Electronic Business articles from June 2006

Electronic Business archives from June 2006

Have it in any color.(THE DODGE REPORT)(Editorial)
June 1, 2006... HENRY FORD ONCE SAID SOMETHING TO THE EFFECT THAT Americans could buy a Model T in any color as long as it was black. In the old ELECTRONIC BUSINESS magazine Business Trends section, you could read a story of any length as long was it was at...

Consumer electronics: market overview.(BUSINESS BAROMETER: FORECASTS OF ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRY TRENDS)
June 1, 2006... This is a critical year for consumer electronics due to the start of a slowdown, battles over standards and the launch of next-generation equipment in several segments. Given the pending slowdown, it is even more critical that suppliers achieve...

The changing face of PRC's distribution.(CHINA CONNECTION)
June 1, 2006... As more international players have entered China's lucrative component distribution channel, the market has inevitably begun to segment itself into distinct niches. As the key link between component vendors and end product manufacturers, each...

Knocking off the counterfeiters.(IP/COMPLIANCE)
June 1, 2006... Shortly after one of the world's largest electronics OEMs moved the manufacturing of a low-cost product to China, someone copied and launched it in the local market. The OEM first learned of the fake when it received service calls from places...

Solution serendipity.(Analog Devices Inc. is using supply chain management software developed by International Business Machines Corp. IBM Microelectronics Div.)
June 1, 2006... Chip maker Analog Devices Inc. (ADI) didn't come by its new supply chain management software system in the usual way. The vast majority of companies either develop their own systems in-house or purchase or license systems from software...

Texas Prototypes finds a sweet spot.(printed circuit board manufacturing process)
June 1, 2006... Somewhere between the design and manufacturing of a printed circuit board (PCB) is a time-and-energy-sucking black hole where reconfiguration, rework, test and retest reside. Texas Prototypes (TXP) has taken this black hole and turned it into a...

Greece is the word.(hot spot for electronics industry)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... Until now Greece's achievements in electronics have been limited, that seems about to change. The country's growth in electronics production over the last 12 months has been the largest in Europe, more than twice that of Germany, the U.K.,...

Will Alcatel/Lucent affect EMS?(Compagnie Financiere Alcatel merged with Lucent Technologies Inc.)(Electronics manufacturing services)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... Electronics manufacturing services (EMS) providers probably won't know for another year how the impending merger between telecommunications giants Alcatel and lucent Technologies will affect their manufacturing partnerships. "In our view,...

Itanium at a crossroads.(Intel Corp.'s itanium processors)
June 1, 2006... In spite of product delays, developer defections and a shrinking market, Intel's Itanium continues to gain share in the high-performance computing segment. Itanium, Intel's high-performance server processor that was originally intended as...

The end of analog TV broadcasts is near.(as Congress passed rule to use digital television)
June 1, 2006... Earlier this year, Congress set the countdown to the end of analog TV, passing legislation directing broadcasters to turn off all analog transmission by February 17, 2009. That's good news for digital TV makers, because the cutoff date should...

Nanotech finds its own 'valley'.(MARKET DYNAMICS)(California finances for the industrial research on nanotechnology to electronics industry)
June 1, 2006... Silicon Valley has long been the furnace that has forged money and ideas to drive electronics innovation. The rest of the United States has obediently followed. Now nanotechnology research has broken that one-node model. California is...

Burn baby, burn.(power leakage in integrated circuits)(batteries for charging portable devices)(Editorial)
June 1, 2006... AS if cell phone battery life were not short enough, the move to advanced process geometries is likely to bring with it more frequent charges if leakage power is not dealt with. Under normal operation, when an IC device is active (as when a...

No room for second place: Xilinx and Altera slug it out for supremacy in the changing PLD market.(programmable logic devices)(Cover story)
June 1, 2006... Other than the titanic struggle between Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, few semiconductor industry battles have generated more interest, excitement and perhaps sheer entertainment than the conflict between programmable-logic device (PLD)...

Lean, mean, Six Sigma machines: electronics companies have used Lean Six to trim down, but can it help them pump up?(MANAGEMENT STRATEGY)(Company overview)
June 1, 2006... In the depths of the dot-com bust of 2001, the high-tech industry went on a diet--cutting costs, downsizing, scaling back. There were many different types of diets, but some electronics companies embraced a particular approach called Lean Six...

CEO pay under the microscope: scrutiny of CEO pay is likely to increase--especially with a looming SEC requirement concerning what's disclosed on proxies.(HIGHEST-PAID EXECUTIVES)
June 1, 2006... How do you know when executive compensation may have rocketed too high? When some shareholders sue the company. The Hewlett-Packard board of directors can relate to this scenario first-hand. Several union pension funds recently sued the HP...

Surfing Makimoto's wave: the challenge for companies is figuring out which chip design strategy to implement as the consumer electronics wave swells to new heights.(CHIP DESIGN STRATEGIES)(Tsugio Makimoto)
June 1, 2006... WHAT PART OF THE DIGITAL WAVE IS YOUR COMPANY RIDING? After the semiconductor industry went through what Makimoto's Wave shows as the first digital wave in the 1980s, the digital revolution has renewed a second wave of digital consumer...

The little wavelength that could: can semiconductor manufacturers avoid a costly conversion?(PHOTOLITHOGRAPHY)
June 1, 2006... THE FUTURE OF PHOTOLITHOGRAPHY is supposed to lie in extreme ultraviolet (EUV), which uses a beam of light far smaller than today's 193-nanometer deep-ultraviolet (DUV) technology. "EUV should come into play at the 32-nanometer node, somewhere...

Federal R&D: show me the money.(George W. Bush announced aid to physical sciences research)(fate of electronics industry)
June 1, 2006... Washington has sent signals that happy days are here again for federally funded physical science research, but electronics executives shouldn't pop any champagne corks yet. In fact, now is the time to turn up the pressure. Despite recent...

'There's the mother' now.(Profile: Fast TRACKERS)(Gene Frantz of Texas Instruments Inc.)
June 1, 2006... In most cases, being the "mother" of invention is considered a compliment. In Gene Frantz's case, it was not. Frantz, in 1978, was leading Texas Instruments' development of the Speak & Spell learning game. "It was the first time we had...