micro-electronics

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NASA, commercial space industy brace for critical test
The upcoming launch of a new rocket to the International Space Station will test NASA's strategy of relying on commercial carriers to launch cargo and crews to orbit.

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eetimes.com | 18-May-2012 12:06

Hybridization of processors increasingly rapidly, says report
Hybrid processors with two or more different types of processor cores accounted for half of the $111 billion processor market in 2011, according to a new report by market research firm IMS Research.

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eetimes.com | 18-May-2012 11:51

Report: UMC benefits from TSMC 28-nm supply shortage
Chip foundry United Microelectronics Corp. has been the leading beneficiary of 28-nm chip supply shortages at the leading foundry and rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd., according to a Taiwan Economic News report.

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eetimes.com | 18-May-2012 00:06

ESilicon set to reap rewards of Asian gamble
Jack Harding, CEO of design services provider eSilicon, says the company's move to Asia is beginning to pay off as it helps customers navigate two very different chip markets in Taiwan and mainland China.

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eetimes.com | 17-May-2012 23:51

UK opens Europe's largest robotics laboratory
Two UK universities have opened the largest robotics laboratory in Europe as the UK government announced a £16M ($25 million) boost for research.

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eetimes.com | 17-May-2012 23:36

Intel's FinFETs are less fin and more triangle
Reverse engineering and analysis consultancy Chipworks Inc. has posted cross-sections of parts of the 22-nm Ivy Bridge processor that has revealed that the FinFETs, which Intel calls tri-gate transistors, are in fact trapezoidal, almost triangular, in shape.

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eetimes.com | 17-May-2012 23:21

Foundry Tower piles up cash in Q1
Specialty foundry Tower Semiconductor Ltd., which trades as TowerJazz, improved its cash position as of March 31, 2012 to $158 million, up from $101 million at the fourth quarter of 2011. The cash benefit came as the company increased sales substantially versus a year before but saw them dip compared with 4Q11.

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eetimes.com | 17-May-2012 23:06

Former Apple, Google, Facebook engineers launch IoT startup
One-year old startup Electric Imp has developed a Wi-Fi node in a memory card physical format that it hopes will become a standard way for things to be given an IP address and linked to the Internet to form a Wi-Fi mediated Internet of Things.

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eetimes.com | 17-May-2012 00:07

Q&A: Nvidia’s Dally on 3-D ICs, China, cloud computing
Bill Dally (shown), Nvidia’s chief scientist calls for a 3-D memory champion, more U.S. spending on computer research and an Ethernet alternative for data centers.

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eetimes.com | 16-May-2012 23:52

GSA spies venture capital investment uptick in April
Investment in semiconductor industry startup and private companies jumped up in April to $194.2 million, according to the Global Semiconductor Alliance industry body.

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eetimes.com | 16-May-2012 23:37

OIF to define three 56 Gbits/s serial interfaces
The Optical Internetworking Forum launched projects to define 50-56 Gbits/s serial interfaces for future Fibre Channel, Ethernet and other links.

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eetimes.com | 16-May-2012 23:22

Cadence tips faster Spice coming soon
EDA software vendor Cadence is working "feverishly" on producing a faster version of the Spice analog electronics simulator, according to Tom Beckley, senior vice president of R&D for custom ICs and signoff in the silicon realization group there.

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eetimes.com | 16-May-2012 23:07

Altis foundry updates 130-nm specialty design kits
Altis Semiconductor SA, the specialty foundry bought by French entrepreneur Yazid Sabeg from IBM and Infineon in 2010, has announced the release of updated process design kits for 130-nm specialty technologies.

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eetimes.com | 16-May-2012 22:52

Cadence extends verification and storage IP offerings
EDA software vendor Cadence announced a couple of extensions in its offering of intellectual property at the Cadence Live European user conference on May 15.

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eetimes.com | 16-May-2012 12:11

EMC buys memory IT startup for reported $430M
Enterprise IT hardware, software and services provider EMC has acquired XtremIO, a three-year old Israeli startup that develops flash memory technology for storage infrastructure, reportedly for $430 million.

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eetimes.com | 16-May-2012 00:13

NSF's I-Corps targets 'innovation ecosystem'
The National Science Foundation's Innovation Corps is designed to create an agile technology ecosystem that can transform basic research into value-added products.

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eetimes.com | 15-May-2012 23:58

IHS: Apple iOS to reassert tablet dominance in 2012
Apple's iOS operating system is expected to reassert commanding leadership of the worldwide tablet space in 2012, following a temporary dip in market share in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to market research firm IHS iSuppli.

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eetimes.com | 15-May-2012 23:43

IMEC to detail memristor progress at VLSI Symposia
The Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC) will report next month on progress to make its memristor variation, called resistive-RAMs (RRAM), the dominate memory technology in four papers at the VLSI Symposia in Honolulu.

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eetimes.com | 15-May-2012 12:00

Nvidia upgrades Tesla, eyes cloud gaming
Nvidia announced its latest graphics board for use highly parallel technical and scientific jobs along with new technology for cloud-based gaming services.

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eetimes.com | 15-May-2012 11:45

AMD’s fires Trinity in x86 notebook battle
AMD launched its 32nm Trinity CPUs with upgraded x86 and graphics cores going head-to-head in notebooks and desktops with Intel’s 22 nm Ivy Bridge CPUs.

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eetimes.com | 15-May-2012 11:30

Qualcomm moves to No. 5 in chip sales
Just over three years after slipping into the top 10 in chip sales for the first time, fabless chip vendor Qualcomm moved to the No. 5 position in the fist quarter, surpassing Texas Instruments and others, according to IC Insights.

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eetimes.com | 15-May-2012 00:11

Intel drives Xeon server CPU to 17W
Intel launched the first server CPUs using its 22 nm tri-gate technology, including a new 17W part aimed geared for micro-servers that compete with ARM-based servers.

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eetimes.com | 14-May-2012 23:56

Transphorm delivers more 600-V GaN power components
Power transistor startup Transphorm has produced gallium-nitride on silicon components with a breakdown voltage of 600-V.

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eetimes.com | 14-May-2012 00:01

Bauer resigns as CEO of Infineon due to ill-health
Peter Bauer, CEO of chip company Infineon Technologies AG, has resigned his post with effect from the end of current fiscal year due to health reasons.

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eetimes.com | 13-May-2012 23:46

Applied to cut jobs, move solar manufacturing to Asia
Applied Materials will cut about 250 jobs and relocate manufacturing for its solar wafer systems from Switzerland to Asia, the company said in a regulatory filing.

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eetimes.com | 12-May-2012 12:04

Four reasons why MIPS new cores may make it relevant again
Here’s the $64,000 question is: If you are already an ARM licensee (most likely you are, if you are in the mobile market), why even consider licensing MIPS now?

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eetimes.com | 12-May-2012 00:06

ST shines in MEMS rankings, says IHS
Texas Instruments and Hewlett Packard Co. retained the number 1 and 2 positions in the ranking of MEMS suppliers by sales revenue in 2011, despite each suffering sales slides of 4 percent, according to market research company IHS.

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eetimes.com | 11-May-2012 23:51

MIPS challenges ARM's Cortex with Aptiv launch
In a move reminiscent of ARM's three-tiered Cortex product launch, processor IP licensor MIPS has introduced three families of Aptiv processor cores.

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eetimes.com | 11-May-2012 23:36

Silicon Ventures tips plan to stem fabless VC drought
Ken Lawler, founding partner with Silicon Ventures Inc., laid out his firm's innovative approach to backing chip companies with a $200 million fund, at a European executive conference organized by the Global Semiconductor Alliance.

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eetimes.com | 11-May-2012 23:21

MEMS project aims to prevent elderly from falling
Texas Instruments and Texas Tech are collaborating on preventative medicine using MEMS sensors and smart analytics to prevent elderly from falling by predicting instability and sending an alert.

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eetimes.com | 11-May-2012 00:05

Despite obstacles, experts say China continues to innovate
China continues to innovate, but in ways that are not well understood in the West.

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eetimes.com | 10-May-2012 23:50

Stretching the limits of printed electronics
Printed Electronics Europe, which took place in Berlin last month, gave rise to a tide of interesting papers and lectures, all concerned with the adoption of new manufacturing or printing methods able to pattern electronic circuits on various substrates, multiplying use-cases and pushing the envelope of the current printed electronics market.

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eetimes.com | 10-May-2012 23:35

Infineon, Fuji agree on HybridPACK 2 automotive power module specs
Fuji Electric and chip manufacturer Infineon Technologies agreed to extend the supplier base for power modules deployed in automotive hybrid and electrical vehicles.

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eetimes.com | 10-May-2012 23:20

OpenFlow debuts on an optical network
The move to software-defined networks passed a milestone as ADVA Optical Networking demonstrated OpenFlow on an optically switched network.

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eetimes.com | 10-May-2012 23:05

Nordic takes aim on step up to the WSN platform
Fabless chip company Nordic Semiconductor ASA, well known as a supplier of low power 2.4-GHz radio ICs, is ready to take its business to the next level, which is the combination of wireless transceivers, sensors and digital processing.

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eetimes.com | 10-May-2012 22:50

Bozotti has a dream: to turn round ST's digital problem
Carlo Bozotti, CEO of European chip company STMicroelectronics NV, has a dream. It is to have both sides of his company be successful and that means fixing mobile chip joint venture ST-Ericsson. Bozotti gave his views on challenges facing the industry as he was interviewed on stage at an executive conference organized by the Global Semiconductor Alliance industry trade group.

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eetimes.com | 10-May-2012 22:35

Micron confirms Elpida acquisition talks
U.S. memory chip vendor Micron Technology confirmed it is engaged in discussions with trustees for bankrupt Japanese DRAM vendor Elpida Memory in an attempt to acquire Elpida.

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eetimes.com | 10-May-2012 12:12

ARM dominates 10B unit CPU core market
ARM won 78 percent of the 10 billion chips using merchant CPU cores in 2010, as shadows gather over rival MIPS Technologies, according to a Linley Group report.

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eetimes.com | 10-May-2012 11:57

IHS projects rise in counterfeit chips
Counterfeit semiconductors are expected to become a more prevalent problem in the future as the semiconductor industry enters a phase of accelerating growth, according to market research firm IHS iSuppli.

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eetimes.com | 10-May-2012 11:42

Microsoft joins Micron memory cube effort
Microsoft became the seventh core member of the Hybrid Memory Cube Consortium led by Micron and Samsung, a sign of the concept’s broad technical implications.

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eetimes.com | 09-May-2012 00:07

AT&T, Q’comm start next battle of home nets
AT&T and Qualcomm separately rolled out broad ecosystems of home automation products, among the first shots in a coming battle between ecosystems for the Internet of Things.

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eetimes.com | 08-May-2012 23:52

Qualcomm, Samsung form wireless power alliance
Mobile technology companies Qualcomm Inc., and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. have announced the formation of the Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP).

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eetimes.com | 08-May-2012 23:37

Fraunhofer makes mini-projector for smartphones
Researchers at the German research institution Fraunhofer IOF have developed an array of hundreds of microprojectors that can be used to project images from smartphones and similar small devices. The array enables the design of slim LED projection systems which nevertheless offer bright images even on curved screens.

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eetimes.com | 08-May-2012 12:11

Baolab plans monolithic inertial MEMS
Baolab Microsystems SL (Barcelona, Spain), a startup pioneering the creation of MEMS within the metal interconnect layers of CMOS wafers, has announced that it is planning to use its technology to build reconfigurable inertial measurement units.

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eetimes.com | 08-May-2012 11:56

Obama highlights manufacturing in NY semifab visit
President Obama will visit the NanoTech Complex at the State University of New York in Albany on Tuesday (May 8) to demonstrate support for advanced manufacturing in the U.S.

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eetimes.com | 08-May-2012 00:11

CSR opens automotive design center in Germany
CSR acquired the facility, which was built by TEMIC Telefunken Hochfrequenztechnik, a provider of RF system solutions for auto-infotainment and consumer products, as part of its merger with Zoran last year.

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eetimes.com | 07-May-2012 12:02