ARM microcontroller, IoT exam coming early in 2013
LONDON – Fiscal Q3 sales at chip maker Infineon Technologies AG (Munich, Germany) were slightly ahead of previous guidance but the company confirmed its outlook that the fiscal Q4 (calendar Q3) wou ...
NEW YORK – With almost 60 percent of its business is coming from a single customer – in this case Apple, Inc., it’s not quite kosher to call Cirrus Logic an independent fabless chip company any more. ...
SAN JOSE – It's Gold Rush time in California again thanks to VMWare’s proposed $1.26 billion acquisition of Nicira Inc., a startup pioneering software-defined networking. There’s no doubt there’s gold ...
SAN FRANCISCO—EDA and IP vendor Synopsys Inc. said Monday (July 30) it completed the acquisition of EDA tool vendor Ciranova Inc. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.Ciranova, founded in 2003, ...
Analog sector to post modest sales growth, boost 300mm production
In-Q-Tel, the investment wing of the Central Intelligence Agency, has entered into a partnership with Lime Microsystems Ltd. to develop transceiver technology.In-Q-Tel usually secures its partnerships ...
LONDON – Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has regained the lead in the smartphone market in 2Q12, six month after losing out to Apple, according to market research firm IHS-iSuppli (El Segundo, Calif.).Sa ...
Analog sector to post modest sales growth, boost 300mm production
SAN FRANCISCO—Apple Inc. has signed a merger agreement to acquire AuthenTec Inc., a provider of fingerprint ICs, sensors and software for security, for about $356 million, according to a regulatory fi ...
LONDON – Foundry chip maker United Microelectronics Corp. (Hsinchu, Taiwan) has announced that it is offering a private equity placement for up to 10 percent of the company. There has been speculation ...
MANHASSET, NY -- Rohde & Schwarz will take over the sales of anechoic chambers and shielded rooms from the Albatross Projects Group in the U.S. and Canada.The two companies have globally collabora ...
GENEVA, Switzerland -- The demise of the automobile has been greatly exaggerated thanks in large part to engineering innovations by automotive electronics companies.The auto market has been revived th ...
Wireless is bright sector in slow chip market, says IHS
LONDON – Intel Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.) has announced the integration of a 3G HSPA radio frequency transceiver with power amplifiers on a single 65-nm die.The company did not say where the chip is ...
NEW YORK—When NXP Semiconductor went public two years ago, the company was debt-ridden with $4.5 billion on its books and faced with the arduous task of streamlining its product portfolio to emerge as ...
GENEVA, Switzerland -- The demise of the automobile has been greatly exaggerated thanks in large part to engineering innovations by automotive electronics companies.The auto market has been revived th ...
LONDON – Taiwan's United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC), which has been a struggling number two behind foundry leader Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC), could get one over on its long-t ...
MIAMI – More than a third of all Google Android applications contain some form of malware, according to tests conducted by BT. A security expert for the U.K. telecom service provider said it expects t ...
NEW YORK – Wow. Talk about alternative reality… or, should I say, revisionist history?I am talking about Intel’s recently launched ‘Me The Musical’ campaign, which piggy- backs on Facebook. ...
LONDON – Japan's Fujitsu Ltd. has attempted to open up talks about the sale of its main wafer fab to foundry chip maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd., according to reports. The wafer fab ...
LONDON – Fully depleted FinFET style transistors made on SOI wafers are likely to allow between half and one-third the leakage current of FinFETs made on bulk silicon according to TCAD simulations per ...
SAN FRANCISCO—Physicists at the University of Texas-Austin say they have developed the world's smallest semiconductor laser in collaboration with colleagues in Taiwan and China. The researchers say th ...
MIAMI – The Metro Ethernet Forum has started technical work on standards to support cloud computing and software-defined networking over carrier-grade Ethernet. First fruits from the work that started ...
SAN JOSE – Data traffic is expected to grow ten-fold from 2010 to 2015 and up to 100-fold by 2020, according to a new report from the IEEE’s Ethernet standards group. The assessment aimed to lay a fou ...
LONDON – Processor intellectual property licensor ARM Holdings plc (Cambridge, England) has invited four U.K. companies to help it form an industry forum to help shape the Internet of Things. The work ...
LONDON – SEMI, the international trade association that represents the interests of semiconductor equipment and materials companies, is planning for a 3-D packaging and through silicon via (TSV) meeti ...
PARIS – After a 1-percent decline in 2009 and an unprecedented 5-percent surge in 2010, global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) increased by 3 percent in 2011, to 34 billion tons, according to the an ...
LONDON – ARM CEO Warren East is not concerned that Intel Corp. is developing a lead in process technology of the foundries that ARM licensees usually deal with. This is despite the fact that FinFET te ...
LONDON – Next generation headsets and glasses frames will be able to deliver audio in compact way without having to use ear buds or stick things in the ear canal, according to HiWave Technologies plc ...
PARIS – The global photovoltaic (PV) inverter market shrank in terms of revenues in 2011 but will return to growth in 2012, exceeding $7 billion, according to IMS Research.In its annual report, titled ...
SAN FRANCISCO—Cadence Design Systems Inc. President and CEO Lip-Bu Tan said Wednesday (July 25) he expects to see design activity remain at a good pace in the second half of the year, despite macroeco ...
NASA preps spacecraft for risky Mars landing attempt
SAN FRANCISCO—The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) Wednesday (July 25) finding that a group of chip makers did not violate several patents held by technology licensor Rambus Inc.Wednesday's r ...
MIAMI – A ruling by Brazil’s telecom officials is expected to tee up a multi-billion bonanza in capital spending on telecom networks.Anatel, Brazil’s equivalent of the U.S. Federal Communications Comm ...
Apple coming to dominate electronics supply chain, says IHS
MANHASSET, NY -- Market research firm IHS iSuppli, in its latest report, has confirmed Texas Instruments’ purchase of National Semiconductor has boosted TI’s market share, reinforcing its dominance in ...
Black Hat: Impersonating Microsoft Exchange servers to manipulate mobile devices
A competitor at the 2012 London Summer Olympics will be running on carbon fiber blades attached to his amputated legs. Double amputee Oscar Pistorius of South Africa is expected to compete in the Olym ...
LONDON – The world's leading foundry chip maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. is considering operating single-customer wafers, according to chairman and CEO Morris Chang.Chang, speaking ...
SAN JOSE – After testifying before Congress about security vulnerabilities in civil GPS systems last week, Todd Humphreys is convinced the industry needs a new approach to plugging holes in what he ca ...
Processor IP firm sues Amazon, Samsung, Huawei, ZTE, others
LONDON – Mixed-signal chip company NXP Semiconductor NV (Eindhoven, The Netherlands) has posted an increased loss on sales that climbed sequentially in the second quarter but were down year-on-year.NX ...
LONDON – Processor IP licensor ARM Holdings plc (Cambridge, England) has posted yet another quarter with increased sales and profits. As it announced its 2Q12 financial results ARM highlighted that it ...
SAN FRANCISCO—Broadcom Corp. President and CEO Scott McGregor Tuesday (July 24) downplayed speculation that Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.'s acquisition of CSR plc's mobile business posed a threat to th ...
SAN FRANCISCO—Japan's Toshiba Corp. said Tuesday (July 24) it would cut its production of flash memory chips by about 30 percent, effective immediately, due to market oversupply and price declines.Ove ...
SAN FRANCISCO—Globalfoundries Inc. said Tuesday (July 24) it would move forward with the final construction of Module 1 at its Fab 8 campus in upstate New York, a move that will bring the total manufa ...
SAN FRANCISCO—Micron Technology Inc.'s move to acquire bankrupt Japanese DRAM vendor Elpida Memory Inc. is a bold move that carries risk, particularly if the integration and technology transfer does n ...
RS Components signs global distribution agreement for HiWave Technologies audio and haptic devices
Despite record iPad sales, Apple's revenue comes up short
SAN FRANCISCO—Chinese chip foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) Monday (July 23) increased its second quarter sales and gross margin forecast, citing improved business.SMIC ( ...
LONDON – Qualcomm Inc. (San Diego, Calif.) has said it will focus its manufacturing of Mirasol sunlight-readable displays on a limited set of products and try and license the technology out to other c ...
NEW YORK -- We all feel like we’ve already seen the movie: “Downfall of the Feature Phones.” Our heroes are Apple and Samsung. They take over the world with their smartphones, while Nokia — the ste ...
Chip set shortage, weak economy mars Fairchild’s sales growth
Slideshow: A blacksmith shop in the heart of high tech
LONDON – The market for automotive ICs is set to grow 8 percent in 2012 to an annual value of $19.6 billion, according to market research company IC Insights Inc. (Scottsdale, Ariz.).The crash of 2008 ...
Qualcomm, Renault team on wireless electric vehicle charging
Chinese safety requirement may be de facto global standard
LONDON – A combination of continued losses and renewed market softness for Europe's leading chip company STMicroelectronics NV has led the company to make a 25 percent cut in its capital expenditure b ...
MANHASSET, NY -- Ferroelectric random access memory supplier Ramtron has entered into a new manufacturing and license partnering agreement with Rohm Co., Ltd. to manufacture Fram-based semiconductor p ...
Here in the U.K. we are about to stage the London Olympic Games. It will be hard to do better than the amazing ceremony that opened the Beijing Olympics four years before, so I am expecting that we wo ...
LONDON – Processor intellectual property licensor ARM Holdings plc (Cambridge, England) has signed up Prometric Inc. (Baltimore, Md.) to design and deliver the ARM Accredited Engineer certification pr ...
Chipset shortage, weak economy mars Fairchild’s sales growth
Astronaut Sally Ride’s battle with cancer ended today (July 23). The California physicist and first U.S. woman to fly in space was 61.Ride was part of the first astronaut class to include woman in 197 ...
SAN FRANCISCO—Network infrastructure chip vendor Mindspeed Technologies Inc. Monday (July 23) announced plans to cut more than 80 jobs as part of a restructuring plan to reduce costs.Mindspeed (Newpor ...
SAN FRANCISCO—Despite chip inventories that are low by historical standards, OEM customers and distributors are being cautious about new purchase orders, largely due to economic uncertainty, executive ...
SAN JOSE – Security experts will show vulnerabilities in everything from ARM processors to x86 CPUs and even hotel locks at the annual Black Hat conference in Las Vegas this week. A handful of session ...
SAN FRANCISCO—Networking giants Cisco Systems Inc. said Monday (July 23) it plans to cut about 1,300 more jobs in connection with ongoing restructuring at the company, according to reports. In an emai ...
SAN JOSE – Venture capital investments in semiconductor companies fell 76.2 percent to $32 million in June, according to the latest figures from the Global Semiconductor Alliance. The decline was an e ...
About 7,500 security professionals scheduled to attend this week's Black Hat conference raised a howl yesterday when they received what looked like a phishing attack in their email boxes. Click her ...
ST's auto IC strategy: Manufacturing line can't stop
PORTLAND, Ore. – Energy efficient semiconductor fabrication techniques have largely eluded designers of wafer cleaning processes, which still depend on open-loop recipes that waste energy and water. B ...
LONDON – Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. was the largest pure-play foundry for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices in 2011, according to market analysis firm IHS iSuppli.IHS rank ...
Europe launches grid-connected renewable energy storage project
PORTLAND, Ore. – Energy efficient semiconductor fabrication techniques have largely eluded designers of wafer cleaning processes, which still depend on open-loop recipes that waste energy and water. B ...
LONDON – Former employees from Nokia's MeeGo N9 organization have formed an independent smartphone product company called Jolla Oy (Helsinki, Finland). The company has announced a sales and distributi ...
MANHASSET, NY -- Ferroelectric random access memory supplier Ramtron has entered into a new manufacturing and license partnering agreement with Rohm Co., Ltd. to manufacture Fram-based semiconductor p ...
SAN JOSE – As many as four companies could start shipping in less than a year a new wave of 60 GHz wireless chips. The devices will deliver more than three Gbits/second of data for less than two Watts ...
LONDON – LFoundry GmbH, a specialist foundry that announced it was closing its wafer fab in Landshut, Germany in 2011, has made a return to profitability during the second quarter of 2012.Despite the ...
LONDON – Processor IP licensor ARM Holding plc (Cambridge, England) and foundry chip maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. have signed a multi-year agreement to work together to optimize n ...
LONDON – Directed self assembly of nanometer-scale structures is a promising method of lithography of the future but it has suffered to date from only allowing the creation of a few arbitrary shapes. ...
Three of Europe's four leading semiconductor companies will announce their second calendar quarter financial results this week: from STMicroelectronics NV after the U.S. market close on Monday July 23 ...
MANHASSET, NY -- Sensor Platforms has announced its FreeMotion library of software algorithms and middleware now supports all major mobile microprocessors, in addition to previously announced support ...
SAN JOSE – Engineers will get the first look inside new x86, Power and Sparc microprocessors at the Hot Chips conference next month. The event will cast a wide net that includes chips for cellular bas ...
EDA firm gets funding from Russia after nine years
NEW YORK -- Maxim Integrated Products is attempting to take analog integration to a new level by combining up to seven sensors in a tiny 2 x 2 mm optical package. According to one analyst, the move is ...
Energy Micro opens design center in Kraków, Poland
LONDON – Heliatek GmbH, a 2006 startup company pioneering the development and manufacture of flexible, organic photovoltaic cells, is about to begin production of the first such products at its Dresde ...
Tesla's CEO: Half of cars will be electric in 15 years
LONDON – The market for discrete semiconductors, module and ICs dedicated to the power electronics industry will reach $20 billion in 2012, according to market research firm Yole Developpement (Lyon, ...
SSD vendor STEC's CEO charged with insider trading
SAN JOSE – Hard disk drives will continue to be the dominant form of storage in notebooks for the near term, despite an onslaught of flash-based tablets, according to a new report by IHS iSuppli.Noteb ...
SAN FRANCISCO—Chip vendor Integrated Silicon Solution Inc. (ISS) said Thursday (July 19) it signed a deal to acquire specialty memory chip vendor Chingis Technology Corp. for $33 million in cash.The d ...
LONDON – The French government is considering ways to tax Internet based companies that contrive to sell products and services in France without paying much to the government there by way of taxes, ac ...
Tablets to outsell notebooks in 2016, says analyst
SAN JOSE – I wish an engineer would develop a mobile force field. You could carry it in your pocket like a key fob, press a button and an impenetrable shield forms around your body. It should cost jus ...
MANHASSET, NY -- Agilent Technologies Inc. and AT4 wireless have signed a definitive agreement for Agilent to acquire the assets of AT4 wireless’ Test Systems business. Privately held AT4 wireless (Ma ...
SAN JOSE – Smartphones are headed for the big screen and Samsung, not Apple, set the trend. Samsung’s Galaxy Note and S3 handsets foreshadow what I expect to be the next important element in smartphon ...
Marissa Mayer has been named CEO of Yahoo Inc. after 13 years at Google Inc., where she served as one of the top executives on the search company’s management team. Employee number 20 and the first fe
Elad Mentovich, a Ph.D. student at Tel Aviv University, has made a vertical transistor based on a single carbon-60 molecule that he reckons could be the basis for both a logic transistor and a memory ...