silicon Valley investor, Sequoia Capital, has identified Graphcore in Bristol as the world’s leading chip designer for machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), backing the startup with $50m in a third round of funding to bring the total to over $110m.
Sequoia has previously backed companies such as Apple, Cisco, Google, NVIDIA and Microchip. “Machine intelligence will cause an explosion of new applications and services that will transform every industry. We believe Graphcore’s product architecture, team and early market interest make it the best positioned new entrant in this market,” said Matt Miller, the partner at Sequoia who will join the Graphcore board of directors.
The funding will be used to scale up production of its Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU) chips and accelerator cards, building a community of developers around its Poplar ML software platform, driving Graphcore’s extended product roadmap, and investing in its Palo Alto-based US team to help support customers.
The company is planning to ship its first IPU devices to early access customers at the start of 2018, slightly later than its original plan of the end of 2017. Early benchmarking has shown 10x to 100x speed up in running AI algorithms and the ability to scale across many separate accelerator cards.
Source: Bristol startup identified as world’s leading AI chip designer -TechSPARK.co
Chippenham antenna specialist Deltenna has been bought by US corporation Cubic in an undisclosed deal.
Since 2002, Deltenna has developed a reputation for its expertise in specialist wireless communication technology including those for use by public safety and emergency response teams worldwide.
Deltenna designs and manufactures cutting-edge integrated wireless products including compact LTE base stations, broadband range extenders for areas of poor coverage and rugged antennas using rugged antennas are small, light and ideal for rapid deployment in emergency situations. The systems are based on the company’s extensive expertise in LTE, frequency re-banding and advanced antenna technologies. Deltenna currently has a portfolio of more than ten issued and pending patents in the fields of antennas and integrated wireless systems.
Cubic, based in San Diego, designs, integrates and operates systems, products and services focused in the transportation, defence training and secure communications markets. Cubic Transportation Systems integrates of payment and information technology and services to create intelligent travel solutions for transportation authorities and operators. Cubic Global Defense provides of live, virtual, constructive and game-based training solutions, special operations and intelligence for the US and allied forces. Cubic Mission Solutions provides networked Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) capabilities for defence, intelligence, security and commercial missions.
“The addition of Deltenna aligns very well with Cubic’s culture of innovation and we are pleased to welcome Deltenna to our Cubic family,” said Bradley Feldmann, president and chief executive officer of Cubic Corporation. “With Deltenna, we will strengthen our capability of developing and integrating products that will change the way our military forces communicate, train and operate.”
www.cubic.com
Blu Wireless Technology MD Henry Nurser on the advantages (and challenges) of setting up in the technology cluster in Bristol
Source: Why I chose South West tech sector over California
Aircraft designers will be able to use the reference design to manage the complete energy generation, storage and power management system for a UAV. This is without having to bring this capability in-house, saving time and resources than can be better allocated to payload design and aircraft aerodynamics.
Many aircraft companies are turning to solar to provide added endurance to UAVs. A typical battery-powered UAV can normally stay aloft for only a few hours. With solar added to the wings, the same aircraft could fly all day.
The targeted release-date for the design is late 2017 and it will be available initially through Alta Devices and PowerOasis.
PowerOasis is the industry leader in 50W to 20kW hybrid power systems & energy efficiency solutions for a wide range of applications, from telecoms to transport and military deployments, combining in-house power electronics and software expertise enabling bespoke or high volume, high quality, leading edge power solutions.
www.poweroasis.com
XMOS in Bristol has launched a family of voice processors to provide far-field voice capture using arrays of MEMS microphones. The move marks a shift away from general purpose microcontrollers and AVB Ethernet controllers and into the market for voice controlled equipment such as Amazon’s Echo and Apple’s home speaker.
The XVF3000 has optional support for Sensory’s TrulyHandsfree technology, the industry’s leading voice-trigger solution and the Xcore architecture provides a flexible and cost effective always-on voice interface in a single device.
XMOS also announces the availability of a development kit (the XK VF3100 C43), which includes an XVF3000 processor card and a 4-mic circular microphone array. This kit provides a quick way to start developing far-field voice capture applications.
“Today is a very significant day for XMOS. We’re introducing XVF3000 and VocalFusion Speaker [development kit] as the first in a range of voice capture products. Based on our powerful and flexible xCORE microcontroller architecture, XVF voice processors open up new possibilities for designers looking to deliver high performance voice capture in a very cost-effective form factor,” said Mark Lippett, CEO at XMOS. “We’re excited to be at the forefront of the revolution driven by products like Amazon Echo and Google Home, which have shown the possibilities for voice interfaces. We are working worldwide with customers and partners to accelerate the adoption of voice as the interface of choice for the Internet of Things.”
The XVF3000 devices include speech enhancement algorithms that include an adaptive beamformer, which uses signals from four microphones to track a talker as they move, coupled with high performance full-duplex, acoustic echo cancellation. The controllers can be easily integrated with an applications processor or host PC via either USB for data and control or a combination of I2S and I2C. Developers can quickly add custom voice and audio processing using the XMOS free development tools.
XVF3000 devices are available immediately from XMOS, and the VocalFusion Speaker Development Kit will be available in July. Developers can register for early access to the Beta program and download further information at: www.xmos.com/xcorevocalfusion.
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The world’s most popular real time operating system, FreeRTOS, has updated to version 9, supporting 64bit microcontrollers for the first time
FreeRTOS V9.x.x, deveoped and maintained in Bristol, is a drop-in compatible replacement for FreeRTOS V8.x.x that still supports 32bit operation and adds new features, enhancements and ports.
Two new configuration constants that allow FreeRTOS to be used without the need for any dynamic memory allocation have been introduced. through the configSUPPORT_STATIC_ALLOCATION and configSUPPORT_DYNAMIC_ALLOCATION constants.
The Win32 demo located in the /FreeRTOS/demo/WIN32-MSVC-Static-Allocation-Only directory is provided as a reference of how to create a project that does not include a FreeRTOS heap at all, and therefore guarantee no dynamic memory allocation is being performed.
Other additions include:
- Creating Tasks and Other RTOS Objects Using Statically Allocated RAM
- Forcing an RTOS Task To Leave the Blocked State
- Deleting Tasks
- Obtaining a Task Handle from the Task Name
- Enhancements to the GCC ARM Cortex-A port layer relating to how the port uses the floating point unit.
- Update the ARM Cortex-M RTOS ports that use the memory protection using (MPU).
- Added vApplicationDaemonTaskStartupHook() which executes when the RTOS daemon task (which used to be called the timer service task) starts running. This is useful if the application includes initialisation code that would benefit from executing after the scheduler has been started.
All the details are at www.freertos.org/FreeRTOS-V9.html
The University of Bristol has revealed its plans for the new £300 million campus next to Bristol Temple Meads and is urging local businesses and industry to feed into a large-scale consultation.
The Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus development will be one of the city’s most significant regeneration projects in recent history, with 35,000 sq m of flexible space for teaching and innovation, including EngineShed 3.
One of its key goals is to work with industrial partners to develop a talent pipeline of graduates who will support the city’s successful digital cluster.
The University is encouraging businesses to share their views and help shape the new campus by taking part in a public consultation, which will run online from 19 June to 21 July.
There will also be exhibitions of the plans at Engine Shed by Bristol Temple Meads and Beacon House on the Triangle from 20 June to 7 July, plus special consultation events at Engine Shed and Paintworks.
The seven-acre site, which spans the derelict former Royal Mail sorting office and part of Arena Island, will be close to business incubation centre Engine Shed, home to the University’s award-winning Bristol SETsquared Centre, which will also be expanding into new premises within the Temple Quarter Enterprise Zone.
A range of new degree programmes will be designed and developed in collaboration with industry and other partner organisations, to ensure students educated on the Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus are equipped with the knowledge, skills, values and resilience to thrive and lead in a rapidly changing world.
“The new campus will focus on the digital technologies of the future and the skills, ethics, business models and infrastructure that turn digital opportunities into jobs, wealth and wellbeing that benefits the whole of society,” said Prof Dave Cliff, who is leading the academic side of the project. “We are working with partners, large and small, to put innovation at the heart of our campus and to build a talent pipeline of creative graduates who embrace social responsibility as well as opportunity. These graduates will be prepared to tackle global challenges that we can’t yet imagine.
“Our plan is for University staff and students to be co-located with partners from industry and commerce in the new buildings. We intend to work with our partners to co-design and co-deliver education and skills training in innovative new ways, better suited to the needs of employers and workers in the knowledge economy.”
Frofessor Hugh Brady, Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Bristol, said: “We have been given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reimagine the future of our University as one of the world’s great civic universities while also transforming a key site at the heart of our city.
“Our new campus is very much a work in progress and we would welcome people’s feedback, on everything from education provision, research and innovation to community engagement and transport links. We don’t know exactly what it will look like yet, but we do know that we want it to feel welcoming to everyone and to be a place for the whole city to learn, explore and enjoy.”
Although designs for the campus are in their infancy and will be informed by the outcome of the consultation, there are ambitions to develop landmark buildings and public spaces which will provide a fitting welcome to those travelling into Bristol.
Fully developed, the Enterprise Zone has the potential to attract over 17,000 jobs over its 25-year lifetime and add a further £100 million a year to the city’s economy.
A second round of consultation will follow in September before an outline planning application is submitted to Bristol City Council later in the year. Applications for individual buildings will follow, with further consultation in 2018/19, when building work is expected to start. The new campus is planned to open for 2021, says Cliffe.
www.bristol.ac.uk/TempleQuarter
Swindon Borough Council has acquired the historic CarriageWorks building from Network Rail to develop a technology innovation centre.
The CarriageWorks is a Brunel heritage building, a five minute walk from Swindon station and will provide a total of 126k sqft. The Council has also acquired a carpark alongside, so there will be parking with conference facilities at the STEAM Museum next door.
The first phase of the refurbishment is around 10k sq ft by the end of the year. This will host 180 desks, plus meeting rooms and other facilities. The rest of the building will be offered to larger organisations to rent.
Forward Swindon is leading the project on behalf of the Council and looking to an operator for the Centre and secure tenants, particularly in smart cities and cybersecurity. It is also looking to build an investor network to support startups in the centre.
http://forwardswindon.co.uk/developments/carriage-works/
Startup Zeetta Networks has won a contract worth £1.8m to build a large-scale demonstrator of its Software Defined Networking (SDN) technology at the Ashton Gate sports stadium in Bristol, writes Nick Flaherty at TechSpark’s High Tech channel.
The contract from InnovateUK follows trials at the stadium last year and will see Zeetta’s NetOS software deployed throughout the stadium. Zeetta will build new business applications on top of the NetOS platform for the wide range of events at Ashton Gate alongside third-party providers, turning the stadium into a test lab for big data applications
The project has broader implications for Zeetta as NetOS can be applied to shopping centres, hospitals, airports and other venues with complex operating networks.
The project will connect tens of thousands of devices including mobile phones, cash tills, turnstiles, display screens, air conditioning and heating as well as sensors and building management systems, all with software that is easy to set up, monitor and reconfigure in real time. Zeetta, a smart city spin-off from the University of Bristol, will also develop a programmable platform for new services by extracting data analytics from the network for new software apps.
“Stadia and other large venues, across the UK and beyond, are challenged by their consumer need for more data and faster response time particularly as they scale up their activities into new business areas,” said Vassilis Seferidis, CEO of Zeetta Networks. “This first-of-a-kind deployment forms a key part of our business plan by demonstrating our technological capabilities and the resulting commercial benefits for our customers.”
“We’ve been working with Zeetta Networks for the last 12 months and it is exciting to see the potential uses of this system unfold,” said Martin Griffiths, chairman of Ashton Gate. “Sports stadia across the globe struggle with connectivity and real-time evaluation of data. I believe we are just scratching the surface of what this NetOS platform can deliver and look forward to seeing its implementation over the coming year. Using Ashton Gate Stadium as a live test lab I’m confident that we will be able to drive greater fan engagement along with significant returns to our businesses.”
www.zeetta.com
Bristol researchers are at the heart of a £6m project developing the next generation of optical networks to support 5G wireless technology.
The three-year METRO-HAUL project includes software defined networking (SDN) startup Zeetta Networks and the University of Bristol’s High Performance Networking group in the Department of Engineering alongside 19 other organisations around Europe. These include operators BT, Telecom Italia, and 02’s Spanish owner Telefonica, equipment makers Ericsson and Nokia, and German research group Fraunhofer Institute.
The next generation 5G technology is currently being developed to provide up to 1Gbit/s of download speed, but that will need to be supported by higher performance optical networks. The aim of the project is to design and build smart, cost-effective, optical systems for urban areas that can support increased traffic coming from all kinds of 5G links, whether these are base stations, small cells or connections from the Internet of Things (IoT).
By 2019 the project will build a 5G network with a range of services in a test-bed, and the software developed will be released as a public repository while the project will actively participate in the standardisation of 5G, promoting the tested solutions to the wider industry.
“We are very proud to have played a key role in this successful EU funding bid and to be collaborating with such a group of leading researchers, telecoms operators, innovative SMEs, and influencers in 5G,” says Vassilis Seferidis, CEO of Zeetta Networks. “This project scored very highly with the judging panel recognising its importance and the huge implications it brings to the telecoms industry and the verticals they support. It is another validation of Zeetta’s growing global profile and positions our software-designed networking technology as a highly innovative solution enabling programmability in both current and future networks.”
This is just one of several 5G projects that include technology companies from the region. For example, Blu Wireless Technology is part of the XHaul project that is looking at other ways to provide the links that will be needed and recently hosted all the researchers involved to collaborate in Bristol.
Cambridge startup Ultrasoc has raised £5m from new and existing investors to further develop its embedded IP that helps system-on-chip designers analyse what is happening in complex chips with billions of transistors.
The money will be used for R&D and to boost the commercial team, increasing the staff from 20 to perhaps 30 says Rupert Baines, UltraSoC CEO, and looking at opening an office in Bristol.
The need for safety, security and performance-tuning is increasingly important and the embedded analytics allows the chip to monitor and optimise its own behaviour at a hardware level, as well as provide insights that enable engineers to make improvements and fix problems. The same technology can detect evolving real-world threats and problems – for instance those caused by malicious attacks. These features benefit any electronic system, but are particularly attractive in the automotive and high-performance computing (HPC) sectors.
“Hard tech is back in favour with the UK and global investment community, with recent funding for Ultrahaptics, Graphcore and SiFive (a fellow RISC-V proponent), plus successful exits at Movidius and Mobileye,” said Baines, UltraSoC CEO. “Our investors are excited by the potential of UltraSoC’s technology and are committed to supporting our aim of putting intelligent analytics into every chip.”
UltraSoC’s semiconductor intellectual property (SIP) enables designers to easily and cost-effectively create complex SoCs (systems on chip) with built-in intelligence that continuously monitors and responds to real-world behaviour. This allows SoCs to optimise power consumption and performance and deal with security threats or safety breaches.
Successful development of the company’s debug tools and increased awareness of the technology’s potential benefits has meant a series of significant commercial engagements, with more in the pipeline. Amongst others, HiSilicon (Huawei), Imagination Technologies, Movidius (now Intel), and Microsemi all use UltraSoC technology in their designs, delivering proven hardware-embedded benefits to their customers. To ensure these benefits are accessible to customers in all sectors across the globe, UltraSoC partners with leading names in the semiconductor industry including ARM, Baysand, Cadence/Tensilica, CEVA, Codasip, Lauterbach, MIPS and Teledyne LeCroy.UltraSoC’s flagship product line is a suite of semiconductor IP that allows chip designers to integrate an intelligent analytics infrastructure into the core hardware of their devices. By monitoring and analysing the real-world behaviour of entire systems via UltraSoC’s intelligent analytics embedded in the silicon, engineers can take action to reduce system power consumption, increase performance, protect against malicious intrusions, and ensure product safety.
These capabilities address applications in a broad range of market sectors, from automotive and IoT products, to at-scale computing and communications infrastructure.
Source: The Embedded Blog: UltraSoC raises £5m for embedded analytics
Quantum technology developed in Bristol is being used in medical screening, drone-based gas-leak detection and cryptography.
Three of the entrepreneurs on this year’s programme at the Quantum Technology Enterprise Centre (QTEC), the first, have been showing their plans. The course at the University of Bristol combines business training with technology development and is looking to recruit 11 more entrepreneurs for next year’s programme.
Neciah Dorh of FluoretiQ is developing a handheld fluorescent sensor that is 100 times more sensitive than today’s systems. The first product is for testing water quality by detecting bacteria at a level of parts per trillion.
Dorh is also looking at using the sensor to detect the bacteria that cause sepsis in hospital. This currently takes from 10 to 24 hours, so he is working with the department of medicine in an InnovateUK project to develop a chemical tag for the bacteria so that a handheld sensor that can provide a result instantly.
Meanwhile Xiao Ai has been working on ways to use single photon measurement technology to detect gas leaks from pipelines. Quantum Light Metrology is using quantum sensor technology licensed by the University of Bristol to Swiss company IDQ to build a lightweight sensor that can be installed on a drone.
The software allows the sensor to detect the gas leaks from a distance of 50m from a drone moving at 30mph, and QLM is working with drone operator Sky-Futures to monitor pipelines and gas installations around the world.
The most advanced technology in the programme is aiming to provide quantum cryptography for communications systems. KETS Quantum Security has developed a commercial chip that can make unbreakable cryptography systems that are ten times smaller, faster and cheaper than today’s systems, says Philip Sibson, chief technology officer. The technology has been demonstrated in the lab and the company, now with five people, is working with a European defence company on using the system on a drone.
You can apply for QTEC’s next programme here. See the story on the High Tech channel at TechSpark
Bristol-based IoT equipment developer Telemisis has merged with its manufacturing supplier, Tioga in Derby.
The new Tioga Group employs over 150 people across the UK and includes Telemisis, Tioga, Internet-of-Things startup Sixis, surveillance equipment developer Audiotel International and a minority interest in SurePulse Medical, a joint venture with the University of Nottingham.
All the companies in the new group will continue to trade under their own names. Telemisis is one of the UK’s leading providers of advanced remote monitoring, control and Internet of Things systems and has recently spun out Sixis.
“As an established exporter, we know that Brexit will create new and exciting opportunities for international trade. At Tioga Group we are investing now in expanding our world-class manufacturing and product capabilities, to fully exploit these opportunities,” said Professor Warwick Adams, group managing director.
As part of the merger, the co-founders of Telemisis, Tony Richardson and Chris Begent (above) will join the board of the new group.
“Bringing together the respective strengths of Tioga, Telemisis and Audiotel will allow us to drive our growth, both at home and internationally,” said Richardson, “By leveraging our combined expertise in development, manufacturing, sales and marketing, we will accelerate the introduction of innovative new products, demanded by our customers.”
Tioga was founded in 1996 and is one of the UK’s leading privately owned Contract Electronic Manufacturers (CEM), providing electronic assembly and complete product manufacturing.
You can find more details on Telemisis here
The University of Bristol is leading a £3m project to build the world’s largest ARM-based supercomputer. Isambard is being developed by researchers at Bristol, Bath, Cardiff and Exeter along with the Met Office and super computer maker Cray, which has its European headquarters and research centre in Bristol.
This will be one of the world’s first systems to be based on the Vulcan server-class chip being developed by Broadcom, which also has a software development centre in Bristol. Details of this device are still under wraps, but it promises much more memory bandwidth rather than higher peak performance, making it very attractive for researchers around the country tackling big problems.
“Isambard is an exciting experiment,” said project leader Simon McIntosh-Smith, Professor of High Performance Computing at the University of Bristol. “If we discover that ARM processors are competitive in HPC, then Isambard could be the first of a new generation of ARM-based supercomputers, ushering in an era of wider architectural choice, with greater opportunities for differentiation between supercomputer vendors. These outcomes should mean that scientists can choose systems more highly optimised to solve their problem, delivering even more exciting scientific breakthroughs at greater cost effectiveness than ever before.”
Sensor fusion and nonlinear systems at heart of £4m European project led by University of Bath
Great piece on the autonomous drone racing at UWE from the Bristol Post
Source: World’s best drone pilots head to Bristol for ‘Scalextric’-style race | Bristol Post
Researchers at the University of Bristol have developed a way to use nuclear waste to generate electricity in a battery. The team, led by Tom Scott, Professor in Materials in the University’s Interface Analysis Centre and a member of the Cabot Institute, have grown a man-made diamond that, when placed in a radioactive field, is able to generate electricty for low power applications […]
Source: Battery uses nuclear waste for long term power -TechSPARK
The foundations for Unit DX, Bristol’s first science incubator, have been firmly laid and construction has begun. The scientific entrepreneurs of the city are welcoming the incubator with open arms as the build will provide much-needed support for science-based startups, as well as create a new dynamic to Bristol’s ever growing tech scene. “We decided to […]
Source: Bristol welcomes its first science incubator: Unit DX -TechSPARK
The success of the globally significant tech cluster goes back many years
Source: Where did the Bristol and Bath tech cluster come from? -TechSPARK
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