Innovation Centre

Many industrial applications require some form of galvanic isolation due to the range of voltages present as well as the electrical noise and spikes that can interfere with system operation.

Heat pumps are seen by many as a way forward to net-zero. However, approaching this goal requires greater adoption of the technology, which relies on cost savings in manufacture.

Technologies such as vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and vehicle-to-home (V2H) where the battery in an electric vehicle (EV) returns power to the grid at times of high demand, or simply powers a home in an emergency are bringing challenges to designers of vehicle chargers

There is little doubt that heat pumps are going to make a significant contribution in the push for net-zero.

An essential aspect of managing a supply chain is reducing exposure to risk so that supply remains uninterrupted.

Toshiba Electronics Europe desired to answer this question recently through testing the function, performance, acoustics, and power consumptions of the PROMISE VTrack J5960 60-bay toploader JBOD

Due to a combination of consumer demand and governmental policy to halt sales of new internal combustion engines (including in hybrid vehicles), all-electric battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are the future of personal mobility

Galvanic isolation is required in an increasing number of systems and products, especially those that contain high and low voltages and those that operate in electrically noisy environments.

Toshiba Electronics Europe desired to answer this question recently through testing the function, performance, acoustics, and power consumptions of the PROMISE VTrack J5960 60-bay toploader JBOD

No risk of contact welding or wear out of device

When building storage solutions for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMB), the ultimate system performance cannot be judged by the storage rack specification alone as the selected hard disk drives (HDDs) can have a material impact.

Though the attributes that make silicon carbide (SiC) have undoubted value to the future of power system design, it is not just about what goes on within the semiconductor substrate itself.

Whether they are silicon-based or use silicon carbide (SiC) technology, MOSFETs will experience switching losses that are caused by their body diodes.

The on-resistance (RDS(ON)) of a MOSFET is an intrinsic property that causes static power losses and depends upon the inner structure of the MOSFET.

The voltage applied between the gate and source of a MOSFET during operation is denoted ‘VGS’ and the highest possible value of VGS that can be applied without damage is VGSS. This is important as it simplifies design of the control circuit.

Silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFETs are able to deliver much more impressive switching characteristics than their silicon-based equivalents.

It’s been about 40 years since PCs were first equipped with hard disk drives (HDDs).

Toshiba looks at the future of HDDs for data centers, surveillance systems and more.

Over recent years, there has been a lot of talk throughout the power electronics industry about the exciting performance attributes offered by silicon carbide (SiC). Though there is plenty of information available on this subject, finding a way of translating it into what this actually means for engineers’ designs has still proved difficult. Consequently, many engineers are still reluctant to migrate from the conventional silicon (Si) technology that they are already very familiar with. Unfortunately that means that they are missing out.

Smaller size, greater reliability and no risk of contact shorting

There are many boards to simplify the integration of sensors, memories, and input controls available, such as the Clicker 4 from MikroElektronika.

Access to highly integrated MCU-less motor control solutions allows that permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) operation can be achieved without requiring rotor sensors.

Implementing a sensor-less brushless DC (BLDC) motor arrangement has several key advantages.

The factory automation sector has seen massive changes due to rapid digitalization and increasing use of artificial intelligence and machine learning, technologies that require the exchange of significant amounts of real-time data.

The importance of switching devices is growing as many applications (such as EVs and renewable energy) rely on attaining previously unachievable levels of efficiency.

Controlling motors is probably one of the first more advanced output-type applications, once they’ve mastered controlling LEDs, that most engineers tackle when learning to program microcontrollers.

Brushless DC (BLDC) motors offer many advantages over brushed DC motors including their ability to deliver more torque in the same form factor, generate less electrical and audible noise, and demand significantly less maintenance.

Modern automobiles have been called ‘computers on wheels’, reflecting just how technology-laden they have become.

I2C was only designed and intended for low-latency board-level communication, meaning that latencies between isolated circuits must be carefully considered.

A key focus within the automotive sector is implementation of more effective in-vehicle networking infrastructure with elevated data rates being needed.

The latest brushless DC (BLDC) motors are more efficient, quieter and, with far less mechanical wear, the lifetime is as much as six times higher.

Supporting mechanical relays – reduce risk of contact stick and weld together

When it was devised four decades ago, the inter-integrated Circuit (I2C) interface was designed as a serial bus system for short-distance communication between microcontrollers and on-board peripherals.

Toshiba Electronics Europe desired to answer this question recently through testing the function, performance, acoustics, and power consumptions of the PROMISE VTrack J5960 60-bay toploader JBOD

While it is possible to design a fully featured gate driver with discrete components, it is rarely the best approach in terms of parts cost, design effort, assembly time, and board area required.

The conventional networking arrangement used in vehicles has been for the constituent electronic control units (ECUs) to be assigned specific individual functions.

Implementing an H-bridge switch requires the use of four switches, which can each be turned on and off independently of one another.

More than one PB capacity at just around 500W - Toshiba tested power consumption PROMISE VTrack J5960 JBOD with 60 18TB Toshiba Enterprise Hard Disk Drives and a total capacity of 1080TB

Mechanical relays are often a good choice for EV applications as they are able to deal with the high voltages that are found in many use cases. However, one significant concern is if the contacts weld themselves together, risking a permanently ‘on’ condition that could clearly be extremely dangerous.

At a first glance it seems reasonable to want to replace brushed motors with brushless DC (BLDC) motors that offer greater performance and extend battery life

The Technology Experience Lab at NTT Global Data Centers provides data center managers and their teams with the space and infrastructure to explore innovative approaches for architecting their servers and storage.

There is significant effort being made to develop next-generation charging infrastructure to support electric vehicles (EVs).

For decades automotive networking was dependent on protocols like CAN and LIN. Unprecedented demand for elevated data rates has led to the widespread adoption by automobile manufacturers of Ethernet interconnection technology. This offers orders of magnitude increases in the bandwidth that can be supported. It is not just a matter of raising speeds though. Other aspects now need to be addressed.

With electric vehicle (EV) chargers delivering up to 22 kW in AC and up to 350 kW in fast DC chargers, several hundred Watts of energy can easily be dissipated as heat.

Servos are what enable robot movement to be initiated - with six of them usually incorporated into modern robot arms, and even more being needed for mobile AGV units and suchlike.

The H-bridge driver has been around for a long time. It presents engineers with a relatively simple way of delivering bidirectional motor control, with the direction of the motor’s rotation being changed by just swapping the polarity of the supply applied to it.

It is commonly believed that to achieve a stable and reliable storage system that ongoing maintenance including firmware updates, software updates and even replacement of failed hardware components are things that cannot be avoided.

So as to keep down the overall component count and lower the costs involved, as well as saving valuable space, sensor-less control of BLDC motors is proving to be increasingly appealing to today’s design engineers.

Induction cookers are gaining ever greater commercial traction.

Brushed DC motors have many vital roles to play in modern vehicles. In fact, the 6.5% CAGR predicted by Data Bridge Market Research for these devices will be predominantly driven by automotive applications.

With hundreds of millions of electric vehicles (EVs) being deployed in the next two decades, providing a comprehensive charging infrastructure is critical. Equally critical is the efficiency of these charging points.

Synchronizing renewable energy generation to peak demand times is proving challenging and raising concerns for future renewable grids.

BLDC motors have significantly better torque to weight ratios, higher efficiency levels and greater reliability than brushed motors, with there being increased use of them in contemporary electronic designs.

Greater reliance on robots seems to be a certainty in the years ahead.

With pressure to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and other polluting energy sources, electrical energy becomes the preferred choice.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are now a major focus for power electronics endeavour, with a large proportion of engineers involved in finding ways to improve their performance and extend their range.

Since it was brought in over 25 years ago, through EU Directive 92/75/EC, Europe’s colour-coded energy efficiency labelling scheme has helped people to become more energy conscious.

We are moving into an age where far greater degrees of automation will be witnessed.

The H-bridge is a fundamental part of electronics engineering, allowing electric motors to be driven in either direction as required, using a pulse width modulated (PWM) signal to set the speed.

Automotive Ethernet has the capacity needed to support data transfer rates that are orders of magnitude higher than legacy CAN/LIN-based in-vehicle networking protocols.

Systems driven by some form of electric motor represent the biggest single consumer of electricity resources.

Brushed DC motors have a vital role to play in modern automobile design, being used in relation to a broad range of different functions.

Highly complex synchronised industrial processes cannot accept data hold-ups, as these may have far-reaching implications.

According to IDC projections, by 2025 the quantity of data that our society generates each year will come to a staggering 175ZBytes.

With pressure to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and other polluting energy sources, electrical energy becomes the preferred choice.

The number of electric vehicles (EVs) on our roads is set to increase dramatically in the years ahead, with 323 million of them being in use by 2040 (according to a study compiled by analyst firm Wood Mackenzie).

Thanks to the advent of IP technology and the development of multi-megapixel high-definition (HD) cameras, the proliferation of surveillance systems and their performance capabilities have increased dramatically over recent years.

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) now find themselves having to deal with far greater amounts of data than they would have ever imagined in the past.

With all of us currently still living in what is a socially-distanced post-COVID world, the need for an automated approach to things remains very much apparent.

Induction cooking offers greater convenience and safety to users, as well as being markedly more energy efficient.

Though the pervasiveness of brushless DC (BLDC) motors is increasing all the time within a wide variety of different sectors, in an automobile context the value of brushed motors still remains clear.

When there are heavy loads (such as motors) incorporated into a circuit, it is not possible for them to be powered directly from the pins of a standard system microcontroller. Instead the microcontroller will be used to control appropriate driver circuitry.

While in the past there have been a variety of different data transport technologies that cars have relied upon, there is growing impetus for in-vehicle network infrastructure to be consolidated

Though the pervasiveness of brushless DC (BLDC) motors is increasing all the time within a wide variety of different sectors, in an automobile context the value of brushed motors still remains clear.

Last year the robotics technology market, which deals with all the hardware and software components needed for building robots, was estimated to have a total worth of over $60 billion.

Circuit protection is an essential part of modern electronics, not least as batteries with low internal resistance (and the ability to deliver huge and potentially damaging currents) are increasingly used in applications from portable devices through to vehicles of the future.

It is now a quarter of a century since universal serial bus (USB) first arrived on the scene. With several billion ports currently in operation globally, and many more being added each year, its market traction is unmatched by any other interface technology.

Clean and energy-efficient cooking is essential as the dynamic of our society changes around the world. With both parents in more and more families working, cooking is often something that is prepared in advance and then left to cook during the day using a rice cooker or slow cooker. This ensures a warm meal is ready when everyone gets home.

Incredibly, one of our DC motor control devices has been in production for more than 40 years, coming to market on the wave of the emerging home video market and VHS recorders. Since then, motor technology and the semiconductors used to control them has changed significantly. A push for higher efficiency coupled with deeply integrated system-on-chip (SoC) solutions means that brushless DC motors (BLDC) can deliver more performance in a smaller package.

Over the last decade we have seen the widespread deployment of Ethernet connectivity within the industrial engineering sector. Since 2018 the market share for newly installed nodes in factory automation show a larger share for Industrial Ethernet protocols comparing to traditional field bus protocols.

Reading through on-line forums, it seems that many students and hobbyists struggle to get to grips with bi-directional motor control. When combined with a microcontroller, the first stage of implementing a transistor- or FET-based driver to deliver enough current to a motor seems simple enough. The next step is making use of or creating through bit-banging, a pulse-width modulation (PWM) signal to control motor rotational speed also comes with relative simplicity. However, the leap to implementing what experienced engineers would know as an H-bridge seems to require some time to absorb.

When excessive current flows, either in a wire or a PCB trace, the conductor can melt if the current is sufficiently high. While this eventually becomes self-limiting, the worst-case scenario is a current just below the melting point of the conductor that causes excessive heating over a long period.

Going back many generations, our society seems to find the subject of robotics unusually enthralling. Rudimentary automatons have been around since before the Renaissance, becoming increasingly popular during the 18th and 19th centuries and also more complex in their design.

During their studies, engineers are confronted with much mathematics that forms the basis of electronics and electronic systems. However, once embedded in our selected industry segment, many of us never really have to contend with convolution, Laplace transforms, or the details of Fourier since we end up developing applications that use this mathematics, rather creating the algorithms themselves.

Technology is being introduced to vehicles at a pace that has never been seen before and, while the latest vehicles have impressive and extensive features, they run the risk of becoming ‘behind the times’ very rapidly. One area that has changed significantly recently is the provision of fully configurable screens in vehicles. While many vehicles have had a single screen for the satellite navigation and infotainment for some time, it is becoming increasingly common that the instrument cluster is now a fully configurable display. In high-end vehicles there is often a third screen that replaces all (or most) of the buttons, knobs and switches.

Controlling motors is probably one of the first more advanced output-type applications, once they’ve mastered controlling LEDs, that most engineers tackle when learning to program microcontrollers.

On the journey to become an electronics engineer there are a handful of legacy silicon devices that we have all come into contact with. If you were building some sort of timing circuit or astable multivibrator, the NE555 would have been the device of choice. Need to amplify a signal or compare voltages? Then the µA741 operational amplifier would have been grabbed from the nearest drawer of components. And, to breadboard your design, what better choice that a 7805 5 V regulator from which to power it all!

Audio in the vehicle is almost as old the automobile itself. Chrylser offered a Westinghouse radio for their vehicles back in the 1920s but at the time the radio would have been as rare as the car itself, bearing in mind it was priced at about half of the vehicle’s cost.

On the journey to become an electronics engineer there are a handful of legacy silicon devices that we have all come into contact with. If you were building some sort of timing circuit or astable multivibrator, the NE555 would have been the device of choice. Need to amplify a signal or compare voltages? Then the µA741 operational amplifier would have been grabbed from the nearest drawer of components. And, to breadboard your design, what better choice that a 7805 5 V regulator from which to power it all!

If the person on the street was asked to list the three heaviest components of a conventional car, it is likely that the engine and chassis will come to mind immediately. In today’s world of electric and hybrid vehicles, chances are that the battery may also be proffered as an option. But it unlikely that they would consider the bundles of wires and connectors to be included on such a top-three list. As anyone involved in the automotive industry knows, not only is the cable loom one of the heaviest parts of a vehicle, it is also one of the three most expensive too.

Since 2014, Toshiba Electronics Europe GmbH has been a key storage partner of CERN who have 3,200 JBODs carrying 100,000 hard disk drives (HDD) providing 350 PB of storage, 10 PB of which is consumed each month from new data requiring analysis. The original system in 2014 made use of the MG03 4 TB capacity drives, server-grade storage designed for high reliability and optimized for highest capacity at the time.

Farads, Ohms, Henrys. Venerable unit definitions for common components recognizing the work of the famous scientists that contributed so much to the world of electronics that we rely upon today. But what of fuses? Unfortunately, it would seem that the science and importance of fuses was not deemed important enough to honor it in the same way. However...

We are generating more and more data which needs to be stored safely and effectively. Hard disk drives (HDDs) continue to be central to solving this challenge, requiring them to be available with increased storage capacities. In order to provide the necessary technical solutions, engineers are now looking to incorporate microwave-based technologies into HDDs. As cloud services, video streaming and social media continue to increase in popularity data volumes are growing rapidly, challenging data centers to grow their storage capacities to cope with demand. As a result, many large IT companies are planning to add additional data centres to drive capacity higher.

There is still no way around HDDs for the cost-effective provision of storage capacity. Different applications require the use of different HDDs. The decisive selection criteria are reliability and operating conditions.

Climbing into the most recent models of vehicle, the internal surfaces seem to spring to life with color and light. It becomes immediately clear that video cameras and displays are an essential part of the new in-vehicle experience. And we’re not just talking about multimedia here. Navigation systems and deep integration with smartphones is a starting point, but it extends to side mirrors implemented with cameras, or a full 360° view around the vehicle, that go beyond the traditional reverse-parking camera.

Generic multimedia automotive head units are built around large, capable system-on-chip (SoC) processors. Over time, with the move to CDs and the introduction of DAB+ radio, together with mobile connectivity and smartphones, these systems have grown to be large and complex products. However, located centrally in the dashboard of most vehicles and wired to speakers and microphones around the vehicle, the topology has largely stayed the same. This inevitably limits the room to improve the in-vehicle multimedia experience.

During their studies, engineers are confronted with much mathematics that forms the basis of electronics and electronic systems. However, once embedded in our selected industry segment, many of us never really have to contend with convolution, Laplace transforms, or the details of Fourier since we end up developing applications that use this mathematics, rather creating the algorithms themselves.

Long gone are the days when ‘in car audio’ referred to a crackly radio or maybe a built-in tape deck or CD player. In all but the most basic versions, the in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) is a ‘hub’ within the vehicle, providing many functions including safety, guidance and entertainment. In fact, the capability and convenience of the IVI system is high on the list of decision-making factors for modern car buyers.

A world without USB is barely imaginable. Since its introduction in 1996 it has not only successfully ousted a plethora of outdated parallel and serial data transfer technologies in the world of PCs and laptops, it has established itself as a de facto charging interface for smartphone and tablets, and has even been integrated into automobiles.

Modern automobiles contain an unprecedented amount of electronics and the level of electronic content in vehicles is set to continue to grow. The drive for efficiency comes in part from legislation designed to protect our environment and also from consumers who want to reduce their motoring bills. Automakers are striving to meet these challenges by moving to electric propulsion and replacing many mechanical and hydraulic systems with smaller, lighter and more efficient electrical alternatives.

BLDC motors are found in many applications including industrial control, automotive systems and in the office or home. BLDC motors power electric fans, air conditioning pumps as well as controlling the moving parts in devices such as printers.