South Africa
Jasco Power will be supplying failover and protection hardware for another 35 sites as part of Sentech’s rollout of equipment for South Africa’s migration to digital terrestrial television. Following the successful completion of Jasco’s initial contract – also for 35 sites – the new deal is for uninterruptible power supplies designed, manufactured, installed and commissioned by Jasco, as well as automatic voltage regulators at switching centres.
Students from the University of Johannesburg’s (UJ) Solar Team unveiled Ilanga II, the prototype solar energy vehicle set to compete in the 2014 Sasol Solar Challenge, at an official ceremony at its Kingsway Campus in Auckland Park, Johannesburg. The race will span eight days starting 27 September.
Schneider Electric has partnered with Rays of Hope, a non-profit organisation, to donate solar lamps to schoolchildren and their families in the northern Johannesburg township of Alexandra. The company donated 28 of its energy-efficient In-Diya LED lighting systems, in addition to a battery charging station which has been installed at Rays of Hope’s facility.
Samsung Electronics South Africa has installed another of its solar powered Internet schools, this time at Mahlenga Secondary School in Sokhulumi, a small developing town in the North West Province.
Overseas
Business
Analog Devices announced financial results for its third quarter of fiscal year 2014. Boosted by the industrial and communications infrastructure markets in particular, the company’s revenue of $727,8 million represented growth of 8% sequentially and 5% when compared to last year’s third quarter. Net income for this most recent quarter was $180,6 million or $0,57 diluted earnings per share (EPS). The company is expecting its recent acquisition of Hittite Microwave to raise revenue for its fourth quarter to the $790 million to $820 million range.
Fairchild Semiconductor will axe 15% of its workforce when it closes its wafer fabrication lines in USA, Malaysia and South Korea. The closures are planned to begin in the second quarter of 2015 and are expected to realise annual savings of $45 to $55 million.
Companies
Microchip Technology has adopted Semtech’s long-range LoRa RF technology for the development of Internet-of-Things (IoT), machine-to-machine (M2M), metering, security and industrial automation applications, among others. This forms part of Semtech’s efforts to create an ecosystem of partners and application solutions, to connect to both private and public IoT/M2M networks.
Infineon Technologies and International Rectifier (IR) announced that they have signed a definitive agreement under which Infineon will acquire IR for $40 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $3 billion. Over and above the fact that Infineon will be acquiring a company with highly complementary product portfolios, this serves to further the company’s focus on gallium nitride on silicon (GaN) based power semiconductor technology.
Murata Manufacturing, through its Murata Electronics North America subsidiary, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Peregrine Semiconductor in its entirety for $12,50 per share in cash, or a total transaction value of $471 million. Peregrine, the founder of RF SOI (silicon on insulator) and a leading provider of RF front-end solutions for mobile and analog applications, will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Murata and continue to operate with its current business model.
u-blox has acquired Antcor, a developer of Wi-Fi baseband intellectual property (IP), for 5,2 million Euros, in addition to an earn-out which offers the sellers the possibility to participate in certain future revenues of the company. The transaction gives u-blox immediate ownership of advanced Wi-Fi core technology that will enable it to develop ruggedised communication solutions tailored to demanding environments.
OmniVision Technologies, a US developer of advanced digital imaging solutions, announced that its board of directors has received a takeover bid from Hua Capital Management for $29,00 per share, or around $1,64 billion. The investment group includes Shanghai Pudong Science and Technology Investment, a wholly state-owned limited liability company.
Microchip is in preliminary discussions over the possible acquisition of CSR, a leading provider of AV, connectivity and location technology. The two have worked together in the past, on a Bluetooth module initiative for example. CSR issued a public rejection on the basis that Microchip’s initial offer was too miserly.
Industry
In recent years, the number of patent applications for electrochemical energy storage technologies has soared. According to a study by the Technische Universität München (TUM), the largest volume of applications by far is submitted by developers of lithium batteries. In this sector, Asia leads the way by far with more than four times as many patent applications as European companies (the US is even further behind) and better performance to boot.
According to DMASS (Distributors’ and Manufacturers’ Association of Semiconductor Specialists) semiconductor distribution sales in Europe grew by 5,3% to 1,6 billion Euros in the second quarter of 2014. Except for France, Benelux, Nordic and Switzerland, all the major regions showed improvement.
Technology
China is on the cusp of launching its own operating system, according to news outlet Xinhua, which quoted Ni Guangnan of the Chinese Academy of Engineering as saying that a desktop version will be ready as early as October this year, with a mobile version to follow. Originating from state newspaper The People’s Post and Telecommunications News, the story gave no technical details but the reasons for the OS’s development are to set a platform for the country’s developers to be more globally competitive, as well as concerns over US surveillance.
IBM has manufactured the closest thing that modern technology can get to a chip that imitates the functioning of the human brain. Called TrueNorth, the chip is made up of 4096 tiled cores and has the equivalent of 1 million neurons and 256 million synapses. It is fabricated in Samsung’s 28 nm process and, with 5,4 billion transistors, is IBM’s largest chip to date in transistor count. TrueNorth chips can be tiled to create vast, scalable neuromorphic systems, and are stingy with power, consuming less than 100 mW and boasting a power density of 20 mW/cm².
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