09/25/2007 Building on its relationships with partners PDF Solutions, Ponte Solutions, and Brion Technologies, Pyxis Technology launched its Nexus Solution Suite on Sept. 25, having matured the product through implementation on 60 different designs, and working with a number of IC manufacturers including AMD and Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing.
09/25/2007 September 25, 2007 - NOR flash memory firm Spansion Inc. has named Donald Lucas as its chairman, a role vacated by AMD top exec Hector Ruiz, and added Gilled Delfassy to its board of directors.
09/25/2007 RedShift Systems has selected MEMS foundry Innovative Micro Technology (IMT) to produce its Thermal Light Valve (TLV), which allows standard CMOS and CCD digital cameras to "see heat." RedShift says the TLV enables new, affordable devices that will rapidly expand the market for thermal imaging.
09/25/2007 Purdue University will get $18.2 million from the federal government to develop more sophisticated simulations of the nanoscale world on desktop computers.
09/25/2007 A lab-on-a-chip device that could detect the bird flu virus before any serious outbreaks occur has been developed by a team of scientists working at several institutions in Singapore.
09/25/2007 The growing role that solid-state drives, which use NAND flash memory to store digital data, are playing in the storage market, was the subject of much discussion at the IDEMA DISKCON 2007 conference (9/19-20). Samsung, for one, is upbeat for new applications as costs decline and densities soar, and has big plans to cut costs further. However, the fact is that disk drives are still the storage technology of choice -- and the rise of consumer demand is actually helping HDDs as much as flash.
09/25/2007 Rice University scientists have captured the first optical images of carbon nanotubes inside a living organism. They used a laser to excite nanotubes that had been fed to fruit flies, and took pictures of the resulting glow with a custom microscope; the technique may help uncover new ways to diagnose disease.
09/24/2007 September 24, 2007 - Private equity firm Advantage Partners LLP reportedly is the winner in the auction for Sanyo Electric Co.'s chipmaking operations, outbidding and outlasting up to six other potential suitors, according to various media reports.
09/24/2007 September 24, 2007 - Cadence Design Systems Inc. has opened a new facility for its research labs near the U. of California/Berkeley, to host research for next-generation electronic design automation (EDA) challenges.
09/24/2007 September 24, 2007 - A week after announcing their partnership, Micromem Technologies Inc. and pure-play GaAs foundry Global Communication Semiconductors Inc. (GCS) say they have started processing MRAM wafers.
09/24/2007 September 24, 2007 - Semiconductor packaging/assembly/test services provider ASAT Holdings Ltd. said its Chinese subsidiary ASAT Semiconductor (Dongguan) Ltd. has received a commitment for RMB 150 million (roughly US $20 million) in financing from a Chinese bank.
09/24/2007 WiSpry, developer of radio frequency micro-electro-mechanical systems (RF-MEMS) tunable components and modules, announced the appointment of Mark Becker as chief financial officer.
09/24/2007 Cadence Design Systems, Inc., announced that NEC Electronics America has adopted Cadence Encounter digital design IC platform to implement their high-performance, low-power ARM11 MPCore multicore processors. The processor reportedly is rated at over 700MHz and built on 90-nm process technology, The success of the dual-core implementation of the device prompted NEC to add the platform as one of its tapeout methodologiesof-choice.
09/21/2007 September 21, 2007 - Taiwan's second-tier foundries' production capacities are overflowing with contracts to fill demand for areas like power MOSFETs and analog chips, and production is likely to remain at full capacity for the next two months, according to the Taiwan Economic News.
09/21/2007 September 21, 2007 - China's Grace Semiconductor has named Ulrich Schumacher, former CEO of German chipmaker Infineon Technologies, as its new president and CEO, as well as a director.
09/21/2007 September 21, 2007 - Infineon Technologies AG has finalized a proposed reduction in its ownership stake in former memory chipmaking division Qimonda, reducing its stake from about 86% to 78.6% (and maybe down to 77.5% if options are exercised). At a price of $10.92/share, the offering is worth about 194 million euros (US ~$272M).
09/21/2007 September 21, 2007 - Samsung Electronics says another "brief" power outage at its K2 production line in its Giheung facility lasted about half a minute, but there was no damage. An automatic system switched on immediately and all lines continued operating normally, a spokesperson told the Korea Times, calling the glitch "a minor technical problem."
09/21/2007 Keithley Instruments, Inc. has partnered with The California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at UCLA to support research collaboration for next-generation instrumentation and measurement requirements to serve the semiconductor industry. The two organiziations intend to share research information to further the understanding of nanotechnology and nanoelectronic technologies
09/21/2007 Analysts presenting at a SEMI breakfast panel on Sept. 19 reviewed changes reshaping the chipmaking and equipment industries, agreeing on several fronts such as progress in production efficiencies and an increasingly consumer-reliant future. But there was plenty of room for debate about the real growth possible in certain new markets (e.g. photovoltaics), and what the sum of all these parts means for investors.
Rice University scientists have captured the first optical images of carbon nanotubes inside a living organism. They used a laser to excite nanotubes that had been fed to fruit flies, and took pictures of the resulting glow with a custom microscope; the technique may help uncover new ways to diagnose disease.