Overseas
Business
• Intel reported third-quarter revenue of $14,5 billion, operating income of $4,2 billion, net income of $3,1 billion and EPS (earnings per share) of 64 cents. Its client computing group’s revenue was $8,5 billion (up 13% sequentially and down 7% year-over-year); data centre group revenue was $4,1 billion (up 8% sequentially and up 12% year-over-year); Internet of Things (IoT) group revenue was $581 million (up 4% percent and up 10% year-over-year); and software and services operating segments revenue was $556 million (up 4% sequentially and flat year-over-year).
• ARM Holdings reported results for the third quarter and nine months ended 30 September 2015. For the year to date, revenue showed 23% growth over last year to reach £569,3, while EPS climbed by 30% to 22 pence. For the third quarter alone, the company signed 38 processor licences for a broad range of applications, from sensors to smartphones to servers, while 3,6 billion ARM-based chips were shipped over the same period, up 20% year-on-year.
• Texas Instruments reported third-quarter revenue of $3,43 billion, net income of $798 million and earnings per share of 76 cents. These figures compare with third-quarter 2014 revenue of $3,5 billion, net income of $826 million and identical earnings per share of 76 cents.
• Xilinx announced second quarter fiscal 2016 sales of $528 million, down 4% from the prior quarter and down 13% from the same quarter of the prior fiscal year. Second quarter fiscal 2016 net income was $127 million, or $0,48 per diluted share, compared to net income of $148 million ($0,55 per share) for the prior quarter and net income of $172 ($0,62 per share) for the second quarter of fiscal 2015.
• Sales for Melexis’ third quarter of 2015 were 101,6 million Euros, an increase of 17% compared to the same quarter of the previous year and flat compared to the previous quarter. Net income was 25,0 million Euros or 0,62 Euros per share, an increase of 1% compared to 24,7 million Euros or 0,61 Euros per share in the third quarter of 2014.
• GE has announced plans to enter the cloud services market with Predix Cloud, the world’s first cloud solution designed specifically for industrial data and analytics. This platform-as-a-service (PaaS) will capture and analyse the unique volume, velocity and variety of machine data within a highly secure, industrial-strength cloud environment. With $4 billion in software revenues in 2014 and projected software revenues of $6 billion in 2015, this signals GE’s intent to continue growing its investment in software.
• For Cypress Semiconductor, third quarter revenue declined 4,3% sequentially in a softening semiconductor market, while pretax profit increased 10,6% quarter-on-quarter, driven in part by continued integration progress in the wake of its merger with Spansion, which led to a 7,9% reduction in operating expenses. The company also announced a $450 million stock buy-back programme; since 2008, the company has returned more than $4,2 billion in capital to shareholders.
Companies
• A federal jury has found that Apple infringed upon a patent owned by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) for an invention that significantly improves the efficiency and speed of computer processing. Following a two-week trial, the jury awarded WARF damages of $234 million. The technology, which enables efficient out-of-order execution of computer instructions with a data speculation circuit, was applied in Apple’s A7, A8 and A8X processors which are found in the iPhone 5s, 6 and 6 Plus, as well as several versions of the iPad.
• Microsemi has submitted an offer to acquire PMC-Sierra, a global fabless semiconductor company specialising in the storage, communications, optical networking, printing and embedded computing markets, in a cash and stock transaction. The transaction is valued at $11,50 per PMC share, representing a premium of approximately 50% to the closing price on 5 October 2015, the last trading day prior to the announcement of PMC’s proposed acquisition by Skyworks Solutions.
• Axsem, a provider of low-power radio frequency (RF) devices, is now a part of ON Semiconductor following an acquisition for an undisclosed amount. Axsem’s portfolio of low-power sub-gigahertz RF solutions (SIGFOX, enocean, wireless M-Bus, AT and proprietary) enhance ON Semiconductor’s existing 2,4 GHz (ZigBee) and wired (MBus, KNX and HART) offerings.
• Maxim Integrated Products, which recently engaged a bank to conduct a strategic review, is rumoured to have been approached by Analog Devices to consider merging the two companies. Bloomberg reported the news but did not disclose its sources, nor have confirmation or denial been forthcoming from company spokespeople. Nevertheless, Maxim’s share price jumped more than 10% on the day the news broke, while Analog Devices’ increased by 8%.
• Also from Bloomberg came news that Fairchild Semiconductor is in buyout talks with ON Semiconductor and Infineon Technologies, after Fairchild enlisted the help of Goldman Sachs to find a buyer. Fairchild’s share price climbed 16% following publication of the news, which added that there is no certainty of a deal and a transaction is not imminent.
• Melexis has signed an agreement with Sony to further expand the time-of-flight offering for automobile safety and infotainment markets. Sony stated earlier that it had acquired SoftKinetic, a Belgian developer of sensor-to-software 3D gesture solutions including the patented DepthSense time-of-flight sensor technology. Melexis has been licensed under this technology for a number of years for products such as the MLX75023, the world’s first automotive time-of-flight sensor in production.
• Infineon Technologies announced the setup of its second factory in Wuxi, on the occasion of its 20th anniversary of operation in China. Scheduled for rollout at the end of 2016, the factory comprises a total investment of nearly $300 million, engaging an area of 36 000 square metres. An addition of about 2500 jobs is anticipated upon ramp-up of all the production lines.
Industry
• Intel announced a 10-year collaborative relation-ship with the Delft University of Technology and TNO, the Dutch Organisation for Applied Research, to accelerate advancements in quantum computing. To achieve this goal, the company will invest $50 million and will provide significant engineering resources both on-site and at Intel, as well as technical support. The company said its goal is to extend the university’s physics expertise and diverse quantum computing research efforts by contributing advanced manufacturing, electronics and architectural expertise.
• Worldwide sales of semiconductors totalled $27,7 billion for the month of August 2015, a decrease of 0,5% from the previous month and 3% lower than August 2014, the Semiconductor Industry Association reported. Regionally, year-to-year sales increased in China (4,4%), but decreased in the Americas (-3,5%), Europe (-12,4%), Japan (-13,0%) and Asia Pacific/all others (-2,3%). The sharp decreases in Europe and Japan were due in part to currency devaluation relative to the US dollar. On a month-to-month basis, sales increased in Japan (1,3%) and the Americas (1,1%), but fell in China (-0,3%), Europe (-0,6%) and Asia Pacific/all others (-2,1%).
• Massachusetts resident, Peter Picone, was sentenced to 37 months in prison for importing thousands of counterfeit ICs from China and Hong Kong and reselling them to US customers, including contractors supplying them to the US Navy for use in nuclear submarines. On 24 April 2012, federal agents searched Picone’s business and residence, and recovered nearly 13 000 counterfeit ICs.
• Gartner is predicting that worldwide semiconductor revenue will total $337,8 billion in 2015, a decline of 0,8% from 2014. This would mark the first decline in revenue since 2012 when the market shrank by 2,6%., and is down from the previous quarter’s forecast of 2,2% growth. The research firm based its forecast on the negative outlook for major applications such as PCs, smartphones and tablets, combined with continuing impact of the strong dollar on demand in key markets outside of the US. Gartner predicts a more positive outlook for 2016 and is forecasting semiconductor revenue will increase 1,9% to $344,1 billion.
Technology
• ARM has released a new highly-efficient graphics processing unit (GPU) to enable smartphone-quality visuals on wearable and IoT devices. The ARM Mali-470 delivers an enhanced user interface for power-constrained products, including smart watches, home gateways and appliances, industrial control panels and healthcare monitors. It is available for immediate licensing, with the first devices expected in late 2016.
• Texas Instruments unveiled the Sitara AM57x processor family, the highest performing devices in this processor platform. They are designed for a broad range of embedded and industrial applications through their unique heterogeneous architecture including ARM Cortex-A15 cores for high-performance processing and running a high-level operating system (HLOS). Additionally, they integrate TI’s C66x digital signal processors for analytics and real-time computation, programmable real-time units and ARM Cortex-M4 cores for control functions, and video and graphic accelerators for advanced user interfaces and multimedia applications.
• Atmel has launched the first radiation tolerant megaAVR microcontroller for space applications. The ATmegaS128 delivers full wafer lot traceability, 64-lead ceramic package (CQFP), space screening, space qualification according to QML and ESCC flow and total ionising dose up to 30 Krad (Si) for space applications. It is latch-up immune thanks to a dedicated silicon process.
• Dialog Semiconductor and Bosch Sensortec are collaborating to create an extremely low-power smart sensor platform that combines Bosch Sensortec’s sensors with Dialog’s Bluetooth Smart technology. The product resulting from the collaboration is said to be the world’s lowest-power, 12 degree of freedom smart sensor reference platform for gesture recognition in wearable computing devices and immersive gaming, 3D indoor mapping and navigation.
• Xilinx announced first customer shipment of the industry’s first 16 nm multiprocessor SoC (MPSoC) a quarter ahead of schedule. The early release of the Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC enables Xilinx customers to begin designing and delivering MPSoC-based systems today. Built using TSMC’s 16FF+ process, the device enables the development of next-generation embedded vision, ADAS, industrial IoT and communications systems by providing a claimed fivefold better system-level performance/Watt and any-to-any connectivity with the security and safety required for next-generation systems.
• Texas Instruments has equipped its latest DLP (digital light processing) chipset with more than 4 million micromirrors, making it the company’s highest-speed and resolution chipset for 3D printing and lithography applications. Consisting of the DLP9000X digital micromirror device (DMD) and the newly available DLPC910 controller, the solution is capable of streaming pixels at over 60 gigabits per second, making it ideal for applications like 3D printing, direct imaging lithography, laser marking, LCD/OLED repair and computer-to-plate printers, as well as 3D machine vision and hyperspectral imaging.
• CEVA introduced the CEVA Deep Neural Network (CDNN), a real-time neural network software framework, to streamline machine learning deployment in low-power embedded systems. Harnessing the processing power of the CEVA-XM4 imaging and vision DSP, it enables embedded systems to perform deep learning tasks three times faster than the leading GPU-based systems while consuming thirty times less power and requiring 15 times less memory bandwidth. For example, running a DNN-based pedestrian detection algorithm at 28 nm requires less than 30 mW for a 1080p, 30 frame per second video stream.
• Nanoelectronics research centre imec and Cadence Design Systems have completed the first tapeout of a 5 nm test chip using extreme ultraviolet (EUV) as well as 193 immersion (193i) lithography. Using a processor design, the experiment pushed the limits of patterning and indicates that a combination of EUV and 193i is likely the best approach for pushing the size/performance envelope in the future.
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