Southern Africa
Landis+Gyr has been awarded the contract to supply the City of Tshwane with its Cashpower Suprima online prepayment vending system to improve the vending facilities for the metro's large number of prepayment electricity users. The metro comprises the previous Pretoria Municipality, Centurion and northern areas such as Akasia and Rosslyn. The City of Tshwane also uses the company's Cashpower Gemini PLC meters which use powerline carrier technology that eliminates the need to install a dedicated communications cable between the prepayment meter and the customer interface unit.
Spescom has announced that its subsidiary, Spescom Telecommunications, has formed a strategic alliance with multiserve access platform manufacturer Keymile, one of Europe's biggest players in the field of wire-line access telecommunications. Keymile selected Spescom Telecommunications as a partner for providing comprehensive turnkey solutions to the South African market. Under the agreement, Keymile has given it exclusive representative rights for the purposes of servicing the Telkom South Africa account. Spescom Telecommunications' commercial manager David Davie says, "The access network connects residential and business subscribers with telecommunication services. As the demand for higher bandwidth and new types of services increases, telecommunication carriers need to be able to deliver the right service to the customer at the right time." Multiservice Access Platforms deliver a mix of services over a single medium. Such platforms allow telecom carriers to build - or migrate to - a modern access network that is able to deliver an ever-growing range of services.
Trolley Scan has recently delivered a 1200 UHF transponder system with readers, to a value-added-reseller who is adapting the system to be used for the timing of motorsport events. UHF transponders, with their good operating range, low cost, low weight, multiple transponder protocols and the ability to be read at high speed, are well suited for incorporating into timing systems where large numbers of competitors are processed. The VAR has developed antenna systems for covering the track optimally as well as software to cater for the timing and processing paperwork. Further uses of such systems are in the timing of fun runs and city marathons, said Trolley Scan.
'NI Days' is a yearly technical conference organised by National Instruments in more than 60 cities worldwide to bring engineers, scientists, and educators the latest news and updates in computer-based test, measurement, and automation technology. For the fist time this year, the NI Days technical symposium will take place in South Africa (Cape Town on 4 November, and Midrand on 6 November), with the most popular NIWeek conference topics presented. The event builds on the success of NIWeek, the worldwide virtual instrumentation conference held annually since 1993 near the company's headquarters in Austin, Texas. The NI Days event brings the NIWeek conference's hottest topics to customers around the world. For more information call the National Instruments local office in Midrand at 0800 203 199, or see ni.com/southafrica
Each year Tempe Technologies arranges what is called the 'Tempe Summer School', which has become an annual de facto standard in technical training and information exchange in SA, and specifically structured to meet the needs of today's design engineers. Focused on products from Microchip Technologies, this year's event will take place on 22, 23 October at the Birchwood Hotel near Johannesburg International airport. Intended to improve the quality of technical engineering in SA, the summer school will host internationally renowned application engineers that will present the Microchip Technologies classes. For more information contact Susann Ellis, 011 915 5520, [email protected] .
Overseas
Business
National Semiconductor has moved back into the black, reporting a profit of $29,7m, on flat revenues of $424,8m for the first quarter of fiscal 2004. The first quarter net profit included special charges of $12,6m, primarily for severances and asset impairments, and a $1,9m net charge for implementing a new accounting standard. In the previous quarter, National posted a loss of $4,4m on sales of $425,3m, while it posted a profit of $1,3m on sales of $420,6m in the like period a year ago.
Intel has narrowed its forecast for the third quarter of 2003 and now expects revenue to be between $7,6 to $7,8 bn. This compares to previous guidance of $7,3 to $7,8 bn.
Companies
Analog and mixed-signal company, Xicor has announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Poweready, a manufacturer of charging systems for SMBus battery management applications, for $15m in cash and stock.
Following a recent move to sell its chip-testing unit, Schlumberger has spun out and divested its Schlumberger Verification Systems metrology equipment business unit into a new company called Soluris.
Ixys has completed its acquisition of Microwave Technology, a supplier of gallium arsenide (GaAs) devices, pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistors, and microwave monolithic integrated circuits.
Siemens has formed a joint venture with Huawei Technologies, to promote the third generation mobile standard TD-SCDMA (time-division synchronous code-division multiple access), worldwide. The companies have also signed a memorandum of understanding to develop, manufacture and market TD-SCDMA technology.
Memgen, a spin-off company from the University of Southern California that was set up to commercialise a novel manufacturing method for micro-electromechanical systems and microsystems in 1999, has changed its name to Microfabrica. According to the company, to have MEMS in its name when it was not a MEMS company as commonly defined in the industry, was inappropriate. It said the term MEMS has come to be associated with microdevices that are based on silicon and built using semiconductor manufacturing techniques; essentially a planar technology. Microfabrica's devices, on the other hand, are made out of metals, can be built on different types of substrates and support high aspect ratios and 3D flexibility unheard of in silicon MEMS.
Cambridge Silicon Radio and Accelerated Technology, the Embedded Systems Division of Mentor Graphics, are collaborating to bring full support for the Nucleus RTOS embedded in many wireless applications. CSR has ported its BlueCore Host software (BCHS) to the Nucleus Plus realtime kernel and the Nucleus NET TCP/IP networking protocol stack. This means for mobile developers working with the Nucleus software for embedded applications, that less development work is required and hence shorter time to market when integrating Bluetooth into their products.
IBM's Microelectronics Division has forged a chip-manufacturing deal with Intersil. Under the foundry services agreement, IBM will use Intersil's semiconductor process technology in its fab in Burlington, Vt. In addition, IBM will serve as a second-source manufacturer for Intersil's Endura power management integrated circuits.
ARM Holdings has announced it is working with two major Japanese consortia to make its ARM7TDMI core available in a 90-nm manufacturing process technology. ARM is working with Japan's Advanced SoC Platform Corporation (ASPLA) wafer fab, and Semiconductor Technology Academic Research Center (STARC) design group, which are collaborative research organisations comprising Fujitsu, Matsushita, NEC Electronics, Renesas, Toshiba, and six other companies.
Dawning Information Industry Corp of China is using AMD's Opteron processor to build the fastest supercomputer in China. The Dawning 4000 A supercomputer is planned to run at maximum speeds in excess of 10 trillion operations per second (10 Tflops). It is also expected to be the first supercomputer made in China to be considered among the 10 most powerful in the world. The Dawning 4000 A is a server cluster covering 50 square metres and packed with more than 2000 Opteron 800 series 64 bit processors and 2,256 terabytes of memory. The company hopes to finish the supercomputing project in March 2004.
IBM and Agilent Technologies said they will jointly work on 'terabit per second optical interconnect' technology for multiprocessing servers under a four-year, $30m effort backed by the Darpa (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). The effort aims to build chip-sized modules that interconnect high-speed microprocessors at aggregated data rates of up to a terabit per second.
Southampton Photonics (SPI) and the University of Southampton's Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) claim to have produced more than 1 kW output in a high-quality beam from a single-fibre laser. The team achieved the result in an ytterbium-doped fibre laser operating at 1090 nm. According to SPI, the laser exhibited significantly improved beam quality compared with conventional high-power lasers and to previously reported large-core multimode fibre lasers. It also exhibited extremely high efficiency (80%) relative to the launched diode-laser pump power. Breaking the kilowatt barrier with a single fibre having high beam quality is a milestone thought to be virtually unattainable just a few years ago. SPI said it will be commercialising the kilowatt laser technology for industrial and aerospace applications requiring compact, reliable kilowatt sources.
Industry
Worldwide sales of semiconductors increased to $12,90 bn in July 2003, up from the $12,50 bn in revenue reported in June of 2003 - the fifth consecutive monthly increase and a 10,5% increase from July 2002 revenue of $11,68 bn, reported the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). In July, PC related products were the strongest sector with microprocessors up 5,6% and DRAMs up 8,2% over June. SIA believes this boost in sales can be attributed to the beginnings of a business upgrade cycle and the seasonal back-to-school PC buys. In addition, the consumer sector continued its recent strength with optoelectronics increasing 5,3% and Flash up 5,7% over last month. In the month of July, sales in Japan rose 4,8 %, Asia Pacific was up 2,9%, Europe up 2,3%, and the Americas increased 1,0% over June.
The worldwide flash card market is forecast to reach $2,75 bn in 2003, a 38% increase over the $1,99 bn posted in 2002, despite the fact that NAND flash components within the cards have been declining in price, according to market research company Gartner.
The $21m Integrated Metrology (IM) market is set to double to $43m in 2005, according to a new report by market research firm The Information Network. The integrated non-metal thin film market will exhibit a compound annual growth rate of 18,7% between 2003 and 2005. In contrast, the standalone market will exhibit a rate of only 12,8%. That rate will mirror the growth rate for the total semiconductor metrology and inspection market, which was $2,5 bn in 2002 and will reach $2,8 bn in 2003.
The mixed-signal, data-converter semiconductor market is projected to grow by 30%, resulting in a total available market of $2 bn in 2003, according to research group Databeans. Based upon the expected high growth in 2003, Databeans' five-year forecast estimates a healthy compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15%, resulting in an available market of $4 bn by 2008. The fastest growing market segments for data converters are communications and consumer. Data converters for communications is growing at around 17% each year, due to the increased need for DSP, while the consumer market, which includes audio and video entertainment products, is also growing faster than other market segments, with an estimated annual growth of 16%.
Royal Philips Electronics has announced that it plans to outsource a much greater proportion of its chip production foundries in Asia. Philips Semiconductors intends to increase outsourced production to 50% from the current 10% proportion.
Coventor, a provider of software for developing micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) and microfluidics, is to license and sell its MEMulator software. The 3D software can be used to emulate fabrication processes used by the MEMS industry and is being added to the CoventorWare suite of MEMS design software.
By 2008, train travellers are expected to spend a total of $420m per year on in-transit wireless local-area networking (WLAN) hotspot services, according to a report from UK market researcher, BWCS. Trains and planes have been identified as offering the biggest revenue potential because of the volume and type of passenger they carry. Within five years, some 625 million people will be travelling on WiFi-enabled trains around the world every year, it says.
Technology
Intel disclosed further details on its future 'adaptive radios'- or smart antennas - that are designed to boost the throughput and range in wireless systems, at the recent Intel Developer Forum. The technology involves multiple antenna systems. Adaptive radio technology is part of Intel's overall wireless vision, dubbed 'Radio Free Intel' intended to integrate advanced and 'free' RF technology into processors or other products, thereby connecting systems to a range of wireless networks.
Seiko Epson claims its newly-developed ferroelectric material for FeRAM (ferroelectric random-access memory), would significantly improve endurance cycles. Called PZTN, the new material is based on lead zirconate titanate (PZT), a widely used FeRAM material. It replaces some titanium with niobium. Ordinary PZT is subject to fatigue - memory performance deteriorates by about 50% after 1 billion rewrites - while the new material exhibited minor deterioration measured in just several percent after 1 billion rewrites, according to Epson.
Sharp is to introduce notebook computers with 3D liquid crystal displays (LCDs) that can be viewed without special glasses it said. The 3D feature could be used for video games and architectural design and users could, at the touch of a button, switch to 2D viewing for normal use.
Osram Opto Semiconductors has introduced to the market blue 'thin-film' light emitting diodes that it claims would enable the use of LEDs in vehicle headlights, amongst other applications. Developed using InGaN technology, the LEDs make it possible to extract up to 75% of the internally generated light from the chip, the company said. Unlike standard blue LEDs, which are grown on SiC, the InGaN LEDs are grown on sapphire, with the substrate removed by a laser lift-off procedure. Prototypes of 5 mm radial LEDs achieve brightness values of up to 16 mW for 460 nm blue LEDs at 20 mA operating current.
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