NXP showcases the future of silicon

We need to move "from living faster to living better", according to NXP Semiconductor's Gerard Beenker. Speaking at the silicon firm's Innovation Day, held at its next-generation lab in Eindhoven in the Netherlands, Beenker and his colleagues took a group of journalists through some of the upcoming technologies aimed at making our lives that much easier.

The day spanned four broad topics: mobility, health, energy and security.

Demonstrations on mobility showed how telematics units, which combine GPS and GSM connectivity as well a host of other functionality, could help introduce road pricing, whereby cars are taxed on journeys they take rather than as a flat fee. Very early trials of this technology are already underway in Eindhoven whereby drivers are charged depending on distance travelled, at what times and on which roads.

Also on show was the next generation of car key fobs incorporating two-way communication between the car and the key, allowing the fob to store location information and car diagnostics such as petrol levels and lock status. This technology is already being implemented in some of the latest BMWs, but NXP is also looking at expanding the connectivity to include near-field communications (NFC). This would allow users to share this type of information with their mobile phone - for instance to find where they parked their car - as well as potentially implement payment options from the key fob itself, much like the NFC mobile payment trials being used with mobile phones today.

On the health front, NXP is using short range magnetic induction wireless links to improve the performance of hearing aids by allowing a pair of the devices to communicate, allowing for better audio performance and source location. This can also be extended to allow the hearing aids to integrate with a Bluetooth receiver to stream audio from a mobile phone, media player or TV straight to the device.

The same technology is also being considered to develop 'smart bandages' for use when dressing critical wounds. Pressure and humidity sensors embedded in a flexible sheet along with an antenna and processing module can be woven into a bandage to help nurses regularly monitor how the wound is healing without needing to remove and replace the dressing.

Smart metering is a hot green topic, allowing utility companies to get a much greater level of control over their energy grids and help manage the growing trend towards micro-generation from sources such as solar panels and wind turbines. The initial phase is simply to replace the existing electro-mechanical meters, which can report details of power usage over the grid network. This can allow for the introduction of load- and time-based tariff structures and can possibly be expanded into the creation of a home gateway allowing for better power management, both internally and remotely.

With NXP being one of the biggest players in the development of NFC, the company is working hard on the next generation of NFC technology, focusing primarily on enhancing the security and flexibility of these chips.

With all this enhanced connectivity, security and privacy was a key theme that ran through all of the presentations and plenty of questions were asked about what lengths NXP and its partners are going to to ensure that the systems cannot be abused, or that data cannot be misused or fall into the wrong hands.

What makes days like this interesting is that it's not just technology for technology's sake, but instead shows off real world applications enabled by these technologies - what Beenker refers to as 'More than Moore' - and gives us a glimpse into what tomorrow's world may look like.

02 Jul 2009