South Africa
The Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) hosted the signing of the first South Africa-Ethiopia memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the expansion of cooperation in science, technology and innovation (STI) between the two countries. The MoU will seek to promote information and knowledge sharing relating to research, technological development and innovation, as well as joint scientific and technological solutions in support of the two countries’ developmental agendas.
RFiber Solutions has signed an agreement to distribute X-REL Semiconductor’s offering into the South African market. X-REL designs innovative high-reliability and high-temperature integrated circuits and systems for a wide range of application fields. The range of products it offers includes power management, signal conditioning, clocks and timing, interfacing and transceivers, discretes and logic.
Overseas
Business
For the third fiscal quarter of 2021, Keysight Technologies grew revenue by 23% year-on-year to reach $1,25 billion. Net income was $254 million, or $1,36 per share, compared with $176 million, or $0,93 per share, in the third quarter of 2020. The company’s Communications Solutions Group contributed the bulk of revenue with $875 million, while the Electronic Industrial Solutions Group enjoyed better relative growth, up 48% over last year.
Companies
ON Semiconductor, a well-known name in the IC vendor landscape over many years, has changed its trading name to onsemi and says it has refreshed its brand as a next step in the company’s evolution to establish itself as the leading provider of intelligent power and sensing technologies. With a continued focus on the automotive and industrial end-markets, onsemi has sharpened its strategy to drive disruptive innovation that contributes to a sustainable ecosystem of high-growth megatrends such as vehicle electrification, advanced safety, alternative energy and factory automation.
Industry
In IC Insights’ rankings of semiconductor sales leaders for the second quarter of calendar year 2021 (2Q21), Samsung saw its total semiconductor sales increase by 19% to $20,3 billion, moving it past Intel and into first place to become the world’s largest semiconductor supplier for 2Q21. Samsung previously held such a lead over Intel through much of 2017 and 2018 and with strong demand for memory ICs forecast to continue this quarter, Samsung’s sales are projected to rise another 10% to $22,3 billion in 3Q21, further widening its lead over Intel.
The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) announced that global semiconductor industry sales were $45,4 billion in the month of July 2021, an increase of 29% over the July 2020 total of $35,2 billion and 2,1% more than the June 2021 total of $44,5 billion. Regionally, year-to-year sales increased in Europe (38,0%), Asia Pacific/All Other (30,9%), China (28,9%), the Americas (26,8%) and Japan (20,9%). Month-to-month sales increased in the Americas (4,2%), Japan (3,2%), Asia Pacific/All Other (2,0%) and China (1,2%), but fell slightly in Europe (-0,8%).
Technology
For the first time, a large high-temperature superconducting electromagnet has been ramped up to a field strength of 20 tesla, the most powerful magnetic field of its kind ever created on Earth. That successful demonstration helps resolve the greatest uncertainty in the quest to build the world’s first fusion power plant that can produce more power than it consumes, according to the project’s leaders at MIT and startup company Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS). The next step will be building SPARC, a smaller-scale version of the planned ARC power plant; if successful, SPARC will demonstrate that a full-scale commercial fusion power plant is practical.
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