South Africa
JSE listed Altech announced the group’s interim results for the six months ended 31 August 2009. Revenue was up to R4,7 billion, with profit after tax up 14% to R322 million. Adjusted headline earnings per share were up 13% to 304 cents. Transactions concluded during the period included the acquisition of the entire share capital of both Fleetcall, a leading radio trunking network operator, and Internet technology solutions and broad-based IT company, Technology Concepts. Altech also concluded the purchase of 50% plus 1 share in NuPay, a transaction service provider and switching company.
Reunert and Siemens South Africa have signed an agreement to transfer Siemens’ remaining 60% stake in Siemens Enterprise Communications (SEC) to Reunert. With this transaction, the JSE-listed company will hold 100% in SEC. The transaction, whose value has not been disclosed, is still subject to approval by the South African competition authorities.
The CSIR has released its annual report for 2008/09, which further reinforces the positive impacts of the organisation’s reconfiguration in 2005. In terms of its demographic profile, the figures for the organisation’s Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) base reached 53% black and 33% female during the period. The number of research publications by CSIR scientists increased by 32% to 451 in the past financial year. Scientifically and financially rewarding collaborations also showed a significant increase, with the value of research supporting national strategies showing an increase of more than R76 million. The organisation’s balance sheet for 2008/09 shows a 21% increase in total operating income to R1,4 billion, while net profit increased by 7% to R58 million. The CSIR has also done well in terms of technology transfer, which has resulted in a significant increase in licensing agreements and royalty income across the broad portfolio of work undertaken by the CSIR.
Overseas
Business
Infineon is planning to spend 10 million Euros on manufacturing equipment for its Dresden manufacturing line as it returns to growth mode. The capacity expansion will see 70 new jobs created at the site that currently employs 1800, and will pave the way for increased production of chips for automotive, smartcard, security and wireless communication markets.
Micron announced results of operations for its fourth quarter and 2009 fiscal year, which ended 3 September 2009. For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009, the company posted a net loss of $88 million, or $0,10 per diluted share, on net sales of $1,3 billion. This compares with 4Q 2008 net loss of $344 million, or $0,45 per diluted share, on net sales of $1,45 billion. For the 2009 fiscal year, the company posted a net loss of $1,8 billion, or $2,29 per diluted share, on net sales of $4,8 billion. This compares with 2008 full-year net loss of $1,6 billion, or $2,10 per diluted share, on net sales of $5,8 billion.
Companies
Trident Microsystems and NXP Semiconductors have signed a definitive agreement whereby Trident will acquire NXP’s television systems and set-top box business lines. Trident would remain fabless with a significant presence in Asia and as a result of the transaction would have a global leadership position in the digital home entertainment market. Under the terms of the transaction, NXP will receive newly issued shares of Trident common stock equal to 60% of the total shares outstanding post-closing, including approximately 6,7 million shares that NXP will purchase at a price of $4,50 per share, resulting in cash proceeds to Trident of $30 million.
MIPS Technologies announced that Altera has licensed its MIPS32 architecture, marking the entry of the MIPS architecture into the FPGA channel. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
NXP Semiconductors has agreed to transfer a part of its CMOS intellectual property rights and certain engineering talent and equipment to Virage Logic. This arrangement includes a long-term licensing and IP development relationship between the two companies, enabling NXP to reduce costs without compromising its design capability. Under the terms of the multiyear agreement, NXP will transfer over 160 employees and the assets associated with selected advanced CMOS libraries, IP blocks and SoC architecture along with other classes of semiconductor IP, including approximately 25 associated patent families. In consideration for the assets, NXP will receive 2,5 million shares of Virage Logic common stock, which will be subject to transfer restrictions, and a share of the future revenue generated by Virage Logic from licensing the transferred IP portfolio.
Industry
Customs experts and officials from China, Taiwan, Europe, Japan, Korea and the USA met in Korea recently to discuss the problem of counterfeit ICs. During the meeting, participants discussed the extent of the problem, societal and economic risks and consequences of semiconductor counterfeiting, descriptions of national enforcement procedures, current efforts to address the problem and possible ‘toolkits’ to contain semiconductor counterfeiting. A spokesperson for the group stated: “Counterfeit products are an increasing problem throughout the world and the semiconductor industry is no exception to this growing threat. The impact goes beyond IP or trademark infringement of semiconductor companies. Together with an increase in the number of semiconductors being used in an end-product, proliferation of counterfeit semiconductors in today’s market creates risks to public safety and health.”
Following alarming revenue plunges in late 2008 and early 2009, the global electronics contract manufacturing business showed signs of stabilisation in the second quarter, with the top players experiencing a collective return to growth, according to iSuppli. Based on a review of second-quarter sales data, the top 10 electronics manufacturing service (EMS) providers achieved revenue growth of 1,6% compared to the first quarter. While this may not appear to be much of an increase, it represents a dramatic swing from the 25% sequential revenue contraction in the first quarter. The top 10 original design manufacturers (ODMs) performed much better, with second-quarter revenue rising by 12% compared to the first quarter. This contrasts with a 14% sequential decline in the first quarter.
According to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), worldwide sales of semiconductors in August totalled $19,1 billion, an increase of 5% from July 2009 when sales were $18,2 billion. Sales declined 16,1% from August 2008, when sales were $22,7 billion. Sales were up sequentially in all geographic regions. Year-to-date sales through August are down 21,3% to $133,8 billion from $170,1 billion at this time last year. The rate of decline has slowed from the first six months of 2009 during which sales declined by 25% year-on-year. All monthly sales numbers represent a three-month moving average of global semiconductor sales.
Worldwide production of printed circuit boards (PCBs) was flat in 2008, climbing a negligible 1% over 2007 to $50,8 billion, according to the ‘World PCB Production & Laminate Market Report for the Year 2008’ released by IPC. The value of PCB production in 2009 is expected to end in a double-digit decline from 2008. China’s share of PCB production continued to grow in 2008 to 31,4% of world production, while most other countries’ shares either held steady or declined. Japan is the second biggest producer with 22,5%. Asia now has 84% of the world’s PCB production value. North American and European PCB production declined slightly, holding 8% and 7% shares, respectively, in 2008. The value of PCB production in Europe declined approximately 10% in real terms in 2008. In North America, the production decline was about 6,5%, while the North American market declined by around 5,3%, suggesting that production levels were affected by both a shrinking home market and continued movement of production to other regions.
The EDA Consortium announced that the EDA industry revenue for the second quarter of 2009 was $1,13 billion, a 5,6% sequential decline. On a Q2/Q2 basis, EDA industry revenue declined 15,8%, compared to $1,34 billion in Q2 2008. The four-quarter moving average declined 13,9%. This marks the sixth consecutive quarter of industry revenue decline on a year-to-year basis. Companies that were tracked employed 26 298 professionals in Q2 2009, down 6,1% from the 28 004 employed in Q2 2008, and down 1% from the 26 561 employed in Q1 2009. Computer aided engineering (CAE), EDA’s largest category, generated revenue of $449,7 million in Q2 2009. This represents a 12,2% decrease over the same period in 2008. Revenue in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) was down 21,1% in Q2 2009 compared to Q2 2008 on revenues of $212,4 million. The four-quarter moving average for EMEA was down 14,3%.
Technology
Sharp has developed a five-primary-colour display that faithfully reproduces the real surface colours that humans are capable of perceiving. The display features special image processing circuitry, in addition to the display panel whose pixel structure is based on five-colour filters that add the colours C (cyan) and Y (yellow) to the three colours of R (red), G (green) and B (blue). This combination expands the colour gamut that can be rendered within the colour spectrum that humans can discern with the unaided eye, and enables the display to reproduce more than 99% of real surface colours. Nearly all real surface colours can be rendered faithfully, including colours that have been difficult to render using conventional LCD monitors — the colour of the sea (emerald blue), brass instruments (golden yellow) and roses (crimson red), for example.
Texas Instruments has announced the opening of a highly advanced analog manufacturing facility in Texas. Known as RFAB, the fab will be the world’s only production facility to use 300 millimetre silicon wafers to manufacture analog chips. The facility is expected to give TI a strategic advantage in high-volume production because thousands of analog chips can be etched onto each of these wafers, more than double the number on the more commonly used 200 millimetre wafers.
CMOS image sensors in special cameras – as used for driver assistance systems – mostly only provide monochrome images and have a limited sensitivity to light. Thanks to a new production process developed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems, these sensors can now distinguish colour and are much more sensitive to light. In the same way as the human eye needs colour-specific cone types, colour filters have to be inserted in front of the sensors so that they can distinguish colour. This job is handled by polymers dyed in the primary colours red, green and blue. Each pixel on the sensor is coated with one of the three colours by a machine which coats the sensor disk with a micrometre-thick polymer layer. Using UV light and a mask which is only transparent on the desired pixels, the dye is fixed at the requisite points and the rest is then washed off.
University of Missouri researchers are developing a nuclear energy source that is smaller, lighter and more efficient than traditional batteries. According to researcher Jae Kwon, the radioisotope battery can provide power density that is six orders of magnitude higher than chemical batteries. Kwon and his research team have been working on building a small nuclear battery, currently the size and thickness of a penny, intended to power various micro-/nano-electromechanical systems (M/NEMS). Quelling concerns which naturally arise at the mention of the word ‘nuclear’, Kwon points out that nuclear power sources have already been safely powering a variety of devices, such as pacemakers, space satellites and underwater systems. The innovation is not only in the battery’s size, but also in its semiconductor; Kwon’s battery uses a liquid semiconductor rather than a solid semiconductor. This is to mitigate the problem whereby harvesting energy from a radioactive battery can damage the lattice structure of a solid semiconductor.
ARM recently announced the results from a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) 45 nm test chip that is said to demonstrate potential power savings of up to 40% over traditional bulk process for manufacturing chips. The test chip was based on an ARM 1176 processor and enables a direct comparison between SOI and bulk microprocessor implementations. The silicon results further showed that 45 nm high-performance SOI technology can provide up to a 7% circuit area reduction compared to bulk CMOS low-power technology, operating at the same speed. This same implementation also demonstrated 20% higher operating frequency capability over bulk while saving 30% in total power in specific test applications.
Researchers from Micronas and the Freiburg University in Germany have developed a microchip that integrates a fuel cell array to provide it with power. The device contains 42 microscale fuel cells plus four cells to power the control circuitry necessary to keep the 3,3 V output voltage constant. The semiconductor structures were manufactured on a standard CMOS process, while the fuel cell elements were added post-process. The chip is capable of delivering nominal power levels of hundreds of Watts, with a lifetime of roughly one year.
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