The publicity shots present an attractive device with very familiar curves and materials, implementing elements of current Apple industrial design. Of course it appears quite orderly with no excess material.

Certainly though, as with all Apple products, there must be more than just a nice design. Phrases such as “smarter way” and “intelligent power management system” on the charger’s page on the Apple site stress it’s ability to think.  A claimed life of up to 10 years also alludes to this ability.   This lifespan reminds one of Apple’s most recent laptop batteries that are claimed to have a lifetime of up to 1000 cycles.  While the term “adaptive charging” is not used in the description of the charger the longevity claims certainly point to some optimized charging algorithm and thus a thinking system.

So, what type of logic is inside the Apple charger?

Located on the charger’s circuit board is a 16 pin QFN package with the markings:
16F616
-I/ML
0211GR

While the package has not been opened, the “16F616” marking and package type match Microchip’s PIC16F616 8-Bit micro-controller with embedded Flash.

So why is Apple putting this effort into a charger? For sure the charger will only represent a tiny revenue stream.  Is it as straight forward as a more efficient system? Is there an IP angle to all this?  Apple appears to be porting R&D from one line of business to another.  In this case an entirely new one.  Time will tell what comes of this move and whether tangible technology and/or IP inroads are made into the mobile power market.

What might be behind this phrase?

There was at least some insight to come out of the transcript of the Q&A portion of this past Monday’s conference call.  Towards the end of this portion Mark Gilbreth discusses some aspects of the 370 kW’s design. He first comments “by combining a C250 in a low pressure spool you don’t need a recuperator”. He latter comments that the high pressure spool would be “something very similar to the C65”, but producing about three times the power output. Towards the end of this discussion Mark comments that essentially existing components will be combined in a ‘unique’ way.  Unique being the interesting term here.

Capstone has always taken IP seriously, having a respectable stack of issued patents.  However, a recent look at published applications assigned to Capstone suggests there was a dip in filings.  Namely, the most recent published application and issued patent are the same i.e. issued United States patent  7,614,792. The application from which the above patent stems had a filing date of April 26, 2007 and a publication date of October 30, 2008.  With an 18 month delay between the filing of an application and its publication it appears that no applications were filed in the USPTO between the above filing date and December 15, 2008.

This dry spell will however surely come to an end.  Besides any applications that may have been filed since mid-December 2008, the unique combination of components in the 370’s design will likely already have been or will be scrutinized for patentable subject matter and at some point in the future published applications will again appear at the USPTO.

To pick up where the last article left off our speculation about the iPad, then tablet, and A4 appear to have been in the right direction.  Along the way comments from Steve Jobs and Tim Cook have reaffirmed an interest in differentiating the iPad on the hardware level.  That said, there will be an ARM CPU and  the GPU will too likely be centered around a licensed core.  So where does the differentiation occur?

The CPU may well get the most attention on the A4.  However graphics horsepower and tricks are also important.  In agreement with our speculation, the January 27th Keynote certainly showed a graphics intensive system.  It has also been reported that iPad graphics are quite smooth with no hesitation in the motion or transitions. This is important to Apple as it will affect the user’s experience and feeling for the device.  Getting a bit fanciful, is there extra graphics horsepower with a parallel compute engine, which is used in some dedicated video processors, or maybe some on board ROM holding graphics code as firmware to speed things along.

Looking forward,  Apple acquired PA Semi in April ‘08 and the date code on the A4 publicity shot suggests the part was packaged in September ‘09.  That is a mere 17 mos. for design, tape-out, fabrication and testing, not much time.  A4 circuit design was likely occurring in parallel to system level design and software development, likely leading to considerable learning and some comprises along the way.  It will be the next revision or two that will be quite interesting as the blocks are tweaked to improve performance with the OS and major end applications being set.

There is more to come in this move into more semiconductor design.

The graphic will of course have many meanings and inspirations.  The use of spray paint seems to take inspiration from urban culture, gaming, art and creativity to name but a few.  Of particular note are the bits that extend beyond the border.  Is Apple thinking outside the box?  Does this coincide with the rumours of resurrecting the Think Different slogan?

With regard to the copy Apple does not usually give this much away.  The term “latest creation” particularly suggests new hardware.  Of course Apple does not separate the hardware and software, so expect some neat software thrown in there.  But, does it also suggest a new semiconductor, namely the use of their own integrated circuit designed by the PA Semi team that was acquired in the spring of 2008.

A central aspect of Apple’s success has to be integration.  Their products have increasingly been about an integrated approach to hardware and software that makes the end result larger than the sum of the individual parts.  An iPod, for example, does not have a particularly unique parts list.  It is however brought to life through the understanding and design of an intuitive UI, an integrated approach to content delivery, and simply appealing design.

Is the tablet where Apple goes one step further? At the time of the PA Semi acquisition Apple indicated that it further wanted to differentiate itself from any and all competition through the design of its own semiconductors.  Off the shelf processors are in large designed and sold with a set of features, ports and performance that will appeal to a range of clients, including your competition.  So what happens if you could design your own processor with blocks tailored solely to your device and its application.  Remember, you control everything.

The tablet or any device between an iPhone and Macbook will need more processing power than the former and less than the latter, suggesting a general purpose microprocessor is too much and a single, smaller logic core is too little.  By the same token any tablet would not be used for general computing, but would be graphics intensive with gaming and video likely being target markets.  So what could you design? Since PA Semi has low power experience and you want a long battery life you would certainly have some novel power management functionality.  As you do not need a particularly high clock or large cores how about several smaller cores running at lower clocks.  For graphics why stop at a single or dual core, how about a parallel compute engine to crunch all those polygons?  There are lots of ideas and it is all just tantalizing speculation at this point.

Whether it happens with whatever is introduced next week or in later iterations it makes for some compelling speculation.  Whenever an Apple/ PA Semi chip does emerge it will certainly keep the reverse engineering houses busy as large semiconductor manufacturers and OEMs will want to decode the circuit blocks thereon.  Ah…integration.

In its coverage of this news the CBC provided commentary into the relevance of the Nobel Prize today.  During the course of a segment on the radio it was submitted that the Nobel prize is still quite relevant as it recognizes fundamental work that is not simply associated with patentable material.  It was certainly implied that anything patentable is somehow of lesser value.  This is simply not true as fundamental research and patentable subject matter both have their place and value.

The fundamental discoveries for which a Nobel prize is given might explore a basic physical concept or relationship.  Invention then builds on top of these discoveries, developing systems and methods that are applications or derivatives of the basic understanding.  It is this layer of inventing, lying on top of fundamental discoveries, that develops the building blocks for products from which the public draws benefit and pleasure.  Patents have been a part of this second stage for some 500 years.  At their heart they are a bargain between the inventor and the state whereby the inventor discloses the invention for the benefit of further invention and the state grants a limited monopoly.

Digging back into the records of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, one finds that Willard Boyle had numerous patents issued to him during his tenure at AT&T Bell Labs.  Of these United States Patent 3,792,322, entitled “Buried Channel Charge Coupled Devices” and 3,796,927, entitled “Three Dimensional Charge Coupled Devices” appear to directly stem from the recognized CCD research.  The former appears directed to a problems associated with surface states and mentions an example where the charge is generated by photon absorption.  The latter is directed to shift registers and other logic circuits that might be built from CCDs.  Therefore, as is often the case there are a number of possible applications of the fundamental research being explored around the time , with patents generally being associated with the developments of working structures and solutions to problems encountered in application of the initial discovery.

Last week Capstone Turbine released a photo of a micro-turbine powered hybrid electric vehicle that was engineered by Langford Performance Engineering in the UK.  The claims made in the associated copy were quite impressive, including an 80 mpg fuel efficiency.  This number tops the fuel efficiency of current well-known hybrids by at least 50%. While it is not our intention to quibble about the particular numbers this type of difference suggests a real paradigm difference and not “simply” an incremental decrease in body weight, for example.

As indicated in the Capstone release and Langford’s patent application WO2009/050456 the micro-turbine is part of the electricity generating system and is not part of the traditional power-train.  An electric motor provides all drive power.  In this configuration the turbine only runs as needed and can be operated to optimize efficiency, not worrying about the power requirements of the instant driving conditions.  While this configuration is central to the efficiency increase it does not diminish from the micro-turbine’s improved fuel efficiency and reduced emissions.  Finally, the turbine is claimed to be only 50% of the weight of a traditional internal combustion engine.

While the push for the electric car is real, the inability of the current power grid to handle the associated additional load is even more real. The above development of the auto-turbine advances the case for the continued role of liquid fuels for transportation.  Whether it be Iogen’s cellulosic ethanol, which was coincidentally made available at an Ottawa gas station last week, or Dynamotive’s bio-diesel that are both bio-mass based, advanced bio-fuels become even more attractive with a decoupling from the internal combustion engine.  Continued progress in advanced fuels that do not source food crops and auto-engines will likely go a long way to reducing the carbon footprint of cars while mitigating the need for new electricity infrastructure.

Recent ads have presented an apparent price difference between Apple and PC laptops. Phrases like “too sexy” or “too cool” are used with inference that this is an appropriate assessment of Apple offerings. There is no denying the effort Apple puts into design. However, only considering design when comparing prices, as if the innards simply fit on a checklist, does not give due respect to Apple’s engineering. Apple has both historically advanced and continues to advance hardware engineering along with its more obvious efforts in design.
Apple has, in fact, set trends in hardware over the years that other manufacturers later followed. Whether it be the adoption of CD-ROM drives in the early 90’s, dropping the floppy and moving to USB in first generation iMacs, or advancing heat management knowledge with the G4 Cube, Apple has a record of breaking new ground. Moving forward to the winter release of the 17” MacBook Pros, Apple introduced a non-replaceable battery with an advertised battery life of 1000 charging cycles or approximately 5 years. In describing the battery on their website Apple mentions a feature they refer to as adaptive charging, where the charging current is varied with consideration of the instant condition of the battery cells.
Going back a bit in issued US patents assigned to Apple one finds 5,998,972 which is entitled “A Method and Apparatus for Rapidly Charging a Portable Computing Device”. While the title suggests this patent is directed to methods for rapid charging, reviewing the specification (column 6, in particular) suggests the methods are very similar to those alluded to above. Namely, charging current is varied during a charging cycle based on the instant conditions of the battery. This is illustrated in Fig. 4 where an ideal charge curve 402, a traditional charge I-V curve 404 and I-V curve 406, the curve according to an embodiment of the invention, are presented. As is apparent from curve 406 the current is varied over the charge cycle.

In the end Apple has been researching methods around battery charging for some time, likely implementing the assembled knowledge into the new 17” MacBook Pro battery. It is quite possible that we are witnessing a shift in the laptop battery paradigm, even if it is not all that sexy.

We last posted an article about thermoelectrics in January 2008. Since then thermoelectrics have continued to be an area of great interest, as the technologies develop and their utility is further demonstrated. A case in point is this recent abstract from Nature that discusses advances in superlattice-based structures. It was of interest to note co-authors from Intel are listed. This is no surprise as the semiconductor industry has always been considered a prime market for superlattice based thermoelectric structures because of the industries great experience in the deposition techniques and equipment that is applicable to superlattice device fabrication.
A look at the author list of the above abstract reminded us of United States patent 7,279,796 (the ‘796 patent) to Hu, Chrysler and Mahajan, and assigned to Intel. The ‘796 patent details a basic structure that integrates a thermoelectric device and integrated circuit. Intel is defining its space within the thermoelectric landscape.

With reference to the above representative figure from the ‘796 patent the integrated circuit 14 is located on one side of silicon wafer 12, while the thermoelectric module 56 is located on the other side. Metal vias 46 and 48 then connect module 56 to the power and ground planes, within the metallization 16, respectively.
The involvement of Intel in thermoelectrics suggests the technology will be further advanced towards commercialization now that such a large, experienced semiconductor company is lending support. Thermoelectrics have always presented a compelling story and promise. Integration of thermoelectric structures within integrated circuits could provide competitive advantages in either reducing the power consumed in mobile devices or reducing the energy expended cooling large installations. This goes hand-in-hand with the growing efforts to “green’ data centers and other IT infrastructure.

“Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and Zero Emission Energy Plants, Inc. Sign Gasification Licensing Agreement”,

“Vegawatt plugs in grease-fired restaurant generator”, and

“Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and AERI Collaborate to Develop Gasification Technology”;

are but three headlines that have appeared over the last several months regarding systems and/ or methods for processing a carbon-containing feedstock into some type of fuel. There are a myriad of techniques for the above processing, each having a different set of pressure, atmosphere and reaction conditions. The particular combination of reaction conditions being dictated by at least the nature of the feedstock and the desired end product.

With consideration to the second headline, the Vegawatt system is designed to use waste vegetable oil to generate on-site electricity. It is indicated on the Vegawatt website that a four-stage cleaning process is used to process the waste cooking oil for use as a fuel. In this case the original hydrocarbon chain is most likely still intact. Such a process is quite different from that of the Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR) technology.

A flavour for the PWR gasification technology emerges from visible patent documents. In general PWR appears to have developed a high temperature, high pressure system, similar to a so-called entrained flow gasifier. Published US patent application 2008/0141913 describes a dump cooled gasifier. In particular it describes structures around a slag-based regenerative liner. Published US patent application 2008/0060914 and issued US patent 7,303,597 describe feed systems for use with a gasification system. A common theme emerging from these and other PWR documents is the development of technology around providing for a continuous gasification process.

While the above two approaches appear quite different on the surface there is a least one common thread, the use of what would have been once considered waste as a source of energy. Both processes also discuss the implementation of “waste” heat to further improve the overall energy captured from the fuel.

A recent edition of Barron’s Online featured an article on Emcore and its Concentrating Photovoltaic(CPV) technology. On August 13th OPEL International announced that its CPV technology received a strong reception at Canaccord Adams’ 28th Annual Growth Conference. This latter release went on to say that while CPV technology is not new it is now coming into its own in the marketplace. Finally, a CPV technology primer on Solfocus’ website indicates that concentrating photovoltaics have been an established science since the 1970’s but are only now reaching commercial viability.

Two questions: Why has CPV technology apparently been around for so long yet only now being commercialized? and How are the various entrants in this market space defining themselves technologically?

The fundamental concept behind CPV systems is the use of a system to reflect or focus incoming solar energy down to a much smaller area than the original incident light, such that a much smaller area of photovoltaic (PV) material is required. A concentrating factor of 500 is common. Along with the concentrated solar energy comes elevated temperatures. In fact the temperature is elevated to the point where traditional Si-based PV systems are not appropriate. The answer to the first question is likely related to the development of multi-junction PV materials that can operate at “CPV” temperatures.

Some thoughts on the second question.

Emcore appears to be designing the entire system from the multi-junction material to the Imaging optics to the structure for supporting the entire system. United States published application 2008/0245409 is but one example of Emcore’s work on the PV material, while issued patent 7,381,886 describes a terrestrial solar array and its components.

Solfocus appears to be concentrating its efforts on the cell optics, integrating technology licensed from Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and purchased tracking technology. Recently published United States patent application 2008/01233313 describes a semiconductor mount for the PV cell, within the overall cell array. It is noted in paragraph [0043] that suitable triple junction cells may be provided by Sharp, Emcore or Spectrolab.

Developments associated with work at PARC are outlined in various patent documents including published United States patent application 2006/0231133.