Southern Africa
A new public-private partnership between SA Government and several key players in the South African technology industry, promises to accelerate development of the South African Information and Communication Technologies and Electronics (ICTE) sectors, while raising the international profile of this industry. South Africa's first marketing and branding campaign for the ICTE sectors, SAVANT, involves a coalition of industry leaders supported by government, and is represented by the Department of Trade & Industry (the DTI) and the ICT Development Council. An ongoing initiative, the multilevel project will firstly establish an effective Web presence, which will then be complemented by extensive promotion material, advertisements and projects both locally and abroad. The SAVANT initiative has identified six crucial areas where it believes South Africa has a distinct competitive advantage: IT Training & Certification, Call Centres, Wireless Development, Pilot Lab, Niche Software Development and Infrastructure Development.
ALSTOM (France) has announced, amongst other initiatives, the intended sale of the ALSTOM Transmission & Distribution (T&D) sector internationally as part of a programme to strengthen ALSTOM's balance sheet and focus the company on the Transport and Power business worldwide. The group said that this does not materially affect ALSTOM SA (South Africa) as last year the local shareholding was restructured to include empowerment companies, financiers and management, with ALSTOM retaining 10%. The company is now an independent organisation focused on local manufacturing and added value. In the South African T&D sector, local technology has been developed specifically for the Sub Saharan African environment and is owned by the local company.
Altech Card Solutions (ACS) has announced that it has achieved EMV Level 2 certification for the SchlumbergerSema MagIC range of terminals that it promotes in the southern African region. ACS, a subsidiary of the Altech group of companies, has been supplying electronic funds transfer at point-of-sale (EFTPOS) terminal hardware and software solutions to the South African market since 1993. Managing director of ACS, Derek Chaplin, said that the EMV standards ensured compatibility of smartcard payment accepting devices to international specifications and the Level 2 certification referred to the software aspects of processing a smartcard transaction. EMV application has been certified for online/offline PIN verification and both static data authentication (SDA), and dynamic data authentication (DDA).
Trolley Scan was granted a US patent on 31 December 2002 that details its unique protocol for reading many transponders with a reader. Due to the legal process, protection is backdated to May 1998 when the initial patent was filed in South Africa. The protocol is a very important step in the technology development for low-cost RFID, claims the company, as it allows many very simple transponders to communicate their identity to a reader on a single operating frequency. This is even in situations where all the transponders have identical data - such as would happen when RFID becomes a replacement for bar codes on retail goods using a numbering system such as EAN/(UCC). The protocol also allows EAS features to be incorporated in the transponders and controlled via the reader - setting up the situation where unmanned checkouts with full EAS checking can be implemented in supermarkets, says Trolley Scan.
ICT specialist Grintek Telecom has announced the opening of a new Nortel Networks Training Centre to deliver Nortel Networks product training to the South African and sub-Saharan African markets. Grintek says the training centre opened in response to growing requirements in the local and Pan-African market for Rand-based product and solution training on the Nortel Networks Enterprise Voice range.
Randpark Sound and Vision, traditionally a radio and television components supplier, and based at Randridge Mall, has announced that it has now expanded its offering to cover a wider range of general and specialised components. The company says it stocks many obsolete ICs and transistors, plus many types of transformers for older computer monitors. Travelling and 'on site' service technicians in Johannesburg's northern suburbs will find these services very helpful. Tel/fax: 011 792 4522.
ASIC Design Services is hosting free programmable logic seminars in April at Stellenbosch, Durban and Midrand. See www.asic.co.za.
Crystal Quartz Technology has moved to 33 Nooitgedaght, Joan Street, Randvaal. Box 1232, Meyerton, 1960. Tel: 011 903 7977/011 903 8438, fax: 011 903 7979, [email protected], www.cqtcrystals
Overseas
Business
National Semiconductor has reported revenues of $404,3m for the third quarter of fiscal 2003, a 4% decline from the second quarter of 2003, but up 9% over last year's third quarter. National recorded a net loss of $36,4m compared with a loss of $37,8m in the like period a year ago.
Nokia has warned that continued falling sales and demand at its Networks division would pull first-quarter sales lower, and push the unit to its first reported quarterly loss ever. However, the company stressed its mobile phones division was profitable and indicated that it expected to take market share from leading competitors.
Companies
Infineon Technologies has announced that its subsidiary Infineon Technologies North America has agreed to acquire the assets of MorphICs Technology, thus strengthening its position in the 3G wireless sector. For some time, MorphICs has been developing 'configurable' digital baseband circuits for 3G wireless applications.
Taiwan's Via Technologies has announced it has acquired the wireless applications design centre co-established in 2001 with Swedish microelectronics institute Acreo AB. In 2001, Via and Acreo announced they would establish a new design centre for wireless applications in Lund, Sweden focused on developing RF and mixed-signal device technologies.
Royal Philips Electronics has announced it has invested and re-named its metrology tool unit within its instrumentation division to Philips Advanced Metrology Systems Inc. (Philips AMS).
Agilent Technologies has acquired certain absolute encoder technology from Germany's Optolab Microsystems, a supplier of optoelectronic devices. Optolab has developed what it claims is the world's smallest, high-speed absolute encoder capable of 12 to 16 bit resolutions. This technology will complement Agilent's own 8 and 10 bit resolution absolute encoders.
Cambridge Display Technology (CDT), a licensor of intellectual property in light emitting polymer (LEP) organic light emitting diode (OLED) technology, is to transfer technology for the manufacture of full colour displays by ink-jet printing to DuPont's displays business unit.
Philips Research is spinning out a reconfigurable computing architecture it first developed in the early 1990s to an incubator company called Silicon Hive, which will develop and license synthesizable intellectual-property (IP) cores. Intended for automotive, communications, consumer equipment and data processing applications amongst others, Silicon Hive will license IP blocks based on reconfigurable accelerators.
A Japanese consortium is being established to promote products and applications for 3D stereographic LCDs. Spearheaded by Itochu, NTT Data, Sanyo, Sharp, and Sony, the group will aim to standardise hardware and software to produce stereographic 3D displays that require no additional viewing aids, and build an industry structure to develop and distribute 3D content.
Cadence Design Systems has joined the automotive drive-by-wire FlexRay Consortium as a tool development member. The FlexRay Consortium was formed in September 2000 to create a standard bus system for distributed control applications in vehicles. Cadence plans to develop a system-level FlexRay IP simulation model for the analysis, exploration and validation of advanced architectures featuring the FlexRay protocol.
Cadence Design Systems and ARM Holdings have announced a five-year agreement to enable customers to put different ARM cores into the recently-announced Cadence Incisive verification platform.
ABB, Accenture, Intel and Microsoft have announced an alliance to help manufacturers bridge the gap between plant floor operations and enterprise IT systems. The alliance aims to help manufacturers by simplifying integration, gaining greater visibility into their businesses, making informed, realtime business decisions and enhancing their financial performance. The four companies will provide a full range of computing diagnostics, solution design, development and integration services for manufacturers.
Toshiba says it has introduced a 2 Gbit single die NAND flash memory - double the density of the firm's current NAND chip. Codeveloped with SanDisk, the chip is produced on a 0,13 µm process.
Amkor Technology and Sharp have agreed to work together and unify their designs in the three-dimensional (3D) system-in-package arena. The two companies will attempt to develop an 'industry standard' stacked package format, based on Amkor's stackable 'etCSP' package and Sharp's 'package stacked CSP.' Amkor's etCSP package is a ball grid array capable of a thin 0,5 mm maximum mounted height.
Infineon Technologies has joined the IMEC research program on reconfigurable systems. IMEC and Infineon will collaborate in developing an optimised architecture targeted at Infineon's key application areas, according to the organisations.
Industry
While the 1,5% growth in semiconductor industry revenues in 2002 was far better than the disastrous 31,7% slide experienced in 2001, major changes again occurred in the market share rankings of leading semiconductor suppliers, reports iSuppli. In releasing its Top 30 Semiconductor Suppliers 2002 listing ( www.isuppli.com/pdf/Top30Semicon ductorSuppliers2002.pdf) Dale Ford, director at iSuppli said: 'It was clearly a game of Survivor for the semiconductor industry in 2002, with some contestants being severely penalised by the market. If the semiconductor market in 2002 were an episode of television's Survivor, one-half of the top 30 contestants would be on the verge of getting voted off the island. It is not surprising in a relatively flat revenue growth year that 15 companies were up while 15 were down in our top 30 rankings.' Ford said that five 'survivor' companies in the top 30 listing that experienced double-digit revenue increases were focused on market segments with solid demand profiles throughout 2002, while five other 'at-risk' companies found themselves serving markets where slack demand and falling ASPs were the rule. The 'survivors' were led by Samsung Electronics, which posted an impressive 43% revenue gain thanks to strong DRAM and Flash memory sales, and jumped from number four position to number two. nVidia, which posted a better than 44% revenue gain on strong graphics chip sales into an otherwise flat PC marketplace and ramping video game console sales, moved up six places to rank 24th. In addition, CDMA leader Qualcomm achieved a revenue gain of more than 39% to move up five places to the 23rd slot. Infineon Technologies and Micron both benefited from the DRAM turnaround to post revenue increases of more than 17%.
Global semiconductor sales were $12,2 bn in January of 2003, a 2,4% decrease from $12,5 bn in December of 2002, but a 22% increase from $10 bn in the like period a year ago, according to new figures from the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). For January of 2003, most IC product sectors were down. One of the exceptions was DSP, which was up 3,3% in the month, said SIA. SIA continues to forecast double digit revenue growth for 2003, driven by a recovery in information technology spending, a fast-paced global wireless market, and the emergence of new growth sectors, including Wi-Fi and broadband networks that use advanced semiconductor technologies.
Following rising tensions between the United States and North Korea, iSuppli has warned that South Korea could become the new hot spot in the electronics supply chain. iSuppli warns that OEMs should develop contingency plans if a conflict breaks out in the region. It believes that suppliers in other countries could not make up for a shortfall if South Korea's chip production is interrupted or stopped. Also, according to the group, South Korea not only controlled 44% of the world's DRAM shipments in 2002, but the nation also manufacturers 32% of the world's SRAMs, 15,6% of flash devices, and 40% of all LCDs.
Even though 3G has barely had time to arrive, the industry has been looking beyond it for some time - and according to a new study by Visant Strategies, 4G will soon be here, and may be deployed by mid-2003. A number of different 4G air interfaces are now being readied for beta deployments by leading wireless operators since 4G technologies offer a lower cost and/or higher performance alternative to traditional 3G systems. 4G digital I/P-based high-speed cellular systems are anticipated to account for 14% of total mobile wireless data revenues in 2007 and 50 million subscribers by year-end 2007. 4G infrastructure sales will reach $5,3 bn during 2007 believes Visant.
US cable TV operators are finally 'over the hump' with their long-term projects to upgrade their extensive infrastructure to support new, two-way digital cable services. This is according to a recent survey performed by market researchers In-Stat/MDR. Survey respondents indicated that they have completed most of their bandwidth upgrades, and are now focused on driving new revenue-generating services through these upgraded systems. Other findings: Video-on-Demand (VOD) is one of the key new high value services being deployed by some cable operators; 58% of respondents have 750 MHz or more, of bandwidth on their cable systems; the two most popular digital cable services are digital video and high-speed data.
Market research firm Semico Research, says that the flash memory market was worth about $7,77 bn in 2002. Semico partitions flash memory sales into a NAND-flash market valued at $2,25 bn in 2002 and a NOR-flash market valued at $5,58 bn in 2002. In 2002 the NAND-flash market was led by Samsung, with $1 bn of sales, followed by Toshiba, SanDisk and then Hitachi. The 2002 NOR-flash market was dominated by Intel, who had almost three times as much sales revenue as second-placed Advanced Micro Devices, said Semico.
With Universal Serial Bus (USB) 2.0 succeeding the first generation USB standard, In-Stat/MDR says that USB saw continued success in 2002. In 2002, PC manufacturers adopted the new standard very quickly; to the extent that all desktop PCs shipped by the end of 2003 will be USB 2.0-enabled, it claims. As the standard is adopted by notebook PCs and, eventually, PC peripherals and consumer electronics devices, In-Stat believes that the total number of USB-enabled devices will increase from approximately 375 million in 2002 to 863 million in 2007, a CAGR of 18,2%. Another new USB standard, USB On-The-Go (OTG), made an initial appearance in the market in 2002. Intended to connect portable devices without the need for a PC host, silicon makers are targeting applications such as PDAs and mobile phones.
Shipments of 802.11 chipsets will grow 80% in 2003 to reach 35 million units, according to a new report by IC Insights. The market research firm said that from 2002 to 2006 the average annual shipment growth rate for 802.11 products is expected to be 50%.
Thales UK has been selected by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to undertake the assessment phase (AP) of the FIST (Future Integrated Soldier Technology) programme, which will see soldiers equipped with the latest tactical equipment. The FIST programme intends to equip soldiers with the high-tech capabilities including computerised helmets with night vision and laser-guided technology. The programme will eventually provide around 29000 FIST systems for the UK infantry, according to the MoD. The FIST AP will be conducted over the next three years with a contract value of £15m. Thales said it will be extremely well placed to be chosen for the subsequent demonstration, manufacturing and support phases worth some £2 bn.
Consumer electronics giant Royal Philips Electronics has announced the closure of a wafer fab in San Antonio, Texas, and the cutting of 1600 jobs by the end of the year. The recovery plan for its semiconductor division is expected to provide annual savings of about 250 million Euros and help return the division to profitability in the fourth quarter of 2003. According to the company, the recovery plan includes five elements: technical focus, capacity cuts, business simplification, supply chain management, and winning sales.
ST Microelectronics plans to invest up to 250 million dollars in Singapore over the next three years to increase the production capacity of its 6-inch and 8-inch wafer plants.
Xilinx is to expand its facility in Dublin, Ireland and invest 52m Euros in making the advanced R&D, design and operations centre its European headquarters. As part of the expansion, Xilinx said it would also set up an international technical support centre in Dublin as well as expand the company's existing data hub at the base following a decision to locate strategic marketing operations in Dublin. According to Xilinx it is the first semiconductor company in Ireland to use 300 mm processes.
Hynix Semiconductor plans to invest $100m to upgrade its wafer fab in Oregon, US, in a move to boost DRAM capacity.
German chip giant Infineon may soon be moving its headquarters to Switzerland. According to a Pressetext.europe report, chairman of the board Ulrich Schumacher plans to complete negotiations with tax authorities in six months and present concrete proposals for the foreign relocation of the company's headquarters by the end of the year. Infineon hopes to save several hundred million euros by relocating its headquarters. Pressetext.europe says that in an initial report by WirtschaftsWoche, Schumacher is reviewing several models for a future company structure, as well as three location options. These are Switzerland at the top of the list of European countries, then Southeast Asia - in particular Singapore, which is close to important purchaser markets - then USA, as the least likely of the three main options, but which would offer the best access to capital markets.
Zuken says it is to restructure by moving its European sales headquarters to Munich. This will streamline overlapping functions between Europe and Japan according to the company.
Software-modem specialist PCTEL has filed a patent infringement suit against 3Com, claiming it is infringing upon its fundamental software-modem patent. The company claims it owns patents that enable modems to operate in different countries and to reset country-specific parameters.
The SCO Group, the owner of the UNIX operating system, has announced that it has filed legal action against IBM in the State Court of Utah, for misappropriation of trade secrets, tortuous interference, unfair competition and breach of contract. The complaint alleges that IBM made concentrated efforts to improperly destroy the economic value of UNIX, particularly UNIX on Intel, to benefit IBM's new Linux services business. Details at www.sco.com/scosource.
According to analysts and chip makers at the Semico Summit conference, held recently in Arizona, the cost of a new, leading-edge plant is soaring out of control and running at around $4 bn each today, reaching a point where very few chip companies now can build factories.
Communications is driving Asian design. This is according to a survey, conducted by Dataquest and EE Times-Asia, of 900 design engineers from Mainland China, Taiwan and other regional design hubs from India to Korea. It revealed that communications systems development is the leading design activity in Asia but that computer and consumer electronics is strong in Taiwan, while China majors on industrial control and instrumentation.
Future 'all-in-one' boxes with DVD, PVR, home-theatre-in-a-box, and gaming capabilities - or combinations thereof - will outsell each of the respective devices. According to ABI, this centripetal force of gadget consolidation will pave the way for a whole new set of all-in-one devices and platforms. This will further blurr the lines of functionality that consumers are familiar with when evaluating, purchasing and using multiple entertainment devices. In addition, Wi-Fi (802.11b/a/g and UWB) and Powerline (HomePlug 1.0 and others) - the networking technologies that link these capabilities together - should get simple, robust, and affordable to the average electronics consumer by 2006, it predicts.
Intel is sponsoring a research lab at Cambridge University for up to 50 researchers. It is intended to allow university and Intel researchers to collaborate on open research projects in the fields of computers and communication. The university said the research would focus on new networking systems and software development technologies.
Technology
Bell Labs researchers have described the world's first quantum cascade laser for use in semiconductor manufacturing applications. At the American Physical Society in Austin, Texas, Bell Labs presented details of its quantum cascade laser, which emits light over a broad spectrum of infrared wavelengths. According to the researchers, the cascade laser requires less power to operate than conventional semiconductor lasers, and can operate under a range of temperatures. A broadband laser allows for sampling of a wide swath of wavelengths at the same time, which offers significant advantages, say the reasearchers.
China's Institute of Computing Technology (ICT) claims to have developed a sign-language recognition program that allows written and verbal input of Chinese characters, or other languages, which are then translated into sign language gestures by a virtual person. Hearing-impaired people will use the program along with a set of 'digital gloves' to input the sign language.
RadioScape, a leading designer of DAB solutions, has launched the RadioScape RS200 module that provides the core of a hybrid analog and digital radio on a card measuring 44 by 110 by 15 mm. To make finished equipment capable of receiving transmissions to the European digital radio standard only requires the addition of power supply, case, speakers or headset, antenna, buttons, and a display, according to the company.
Toshiba has announced what it calls the world's first prototype of a small form factor direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) for portable PCs. Currently, the fuel cell delivers an average output of 12 W and maximum output of 20 W, achieving around five hours of operation with a single cartridge of fuel, according to Toshiba.
Hardi Electronics of Sweden claims to have developed a realtime prototyping platform, the HAPS system, which allows for up to 8 million ASIC gates running at over 200 MHz clock frequency on a single board. To accommodate larger designs, customers can stack several boards together. The HAPS 2.1 helps address such issues as cross-talk, signal integrity, impedance matches, connectivity problems, size and speed, said the company.
RF radiation safety specialists in the UK, Link Microtek, have produced a computer-based training package to serve as a valuable resource for anyone who has to deal with RF radiation in the course of their work. As well as appealing to telecoms maintenance engineers, it says that the package will also benefit employees in a variety of other sectors, including operators of industrial heat-sealing machines, military personnel involved with radar or communications equipment, and medical and scientific staff providing diathermy treatment. It is supplied on CD in two versions: RF Worker and RF Surveyor. See www.linkmicrotek.com or www.radhazonline.com
Flomerics has developed an EDA tool that combines both thermal and EMC simulation in a 'single piece' of software. The tool is to be labelled as Version 4.1 of the company's Flotherm EDA tool. Flotherm provides three-dimensional simulation of thermal effects within enclosures, on circuit boards and chip packages.
Sirenza Microdevices has announced it has been recently issued a US patent entitled 'Microwave Field Effect Transistor Structure on Silicon Carbide'. The patent discloses a new structure for devices that operate in the 1 GHz to 4 GHz range at power beyond that currently available from any other semiconductor technology.
Micron Technology has announced it has launched its first mega-pixel CMOS image sensor. The MI-1300 is a 1,3 mega-pixel low-power image sensor capable of 30 frames per second progressive scan.
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