Qualcomm buys power IC vendor Summit Micro
SAN FRANCISCO—Qualcomm Inc. said Monday (June 18) it acquired programmable power IC vendor Summit Microelectronics Inc. for an undisclosed sum.Qualcomm (San Diego) said the acquisition would enhance t ...
Emerging battery techs slowly entering mainstream
CUSTER, Wis. – One of the stars of the annual renewable energy festival was lithium-ion battery technology, which is slowly making the transition from a power source for electronic devices to the prim ...
Ramtron rejects Cypress Semi offer
SAN FRANCISCO—The board of directors of nonvolatile ferroelectric random access memory (FRAM) maker Ramtron International Corp. reviewed and rejected a proposal by Cypress Semiconductor Corp. to acqui ...
OLEDs are hitting their stride this year in all segments
OLEDs are hitting their stride this year in all segments
Cray will use Intel MIC, branded Xeon Phi
SAN JOSE – Intel Corp.’s second run at the graphics market is catching some badly needed traction.Supercomputer maker Cray announced today it will use in its high profile Cascades system Knights Corne ...
Europe asks if it is time for an Airbus of chips
Europe asks if it is time for an 'Airbus of chips'
Six-axis sensor fuses accelerometer with magnetometer
Six-axis sensor fuses accelerometer with magnetometer
IBM re-takes lead in Top 500 computers
SAN JOSE – IBM re-took the lead on the latest edition of the list of the world’s Top 500 supercomputers with Sequoia, a 16.32 petaflops system packing more than 1.5 million custom Power cores. It is b ...
Microsoft iIs expected to introduce a tablet
On Monday, Microsoft is expected to introduce a tablet computer of its own design that runs a new version of its Windows operating system, according to people with knowledge of Microsoft’s plans who d ...
BMW: Silicon Valley honks at Detroit
SAN JOSE – Silicon Valley is becoming the next Detroit, but Detroit is by no means asleep at the wheel these days when it comes to connected, green vehicles.“There are a lot of hybrids and electric ve ...
Chinese RF chip vendor Nationz licenses MIPS32 M4K cores
Chinese RF chip vendor Nationz licenses MIPS32 M4K cores
Xilinx to demo All Programmable OTN Solutions
I just heard from the folks at Xilinx that they are going to feature the advantages of their All Programmable Technologies for carrier-class optical networking at the WDM and Next Generation Optical N ...
Large capacity LiFePO4 batteries require high power chargers
Large capacity LiFePO4 batteries require high power chargers
Research project to avoid rare-earth metals for electric motors
Research project to avoid rare-earth metals for electric motors
Via preps 20-member LTE patent pool
SAN FRANCISCO – Via Licensing will roll out in the next few months a patent pool for 4G LTE cellular technology with more than 20 members including AT&T. The effort comes as two other LTE licensin ...
Silicon Valley Bank gears up China venture
SAN JOSE – Taking its expertise with chip startups to the mainland, Silicon Valley Bank aims to be the first U.S. tech-focused bank operating in China by September when it opens the doors on a new joi ...
Awinic, China fabless, flourishes by mimicking Huawei work ethic
Awinic, China fabless, flourishes by mimicking Huawei work ethic
First look: TI shows off Win RT on Toshiba tablet
Dallas, TX.--Texas Instruments Inc., has shown off Windows RT running on an Omap powered Toshiba tablet on video for the first time.Microsoft's operating system, adapted for the ARM ecosystem, see ...
T-Mobile gears up LTE Release 10 network
SAN FRANCISCO – In an effort to leapfrog AT&T and Verizon, T-Mobile is deploying base stations for what it hopes will be the first cellular network to support Release 10, the next generation of LT ...
Nokia job cuts don't and won't impress anyone
The announcement earlier today by Nokia Corp. that it will eliminate one of every five jobs in its mobile handset division and remove three senior executives didn't impress investors who promptly ...
Qualcomm, Lantiq team on home gateway reference design
Qualcomm, Lantiq team on home gateway reference design
Power IC vendor taps Dongbu HiTek's analog process
Power IC vendor taps Dongbu HiTek's analog process
HDD revenue set record in Q1
2012-06-15 00:00:12HDD revenue set record in Q1
BELLEVUE, Wash.—Thanks to higher average selling prices (ASPs) in the wake of supply disruptions caused by last year's rampant flooding in Thailand, overall hard disk drive (HDD) sales hit a recor ...
Nokia to cut 10,000 jobs, divest assets
Nokia Corp. has replaced three senior executives, including the head of its mobile phone division. And it plans to reduce payroll by up to 10,000 as it struggles to restore profitability and improve i ...
Imec, Panasonic R&D collaboration to include flexible electronics
Imec, Panasonic R&D collaboration to include flexible electronics
Soitec completes CPV solar plant in Italy
PARIS – Wafer maker Soitec SA announced it has completed construction and grid connection of its 1.17-megawatt-peak (MWp) concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) solar power plant in the Belpasso municipality ...
Teardown: Inside the Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone
The story of Samsung in the smartphone landscape is an intriguing one. No more than three years ago, Samsung was considered a minor player in the handset industry, lagging in sales and stature behind ...
TI details TSV integration in 28-nm CMOS
SAN FRANCISCO—Texas Instruments Inc. Wednesday (June 13) detailed progress in integrating through-silicon-vias (TSVs) into the company's advanced 28-nm CMOS process with little or no impact on nearby ...
Toshiba shows first SCSI-like Universal Flash demo system
Toshiba shows first SCSI-like Universal Flash demo system
Startup preps phased array satellite system
A UK startup is set to launch a phased array antenna system that allows moving vehicles to communicate with satellites, or antennas that track satellites, in real time with no moving parts.Phasor Solu ...
Apexone: Here comes muPad from Shanghai
SHANGHAI - On its surface, Apexone Microelectronics Inc., consisting of 40 people in Shanghai, is your typical one-trick Chinese fables chip company. The company designs an optical sensor chip that ...
Toshiba shines in Q1 NAND rankings
BELLEVUE, Wash.—Japan's Toshiba Corp. posted NAND flash memory sales of $1.71 billion in the first quarter, up 19 percent from the fourth quarter of 2011, the highest growth rate among all NAND suppli ...
AMD to integrate ARM core into APUs
BELLEVUE, Wash.—Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) will develop a platform security processor using an ARM Cortex-A5 CPU for inclusion in accelerated processing units (APUs) that will be available star ...
AMD looks smart in the brain engineering era
In April 2011 I was already been arguing that AMD would eventually have to license ARM processor cores. And at the first AMD Fusion developers conference in June 2011 Phil Rogers, AMD Fellow, said tha ...
IMEC reports on gate-last HKMG options
LONDON – Nanoelectronics research center IMEC (Leuven, Belgium) is evaluating options for so-called replacement metal gate (RMG) technology to allow further transistor scaling and to follow-on to the ...
Sharpen your pencils for 2013 software exam
SAN JOSE – Can you pass the software test? That’s the question The National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying will answer when it offers its first Principles and Practice of Engineeri ...
Is there a mobile hybrid in our future?
SAN JOSE – Notebooks, netbooks, smartphones, tablets…what other sorts of systems or combinations of existing systems are out there to be discovered?That’s the question Asustek posed about a year ago w ...
AMD, ARM, Imagination, TI, MediaTek form HSA group
AMD, ARM, Imagination, TI, MediaTek form HSA group
ARM improves its image in graphics
ARM has been doing better at shipping graphics cores than it has been given credit for, according to Jem Davies, ARM Fellow and vice president of technology for the media processing division. Some rat ...
Moderate growth projected for comms chips
BELLEVUE, Wash.—The market for communications semiconductors is projected to grow moderately in 2012 after a 3 percent decline in 2011, according to a new report by the Linley Group, a market research ...
SK Hynix buys Italian flash expertise, forms R&D center
SK Hynix buys Italian flash expertise, forms R&D center
Fujitsu tips bi-directional transcoders with integrated memory
Fujitsu tips bi-directional transcoders with integrated memory
Imec, Kaneka claim 22.68% heterojunction solar cell efficiency
Imec, Kaneka claim 22.68% heterojunction solar cell efficiency
A123's new battery tech goes to extremes
WASHINGTON – Battery specialist A123 Systems said Tuesday (June 12) it has developed a battery technology advance that enables lithium ion batteries to operate more efficiently in extreme temperatures ...
IBM, SK Hynix sign phase-change memory deal
LONDON – Memory IC maker SK Hynix Inc. has agreed to develop non-volatile phase-change memory technology and products with IBM. SK Hynix will manufacture the memories, which will offer multi-level cel ...
Cypress goes public on offers to buy Ramtron
LONDON – Chip company Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (San Jose, Calif.) has announced it has offered to acquire all the outstanding stock of non-volatile memory company Ramtron International Corp. (Color ...
ARM fills in GPU line with Mali-450
LONDON – Processor intellectual property licensor ARM Holdings plc (Cambridge, England) has provided some details of the Mali-450, a graphics processor based on ARM's Utgard architecture.T450 offers u ...
Dolphin Integration, LFoundry team to serve defense, industrial markets
Dolphin Integration, LFoundry team to serve defense, industrial markets
AMD creates embedded IC business unit
BELLEVUE, Wash.—Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) Monday (June 11) announced the formation of a business unit dedicated to marketing the company's accelerated processing units (APUs) for embedded appl ...
Fab tool bookings, billings improved in Q1
SAN FRANCISCO—Worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment billings reached $10.61 billion in the first quarter, up 14 percent from the previous quarter, but down 9 percent from the same period of ...