Knowles completed the acquisition of Cornell Dubilier

Knowles Corporation announced it has successfully completed the acquisition of Cornell Dubilier. The $263 million all-cash transaction was announced on September 2023. Cornell Dubilier, based in Liberty, South Carolina, is a technology leader and manufacturer of high-quality film, electrolytic and mica capacitors used in demanding medtech, military, aerospace, and industrial electrification applications. The acquisition is a part of a new Knowles’ strategic plan to accelerate its transformation to an industrial technology company focused on higher growth and value opportunities.

The Company also announced that it is reviewing strategic alternatives for its Consumer MEMS Microphones (CMM) business. CMM designs and manufactures micro-electro-mechanical systems microphones that enable voice control communication and superior audio recording for customers across the ear, compute, internet of things and smartphone market segments. Knowles provides micro-acoustic microphones, audio solutions, and high performance capacitors and RF products for the consumer electronics, medtech, defense, electric vehicle, industrial, and communications markets.

“Knowles shares our culture of innovation,” said Cornell Dubilier Chief Executive Officer Jim Kaplan. “Like Knowles, some of the world’s most respected companies rely on our technologies. Together, we will offer cutting-edge products and solutions to our customers.” Knowles sales in 2023 totalled $707 million. Revenues of Q4 2023 were up 9% and reached $215 million. Jeffrey Niew, president and CEO of Knowles: “As we look to the first quarter of 2024, we expect to see strong year over year organic growth despite excess channel inventory in some of our end markets. The Cornell Dubilier acquisition is anticipated to further add to growth and profitability. In total, revenue is expected to be up 35% from first quarter 2023 levels.”

Elina's booth during a Technology Exhibition in Tel aviv
Elina’s booth during a Technology Exhibition in Tel aviv

             

 

Knowles is represented and supported in Israel by Elina Electronic Engineering Group.

For more information, contact: mulu@elina.co.il,  +972-54-2509599

Wi-Fi 6 plus Bluetooth LE 5.4 Wireless SoC

Silicon Labs announced the SiWx915 SoC, the second in its family of Wi-Fi 6 devices, aimed for energy efficient or line powered IoT wireless devices using Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy (LE), Matter, and IP networking for cloud connectivity. It includes a Wi-Fi 6 plus Bluetooth LE wireless CPU subsystem, and an integrated micro-controller (MCU) application subsystem, Security, memory, peripherals subsystem all in a single 6×6 mm QFN package.

The wireless subsystem consists of a multi-threaded processor (ThreadArch®) running up to 160 MHz, baseband digital signal processing, analog front end, 2.4 GHz RF transceiver and integrated power amplifier. The application subsystem consists of an ARM® Cortex®-M4F running up to 180 MHz, embedded SRAM, and FLASH.

The ARM® Cortex®-M4F is dedicated for peripheral and application related processing, while the ThreadArch® runs the wireless and networking stacks on independent threads, thus providing a high performance, fully integrated solution that is ready for a wide range of embedded wireless IoT applications.

Target applications include Smart HomesConsumer Health and WearablesClinical MedicalIndustrialRetailSmart Building and CitiesAsset Tracking.

Silicon Labs is represented in Israel by Elina Engineering 

 

Contact: Yossi Chen, +972-44902499, yossi@elina.co.il

Coilcraft New eBook: The Fundamentals of RF Inductors

Coilcrafr, The US-based designer and manufacturer of high-performance magnetic components (including RF chip inductors, power magnetics and filters), has published a new eBook: The Fundamentals of RF Inductors. This eBook covers the fundamental of RF inductors – from the basic question of, “what is an inductor” up through specific applications and different types of RF inductors. It includes guides and technical articles on the major technologies and RF applications of inductors.

Following basic introduction about inductors, and how these components are used in electronic devices, the eBook includes a variety of technical articles that address topics such as solving RF isolation issues with RF inductors, what is a Conical Inductor and how to use it, understanding Inductors as RF Chokes, comparing the benefits of wirewound ferrite beads to traditional chip ferrite beads, and designing LC filters with Coilcraft reference designs and software.

For free download, click: The Fundamentals of RF Inductors

             

 

Coilcraft is represented and supported in Israel by Elina Electronic Engineering Group.

For more information contact Eng. Avi Elia, tel: +972-54-7532262

 

Si89xx Isolated Amplifier and Delta-Sigma Modulators

Skyworks Solutions announced the availability of its next-generation Si89xx isolated analog amplifiers, voltage sensors and delta-sigma modulator (DSM) devices to improve charging times for electric vehicles (EVs). Skyworks’ new family, which includes Si8921Si893x and Si894x, will help to shorten recharge time for EVs. and offers broader industry applications and improvements for solar inverters and wireless charging.

Thsse devices provide accurate isolated current and voltage measurement with very low drift across temperature. Based on robust isolation technology, the new Si89xx family provides flexible voltage, current, output and package options to help developers reduce BOM cost and shrink board space for a wide range of industrial and green-energy applications including electric vehicle (EV) battery management and charging systems, dc-dc converters, and motor, solar and wind turbine inverters.  Early customer interest has been exceptional with hundreds of customers sampled and design wins across top automotive EV and industrial customers.

Si89xx products provide accurate, precise measurement readings of the current and voltage involved in the operation of power control systems, including 75 kV/µs immunity to fast transients and accuracy over temperature. This minimizes loss of power and makes the system more efficient, allowing for charging devices to more swiftly transfer power. This enables charging improvements for the EVs and industrial applications such as wireless infrastructure, data centers and wired communications.

Skyworks’ Si89xx consists of the Si8921 isolated analog amplifiers, the Si893x isolated voltage sensors and the Si8941/6/7 isolated DSM devices. These devices are optimized for voltage or shunt-current sensing and provide typical offset error as low as ±40 µV and ±0.1% gain error. Additionally, offering a typical offset drift as low as ±0.5 µV/˚C and typical gain drift as low as –4 ppm/˚C, allows for exceptional accuracy across temperature. As a result, Si89xx devices can offer one of the industry’s highest signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) – up to 90 dB.

The Si89xx family offers the following options:

  • Current or voltage-optimized devices with single-ended, differential or DSM output
  • ±62.5 mV, ±250 mV or 2.5 V input ranges
  • A stretched wide-body SOIC-8 package to support 5 kVrms isolation and 8 mm creepage/clearance and a compact narrow-body SOIC-8 to support 2.5 kVrms isolation.

             

 

Skyworks is represented and supported in Israel by Elina Electronic Engineering Group.

For more information contact:

silviu@elina.co.il ,  +972-54-7559692

mulu@elina.co.il,  +972-54-2509599

Coilcraft Unveils 0805 Wire-wound Ferrite Beads

Coilcraft announced new release of its 0805PB Series automotive small size wire-wound ferrite beads. The series features robust mechanical structure, and is approved for the automotive applications and harsh environments standard AEC-Q200 Grade 1  (–40°C to +125°C).

Ferrite beads, or ferrite chokes, are used as low pass filters to eliminate high frequency noise while allowing low frequency signals or DC current to pass through a circuit. The noise may come from any number of sources including high-frequency switching noise from a power-supply circuit or RF noise in an RF signal-isolation circuit that must be minimized to ensure both signal integrity and antenna efficiency.

Wirewound ferrite beads also provide lower DC resistance (DCR) and higher current ratings without core saturation, resulting in the highest possible performance in the smallest size

The 0805PB Series offers extremely low DCR that is optimized for high-frequency (up to 1.7GHz) noise suppression on high current power supply lines of up to 4.4 Amps. The new products provide wider spectrum of suppression than traditional ferrite beads, with inductance ranging from 0.1μH up to 3.6μH (±20% Tolerance). It is RoHS compliant , halogen free, and can be stores in wide range of tempertures (–40°C to +140°C).

             

 

Coilcraft is represented and supported in Israel by Elina Electronic Engineering Group.

For more information contact Eng. Avi Elia, tel: +972-54-7532262

Skyworks’ Si5332 Clock Family Supports PCIe 6.0

Above: The Si53301/4-EVB development kit

Skyworks Solutions announced the evolution of its Si5332 family of high-performance clock generators, supporting the industry transition to PCI Express Generation 6 (PCIe 6.0). According to PCI-SIG, new applications including Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Edge Computing are driving the need for higher performance and increased bandwidth interconnects for compute, switching and storage platforms in data centers.

The Si5332 product family supports PCIe 6.0 while maintaining backwards compatibility with older PCIe standards. “PCIe 6.0 is the future of the data center,” said James Wilson, VP and general manager of timing products at Skyworks. “We have qualified our Si5332 family to provide reference timing for the newest PCIe 6.0 applications.”

PCIe 6.0 increases data rates to 64GT/s and enables bandwidths as high as 256Gbps, effectively doubling the performance of PCIe 5.0. This latest upgrade to the PCIe standard ensures the high-speed interconnects used in data center applications do not become a bottleneck and complements the industry’s transition to 400G and 800G Ethernet.

Eye-diagrams for PAM4

Unlike prior generations of the PCIe standard, PCIe 6.0 uses PAM4 modulation to combine two bits into a single symbol with four amplitude levels. This approach doubles the transfer speed but degrades the eye diagram by replacing a single, large data eye with three smaller data eyes. Using a low jitter PCIe reference clock maximizes the PAM4 data eye opening and minimizes bit-error rate, which is necessary for faster transfer speeds.

The Si5332 is ideally suited to replace fixed function oscillators, clocks and buffers with a single IC. The device features Skyworks proprietary MultiSynth fractional divider technology, for better jitter performance. The Si5332 is available in 6, 8 and 12-output options, with support for integrated format/level translation, LVPECL, LVDS, HCSL and LVCMOS, and 1.8-3.3V VDDO operation.

When combined with support for PCIe 6.0, the Si5332 is well suited to operate as a data center clock-tree-on-a-chip, replacing multiple timing components with a highly integrated, high-performance solution. In addition to this Si5332 product announcement, Skyworks announced PCIe 6.0 support in its PCIe Jitter Tool – widely used for measuring PCIe clocks and evaluating compliance to PCIe jitter specs.

             

 

Skyworks is represented and supported in Israel by Elina Electronic Engineering Group.

For more information contact Eng. Silvio, tel: +972-54-7559692

Patent Dispute: USPTO Ruled in Favor of VARTA

The USPTO (United States Patent Office) Trial and Appeal Board ruled in favor of VARTA in an ongoing patent dispute between VARTA  and its Chinese competitor EVE Energy Co., Ltd. The related patent covers aspects of VARTA’s CoinPower microbattery technology. The patent is presently in an infringement lawsuit in the U.S. against EVE Energy. VARTA estimates that USPO decision, “greatly strengthen the patent and the likelihood to prevail in the litigation”.

VARTA provides micro batteries, household batteries, and customer-specific battery solutions for a variety of applications. It offers a wide range of primary Lithium button cell types with a voltage of 3.0 V and capacities from 27 mAh up to 560 mAh. They are used in reliable applications such as Memory Back Up (MBU), Real Time Clock (RTC), clocks, car key applications and more. The batteries appear in various PCB, SMT and wire & connector versions.

Its Lithium Cylindrical Batteries provides power for applications like energy meters, water meters, gas meters, heat cost allocators, medical pipets, sensors and alert systems and home security sensors. Thanks to low self discharge of less than 1 % per year, their operational life reach up to 10 years. The company’s Alkali Manganese Cylindrical Batteries appears also in an Industrial Pro version, for use in mobile equipment such as GPS equipment, pagers, remote controls, clocks and other devices who need powerful energy source for optimum performance.

VARTA AG is represented in Israel by Elina Engineering

Contact: Yossi Chen, +972-44902499, yossi@elina.co.il