What are the topics covered this week? There’s vehicle-to-anything (V2X) energy transfer, crypto-currencies, a new UK EV factory, WCH’s range of few-pin Risc-V MCUs, and National Instruments putting itself up for sale.
5. Government funds UK vehicle-to-everything energy transfer research
The UK Government has announced the companies that will be funded to develop vehicle-to-anything (V2X) energy transfer projects. Funded is via the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and Innovate-UK. Malvern-based bi-directional EV charger company Indra is in two of the winning consortia: in Next Generation V2X Power Module to improve its charger, and in V2X Inflexion with Kaluza, OVO Energy and Volkswagen looking into CCS (combined charging system standard) as used by European EV manufacturers
4. Idiots [Mannerisms]
It’s ironic when the libertarians turn to the authorities for a bail-out. All these crypto-gullibles who have lost their money in FTX are now relying on the established governmental agencies to get their money back. You’d think going to the authorities for a rescue would be against the principles of the gulliblerati who hailed crypto as the anti-establishment replacement for fiat currencies issued by corrupt untrustworthy governments.
3. Williams F1 behind new UK EV factory
Technology developed by the Williams Formula 1 team is behind a new UK EV battery plant opening later this year. After the collapse of Britishvolt, the news that Australian iron ore miner Fortescue is opening an advanced battery plant in Oxfordshire is welcome. Fortescue founder Andrew Forrest is building on the capabilities of Williams Advanced Engineering – the technical arm of Williams F1 – which he bought last year. “We invested heavily in British technology, British knowhow and British work ethic last year,” Forrest told Sky News at Davos.
2. Risc-V MCUs have 8 to 20 pins
Chinese chip maker WCH has announced a range of few-pin microcontrollers with cores that execute the RISC-V RV32EC instruction set. Called the CH32V003 series, they are based on the company’s own QingKe RISC-V2A core with a hardware interrupt stack and two-level interrupt nesting, supported by 16kbyte flash, 2kbyte ram and a ~2kbyte bootloader. There is also 64byte of non-volatile system configuration memory, 64byte of user-defined memory and a 64bit unique ID. A single-channel DMA controller is provided. 24MHz (factory-trimmed) and 128kHz oscillators are built-in, and there is support for external oscillators from 4 to 25MHz.
1. National Instruments up for sale
National Instruments is up for sale and is carrying out a strategic review of its options. The company says it has retained advisers Bank of America Corp. and Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz to review a range of alternatives, “including solicitation of interest from potential acquirers and other transaction partners, some of whom have already approached the company.” “Over the last five years, we have been executing an exciting strategic transformation, increasing our focus on complete solutions for high-growth vertical markets,” says NI chairman Michael McGrath.
