Southern Africa
Spescom has been awarded a contract valued in excess of R250m for an advanced information management system for testing and monitoring to be used throughout Telkom's network of services. The contract will be implemented and executed within a 2 year period. Said to be the first and most advanced system of its kind to be deployed anywhere in the world, it is comprised of a single platform for the complete testing of Telkom's complex copper network, up to and including, the consumer. According to Spescom, it will permit Telkom to remotely identify, and correct, any fault on its voice or data services and provide customers with a speedy response regardless of location on the network. With the exception of certain proprietary technologies obtained from leading multinational organisations such as Harris, ADC and Schlumberger-Sema, the solution is based on a local software and network management architecture and design.
Technology group IST has announced that it has marked the successful completion of its turnaround process by posting an 80% increase in headline earnings per share and more than doubling its dividend for the year to February 2002. According to chief executive Harry Coetzee, all the group's operations had contributed to a strong overall performance, achieved in the face of challenging market conditions. During the past year, turnover from continuing operations was increased by 31% to R276,9m and operating profit by 38% to R23,4m. Coetzee said that IST is working hard to change from an inwardly orientated organisation into a technology-based marketing business with a strong external focus. IST's balance sheet remains very robust, and the group was maintaining a flexible approach to its cash resources of some R54m with a view to possible acquisitions. The company's growth strategy was aimed not at diversifying the group, said Coetzee, but at strengthening the position of its existing businesses in their current markets and, where possible, at increasing its hard-currency revenues.
Greater London Enterprise (GLE) will be bringing a trade delegation to South Africa on 20-23 May specifically to promote the UK-SA partnership programme. This will be run in parallel with @frican Business Access, based in Cape Town. The companies participating are looking for SA partners in the fields of information technology and electronics, engineering, environment, agriculture, healthcare and creative industries, and will focus primarily on the SME sector. For information contact Bernie Charles, BTI, +27 (0)11 537 7000.
ASIC Design Services of Midrand, South Africa has entered into a distributorship agreement with Exar Corporation, a designer and marketer of high-performance, high-bandwidth analog and mixed-signal silicon solutions for communications. In terms of the agreement, Exar has appointed ASIC Design Services as its exclusive distributor for its network and transmission products. ASIC Design Services will also be distributing Exar's UART products. See 'EXAR teams up with ASIC Design Services'.
The Motorola Support Centre has extended its services to Africa and the Middle East. Based in Midrand, Johannesburg, the centre is ISO 9000-certified and provides support for the entire Motorola CGISS range of products. It offers pre-sales services, integration, installation, commissioning and maintenance. In addition to systems support, the centre also repairs all Motorola subscriber radio equipment down to component level. See 'Motorola Support Centre opens doors to Middle East, Africa'.
Overseas
Business
Market research firm iSuppli has issued its Top 30 ranking of semiconductor companies in 2001. By regional sales, American-based chip companies held 53,3% of the semiconductor revenues in 2001 vs. 51,3% in 2000. European chip suppliers had an 11,8% share in 2001 vs. 10,8% in 2000, Japanese chip makers saw their share slip to 26,3% from 27,9% in 2000, and Asian Pacific region suppliers had an 8,6% share in 2001 vs. 10% in the previous year, said the report. The top 30 chip suppliers for 2001 were (in order): Intel ($23,54 bn), STMicro ($6,36 bn), Toshiba ($6,07 bn), TI ($6,05 bn), Samsung ($5,24 bn), Motorola, NEC, Infineon, Philips, AMD, Mitsubishi, Hitachi, Fujitsu, IBM, Agere, Matsushita, Sony, Micron, Hynix, Rohm, Sanyo, Sharp, Analog Devices, Agilent, LSI Logic, National, Atmel, Qualcomm, Fairchild, and Nvidia.
Companies
International Rectifier has acquired Fairchild Semiconductor's high-reliability, power MOSFET product line for approximately $29,6m in cash. These power management semiconductors are used extensively in aerospace and defence applications, said IR. The company expects the product line to contribute approximately $10m in revenue in the first 12 months and to be immediately accretive.
Broadcom has agreed to purchase Mobilink Telecom for $251m in a move to enter the handset baseband market. Mobilink Telecom is a supplier of chipsets and reference designs for mobile phones, PDAs and cellular modem cards. Mobilink's product offering includes an all-CMOS single-chip baseband processor, protocol stacks, MMI (man-machine interface) and application software, as well as the ability to provide customised final product designs to its customers.
Apple Computer has acquired 1394 FireWire chip and software supplier Zayante. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Apple invented the FireWire technology, a high-speed serial input/output technology for connecting digital devices such as digital camcorders and cameras to desktop and portable computers. Zayante's IEEE 1394 silicon and software is used by leading consumer and computing product and semiconductor manufacturers seeking to produce 1394-compliant products, said Apple.
Fairchild Semiconductor has announced it has completed two acquisitions. The company has purchased I-Cube, a developer and supplier of cross-point switches for Internet infrastructure, data communications, telecommunications, broadcast video, test equipment and DSP. Fairchild has also completed the acquisition of Toko's data conversion business and its design centre, Signal Processing Technologies (SPT). SPT is a designer of analog-to-digital converters, digital-to-analog converters and comparators for multimarket products that focus on the high end of the resolution/speed curve. Fairchild did not disclose the purchase price of the two companies.
NEC Solutions (America) has been launched from the integration of three NEC companies. NEC Solutions (America) has begun operations as the newest addition to the NEC family of companies in North America. The newly-formed company is the result of the combined resources of NEC Computers, NEC Technologies, and NEC Systems. Chartered with enhancing NEC's solutions business, NEC Solutions America will blend the expertise of each of the companies, which includes hardware platforms, software development and systems integration. It hopes that the closer working relationships between the divisions will ensure that customers' unique technological needs are satisfied more quickly. Norio Tanoue, former president and CEO of NEC Technologies, has been selected to lead NEC Solutions America as president and CEO.
Infineon Technologies has announced an agreement with TECO Electric & Machinery, Taiwan, to provide secure microcontroller chips for use in smartcards that TECO is manufacturing for Asia's biggest smartcard project: the Taiwan National Healthcare Chip Card project. Infineon will supply TECO with security controllers from its 66Plus family featuring 32 KB of EEPROM. The 66Plus microcontroller ICs will be manufactured using 0,22 micron technology by United Microelectronics (UMC), in Taiwan.
Fujitsu Siemens Computers, a leading European computer company, has selected Intersil as its preferred supplier of power management ICs for all of its PC motherboards. According to Intersil this is a major coup for Intersil, whose multiphase power management solutions are already widely used on both Intel and AMD processor boards in PCs, file servers and portable information appliances. Fujitsu Siemens Computers will use Intersil's Endura motherboard power solutions based on a multiphase power controller IC from the HIP6300 series and the HIP6600 series MOSFET drivers.
Research In Motion (RIM) and Analog Devices have announced a reference platform that would enable systems manufacturers to build advanced cellular phones and other handheld devices. In an effort to proliferate wireless technology to OEMs in China, Taiwan and other nations, Research In Motion plans to offer its BlackBerry reference design program to other manufacturers and will no longer protect the technology for exclusive use on its own line of wireless handheld devices. As part of the reference design program, ADI plans to provide participating manufacturers with an integrated processor that supports both wireless communications and Java applications on a single chip. This new processor is based on ADI's SoftFone architecture.
Plastic Logic, a Cambridge start-up, and Cambridge Display Technology (CDT), owner and developer of light-emitting polymer (LEP) technology, have signed an agreement to cooperate in polymer organic electronics. Plastic Logic, founded in 2000, focuses on electronic transistor circuit applications using polymer electronics technology. As part of the agreement, each company receives a non-exclusive licence for use of the other's intellectual property in its own core business. The agreement also includes the assignment of selected intellectual property by CDT to Plastic Logic.
Parthus Technologies of Dublin, and US-based DSP Group have announced an agreement to combine their intellectual property (IP) licensing businesses into a new company to serve digital signal processing-based applications in digital communications, wireless systems, and multimedia devices. The new company will be called ParthusCeva, and will be headquartered in San Jose. Under the agreement, DSP Group shareholders will own 50,1% of the new company, with the remaining 49,9% being held by Parthus stock owners. ParthusCeva will focus on both DSP cores and platform-level IP solutions based around digital signal processing.
Mentor Graphics has established a joint marketing agreement with Optimum Design Associates (ODA) to make the 2002 ODA Library for Expedition available for use with the Mentor Graphics Expedition Series of PCB design tools. The 2002 ODA Library for Expedition is the result of more than five years of development by ODA, an established PCB design service centre that uses Expedition for more than 75% of its designs. According to the company, this is a production-ready, integrated and fully documented library of symbols, cells (footprints) and a large PDB (part database) that will allow new Expedition users to reduce the task of library creation and proceed to the design and layout process quickly.
STMicroelectronics and 8x8 have announced a partnership to develop Internet protocol (IP) based video chip solutions. Under the agreement, 8x8 has licensed very long instruction word (VLIW) processor cores from STMicroelectronics to develop new IP-based telephony chip products. The companies plan to work towards versions of the VLIW cores optimised for advanced video compression and decompression technologies.
NEC has regrouped its semiconductor division into seven new technology areas that correspond to chip technologies. These are: system memory, custom logic, network systems, network cores, microcomputers, ULSI devices and system ULSI.
eMagin, a developer of organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays, has announced that it has received a $1m investment from Rohm. The two companies have also agreed to explore the development of a 'partnership agreement,' under which eMagin would outsource its manufacturing, design and distribution to the Japanese concern. Additionally, the companies will explore the development of new ICs to be incorporated into eMagin's microdisplays for consumer applications such as camera or camcorder viewfinders, and joint product development or other opportunities. Many computer and video electronic system functions can be built directly into the silicon chip under the OLED devices, resulting in very compact, integrated systems with lowered overall system costs, according to eMagin. It claims to be the first company to commercialise active-matrix OLED-on-silicon 'microdisplays.' These products currently provide SVGA resolution of 1,53 million picture elements.
Industry
Worldwide sales of semiconductors totalled $10,01 bn in February, essentially unchanged from the previous month, as sales growth in the Asia-Pacific region and the Americas compensated for a dip in Europe and Japan, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) reported. On a month-to-month basis, sales in the Americas and Asia Pacific market accounted for approximately 60% of the global semiconductor sales with increases of 2,0% and 0,3% in February. Markets in Europe and Japan registered a slight dip in February, with sales down 1,5% and 1,2%, respectively. "Strong consumer spending for mobile phones, DVDs, and digital cameras continued to move chip sales slightly upward," stated SIA president, George Scalise. "Flat to slow growth of semiconductor sales in the first quarter of this year is in line with expectations. Our forecast calls for the second quarter to be slightly stronger with accelerating growth in the second half of 2002."
The EDA Consortium's Market Statistics Service (MSS) has announced that electronic design automation (EDA) industry revenues for the fourth quarter of 2001 were $1046m, compared to $1035m in Q4 2000. It also announced that the EDA industry generated revenue of over $900m for seven consecutive quarters, and as such has established a record for Q4 revenue. For year 2001, the EDA industry generated $4 bn in global revenues - a new revenue record, and 6% more than in 2000. "Since we began tracking revenue in 1994, EDA each year has gone in one direction - up," said Ray Bingham, chairman. "Even though the electronics industry experienced the worst economic downturn in its history last year, customers around the world continued to increase their investments in the design of electronic products. That is because product design technologies and services play a crucial role in helping companies create value, differentiate their product offerings, and bring innovation to reality while accelerating time to market." In terms of revenue by tool category for Q4 2001: IC layout grew to $309m, computer-aided engineering (CAE) generated $530m, PCB and multichip module (MCM) layout totalled $96m, semiconductor intellectual property (SIP) revenue was $27m, and consulting services revenue, $69m. By computing platform, UNIX software comprised 86% of all EDA software revenue, while Windows-based platforms totalled 14% for full year 2001.
Despite a slow economy, wireless LAN chips were a bright spot in an otherwise dismal 2001 worldwide chip market, according to In-Stat/MDR. The research firm reports that the number of WLAN chips sold worldwide in 2001 managed to top 8 million chipsets, up more than 23% from 2000. Early indications illustrate that device sales, and resulting chipset demand, are already up sharply this year when compared with the end of 2001. For 2002 chipset units are forecast to exceed 14 million units, an increase of 75% from last year's depressed numbers. Currently in the enterprise, as in the home market, 802.11b accounts for almost all the WLAN chipsets sold to date. However, In Stat expects that this will be changing very quickly, as faster technology in the form of 802.11a and 802.11g becomes available.
Already well-known, the semiconductor market experienced its worst slump in history last year, with a 33% decline in monolithic ICs, said analyst group Forward Concepts. According to its latest bulletin, DSP was no exception, and showed negative growth for the first time in history. DSP chip shipments reported by semiconductor manufacturers to the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organisation totalled $4256m in 2001, representing a drop of 30,7% from year 2000 shipments. The group is forecasting a moderate 15% increase in programmable DSP chip revenues this year, compared to a predicted overall monolithic IC market increase of 8%. It said increasing cellular sales will lead the recovery, however, a number of smaller markets were also doing better - examples being digital cameras and MP3 decoders. Wireline and telecom markets are not likely to improve until the second half of 2002, but the group is forecasting a 33% DSP market jump in 2003, based on recovery of the telecom market and the replacement cellphone market that will increase sharply as new phones with added features for '3G lite' and GPRS reach volume shipments.
After several years of rapid growth, the worldwide PDA market slowed considerably in 2001, and this more moderate level of growth is expected to continue in 2002. According to Gartner Dataquest, 15,5 million PDAs will be shipped in 2002, an 18% increase from 2001 shipments of 13 million units. In 2001, the industry experienced a similar growth rate of 18,3%. This was considerably below year 2000 shipment growth of 114%.
JEDEC has formed a new IC standards group to promote 802.11 WLAN technology. The group is called the JC-61 Committee-Wireless Interface Networking Group (WING) and work on developing open industry interface standards for semiconductors between the major functional blocks.
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has developed a broad suite of recommendations for cable networks which could serve as the basis for a global communication system using the 'language of the Internet'. The initiative, known as IPCablecom, is intended to help cable operators and vendors meet the consumer demand for multimedia services such as interactive games, electronic commerce and streaming media applications such as voice and video conferencing. The IPCablecom initiative is directed toward defining a totally new digital broadband multimedia system architecture that overlays a high-speed two-way hybrid (fibre/coax) cable modem access network. The objective is to enable a wide variety of IP-based realtime multimedia services, such as Voice over IP, unified messaging, PBX extension, videoconferencing, online gaming and many other general multimedia applications.
The world's largest fuel cell system will be deployed to power a call-routing centre in New York. US telecoms firm Verizon will implement a system of seven natural gas powered cells from UTC Fuel Cells capable of producing 1,4 MW. Four natural gas powered generators will boost this to 4,4 MW of total power.
Applied Digital Solutions has announced that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will not regulate the company's new human-implantable ID chip line as a medical device. The announcement clears the way for the company to begin sales, marketing and distribution of its VeriChip chip line in the United States. The VeriChip is an RF device that measures 12 x 2,1 mm.
The MPEG-4 Industry Forum (M4IF) has announced that 29 MPEG-4 vendors have successfully carried out three rounds of interoperability tests of products based on the MPEG-4 standard (see www.m4if.org/public/interop/ for details on the vendors). The world's largest MPEG-4 interoperability program continues to grow as it enters its fourth round, which indicates a strong foundation for MPEG-4 proliferation and deployment. MPEG-4 is the interactive coding standard for all digital multimedia platforms.
austriamicrosystems' controller IC has been nominated as 'Top Product of the Year' at the SAE World Congress. This year's SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) Congress in Detroit, presented more than 5000 innovations. According to judges from 'Automotive Engineering International', the most significant came from Austria. The 'TimeTriggered protocol', developed by austriamicrosystems in cooperation with software company TTTech, enables low-cost realisation of innovative 'drive-by-wire' concepts. At the heart of the system is the AS8202 controller chip, which allows lightning-fast communication between the different vehicle systems.
On Semiconductor has appointed Syrus Madavi as executive chairman and chairman of the board. Madavi was senior vice president at TI and previously, the president and CEO of Burr-Brown. Madavi succeeds Curtis J. Crawford, who will remain on the company's board of directors.
Technology
Intel has officially launched its 2,4 GHz Pentium 4 processor, which the company claims is now the world's fastest microprocessor for desktop computers.
Silicon Valley startup Canesta, has introduced what it calls the world's first 'electronic perception' technology, a unique, ultra-low-cost, realtime 3D imaging capability that will enable machines and electronic devices to perceive nearby objects and their movements in three dimensions. At the heart of Canesta's technology is a small, moving-image sensor and software that 'sees' the environment in three-dimensional contours, rather than the flat, two-dimensional images historically provided by video camera chips. Canesta's software starts with a 3D 'contour-map' view of the world, provided directly by the hardware, which the company claims is a substantial advantage over classical image processing software that struggles to construct 3D representations using complex mathematics, and images from multiple cameras or points of view. This reduced complexity makes it possible to embed the application-independent processing software directly into the chips themselves, to make smaller electronic devices.
Royal Philips Electronics has announced the development of what it claims is the world's smallest IC package. Called the depopulated very-thin quad flat-pack no-lead (DQFN) package, it is 75% smaller than the existing thin shrink small-outline package (TSSOP) and has a footprint of 2,5 by 3 mm in a 14-pin configuration, according to Philips. The DQFN package has also been designed to offer improvements in heat dissipation and ease of board assembly. The new package incorporates an exposed die paddle, which provides a 20% improvement in heat dissipation over a comparable TSSOP package, according to Philips.
Atmel has introduced its AT05SC1604R smartcard IC for general release. This 4K EEPROM HC05 microcontroller with 16K ROM and 1K RAM, is targeted at single application or multifunction applications requiring cost effective small memory but high security, such as banking and government applications. Examples include credit, debit, electronic purse and personal identification cards. The product has been granted security certification to ISO-15408, more commonly known as Common Criteria, to EAL4 Augmented level in accordance with Protection Profile PP-9806. The device has already achieved Level 3 Capability approval from Visa earlier this year and has also received approval for an EMV banking application in Europe, said Atmel.
Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas (SMA), a US-based division of Sharp Electronics, has launched its 8, 16/32 and 32-bit microcontroller and SoC product line at the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) in San Francisco. With this, SMA has introduced the 'BlueStreak' name for its family of MCU and SoC ARM-based products that are specifically targeted at the mobile/multimedia, home/office automation and industrial markets.
VIA Technologies, through its Platform Solutions Division, has released a new ultra-compact, highly-integrated EPIA Mini-ITX motherboard that measures only 170 x 170 mm. Offering the choice of a VIA Eden ESP processor for fanless systems with power sensitive requirements, or a VIA C3 E-Series processor for more multimedia-rich applications, the new motherboard features integrated 3D graphics, AC'97 audio, Ethernet and TV-out connectivity, said the company. The board is targeted for developing next generation small footprint digital information appliances and entertainment devices.
Korean capacitor maker Ness claims it has developed the highest value capacitor in commercial production: 5000 F at 2,7 V. Energy density is 5,8 W/kg and ESR is only 400 μΩ at 500 A, it claims.
Toshiba America Electronic Components (TAEC) has rolled out a line of non-contact optical transmitter and receiver modules capable of transmitting data at speeds of 125 Mbps within a 30 mm transmission distance, for high-speed networks. Part of TAEC's Toslink family of optical fibreless (OFL) module solutions, the TOTX1500 transmitter and TORX1500 receiver products are interconnect devices designed for use in digital audio equipment, such as DVD, minidisc players as well as industrial and automotive entertainment LANs. The modules can be used for 10Base/100Base Ethernet signals or IEEE1394 S100 signal transmissions.
STMicroelectronics has introduced the VK05CFL, an advanced, high-frequency, self-oscillating electronic chip for driving energy-saving compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). Noteworthy features of the VK05CFL include a combination of a high-voltage power and low-voltage control stages; built-in ESD protection, anti-parallel collector-source diode, and diac; capacitor-settable working frequency, and load-settable ignition frequency.
Advanced Micro Devices has revealed a new 32-bit chip, based on a RISC technology from Mips Technologies. AMD's Au1100 is targeted for the mobile information appliance market, such as PDAs, Web pads, and telematic systems etc. The performance and power consumption of the Au1100 ranges from 333 MHz at less than 200 mW, 400 MHz at 250 mW, and 500 MHz at 500 mW, and can run a variety of operating systems, including Windows, CE.NET, Linux and VxWorks.
VIA Technologies has launched a new version of its C3 processor for the mobile computer market which runs at speeds of up to 900 MHz and has enhanced power consumption and thermal dissipation properties. With a typical power consumption of 6 W and an ultra low voltage of 1,35 V, VIA C3 mobile processor is said to be the industry's lowest power notebook processor.
Intersil has released a new four-channel digital down converter that includes four independent channels on a single chip. The ISL5216, part of the CommLink family of software defined radio (SDR) circuits is claimed to provide a flexible and cost-effective solution for high dynamic range applications where processing of multiple channels is required in a small physical space. According to Intersil the device replaces more expensive analog and programmable logic devices and can be used in wideband and narrowband applications. It supports all protocols and standards, including third-generation (3G) wireless protocols.
Linear Technology has released a range of 80 MHz rail-to-rail op-amps that it claims combines speed with high precision. The LT1800/LT1801/LT1802 single, dual and quad rail-to-rail input and output precision op-amps are 80 MHz amplifiers that combine the extra speed required in new designs, with the benefits of high DC precision. Using less than 2 mA supply current, the devices are claimed to have a maximum input offset voltage of 350 mV, maximum input bias current of 250 nA, CMRR of 105 dB and voltage gain of 98 dB. According to the manufacturer, these devices rank an order of magnitude better than any other op-amp with comparable bandwidth. High speed and exceptional DC accuracy at low supply current makes them ideal for low voltage signal conditioning and data acquisition systems.
© Technews Publishing (Pty) Ltd | All Rights Reserved
printer friendly version