Texas Instruments to acquire Silicon Labs

Texas Instruments will acquire Silicon Labs for $231.00 per share, representing a total enterprise value of approximately $7.5 billion. The transaction is expected to complete in the first half of 2027, subject to receipt of regulatory approvals and other conditions. Silicon Labs wireless chips are fairly popular in Smart Home applications with Zigbee, Thread, and Matter connectivity, as well as low-power Bluetooth LE wearables and industrial Sub-GHz or 2.4 GHz IoT applications. I can still remember when Silicon Labs purchased Energy Micro in 2013, taking over the EFM32 Gecko MCU family, and about 13 years later, the company is changing...

Detecting Helium Leaks with Sound in a Physics-Based Sensor

Helium is inert, which makes it useful in a lot of different industries. But helium’s colorless and odorless non-reactivity also means traditional gas sensing methods don’t work. Specialized detectors exist, but are expensive and fussy. Thankfully, researcher [Li Fan] and colleagues found a physics-based method of detecting helium that seems as elegant as it is simple.

The new sensor relies on a topological kagome structure, and doesn’t depend on any chemical reaction or process whatsoever. The cylinders in the structure are interconnected; air can flow in and speakers at the three corners inject sound.

Sound waves propagate through the air within the...

5K iMac Turned Into 5K Display

While Apple weren’t the first to invent high-DPI displays or to put them into consumer electronics, they did popularize them fairly effectively with the Retina displays in the early 2010s and made a huge number of them in the following years. The computers they’re attached to are getting up there in age, though, and although these displays are still functional it isn’t quite as straightforward to use them outside of their Apple-approved use. [David] demonstrates one way of getting this done by turning a 5k iMac into an external monitor.

The first attempt at getting a usable monitor from the old...

AMD Kintex UltraScale+ Gen 2 mid-range FPGA family to be available until at least 2045

AMD Kintex UltraScale+ Gen 2 is a mid-range FPGA family designed for the broadcast, test, industrial, and medical markets, which provides an update to the Spartan UltraScale+ FPGA family introduced in 2024, and promises availability until at least 2045. Key features include high-speed transceivers and PCIe Gen4 for support of 4K AV-over-IP, multi-stream capture, and frame-accurate transport, increased memory bandwidth for semiconductor test and inspection systems, and advanced imaging and real-time control for machine vision, industrial automation, medical imaging, and robotic systems. AMD Kintec UltraScale+ Gen2 key features AMD says the Kintex UltraScale+ Gen 2 devices deliver up to 5x...

Qualcomm IPQ5424 embedded router board supports 22 Gbps tri-band Wi-Fi 7 and dual 10GbE networking

Wallys Communications’ DR5424 is a new embedded router board powered by a Qualcomm IPQ5424 quad-core Cortex-A55 SoC (aka Dragonwing NPro A7 Platform) and offering tri-band Wi-Fi 7 connectivity up to around 22 Gbps, along with two 10 GbE RJ45 ports and four 2.5GbE RJ45 ports for wired networking. Based on Qualcomm AP.MI01.2 reference design, the board also features 4GB or 8GB DDR4 memory, 256MB NAND flash, and 32MB NOR flash, as well as a USB 3.0 port, a USB 2.0 port, and JTAG and serial debug ports. Target applications include Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) access points, Internet of Things (IoT) gateways,...

reComputer Jetson AGX Orin Developer Kit GMSL Bundle features 8x GMSL2 camera interfaces, 10GbE networking

Seeed Studio’s reComputer Jetson AGX Orin Developer Kit GMSL bundle is an NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin 32GB/64GB equipped with eight GMSL2 camera interfaces through two FAKRA connectors. It’s based on the company’s reComputer Mini J501 carrier board – a smaller version of the reServer Industrial J501 – with 10GbE and GbE RJ45 ports, HDMI 2.1 video output, two USB 3.2 ports, two USB 2.0 Type-C Debug/Recovery ports, and fitted with a 128 M.2 NVMe SSD and an M.2 WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0 module, besides the daughterboard with the GMSL2 camera interfaces. reComputer Jetson AGX Orin Developer Kit GMSL Bundle specifications:...

End-of-life notice for Samsung/Nexell S5P4418 processor

Samsung/Nexell S5P4418 SoC is being phased out, according to a somewhat recent post by EmbSoM/Graperain stating that the SoC was discontinued by the original manufacturer. Most people will likely not care about an old quad-core Cortex-A9 SoC being discontinued, but the S5P4418 was found in several interesting hardware platforms we’ve covered here, mostly from FriendlyELEC, previously FriendlyArm. This includes the FriendlyELEC Core4418, NanoPi2 and Fire2A SBCs, Samsung Artik 530 modules, and several others. Graperain provides more details about the end-of-life notice, notably the key dates for their products: Last Time Buy (LTB) – 2026-03-31 Last Shipment Date – 2026-09-30 This...

Cincoze CV-221C 21.5-inch modular slim Panel PC supports up to Intel Core Ultra 3/5/7 Meteor Lake-PS SoC

Cincoze CV-211C is a family of 21.5-inch modular slim panel PCs powered by Intel Core Ultra 3/5/7 Meteor Lake-PS SoC (P2302 Series), Core i3-1215UE or Core-i5-1245UE Alder Lake processor (P2202 Series), Core i3-8145UE or Core i5-8365UE Whiskey Lake SoC (P2102 Series), or Core  i3-6100U or Core i5-6300U Skylake processor (P2002 Series). All are advertised as new models, despite some being powered by Skylake processors released in 2015. They share similar key features such as up to a 21.5-inch TFT panel with 1920×1080 resolution, VGA output, dual Ethernet, three to four USB 3.2 ports, and more. We’ll focus on the Cincoze...

WalnutPi 2B is a Raspberry Pi–style SBC with Allwinner T527 and 2 TOPS NPU

The WalnutPi 2B is a compact single-board computer built around Allwinner’s T527 processor, combining an octa-core Cortex-A55 CPU with a modest 2 TOPS NPU in a Raspberry Pi–like form factor. The design focuses on low-cost Linux development, edge experimentation, and light AI workloads. The WalnutPi 2B is based on the Allwinner T527, an octa-core 64-bit […]

Core Ultra HX powers RTX-equipped NUC 15 workstation

SimplyNUC is shipping the Jean Canyon NUC 15 Performance, a compact 3-liter workstation that runs Linux or Windows on Intel Core Ultra Series 2 HX processors with discrete NVIDIA RTX Laptop GPUs. The Jean Canyon platform is available in two main configurations based on Intel’s Core Ultra 9 275-HX or Core Ultra 7 255-HX processors. […]