Touchscreen technology has remained virtually unchanged for decades. SigmaSense has unveiled new multi-dimensional sensing technology that improves the performance of almost any application with a touchscreen. The company also announced that it is licensing its technology to NXP Semiconductors and that the two companies will collaborate on developing high-performance sensing products for applications that require faster and fully immersive software-defined experiences.

Target applications range from mobile, gaming, wearables and IoT to automotive, industrial, and digital signage. It can even improve the performance of electric vehicle (EV) batteries.

“The planned co-development defines a move to new data-centric design options driven by software-defined sensing. The quality and speed of data extraction from the physical world is becoming as important, if not more important than processing performance,” according to Gary Baum, SigmaSense’s senior vice president of emerging technology.

“SigmaSense extracts deeper, high-quality data that makes viable new touch sensing functionality in existing and new applications. This along with a shift from analog sensing to software-defined sensing offers greater programmability and design flexibility essential for developers to innovate new features and capabilities for HMI products,” he added.

Multi-dimensional sensing enables previously impossible designs. By measuring current direct-to-digital, SigmaSense delivers low-voltage, frequency domain sensing, an industry first. Fast, continuous, high-fidelity data capture with intelligent digital signal processing moves analog challenges to the digital domain, where design flexibility can deliver orders of magnitude improvement.

The technology captures more granular data from the physical world enabling interactive advances such as high-speed touch interfaces of all sizes and shapes, new surface materials beyond glass, operation in rain and with gloves, foldable designs and economical large format interactive displays with the speed of a mobile experience.

Expanded use cases are found in large displays with gaming class, high-speed user experiences, as well as industrial/rugged applications. The technology also enables previously impossible use cases.

“With SigmaSense current-mode sensing, large displays can now simultaneously drive, sense and image the entire screen surface regardless of size. This eliminates previous speed limitations for large displays and the large latencies of the past,” explained Baum. “SigmaSense delivers 300-Hz report rates on 32-inch to 100-inch touch displays, driven by as little as 0.02 volts. Large displays in all kinds of environments including gaming tables, automotive cockpits and outdoor kiosks with over 1 mm of thick vandal resistant cover glass, are now possible.”

Legacy touch-sensing solutions used in rugged laptops/notebooks and kiosks are limited in their ability to operate in water or when gloves are used. SigmaSense claims its performance is consistent, working automatically with and without water, gloves or passive stylus and without any software mode change.

Not only can it be used to enhance existing applications, but the technology can also identify individual users via touch. Data can be accessed per individual or across devices achieving touch with intent—who is touching and what is their intent, for example, in gaming applications. Data accessed through touch can also be used in conference room applications to log into conferencing systems and share documents with only a touch from a document owner.

The technology also enables expanded functionality beyond the surface of the display for touchless 3D interaction. “Presence, hover, touch and pressure information is now provided where only an X-and Y-coordinate touch was available until now. Features such as gestures and presence detection for power management and proximity for new user experiences streamline, reduce cost and simplify functions,” said Baum.  “Examples include presence and touchless interaction in laptops for wake up, user ID login, screen brightness control, volume or pressure and haptics for new applications.”

A software-defined sensing approach means that independent channels can be allocated to multiple types of sensing via a single controller. The channels are shared between multiple sensors, even when locating the sensors separate from each other, and the channels do not require a uniform impedance to operate.

“The functions are software defined and the design flexibility enables possibilities such as sensing of temperature, humidity and any type of impedance transducers. The end results are lower cost, simplicity and improved performance of user experiences,” said Baum.

AMD has expanded its AMD Radeon PRO W7000 Series product line with two new additions: the Radeon PRO W7600 and Radeon PRO W7500 workstation graphics cards. Targeting mainstream workloads across a range of professional industries, including media & entertainment, design & manufacturing and architecture, engineering & construction, these graphics cards offer higher performance and higher efficiency for professional workloads.

The Radeon PRO W7600 and Radeon PRO W7500 graphics cards feature AMD’s RDNA 3 architecture that offers performance and power efficiency improvements. The new architecture features new AL accelerators, unified ray tracing and AMD’s second-generation Infinity Cache and ray-tracing technologies. The new AI instructions and higher AI throughput are reported to offer over 2× performance on average compared with the previous RDNA2 architecture.

The Radeon PRO W7600 workstation graphics card delivers 2× higher TFLOPS performance and 1.5× higher maximum total data rate for displays than the previous generation. (Source: AMD)

Both cards feature 8 GB of high-speed GDDR6 memory to support data-intensive tasks and enable ray-traced renderings with detail and realism. Other features include AMD Radiance Display Engine with DisplayPort 2.1 with 12-bit HDR color support and over 68 billion colors and dual encode/decode media engines with full AV1 encode/decode support that is designed for high resolutions, wide color gamut and high-dynamic range enhancements.

The new graphics cards build on the previous Radeon PRO W7900 and Radeon PRO W7800 to offer more choices to creators and professional users and they set a new performance standard for mid-range professional graphics, said AMD.

Product specs


Radeon PRO W7600 and Radeon PRO W7500 product specifications (Source: AMD)

All Radeon PRO workstation graphics are supported by AMD’s PRO Edition software. Here is a list of certified applications for the Radeon PRO graphics cards.

The Radeon PRO W7000 Series workstation graphics cards are available from leading etailers/retailers. Product availability in OEM workstations and SI systems is expected to begin later this year. Suggested retail pricing for the Radeon PRO W7600 and Radeon PRO W7500 graphics cards is $599 and $429, respectively.

Congatec GmbH has introduced a new series of COM Express Compact computer-on-modules (COMs) based on Intel’s new Core Ultra processors. The COMs deliver heterogeneous compute engines, including CPU, GPU and NPU and are designed to meet the demands of running AI workloads at the edge.

The Intel Core Ultra processor-based COMs combine high-performance real-time computing with powerful AI capabilities for applications such as surgery robots, medical imaging and diagnostic systems. They also target situational awareness in industrial applications including inspection systems, stationary robotic arms, autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs).

The conga-TC700 COM Express Compact COMs with the Core Ultra processors (code named Meteor Lake) provide up to 16 cores and 22 threads to consolidate distributed devices onto a single platform. The SoC-integrated Intel Arc GPU with up to eight Xe cores and up to 128 EUs delivers up to 2× 8K resolution and ultra-fast GPGPU-based vision data (pre)processing.

An integrated NPU, called Intel AI Boost, executes machine learning (ML) algorithms and efficient AI inferences. Up to 96 GB DDR SO-DIMM with in-band ECC at 5600 MT/s achieves power-efficient high data throughput and low latency, the company said, and delivers highly efficient advanced integration of AI workloads at a lower system complexity and cost than is possible using discrete accelerators. The solution features powerful P-cores and efficient E-cores for general computing and a high-performance Intel Arc GPU for graphics-based tasks.

The modules are designed for application-ready AI use in a plug-and-play form factor. They allow OEMs to upgrade existing applications by just exchanging the modules to access cutting-edge AI technologies, Congatec said.

An available ecosystem of solution-focused products and services enables a faster time to market when implementing x86 systems with powerful AI capabilities necessary in a variety of medical and industrial uses, the company said. The modules are available with pre-evaluated real-time hypervisor technology from Real-Time Systems for virtual machine deployments and workload consolidation at the edge. Service offerings include shock and vibration tests for custom system designs, temperature screening, high-speed signal compliance testing, design-in services and training sessions to simplify the use of congatec’s embedded computer technologies.

The conga-TC700 COM Express Compact Type 6 modules support the embedded temperature range from 0°C to 60°C and are available in a variety of standard configurations. The modules will be on display at embedded world, April 9-11, 2024 in Hall 3, Stand 241.