Southern Africa
Spescom Software, Spescom's US division, has formed an alliance with Aker Kvaerner, a supplier of project solutions and operations services relating to environmental clean-up in the UK nuclear sector. The alliance will deliver information management solutions to the nuclear industry in Europe and will allow nuclear plant owners and operators to comply with the stringent European regulatory standards. According to Ben Martin, director of Spescom UK, the agreement provides improved regulatory compliance, reduced risk, and enhanced quality and traceability.
Grintek Telecom and iPico have signed a partnership agreement whereby Grintek Telecom will supply iPico's solutions to the local market. Grintek will also provide the integration, support and implementation skills to customise the solution to suit the client's requirements and applications. iPico creates, develops and commercialises intellectual property for the identification and authentication markets providing RFID solutions to optimise the management of goods and people within the logistics supply chain.
Spescom and Spanish company Presence Technology have signed a strategic partnership agreement whereby Spescom will market its contact centre solutions - specifically the CRM Optimizer product - in Africa.
Components & System Design has been appointed as the exclusive local distributor for the Radiocrafts range of products. Radiocrafts designs and sells high performance standard RF modules for use in a variety of wireless short-range applications.
The CSIR's Tsilitwa telehealth project based in the Eastern Cape has qualified as a finalist in the Stockholm Challenge - an awards programme for pioneering information technology projects worldwide. The focus is not on the technology itself, but on how ICT can benefit people and societies. The Tsilitwa project connects the rural clinic of Tsilitwa by means of an 11 Mbps broadband wireless network to the Nessie Knight Hospital in Sulenkama. A clinic sister there is thus able to interact with the doctor at the hospital through data, voice and video communications via a wireless system. This facilitates cost-effective healthcare for patients who would otherwise have to travel long distances, it says.
Technikon Witwatersrand (TWR) alumnus and business magnate Bill Venter, founder and Chairman of the Altron Group, has been awarded an honorary doctorate degree in Business Management from TWR. This is in recognition of his distinguished example of South African entrepreneurship and his achievement at the highest level of international marketing and blue chip investment.
American Power Conversion (APC) has paid tribute to its channel partners for their accomplishments during 2003: Drive Control Corporation once again attained the title of 'Distributor of the Year', having obtained the highest sales-in revenue; Achieving the highest sales-in revenue on APC products for the financial year, Datacentrix was named as 'Reliability Provider Partner' of the year, with Bethesda Computers SA coming in second.
SAME 2004: Call for papers and tutorials. Both universities and companies are invited to participate and submit technical papers and tutorials. Main areas of interest are: mixed signal; RF; design tools and methodologies; system architecture; embedded systems; power management; micro packaging; SIP. SAME 2004 is the 7th edition in a series of conferences and tutorials that explore the state-of-the-art and new developments in the field of design and manufacturing of ICs and systems. It takes place in Sophia Antipolis, France on 6, 7 October. E-mail: [email protected].
Overseas
Business
National Semiconductor made a net profit of $93,1m on revenues of $513,6m for third quarter 2004. National's Q3 sales were 27% higher than the third quarter of fiscal 2003 and 8,5% higher sequentially from second quarter 2004, when the company reported revenues of $473,5m. The third quarter fiscal 2004 results included a $1,9m pre-tax credit for special items relating to prior cost reduction actions. Without this credit, National's profit would have been $91,5m.
Xilinx has announced that it continues to see strong demand across its entire CPLD portfolio. In its most recent calendar quarter ending December 2003, revenues for the portfolio as a whole grew over 25% quarter-to quarter, representing a continued market segment share gain in 10 of the previous 11 quarters, it says. Overall the company has more than doubled its CPLD segment share in just five years. In addition, its Xilinx CoolRunner-II RealDigital CPLD product family continues to gain significant momentum, it says.
Companies
In a move to expand its analog chip portfolio, Intersil has acquired Xicor for $529m. Xicor is a supplier of digital potentiometers and system management products that complement Intersil's current standard analog portfolio. Xicor also has a portfolio of realtime clocks, voltage references, power sequencing and display products.
Cree has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the gallium nitride (GaN) substrate and epitaxy business of Advanced Technology Materials. ATMI's GaN substrate and epitaxy capabilities complement Cree's existing silicon carbide and GaN materials business.
iRoC Technologies has sold its Memory BIST Division to Synopsys. The sale includes an exclusive patent licence for sales and marketing of M-BISTeR, an EDA tool that offers unique features such as low-cost programmability and BIST (built-in self test) sharing to support SRAM, ROM and Dual Port SRAM memories. Also included is full ownership of software source code for product maintenance and ongoing development. Memory BIST is a convenient way to test embedded memories on 'system-on-chip' devices.
Seiko Epson and Sanyo Electric have announced that they are to combine their liquid-crystal-display manufacturing operations, creating the world's fourth largest LCD maker. The combined venture, called Sanyo Epson Imaging Devices, is due to start operations on 1 October, 2004, and will be based in Tokyo.
IPFlex and Fujitsu have commercially released their jointly developed reconfigurable processor, the DAP/DNAR-2 (digital application processor/distributed network architecture), said to be the first commercial, general-use dynamically reconfigurable processor. With the unique ability to dynamically reconfigure its internal circuitry, the processor enables systems to perform multiple processing tasks with a single-chip solution that previously required several specialised chips, claims Fujitsu.
Automatic Parallel Designs, has changed its name to Arithmatica and moved headquarters from Oxford, England, to Redwood City, California. Arithmatica has launched a set of logic cell libraries that it says use innovations in mathematical circuit blocks to improve silicon performance and reduce die area and is available for use by custom and standard cell design styles. The company's R&D location is now Warwick, England.
Structured ASIC vendor Chip Express has secured $12m in additional financing and changed its name to ChipX. The extra funding will be used to develop the company's structured ASIC technology.
Industry
According to IC Insights' latest rankings in the microprocessor arena, Intel's processor sales reached a staggering $21,85 bn in 2003, up 15% from 2002, with market share of 80%. Advanced Micro Devices comes in second at 7% market share and had $1,96 bn in processor sales last year, up 15% from 2002. Motorola had $840m in sales for 2003 while IBM had $520m. Citing good sales to Apple and to Microsoft's Xbox, IBM's processor sales jumped 160% year-to-year.
Statistics released by the EDA Consortium state that following three consecutive quarters of relatively flat revenues, the EDA industry finished 2003 on a high note. It reported industry revenue of $1021m, a 13% increase over the Q4 of 2002. For the full year, the industry posted revenues of $3825m, 3% higher than in 2002.
According to the Fabless Semiconductor Association, worldwide public fabless revenue grew 16,2% in 2003, totalling $24,2 bn. Fabless revenue represented 16,6% of total semiconductor industry sales. Of 2003 revenue, US companies represented 78%, Taiwan, 18%, Europe and Japan each represented 2%, while China and Canada each totalled 0,4%.
Databeans estimates that due to rapid growth in China's telecoms manufacturing, and growing capacity in the consumer and computer markets, China's IC consumption in 2009 will amount to 25% of worldwide IC revenue, or $69bn. China's largest markets in terms of IC demand are computers and communications, the latter being the fastest-growing segment with an average annual growth rate of 21%. China is quickly outpacing some of the world's largest manufacturing centres. According to China's Ministry of Information Industry, 50% of cameras, 30% of TVs, 30% of airconditioners, 25% of washing machines, and 20% of refrigerators are produced or assembled in China. Databeans estimates that China also produces well over one third of global mobile phones, 17% of digital cameras, 20% of DVD players, and 28% of broadband routers and modems.
According to IC Insights' projections, Infineon Technologies and Sony are expected to move up in the worldwide chip sales rankings in 2004. It expects Intel, Samsung Electronics, and Texas Instruments to remain (in order) the top three chip makers in 2004, based on projected sales for the year. Infineon would jump from 7th to 4th for 2004, while Sony would come from 12th to 10th place.
A study conducted by InfoTrends Research group has shown that camera phones will amount to 60% of total digital camera sales in 2004. The worldwide market for camera phones is forecast to account for more than 25% of all mobile phone sales in 2004 and annual growth is expected to continue at a rate of 55%.
A record 131 million cellular handsets were shipped in Western Europe in 2003, according to Strategy Analytics. With annual growth of 21%, Q4 was the highlight of the year, with 42 million units sold.
The Information Network, a market research company, predicts that MEMS technology used for microphones and microspeakers is set to reach volume production levels in 2004 with 50 million units shipping. Over the period 2003 to 2006, MEMS technology will grow from less than 1% of the 1,2 billion microphones sold worldwide in 2003 to 20% of 1,6 billion units sold in 2006 - a CAGR of 207%. A similar growth rate is set to propel the MEMS-based microspeaker sector. These products are already used in products such as mobile telephones and hearing aids.
Lucent Technologies has agreed to pay a penalty of $25 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with last year's settlement of a two-year investigation into how certain revenue was reported. Lucent said the penalty is not based on any additional violations of law, but on what SEC considered Lucent's lack of cooperation during the investigation and certain actions taken by the company subsequent to the agreement in principle.
The DVD Forum has provisionally adopted ITU-T H.264 AVC Video codec as mandatory for the upcoming HD-DVD Video specification for DVD players. The DVD Forum defines DVD format specifications, and is a voluntary association of more than 200 companies. ITU-T H.264's adoption by the Forum is an important step on the way to it becoming the leading video codec in this major consumer market. H.264, ratified in 2003, surpasses earlier video standards in terms of video quality, compression efficiency and resilience, it said.
Operators, manufacturers and administrations which make up the membership of ITU have called for work on next generation networks (NGN) to take renewed priority. NGNs will form the basis for the future of all telecommunication services. As a start-point, a recent meeting agreed on a 'working definition' for the oft-used but ill-defined term of an 'NGN': 'a packet-based network able to make use of multiple broadband, QoS-enabled transport technologies and in which service-related functions are independent from underlying transport-related technologies.'
For the eighth year, Arrow Electronics has been named one of America's most admired companies by Fortune magazine. Arrow ranked third within the 'Wholesalers: Electronics' category.
Technology
Bell Labs, the research arm of Lucent Technologies, says that a possible new solution to cooling chips could be with use of 'nanograss' technology - tiny tubes that can spray liquid onto chip hot spots. Micro-amounts of liquid would be applied only on the hot spots of a chip, with the excess flowing through the channel to a radiator sitting on top, where it is cooled and re-used. Since the coolant would be applied only where needed, less power would be used because less liquid would be circulated.
Unitive Semiconductor of Taiwan, has developed an electroplated lead-free bumping technology and qualified it for use by Infineon Technologies. According to Unitive its tin-silver lead-free solution enables customers to replace eutectic solder with lead-free solder and meet the forthcoming lead-free requirements. Unitive claims it is the first bumping subcontractor in the world to qualify an electroplated lead-free bumping solution.
Researchers at the Technical University of Vienna and the Max Planck Institute in Bielefeld, Germany, claim to have measured the smallest time interval recorded, and found it lasted a ten million billionth of a second. The scientists said they used pulses of ultraviolet laser light (lasting 250 attoseconds) to watch an electron moving around inside an atom, distinguishing motion over periods as brief as 100 attoseconds (an attosecond is a thousand million billionth of a second). This is about 10 times shorter than the previous shortest measured interval, which lasted about one femtosecond (or a million billionth of a second), according to the researchers.
A new ultra-small electronic viewfinder system has been integrated into Plawa-feinwerktechnik's new digital camera, the SpyPen Oboe. Debuted at CeBIT, it features an unusual but stylish telescopic look with a 2,1 megapixel resolution and a 2x zoom. The 113K EVF Kopin CyberDisplay includes what is said to be the world's smallest colour microdisplay which, at 4 mm diagonal, is as small as a grain of rice. It includes the lens, polariser, backlight and housing. Each ultra-small pixel is comprised of a red, green and blue sub-pixel, each of which measures a mere 6,3 x 11,3 µm. There are a total of 113 578 sub-pixels in the 4 mm diagonal display, a density which the company claims has never before been achieved.
Philips Research demonstrated at CeBIT, a unique variable-focus lens system that has no mechanical moving parts. Called 'FluidFocus' the system mimics the action of the human eye using a fluid lens that alters its focal length by changing its shape. The lens, which lends itself to high volume manufacturing, overcomes the fixed-focus disadvantages of many of today's low-cost imaging systems, says Philips. At 3 by 2,2 mm, it is suited to a wide range of optical imaging applications, including digital cameras. The focal length can switch from 5 cm to infinity in less than 10 milliseconds. Controlled by a DC voltage and presenting a capacitive load, the lens consumes virtually zero power. Varioptic, another company that has been developing such systems, has announced its intention to challenge use of 'the patents it holds on the use of electrowetting technology to create variable focus lenses.'
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