Southern Africa
BAE Systems has awarded Denel an export contract worth about R14-million to supply 'layers display and control units' (LDCUs) for incorporation onto a BAE Systems new light field artillery gun. The LDCU is part of BAE Systems' gun-mounted laser inertial artillery pointing system which provides an accurate gun navigation and pointing system in all weather conditions, day and night.
Grintek Communication Systems (GCS) has won three contracts, worth more than R45m, to supply military radios to India. The Phoenix range of high frequency tactical radios and multiband VHF and UHF radios will be used by the Indian army, air force and its defence research and development organisation. Grintek said the deals were a follow-up to a previous HF radio supply contract worth around R40 million to the Indian navy. The Phoenix family of radios was developed jointly with the European Aeronautic, Defence and Space Company, but all the actual work was done in South Africa at the GCS facility. The frequency-hopping Phoenix radios are software controllable and can transmit data and voice signals.
Avitronics launched its new Land Electronic Defence System 100 (LEDS-100) at African Aerospace and Defence 2004. Said to be a revolutionary system, the LEDS-100 in full configuration will offer main vehicle battle tanks comparable protection against engagement by weapons like the RPG-7, anti-tank guns, missiles and artillery shells. The system consists of a warning sensor system, a central computer and a high-speed directed launcher. Avitronics has been successful in entering the world electronic warfare (EW) self protection market with innovative products in the past. Last year the company, together with its partner SaabTech, was rated amongst the top 25 EW companies in the world in an international survey in the USA.
Vishay distribution manager for Iberia and RSA, Ferran Ventana, recently visited the Jet Park and Cape Town offices of Arrow Altech Distribution (AAD) to further enhance the long-standing supplier/distributor relationship between the two companies. Pictured below are AAD field application engineer, Marcello Bartolini (left) and Ferran Ventana (right) in front of AAD's Cape Town branch.
Aerospace Monitoring Systems (AMS) has won new orders from BAE Systems of the UK to supply crash recorders for military aircraft. Under the R70m contract, AMS would install aircraft 'black box' crash recorders and fatigue measuring systems into 116 new Hawk jet trainer aircraft. The aircraft are to be delivered to the Indian Air Force, Britain's Royal Air Force and Bahrain.
Communica has been nominated as one of SA's top 300 empowerment companies. See 'Communica named as one of the Top 300 BEE companies'.
Electrocomp has been appointed as the sole southern African distributor for Epcos, the German developer, producer and marketer of passive electronic components. See 'Epcos - wherever there is electronics'.
KH Distributors has been appointed as the sole distributor for Schmartboard in South Africa. See 'Company signs KH Distributors to supply high-tech electronic design aid to SA designers'.
Overseas
Business
3Com posted a net loss of $36m on sales of $162m in its first fiscal 2005 quarter. 3Com's gross margins were $62m, or 38% of revenues. Operating expenses were $97m, including $3m of restructuring charges.
Scottish microdisplay firm, Microemissive Displays Group, has announced it intends to float on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange and hopes to raise around £17,5m. MED is a developer of power microdisplays using light emitting polymers, and said it believes it is the first company to manufacture an LEP-based microdisplay on a standard silicon wafer.
The Intersil board of directors has authorised a programme to repurchase up to $150m of Intersil's common stock over the next 12 months. Currently, the company has approximately 146 million shares of common stock outstanding.
Companies
Multimedia processor core developer Alphamosaic has been purchased by Broadcom in a deal valued at $123m. Broadcom said the purchase would allow it to provide complete reference designs for next generation, multimedia mobile phone platforms.
Nokia has entered into an agreement to acquire a portfolio of applications development tools based on the Symbian operating system and to license core development tool technologies from Metrowerks. On completion of the acquisition, Metrowerks plans to license its core technologies, including its debugger, compiler and award winning CodeWarrior integrated development environment to Nokia, and certain extensions to that core technology related to the Symbian OS will be transferred to Nokia.
A new Scottish company, CRLO Displays, has been formed by venture capital investors Amadeus Capital and Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures, with $19m in funding and the acquisition of the CRL Opto from Scipher. CRLO will design, development and manufacture silicon-based microdisplays for use in high definition rear projection televisions using full colour, high-resolution F-LCOS (ferroelectric liquid crystal on silicon) technology.
Radiant Networks, which went in to administration in December 2003, has been sold to LamTech, the Cambridgeshire-based research and development arm of Project SkyMinder. Radiant Networks was the pioneer of the Meshworks broadband fixed wireless access technology.
Vishay Intertechnology has completed its acquisition of the assets of RFWaves, an Israeli fab-less IC design house. RFWaves product line is composed of several 2,4 GHz wireless transceivers, ranging from 1 to 3 Mbps.
Canon and Toshiba will begin operating a joint venture company called SED, to develop and produce next-generation flat-screen SED (surface-conduction electron-emitter display) panels for large-screen, flat-panel TVs. Like conventional CRTs, the SED uses the collision of electrons with a phosphor-coated screen to emit light. Electron emitters, which correspond to an electron gun in a CRT television, are distributed in an amount equal to the number of pixels on the display. In addition to high brightness and high definition, the SED is said to deliver exceptional overall image quality, fast video-response performance, high contrast, high gradation levels, and low power consumption.
Flash-memory chip maker Silicon Storage Technology (SST) has entered the smartcard IC market, by acquiring a majority ownership of Emosyn from ATMI for about $19m. Emoysn is a fabless semiconductor manufacturer that specialises in the design and marketing of smartcard ICs for subscriber identification module (SIM) applications.
Programmable logic device vendor, Xilinx, has created two divisions within its organisational structure; a DSP division and an embedded processing division.
Fujitsu and Synplicity said they will jointly develop a custom physical synthesis tool for Fujitsu's AccelArray structured ASICs. The companies will produce an AccelArray-optimised version of Synplicity's Amplify physical synthesis software.
Synopsys, the EDA software vendor, and Photronics, a photomask company, have formed a collaborative program intended to improve the manufacturability and quality of advanced photomasks and reduce design-to-photomask cycle times. The companies will explore and develop solutions together in the area of design for manufacturing (DFM) and mask synthesis targeting faster time to yield for semiconductor manufacturers.
Eastman Kodak and IBM have signed a multiyear agreement under which both companies would collaborate on developing and manufacturing image sensors. The agreement would leverage Kodak's portfolio of image sensor technology and IBM's CMOS processing expertise.
ARM has opened a new office in Beijing, focused on supporting partners and leveraging strong growth opportunities in this fast-developing market. The company has also announced four new strategic licence agreements with CoreTek, Hopen, SMIC and ZRRT.
Toppan Printing, Nippon Sheet Glass and Hitachi have jointly developed a technology to encapsulate IC tags in laminated glass. For the prototypes, the companies used an existing IC tag and a metal antenna communicating at 13,56 MHz and 2,45 GHz.
Intel and CombiMatrix will work together on the feasibility of various projects using CombiMatrix's platform technology to rapidly produce customisable active biochips, semiconductor-based tools for use in identifying and determining the roles of genes, gene mutations and proteins.
Industry
Samsung Electronics led growth among the major players in the chip industry in the second quarter of 2004, according to data released by market research firm iSuppli. Samsungs' spectacular second quarter 84,7% revenue growth compared to the same period in 2003, was more than twice that achieved by the next-fastest growing supplier: Texas Instruments. iSuppli said Samsung continued to benefit from its leadership in the fast-growing DRAM and flash-memory markets, while TI's strength was its position in mobile phones with its DSPs. According to iSuppli, the top 10 chip companies in order by revenue for 2Q2004 (in brackets: % change 2Q04 vs 2Q03): Intel $7280m (20,0%); Samsung $3644m (84,7%); Texas Insts $2646m (46,8%); Renesas $2412m (26,4%); Infineon $2301m (39,8% ); STMicro $2172m (27,6%); Toshiba $2104m (30,1%); NEC $1629m (23,6%); Freescale $1462m (36,3%); Philips $1437m (40,5%).
Demand for thermal management sub-systems used in semiconductor and related manufacturing equipment will reach $308m in 2004, up 54,8% from 2003, according to VLSI Research. The outlook is for worldwide sales to grow at 8% over the next five years to reach a value of $481m in 2009.
The Portsmouth Group has released a revised forecast for IC revenue growth in 2004 compared with 2003, forecasting the market would grow by 37%. The group previously forecast growth of 44% in 2004, but opted to reduce its forecast because of recent signs of the market softening.
According to a five year outlook prepared by Strategy Analytics, the mobile phone handset market is set to remain the primary driver of the gallium arsenide IC market. The worldwide GaAs device market will grow from $2,7 bn in 2003 to $2,9 bn in 2004 and reach $3,7 bn in 2008, said Strategy Analytics.
Semico Research has announced it sees the semiconductor industry on course to finish 2004 with a stellar growth rate of 31%, or $218,7 bn. Like the glowing finish in year 2000, it said 2004 is marked by similar market conditions characterised by a strong GDP, a robust economy that is bolstered by election year activity, and strong sales in personal computers and consumer electronics such as camera phones. Also, the increasing use of semiconductors in applications such as automobiles and industrial equipment will also fuel market growth.
Intel Capital has made five additional investments from its $200m Intel Digital Home Fund in companies developing technologies for the digital home. They are: Cablematrix, a broadband network services software company; Mediabolic, a developer of embedded software for consumer electronics devices; Pure Networks, a provider of consumer software and services for the digital home; BridgeCo, a digital entertainment networking solutions provider, and Envivio, a broadcast and streaming media tools and systems company.
The FCC has provided an additional 20 MHz of spectrum that can be used to offer a variety of broadband and advanced wireless services (AWS) in the US, potentially including 3G wireless services. The FCC allocated and paired five-megahertz blocks of spectrum at 1915-1920 MHz with 1995-2000 MHz, and 2020-2025 MHz with 2175-2180 MHz for AWS use. It said this will benefit the public by fostering the development of new wireless services that will provide American consumers with additional communications options and capabilities.
Infineon Technologies reached an agreement with the US Department of Justice - Antitrust Division - (DoJ) to plead guilty to a single and limited charge related to the violation of US antitrust laws in connection with the pricing in its dynamic random access memory business between 1 July, 1999 and 15 June, 2002. Under the terms of the agreement, Infineon has agreed to pay a fine of $160m, that it will pay in equal instalments through 2009.
Bookham has successfully completed the company's change of domicile to the USA. The company said it believes this move represents a natural next step in its strategy for building on its position as a leading supplier of optical components and subsystems.
The 'Lab-on-a-Chip - electrical biochip technology' project was nominated for the 'Deutscher Zukunftspreis', Germany's prestigious Future Award for Innovation and Technology. The three project partners from research and industry, Fraunhofer ISIT, Infineon Technologies and Siemens said they intend to further pursue their successful collaboration on electronic biochip technology.
Technology
Intel has disclosed key technical details of its upcoming wireless broadband chip for WiMAX products, which will enable long-distance, high-speed wireless Internet access for homes and businesses. The upcoming wireless component, codenamed 'Rosedale', is expected to be the first SoC design for cost-effective customer premise equipment (CPE) that supports IEEE802.16-2004 (previously known as IEEE802.16REVd).
Samsung Electronics has developed an 8 Gbit NAND flash memory using a 60 nm manufacturing process and a 2 Gbit DDR2 synchronous DRAM using an 80 nm process technology. Samsung claims its advanced 60 nm process achieves the world's smallest memory bit cell size at 0,0082 square micron.
Start-up company Analogix Semiconductor has introduced physical-layer transceiver ICs that it claims lets system designers design in 6,25 Gbps serial performance per copper-twisted pair and 25 Gbps full-duplex over a single InfiniBand copper cable at up to 30 metres distance. Analogix combines the analog programmable pre-emphasis techniques typically used in transmit chains with a combination of analog and DSP techniques on receive chains.
Sony has announced it would begin mass production of full-colour, organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays. The 480 x 320 pixel display measures 9,7 cm diagonally, is 2,14 mm thick, shows 262144 colours and has a 180° viewing angle. The first application will be the company's CLIE PEG-VZ90 handheld personal entertainment device.
ATI Technologies has developed an IC that allows a personal computer equipped with a television tuner to function as personal video recorder (PVR). The company said the 'Theater 550 Pro' video processor includes: 12-bit video decoder with filtering for NTSC and PAL; digital intermediate frequency demodulation; multistandard audio decoding; PCI Express X1 and PCI interfaces. ATI said a number of PC manufacturers had agreed to create products including the chip.
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