Southern Africa
IST Energy has been awarded three new Eskom Distribution National Contracts (ENCs), totalling almost R40 m in value, for the supply of complete protection schemes. The contracts, all won on open tender and valid until 2006 or 2007, are for: medium-voltage feeder protection and control schemes, consisting of a single protection relay with all functions integrated, for use on rural lines; fully integrated bus coupler protection and control schemes; and transformer protection and control schemes, based on the company's new enhanced protection relay. Eskom also extended a number of IST Energy's existing ENCs, some of which have been held since 1997, for various periods.
Dimension Data has secured a contract to supply a complete broadband solution to 20 000 flats in Malmö, Sweden, in a deal valued at approximately $4,6m. Awarded by municipally-owned property company MKB Fastighets, one of Sweden's largest property companies, it plans to offer all its tenants provider-independent broadband Internet connectivity. In fulfilment of this goal, MKB says it is deploying a fibre-optic network in parallel with copper, for cable TV, to all its properties, creating the basis for true broadband. Dimension Data's MetroE solution comprises an Ethernet link to each residence for high-speed connectivity, with an operations management system to take care of the interactivity between tenants, the network provider and various service providers. The future-proof design of the system is geared to cater for even more complex services, as they arise, said Dimension Data.
Spescom MeasureGraph has announced a newly established partnership between JTAG Technologies, a leading provider of boundary-scan testing, and LogicVision, a provider of embedded test for ICs. The partnership will streamline the integration of device-level embedded test and diagnosis, with board- and system-level testing. Through LogicVision's LVReady partner programme, JTAG Technologies has integrated LogicVision's Embedded Test Access (ETA) realtime control software into its boundary scan test environment. This allows users to perform at-speed test and realtime root cause analysis of board-mounted devices containing LogicVision's embedded test technology.
Arrow Altech Computer Product Division, formerly a member of the Altech Group, has been acquired by local IT Group, Sahara Holdings. Now trading as Arrow IT Distribution, the company will continue as an Intel distributor along with Intel's two existing distributors, Axiz and Rectron. Intel said it will continue to support a three-distribution channel model for its products. Intel has had a direct presence in South Africa since 1997 and works extensively with its distributors to ensure that the local PC integrators are well placed to support the demand for technology. Says Bill Gradwell, GM of Arrow IT Distribution, "While we will no longer be part of the Altech group, it will be business as usual for us as an Intel distributor, focusing on Intel processors, motherboards and networking connectivity products and we will continue to offer the channel our commitment to Intel technology."
The eCommerce division of Grintek Telecom has reported that it has established itself firmly in the secure transaction processing market in South Africa with the recent supply and installation at First National Bank (FNB), of Hypercom ICE 5500 card payment terminals, with related networking and terminal management systems. Managing director of Grintek Telecom, Phumlani Moholi, said that Grintek Telecom assisted FNB in obtaining the required EMV Level 2 and Visa Network certification during phase 1 of the implementation, and that this had also been completed in a record time of nine months.
MTN is preparing for the next generation of underground communication systems, and together with African Explosives Limited (AEL), has performed intensive tests to assess the safety of electric and electronic detonators in the presence of cellular radio interference. MTN is looking into extending its GSM coverage underground and into mines that would provide miners access to a full range of advanced telecom services, including GPRS, e-mail, SMS, faxmail and voicemail. MTN has reported that exposure to an extremely strong field generated by its equipment had minimal effect on the most susceptible of AEL's electric detonators. Unintended detonation could only be achieved if the detonators were in direct contact with the transmitting antenna and if an excessively strong field was applied, it said. A standard MTN installation would never transmit at the power levels used in these tests, said MTN, and only extreme effort would result in unintended initiation of electric detonators due to the presence of its signal.
D-Link South Africa has reported that, in association with its partners Pinnacle Micro, MWeb,Sentech,and Wireless G (Wi-Tel, Intel & Internet Solutions Alliance), it will be connecting visitors at this year's BEQSA 2003 business and ICT Show to the latest in public domain Wi-Fi technology, commonly termed 'Hotspots'. Using wireless cards with a PC or notebook, users will be able to gain access to free mobile Internet connectivity from 'anywhere at anytime', it said.
British Trade and Investment started the Graduate Placement Programme in February 2003 to improve its ability to provide support to UK-based companies in SA. It employs unemployed graduates from previously disadvantaged backgrounds to do focused market research on a relevant topic. The candidates are sponsored by UK companies. BAE Systems and Weir Envirotech are sponsoring Jabulile Makhuba and Themba Rokhotso respectively, who each started a three month contract in May. Rokhotso will complete a project on transmission fluids while Makhuba will work on an aerospace project. UK companies based in SA that would like to know more about the programme with a view to sponsoring a graduate can contact Siyanda Ngebulana on 011 537 7214.
Spescom MeasureGraph has launched a new Test Solutions website, www.testsolutions.co.za, aimed at customers who require a test and measurement solution. Covering a broad spectrum of products, markets and industries, SMG says that the Test Solutions website will maintain top brands in order to provide test and measurement solutions to the local market and will add value by providing access to additional knowledge and local technical support. An application notes library will operate as a learning centre where the user can educate himself not only on various applications, but also on the many products supplied by the company.
Duet Industrial Technology has relocated both its offices and workshop to new, improved premises at 30 Mandy Road, Reuven, 2091. New postal address: Box 39410, Booysens, 2016. Tel 011 683 7700, Fax 011 683 7721, [email protected].
Overseas
Business
National Semiconductor reported revenues of $425,3 m for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2003, and recorded a net loss of $4,4 m. The fourth quarter net loss included $26,6 m of special charges. National's fourth quarter 2002 net income was $17,1 m, which included a tax refund of $11,5 m. Excluding the tax refund, net income for Q4 of 2002 was $5,6 m. For the year, National reported a net loss of $33,3 m. This compares with a net loss for fiscal 2002 of $121,9 m. The 2003 net loss included $43,6 m of special charges primarily for severances related to the workforce reductions announced in February this year and impairment of certain assets, and $13,8 m in R&D expense for writedowns of technology licenses.
Ixys reported record net revenues of $37,8 m for Q4 2003, compared with net revenues of $20,4 m reported for the same period in fiscal year 2002. Net loss was $5,6 m, as compared to a net loss of $582 000 in the same period for the prior fiscal year. Fourth quarter results include a charge for excess and obsolete inventory of $7 m and litigation expenses of $2,4 m.
Citing weak demand for communications products, Intel narrowed its forecast for the second quarter of 2002. Intel now expects revenue to be between $6,6 to $6,8 bn in Q2, as compared to the previous range of $6,4 to $7,0 bn.
Companies
Handheld device manufacturer, Palm, has agreed to buy rival Handspring in a stock transaction worth about $168 m. The acquisition will effectively merge Palm Solutions Group - Palm's hardware division - with Handspring.
Desco Industries is acquiring all assets of Semtronics from OK International. Under the terms, Desco will acquire all existing inventory, tools and equipment pertaining to the range of ESD products and accessories and will have the right to market these under the Semtronics name and brand as well as its own name and brand. Michael Gouldsmith, president of OK International, said that the acquisition of the Semtronics division by Desco, an established supplier of ESD products, would better serve customers by providing a wider choice of available products from one source. The divestiture will allow OK International, whose primary business is in the broader electronics and general assembly industries, to focus on its core brands - Metcal (soldering tools and PCB repair and rework equipment), Techcon (material dispensing systems) and Impell (fume extraction equipment).
STMicroelectronics has acquired from the IPM Group the assets of smartcard supplier Incard SpA of Italy. Incard offers a wide range of cards, software and development kits covering several smartcard applications.
Intel has announced it is to invest around $100 m in Japanese DRAM manufacturer, Elpida Memory, in return for non-voting stock. Elpida Memory is the 50:50 joint venture between Hitachi and NEC.
Leading companies from the EDA, IP, system and semiconductor industries have formed a consortium to develop industry standards intended to enable easier integration of semiconductor intellectual property and IP tools. The SPIRIT (Structure for Packaging, Integrating and Re-using IP within Tool-flows) consortium, will focus on developing standards for describing and packaging IP in order to cut costs, increase ease of use and enable greater flexibility in selecting and integrating IP. The founding members are ARM, Beach Solutions, Cadence Design Systems, Mentor Graphics, Royal Philips Electronics, STMicroelectronics and Synopsys.
The UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has awarded a £1,2 m funding to a joint initiative for GaN research involving Cambridge University, the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) and Thomas Swan Scientific Equipment. The group will research and build Gallium Nitride (GaN) based products over the next three years.
ITU has established a formal relationship with the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), an association for consumer electronics manufacturers and retailers. The CEA and ITU's leading communications standards development body (ITU-T) hopes to help foster a diverse marketplace where products are produced using quality defining standards, and where prices are kept down through the avoidance of proprietary or de-facto standards. Among the areas of symmetry between CEA and ITU-T are wireless and mobile communications, cable systems, and multimedia technologies. The two groups aim to share resources and expertise in order to enhance international standards in these and other areas.
Visa International and Royal Philips Electronics have agreed to jointly develop and promote the application of contactless chip technology for payment transactions. Recognising the enormous demand for non-traditional payments via connected consumer devices such as PCs, mobile phones, gaming and other handheld devices, the companies say that by combining the benefits of electronic payments and contactless chip technology, they plan to deliver contactless solutions that will enable payment transactions 'anywhere, anytime and through any device'.
Keithley Instruments, a supplier of semiconductor parametric testing and characterisation instruments, and Modelithics are to collaborate on the modelling of radio frequency semiconductor devices. Modelithics specialises in RF and microwave device modelling and characterisation.
The ITU, in cooperation with Waseda University of Japan, has established the ITU-Waseda ICT Centre, to be housed at the Yokosuka Research Park (YRP), near Tokyo. The centre will provide support to the telecommunication standardisation and development activities of the ITU by providing expertise in IT networking, mobile communication, network security, digital content creation and other emerging technologies. The YRP is considered the 'Silicon Valley of Japan', with more than 70 government and corporate research laboratories based there.
Industry
Worldwide sales of semiconductors totalled $12,1 bn in April, 2003, sequentially unchanged from the March revenue, but a 9,7% increase from April 2002 revenue of $11,3 billion, reported the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) in its latest Global Sales Report quarterly. In the first three months of the year, the global wireless sector had brisk growth, led by record numbers of new subscribers in Asia and rapid adoption of new functionality. Consumers in China, the world's fastest growing handset market, purchased 20 million handsets during the first quarter of 2003. However, the spread of SARS caused handset sales and production levels in China to fall in April. Sales of DSPs used in cellphones fell 9,8% during the month, as units fell 11,7%, and Flash memory grew less than 1%. Among computer chips, microprocessor revenue fell by 1,3% in April, while DRAM revenue was off 5,1%. ASSPs for wired communications grew 6% and optoelectronics grew 2,5%, said SIA.
While the smart appliance industry is not growing wildly, there is an ever-growing number of products being produced. Research group In-Stat/MDR says that even though the economic conditions lately have put many projects on hold and have lowered consumer spending, the overall CAGR for smart appliances will be 53,4% from 2002 to 2007. Smart appliances are divided into two main categories: Internet-enabled consumer electronics; and white goods. Internet-enabled consumer electronics include audio products, picture frames, analog Internet TV, and e-mail devices. The white goods segment is divided into major and portable appliances. In addition, this year will also see the first 'smart personal objects technology' (SPOT) devices, says In-Stat. The first of these will be watches, and will use DirectBand technology to access Internet content rather than more traditional methods. According to In-Stat, Microsoft expects SPOT appliances to appeal to a very large audience, because they are focused on everyday objects that people already find useful.
Point Topic, a London-based market research firm, says that the DSL market has reached 41,3 million in terms of worldwide subscribers for the first quarter of 2003, up 15,2% from the previous quarter and 90% over the past year. At the Supercomm trade show in Atlanta, Tom Starr, president of the international DSL Forum said that DSL remains the fastest growing market in the world, and is heading for a global mass-market of 200 million subscribers by the end of 2005, even in the face of overall slow economic trends. He said that to Point Topic data revealed that DSL is also the leading broadband technology, having 56,5% of the world's mass-market broadband subscribers, followed by cable modems (38%) and then Gigabit Ethernet (4,7%).
Semiconductor Equipment Materials International (SEMI) has published 13 technical standards relating to semiconductor and flat panel display manufacturing. Included in the new standards are best practices for welding of fluid distribution systems in wafer fabs, provisional specifications for XML message structures, guidelines for calculating overall factory efficiency and measurement methods for optical characteristics of flat panel display backlight units, said SEMI. The new standards, developed by industry experts from equipment suppliers, device manufacturers and other companies, can be downloaded from www.semi.org.
Research firm Strategy Analytics has maintained its projection of 455 million mobile telephone handset units to be sold in 2003.
The Home Phoneline Networking Alliance (HomePNA) has finalised its third-generation home networking technology. Based on version 2.0 physical-layer technology, the 100 Mbps HomePNA 3.0 physical interface is backward compatible as well as fully interoperable with HomePNA version 2.0 network components. Version 3.0 offers optional extensions that will enable product designers to reach speeds of up to 240 Mbps. HomePNA technology is designed to complement wireless networking technologies in the home.
With the exception of short messaging services (SMS), wireless data in Europe, as in the Americas, has arrived with a whimper rather than a bang, reports In-Stat/MDR. The research firm finds that the prospects for 3G services, which are being launched during a seemingly unending telecom slump, look grim and newly-launched messaging services such as multimedia message service (MMS) and instant messaging (IM) will not reach double-digit (10%) penetration before 2007.
According to Allied Business Intelligence, 'Land Warrior, next generation combat vehicles, and portable electronics' may all be the beneficiaries of fuel cells, as dictated by the US Department of Defense efforts to increase spending on higher efficiency energy sources for military power supplies. Fuel cells have the potential to replace current power supplies of batteries and diesel generators, or even supply essential, reliable power in the digital battlefield, it claims in a new study. Agility, survival, and deployment are three 'must haves' for US military paraphernalia, it says. ABI predicts the first military fuel cell units, to be deployed in 2006, to number in the low thousands, and expects them to reach 45 000 units by 2014.
Sony, Fuji Photo Film, Olympus and other digital still camera manufacturers are expected to increase their output of digital still cameras, according to Portelligent. Casio plans to ship twice as many digital still cameras in this fiscal year, which ends March 2004, while Minolta plans to output 2,5 times more. The Camera and Imaging Products Association of Japan says that global shipment of digital still cameras in 2003 is expected to be 31,45 million units, up 27,8% from 2002. Portelligent says that some industry analysts forecast that global shipment of digital still cameras will surpass 35 million this year.
While 2002 was a challenging year for the semiconductor industry, it was a good year for Motorola's PowerQUICC processor family. Gartner Dataquest's new report, Communications Semiconductor and Optical Component Market Share - 2002, reveals that the PowerQUICC family's market share reached 82,7% in 2002. According to Motorola, to date, it has shipped more than 140 million communications processor units and has garnered over 5000 system design wins.
Cambridge Silicon Radio has announced that it has shipped its 10 millionth single-chip Bluetooth device. The company's BlueCore devices are designed into more than 350 Bluetooth-approved products, from 130 different customers, it said.
Technology
Sony Computer Entertainment has announced that will release a new PlayStation 2-based home server with TV recording and DVD burning capabilities. Dubbed the 'PSX,' it will combine the PS2's existing game-playing capabilities with a TV tuner, 120 gigabytes of hard drive space, a DVD-RW drive, and broadband Internet connection hardware to create a more well-rounded and capable media playing device. Sony said it will be able to play games, play DVD movies, record television programs, download media from the Internet, record content to homemade CDs and DVDs, access photos and other data via a Memory Stick slot, and attach other peripherals through built-in USB 2.0 ports.
Motorola has announced the release of its first product based on reconfigurable compute fabric (RCF) technology that the company says will replace signal processing ASICs. Motorola's smart baseband solutions, a system-level baseband processing architecture designed for 2,5 and 3 G base stations, is supported by its MRC6011 RCF device, MSC8126 multicore StarCore DSP and wireless application software library modules. The device is designed to enable system architects to adapt algorithms and fix bugs before and after deployment, fine-tune baseband architecture, manage partition and load on-the-fly, design multistandard wireless platforms and add advanced capabilities, such as adaptive antenna and multi-user detection.
3M has announced that electronic circuit and packaging designers can 'get up close and personal' to 3M flexible circuits, with the help of a new feature on its web site at www.3M.com/circuitdemo. The company has produced one- and two-metal layer sample circuits to demonstrate 3M's advanced design and manufacturing capabilities in such areas as wiring density, controlled impedance, front and back access, lead termination options, dielectric patterning and lead suspension.
Xicor offers a digitally-programmable capacitor that can be used to tune the frequency response of electronic systems up to 400 MHz. The X90100 can be set to 1 of 32 discrete capacitor steps ranging from 7,5 to 14,5 pF in 0,20 pF increments. Once the desired capacitor value is selected via an up/down interface, it is stored in the on-chip EEPROM. A power-on-recall can restore a preset capacitor position from nonvolatile memory during power up, eliminating the need for microcontroller initialisation.
Motorola has designed 100 W, 900 MHz RF power transistors intended for basestation applications in plastic packaging. Claimed advantages include a 4 to 5% point increase in efficiency over previous generations, higher output power capability, and up to 20% improvement in thermal resistance when compared to standard ceramic packaging.
Ongoing US government funded research has the potential to revolutionise radar design concepts employed by the military, according to top plasma physicists at Markland Technologies. The research has demonstrated that this new concept in antenna design offers unique advantages over traditional metal antennas. The unique benefits of a gas plasma antenna make it very attractive for military applications. Traditional radar antennas use a conducting metal surface that is sized to emit radiation at one or more selected frequencies. A plasma antenna design employs ionised gas, which is contained within an enclosure. When the gas is electrically charged or ionised to a plasma state, it becomes conductive, allowing radio frequency signals to be transmitted or received. Markland says the advantages include: dynamically re-configurable characteristics such as bandwidth, frequency, gain and directivity; stealth - no backscatter or absorption of high power microwave radiation; greater efficiency; and portability.
Agere Systems has announced that, pushing the envelope of the tools and technology available, it has integrated eight ARM9 processor cores in a single microchip intended for use in mobile communications basestations. Each ARM966E core includes 52 KB of instruction memory, 20 KB of data memory and 16 KB of dual port memory for data transfer. The eight processor system is connected by ARM's AMBA on-chip bus. The ARM966E-S macrocell is a fully synthesizable 32-bit RISC core aimed specifically at embedded hard realtime applications.
Mitsubishi Electric has announced the development of an MMIC (monolithic microwave IC) chipset for automobile radar to improve driving safety. The new 76 GHz MMIC chipset is based on GaAs-pHEMT MMIC technology. The entire chipset will consist of a single, three-channel antenna switch MMIC, five transmitter MMICs covering the 19, 38 and 76 GHz frequency ranges, and two receiver MMICs. Such radars are expected to automatically perform control functions in automotive applications by detecting the distances and relative speeds of the other cars ahead on the highway. Mitsubishi says that mm-wave radars offer an important advantage over laser radars because signal propagation for the road scanning functions are not hindered by adverse weather conditions.
Cornice is shipping the Cornice Storage Element (SE), claimed to have gigabytes of capacity at a fraction of the cost of other storage technologies, and packed into a half-cubic-inch package. The first-generation Cornice SE features 1,5 GB of storage, which it says is roughly equivalent to 30 compact discs of music, two hours of VHS-quality MPEG digital video, 80 video games, or over 135 raw, four-megapixel maximum quality tiff images. It can withstand well over a 1 metre drop onto solid concrete or the constant motion incurred when used, for example, by a jogger. The SE has 31 electrical components and three ICs, compared to the 110 components and six ICs in competitive storage products.
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