International
Business
Xilinx announced third quarter fiscal 2012 sales of $511,1 million, down 8% sequentially from the prior quarter and down 10% from the same quarter of the prior year. Third quarter net income was $127,0 million, or $0,47 per diluted share. The company’s board of directors announced a quarterly cash dividend of $0,19 per outstanding share of common stock.
Intel reported full-year 2011 revenue of $54 billion (up 24%), operating income of $17,5 billion, net income of $12,9 billion and EPS of $2,39 (up 19%) – all records for the company. For the fourth quarter, Intel posted revenue of $13,9 billion, operating income of $4,6 billion, net income of $3,4 billion and EPS of 64 cents.
Companies
Microsemi has acquired the telecom clock generation, synchronisation, packet timing and synthesis business from Maxim. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The acquired product lines and technology are used in the effective and efficient delivery of time-sensitive voice, data and multimedia traffic over wireless and wired networks.
Cypress Semiconductor has dropped its trade secret lawsuit against Maxim. The lawsuit charged Maxim with trying to gain access to Cypress’s touch screen intellectual property by unfairly targeting key Cypress employees. Cypress dropped the lawsuit ‘without prejudice’, so it can be filed again in the future if necessary.
Industry
The EDA Consortium (EDAC) announced that the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry revenue increased 18,1% for Q3 2011 to $1543,9 million, compared to $1307,0 million in Q3 2010. Sequential EDA revenue for Q3 2011 increased 7,4% compared to Q2 2011, while the four-quarters moving average, which compares the most recent four quarters to the prior four quarters, increased by 17,8%.
Technology
Scientists from IBM Research have successfully demonstrated the ability to store information in as few as 12 magnetic atoms. This is significantly less than today’s disk drives, which use about one million atoms to store a single bit of information. The ability to manipulate matter by its most basic components – atom by atom – could lead to the vital understanding necessary to build smaller, faster and more energy-efficient devices. The researchers believe that future applications of nanostructures built one atom at a time, and that apply an unconventional form of magnetism called antiferromagnetism, could allow people and businesses to store 100 times more information in the same space.
NXP Semiconductors unveiled an ultra-compact, high-precision MEMS-based frequency synthesiser, which presents a compelling alternative to quartz crystal-based timing devices. NXP’s MEMS technology replaces a quartz crystal with a bare silicon die that is reportedly more than 20 times smaller than the smallest crystal available today. The MEMS die does not require any dedicated, quartz-like, ceramic or metal-can hermetic package. Instead, it can be merged with other ICs into a standardised, low-cost plastic package.
Researchers at OSRAM Opto Semiconductors have succeeded in manufacturing high-performance prototypes of blue and white LEDs, in which the light-emitting gallium-nitride layers are grown on silicon wafers with a diameter of 150 mm. The silicon replaces the sapphire commonly used until now without a loss in quality, and offers benefits in terms of cost, the availability of large wafer diameters and very good thermal properties. Already in the pilot stage, the new LED chips are to be tested under practical conditions, meaning that the company’s first LEDs on silicon could hit the market in just two years.
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