By Year

Extensive efforts are being made to increase automotive safety. Among these efforts, the development of pre-crash safety functions for the realization of "collision-free automobiles" has recently begun to garner a great deal of attention. This article introduces IMAPCAR®, NEC Electronics' high-performance image processing LSI chip at the core of pre-crash safety functions.

The robustness of transistors to electrostatic discharge (ESD) drops remarkably with the scaling down of feature dimensions in semiconductor devices. We have developed a new type of ESD-protection device for power supply systems and a protection circuit to improve ESD robustness. These new techniques target system-on-a-chip (SoC) devices with multiple power domains that separate power supplies to improve noise characteristics and decrease power consumption.

NEC Electronics is the leader in driver ICs for large-screen LCDs. This article introduces one of the new technologies and the background behind the development of a new source driver IC for full high-definition large-screen LCD TVs.

Due to the increasing prevalence of wireless LAN environments, it is now commonplace for notebook PCs, handheld game consoles and other such devices to come equipped with wireless transmission functions. This article introduces NEC Electronics RF devices that can be used not only to increase transmission clarity but also to extend battery life.

The "2006 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits"—recognized as the premiere conference for presenting research results on the latest device, process, and circuit-related developments—were held at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Hotel in Honolulu June 13 to 17 and featured a number of papers presented by NEC Electronics in collaboration with NEC.

The ninth annual IEEE International Interconnect Technology Conference (IITC), a premier conference for presenting and discussing the latest interconnect and packaging technologies, was held in San Francisco June 5 to 7, 2006. A number of collaborative NEC Electronics/NEC papers were selected for inclusion at this year's conference.

As digital broadcasting becomes more widespread, the EMMA Series of system LSI chips are contributing to the compatibility of HDTV broadcasting with key digital AV appliances, namely the set-top box (STB), the digital TV and the DVD recorder.

When it comes to microcontrollers for car audio use, NEC Electronics is the industry leader. This article introduces the untold story behind the creation of the world's first digital tuning system for car audio use, traces the history of how microcontrollers have supported the evolution of car audio and provides an overview of the latest microcontrollers equipped with flash technology.

Along with the spread of mobile audio players capable of recording music onto memory or hard disk, rapid advancements have been made toward incorporating music playback functions in mobile phones. This article introduces NEC Electronics' µPD99910 audio processor for mobile phones that enables 50 hours of continuous music playback.

ISSCC 2006 (IEEE International Solid State Circuits Conference)—featuring papers on cutting-edge integrated-circuit technologies—was held February 5-9 in San Francisco, California, and featured several papers introducing the findings of collaborative research conducted recently by NEC Corporation and NEC Electronics.

Model-based development aimed at improving development efficiency is attracting a great deal of attention as the scale and complexity of control software for automobiles and motors increase. This article introduces the V850™ Integrated Development Environment in conjunction with MATLAB®, which has become the mainstream simulation tool in this field.

Digital movie cameras, which were developed by integrating digital camera and movie functions, are currently enjoying immense popularity. This article introduces NEC Electronics' motor driver ICs, which help reduce motor driving noise and enable the creation of slimmer, lighter and thinner products, and also presents a case study about how one of our customers has employed motor driver ICs in its digital movie cameras.

NEC Electronics' key partner companies in the embedded systems industry have already indicated that they are fully committed to making their products compliant with "All Flash" MCUs. This article presents excerpts of interviews with representatives from two of NEC Electronics' partner companies, Yokogawa Digital Computer Corporation and GAIO TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD.