Electronics Weekly articles from October 2005

Electronics Weekly archives from October 2005

Intellect and Astra set for court clash.
October 5, 2005... PCB firm Astra Circuits and trade body Intellect appear set on resolving a dispute over membership withdrawal in court, after Intellect insisted that it will enforce its membership rules. In response to Surinder Malhotra's - MD at Astra -...

Zero-crossing photo-triacs.
October 5, 2005... Vishay Intertechnology has announced a couple of 600V zero-crossing photo-triacs. VO3062 and VO3063 are designed to isolate low-voltage logic from AC voltages up to 380V, while handling dV/dt of 1.5kV/s. Inside each is an infra-red GaAs LED...

32-tap digital potentiometer.
October 5, 2005... Intersil claims this is the industry's smallest 32-tap digital potentiometer, with options ranging from a 100kO SOT-23 down to a 10kO SC-70. Applications for the ISL90460, ISL90461 and ISL90462 are foreseen in LCD contrast and backlight...

GSM band antenna goes to production.
October 5, 2005... Antenova has released to production its five-band antenna, capable of covering all four GSM bands along with W-CDMA UMTS at 2.1GHz. The antenna, called Pentaband, aims to cut design time and improve power consumption in mobile handsets. "The...

CSR beefs up BlueCore with audio processing capability.
October 5, 2005... CSR has released the fifth version of its BlueCore chip and software for Bluetooth. BlueCore5-Multimedia includes improved DSP provision for audio processing, for instance stereo music streaming; added features such as FM radio; and a ROM...

UK firms follow DTI advice to forge electronics alliance.
October 5, 2005... Intellect, Electronics Scotland, NMI, GAMBICA and IABM have formed the UK Electronics Alliance (UKEA), following the recommendations of last year's DTI Electronics Innovation and Growth Team report. "The first meeting of the alliance is in...

ST develops dye-sensitised solar cells for use in large-scale solar power generation.
October 5, 2005... STMicroelectronics is developing dye-sensitised solar cells (DSSCs), aimed at technology for large-scale solar electricity generation. It has produced demonstration DSSCs as complete series-parallel arrays on glass and is looking to build...

Mobile operator to invest [pounds sterling]100m.
October 5, 2005... Mobile operator O2 has warned it will spend around [pounds sterling]100m more than expected on capital expenditure in its current financial year, mainly due to an increased investment in Airwave. O2 Airwave is the business set up to provide an...

Display firm confident of yield improvement.
October 5, 2005... MicroEmissive Displays (MED) is confident it has resolved its problems manufacturing light emitting polymer (LEP) displays, and expects first production at the turn of the year. The Scottish company has confirmed that volume production will not...

EDA firm updates Microwave Office design suite.
October 5, 2005... High frequency EDA firm Applied Wave Research has released the latest version of its Microwave Office design suite. The 2006 edition includes an RF simulator from Finnish firm APLAC Solutions, acquired last month by AWR, and the second...

Factory prize for Prism.
October 5, 2005... Contract manufacturer Prism Electronics, which is based in St Ives, Cambridgeshire, has won the most improved plant category at the national 2005 Best Factory Awards. "The investments we have made in staff training, computer systems and...

Chip process alliances come from position of weakness, says TI CEO.
October 5, 2005... Semiconductor firms collaborating on the development of chip process technologies are being forced to do so out of a position of weakness, according to Texas Instruments' CEO Rich Templeton. "Technology development is not a team sport. Firms...

Industry facing consolidation, says chip CEO.
October 5, 2005... Europe's chip industry could be entering a period of consolidation when firms merge to share manufacturing costs and find markets, according to the CEO of a leading supplier. AMI Semiconductor's Christine King told EW there is potential for...

Engineer institutes to merge.
October 5, 2005... The IEE and IIE are to combine, forming the IET: Institution of Engineering and Technology. It will come into being in early 2006. "This is an historic step for both institutions," said IEE president professor John O'Reilly. The IEE has 120,000...

Mistrust chills Russian chip entrepreneurs.
October 5, 2005... Potential chip entrepreneurs in Russia are being deterred by their mistrust of government funding and by the reluctance of foreign investors to invest. "The scientific community is ahead of the government in understanding what needs to be done....

EDA company offers RTL tools for synthesis.
October 5, 2005... Calypto Design Systems, the US EDA firm, is integrating its SLEC tool with the Cynthesizer high level synthesis tool from Forte Design Systems. SLEC is a sequential equivalence checking tool that enables verification of the RTL generated from...

Chip firm urges governments to push RFID use.
October 5, 2005... Philips Semiconductors has called on European governments to promote RFID technology in security and retail applications. The firm said governments should collaborate with industry to take full advantage of what it believes could be "the most...

Samsung to invest $33bn in next chip plant.
October 5, 2005... Samsung Electronics has said it will invest $33bn in its Hwaseong chip plant, which will house an R&D facility and eight fabrication lines by 2012. The South Korean firm has also launched a next-generation R&D line, to begin operations in May...

Heading here.
October 5, 2005... This image of the orientation of molecules within a liquid crystal was pictured by using polarised light. The image, taken by Karen Neill, was highly commended in this year's Visions of Science Awards.

Heading here.
October 5, 2005... Oct 10-14: Digital telecommunications networks short course with the University of Surrey in Guildford. www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/ce Oct 11-12: EMC UK conference, Newbury. www.emcuk.info Oct 12-13: Solder joint reliability workshop at the NPL,...

Future of MEMS lies in cost reduction for consumer market, hears congress.
October 5, 2005... The challenge for micro electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) is to reduce product costs to meet the demands of the consumer industry, the SEMI ISS conference in Moscow was told last week. "How do you make money from a 32 cent MEMS silicon...

[pounds sterling]3.3m project to tool up MRAM ready to roll.
October 5, 2005... A [pounds sterling]3.3m project to develop a 300mm production tool for MRAM will kick off this month after a year's delay. Thin film expert Nordiko Technical Services dropped out of the three-member consortium last year, when it was acquired by...

US firm drives in-car network technology to consumers.
October 5, 2005... US chip firm Standard Microsystems Corporation (SMSC) is planning to take MOST, the in-car networking technology, into consumer markets, using technology acquired earlier this year with the purchase of Oasis SiliconSystems. SMSC has undergone a...

High achievers honoured at EW awards.
October 5, 2005... Representatives from the electronics industry recognised technical innovation and business enterprise at the Elektra 05 European industry awards in London's West End last week. Dr Hermann Hauser, the long-established business entrepreneur and...

Heading here.
October 5, 2005... Last month AMI Semiconductor, which owns several fabs mostly for mixed signal technologies, announced plans to consolidate its European wafer fabrication operations. The company is to close its older four-inch wafer fabrication facility in...

Russian rocket has novel panels.
October 5, 2005... The Russian rocket Cosmos, due to launch on 30 September, is equipped with novel panels that combine antenna functions and GaAs solar cells on a single surface. The Asolant (Advanced SOLar ANTenna) was developed over six years by researchers in...

RF Mosfets litho technique opens market to small firms.
October 5, 2005... Southampton process firm Innos has demonstrated high performance RF Mosfets that can be made at low cost using relaxed lithography rules. The firm expects the devices to enable more small and medium-sized businesses to enter the market for RF...

'World's first' 3D SoC combines 200MHz chip with 1Gbit SDRAM, 128Mbit flash, 384-cell PLD.
October 5, 2005... US chip integration specialist Ziptronix has announced what it claims is the world's first three-dimensional system-on-chip. The two-layer, 15mm x 17mm device, was made as a demonstration for a tier one telecoms OEM. It combines a 200MHz...

Vandium oxide speed measured.
October 5, 2005... Researchers in the US have for the first time measured the speed at which vanadium dioxide, a nonmagnetic semiconductor, undergoes a transition from a transparent insulator to a reflective conductor. Although this effect was first reported in...

Nano, photonics R&D programme.
October 5, 2005... A European programme has been set-up to coordinate research in photonics and nanotechnologies. Called MONA (Merging Optics and Nanotechnologies), the European Commission-funded project recognises photonics and nanotechnologies as two of the...

Twin-transistor RAM cuts power and cell size compared to DRAM.
October 5, 2005... Renesas Technology has revealed a capacitor-less, twin-transistor RAM that can be built in a standard silicon-on-insulator (SOI) CMOS process and reduces power and cell size compared to DRAM. It is intended for embedded memories at the 65nm...

SMEs offer students experience of industry in university-driven apprenticeship programme.
October 5, 2005... For university students such as Sian Lewis from Risca in South East Wales who are interested in joining the technology industry, apprenticeships are definitely proving the right way up the career ladder. Keen to gain hands-on experience while...

Open University helps women back to science.
October 5, 2005... The Open University is offering a free online course for women who want to return to work in the science, engineering and technology (SET) sector. The T160 course offers a series of online activities, including interactive lectures and...

Sector skills council offers workforce health check.
October 5, 2005... A free check up to identify the future skills needs of company workforces is on offer from SEMTA, the sector skills council for science, engineering and manufacturing technologies. SEMTA is piloting the scheme which is aimed at engineering...

Heading here.
October 5, 2005... Oct 12-13: IMS/SIP - Oxford www.conted.ox.ac.uk/electronics Oct 12-14: Essential Perl - Bournemouth www.doulos.com Oct 17-18: Altera TechClass - Bournemouth www.doulos.com Oct 17-19: Verilog for VHDL Engineers - Bracknell www.esperan.com Oct...

Principles of electronics introduction saves engineers' time and frustration.
October 5, 2005... For an electronics engineer it can be very frustrating trying to get someone who has absolutely no concept of electronics to understand even the simplest things. But never fear, for you might never be called on to explain again if you point...

Robot fish wows London Aquarium visitors.
October 12, 2005... The London Aquarium now has three robot fish swimming in a tank. Designed and made by a team led by Professor Huosheng Hu of the University of Essex, the fish are autonomous. "They move forward and if they find an obstacle, they turn. They have...

PicoChip in WiMAX bid.
October 12, 2005... Wireless protocol processing specialist PicoChip has released reference designs for the mobile version of the WiMAX wireless broadband standard, 802.16e. The company claimed they are the industry's first. "People like Samsung have got...

Carbon nanotubes grown on silicon with no chip damage.
October 12, 2005... University of Southampton researchers have discovered a way to grow carbon nanotubes on silicon without ruining the semiconductor. The usual carbon nanotube (CNT) growth technique requires a gold or iron catalyst, which poisons the silicon...

Sensors measure up to 200mm.
October 12, 2005... Tyco Electronics has designed a range of permanent magnetic linear contactless displacement (PLCD) sensors that can measure distances up to 200mm with either analogue or digital interface. The devices are aimed at automotive applications...

Child proof reset in supervisor chip.
October 12, 2005... STMicroelectronics has introduced dual and triple rail microprocessor supervisor chips with a difference: they include a child resistant manual reset. For use in applications where an accidental manual reset will loose data, such as when...

EDA industry revenues flat on same period last year.
October 12, 2005... Electronic design automation (EDA) industry revenue for Q2 was $1.09bn, essentially flat compared to Q2 2004, but up 10 per cent sequentially from $989m in Q1, according to industry group EDA Consortium. Total Q2 EDA product revenues without...

Russia takes own strategy to get MEMS technology.
October 12, 2005... Russia is pursuing micro electrical mechanical systems (MEMS) technology in an unstructured strategy in which various institutions bring to the technology their own particular technological strengths. At the St Petersburg Electro-Technical...

Cheap engineers not an option, says TI.
October 12, 2005... Making use of low cost design engineering staff is of no interest to Texas Instruments, according to the firm's CEO, Rich Templeton. "We are not after low cost engineers we are after great engineersa the global nature of design is not going to...

Atmel plans to sell off French chip facility.
October 12, 2005... Atmel is selling its chip manufacturing facility at Nantes in France to a Paris-based company, XbyBus group. Atmel is maintaining its product design activities in Nantes, which address the aerospace, automotive and industrial markets in...

Chip firm demonstrates Bluetooth stacks on UWB.
October 12, 2005... Freescale has demonstrated Bluetooth software stacks running over an ultra wideband physical layer. The firm claimed it is the first working example of a technology combination on which the Bluetooth special interest group is working to...

Chip firm demonstrates Bluetooth stacks on UWB.
October 12, 2005... Freescale has demonstrated Bluetooth software stacks running over an ultra wideband physical layer. The firm claimed it is the first working example of a technology combination on which the Bluetooth special interest group is working to...

Company poised to sell methane cells in a year.
October 12, 2005... LG claims a 200cm3 cell powers a laptop for over 10 hours. Battery firm LG plans to sell direct methanol fuel cells within a year. "Once the global codes and standards for portable fuel cells are prepared within the end of this year, the...

Cognitive radio could benefit UWB firms after 5GHz ruling.
October 12, 2005... Firms developing ultra wideband (UWB) technology to satisfy the emerging international regulations could stand to benefit from a market for cognitive radios. The latest moves from regulators indicate that so-called detect and avoid technology...

Progress in microelectronics slowed by power leakage, says IBM director.
October 12, 2005... Continued progress in microelectronics will depend on materials research, new device structures, software efficiencies, parallelism and switching off current at different levels, according to Dr Tom Theis, worldwide director for research in...

Progress in microelectronics slowed by power leakage, says IBM director.
October 12, 2005... Continued progress in microelectronics will depend on materials research, new device structures, software efficiencies, parallelism and switching off current at different levels, according to Dr Tom Theis, worldwide director for research in...

Heading here.
October 12, 2005... Fujitsu's shares have risen almost ten per cent to 404.5p in a good week for electronics company shares. The EW Index crept up again, taking it to its highest point since June 2002. Fujitsu made a number of announcements last week, including...

Contract design company to grow US business.
October 12, 2005... Contract design and manufacture firm TES is looking to expand in the US, possibly through an acquisition. The Langon, France-based firm, which spun out of Thales Electronic Engineering and Thales Electronic System Solutions a year ago, still...

UK Research Councils' competition looks for successful entrepreneurs.
October 12, 2005... The UK Research Councils have launched their 2005/06 business plan competition, encouraging researchers to turn entrepreneur and use their work to create a successful business. The last competition was won in 2004 by ThruVision, a spin-out...

Strong gains at Samsung.
October 12, 2005... Samsung Electronics saw its consumer chip revenues nearly double to $2.1bn last year, up 84.2 per cent from $1.1bn in 2003, said analyst iSuppli. Samsung saw strong gains in sales of semiconductors for digital television sets, digital set-top...

Suppliers press importance of multi-processor technologies.
October 12, 2005... Embedded system designers need to understand the implications of multi-processor technologies and IP security, according to suppliers speaking to EW ahead of an upcoming UK design conference. In one of the keynote presentations in the Embedded...

Bio-sensing chips analyse carbohydrate.
October 12, 2005... Iowa State University, has developed a technique to allow bio-sensing chips to analyse carbohydrates. "The success of DNA and protein microarrays in chip format for bio-sample screening using small sample volumes has led to a variety of...

Clockless IC technology firm gives free design flow for university use.
October 12, 2005... Handshake Solutions, the Philips spin-out commercialising clockless IC technology, is making its complete design flow available for free to universities for teaching and research. The company said it was taking the step to both drive the...

Russian conference hears of boost to solar cell production.
October 12, 2005... Russia is making big moves into solar cell production and into the production of silicon ingots for solar cell applications. "We're setting up fabs for mass production of photovoltaic cells," Valery Semenov, director-general of NPP Kvant told...

Jaltek takes NOTE into UK market.
October 12, 2005... By Steve Bush Contract manufacturer Jaltek Systems of Luton has teamed up with Swedish CMS firm NOTE to provide prototyping and marketing services in the UK. "We will almost be a NOTE factory," Jaltek's sales director Steve Pittom told EW. "We...

Jaltek takes NOTE into UK market.
October 12, 2005... By Steve Bush Contract manufacturer Jaltek Systems of Luton has teamed up with Swedish CMS firm NOTE to provide prototyping and marketing services in the UK. "We will almost be a NOTE factory," Jaltek's sales director Steve Pittom told EW. "We...

University popularity due to industry interaction.
October 12, 2005... The head of the UK's most popular electronics and electrical engineering department has attributed its success in part to close interaction with industry. The Department of Electronics at the University of Kent recently topped a National...

TSMC 65nm process by end of year.
October 12, 2005... TSMC has started running multi-project wafers for prototype ICs on its 65nm process. The company claimed it will have a 65nm production process running by the end of the year and will start to be ramped to volume supply in the second quarter...

TSMC 65nm process by end of year.
October 12, 2005... TSMC has started running multi-project wafers for prototype ICs on its 65nm process. The company claimed it will have a 65nm production process running by the end of the year and will start to be ramped to volume supply in the second quarter...

Engineers gain PCB certificate.
October 12, 2005... Six design engineers at Raytheon Systems' Glenrothes facility in Scotland have gained the advanced designers certificate for PCB design. A third of all PCB engineers in the UK who have the award are based at the Fife site. Pictured ( to r) are:...

Chip supplier buys USB firm and completes move to US.
October 12, 2005... Oxford Semiconductor has completed its transformation to a US-based chip supplier with the acquisition of a Californian firm specialising in USB chipsets. Oxford has bought TransDimension and set up a US parent firm, but it will retain its...

300mW power consumption for 65nm MCU at 2,000 Mips.
October 12, 2005... ARM's next generation processor will have a power consumption of just 300mW when manufactured on a 65nm semiconductor process. Running at 1GHz, the Cortex-A8 has a specified performance of 2,000 Dhrystone Mips, making it comparable with more...

Network processor company to announce tier one customers.
October 12, 2005... Agere Systems has two tier one customers for its network processors to announce in the next three to six months, according to Steve Dodsworth, Agere's senior manager for marketing and applications. "We aren't short of opportunities, telecoms...

Internet protocol TV services?drive infrastructure spending.
October 12, 2005... Internet protocol TV (IPTV) is driving a round of spending on broadband infrastructure as telcos are forced to find revenue streams, according to speakers at this year's Broadband World Forum in Madrid. Julio Linares Lopez, executive chairman...

Heading here.
October 12, 2005... Helen Maude has joined Remploy Electronics as strategic buyer. She has held purchasing roles in a variety of electronics manufacturing firms, including Filtronic Comtek, Pace Micro Communications and Protec Fire Detection. Lattice...

Competition for customers takes hold in French market.
October 12, 2005... Competition for broadband customers is heating up in France, according to Stephane Teral, MD at analyst firm 10th Street Advisors. According to Teral, Free is offering 20Mbit/s triple play (broadband voice, data and video to the home) at ?29.99...

Mobitex faces up to its rivals.
October 12, 2005... recent years it has seemed that the Mobitex industry has been behaving like that flightless bird the ostrich and burying its head in the sand to avoid acknowledging the threat to it from other wireless technologies. But at this year's Mobitex...

Intel buys UK RF chip design arm.
October 12, 2005... Intel has acquired a UK based RF chipset design business from Zarlink Semiconductor for $70m. The Swindon-based (former Plessey) team designs demodulation and tuner ICs for the satellite, terrestrial and cable TV market. Its acquisition puts...

'U3 smart drive' is buzzword for firms in USB flash market.
October 12, 2005... Several firms, among them Kingston, Memorex and and Verbatim, are to unveil USB flash drives meeting the U3 standard, which allows them to store applications as well as data. The U3 consortium, which was founded by M-Systems and SanDisk, is...

'U3 smart drive' is buzzword for firms in USB flash market.
October 12, 2005... Several firms, among them Kingston, Memorex and and Verbatim, are to unveil USB flash drives meeting the U3 standard, which allows them to store applications as well as data. The U3 consortium, which was founded by M-Systems and SanDisk, is...

Cornell University revvs up for US autonomous vehicle race.
October 12, 2005... Cornell University is to enter this year's US military-sponsored Grand Challenge desert race in which autonomous vehicles compete against each other over hundreds of miles of rough terrain. Sensors in the Cornell truck include GPS, LIDAR...

Knocking UWB into shape.
October 12, 2005... ver the last few years ultra wideband (UWB) radio has gone from being a rather esoteric technology employed by the military for covert communications, and oil companies for geophysical exploration, to being used across all short-range consumer...

Knocking UWB into shape.
October 12, 2005... ver the last few years ultra wideband (UWB) radio has gone from being a rather esoteric technology employed by the military for covert communications, and oil companies for geophysical exploration, to being used across all short-range consumer...

HSDPA gets 3G up to speed.
October 12, 2005... o sooner had 3G mobile phone networks started to roll out than there was the promise of even higher speeds with HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access). Using this, 3G is better able to compete with the speeds being offered by other cellular...

Broadband transforms the home.
October 12, 2005... he capital of broadband technology' isn't the obvious phrase to spring to mind when describing Hull but Hull City Council has claimed this title to draw attention to the Digital Home Showcase, a collaborative project with the test house KTL,...

Broadband transforms the home.
October 12, 2005... he ecapital of broadband technology' isn't the obvious phrase to spring to mind when describing Hull but Hull City Council has claimed this title to draw attention to the Digital Home Showcase, a collaborative project with the test house KTL,...

Russia fails to capitalise on chip talent.
October 12, 2005... he greatest failure of the Russian electronics industry seems to have been its inability to exploit the great wealth of intellectual capacity of Russian scientists. The Russian semiconductor industry has been declining for 15 years. In the...

Russia fails to capitalise on chip talent.
October 12, 2005... he greatest failure of the Russian electronics industry seems to have been its inability to exploit the great wealth of intellectual capacity of Russian scientists. The Russian semiconductor industry has been declining for 15 years. In the...

MEMS design: all-in-one or separates?
October 12, 2005... icromachined accelerometers are now not just for airbags, they are finding their way into more commonplace, but unexpected places. Some laptop hard drives, for example, quickly park their read heads when they experience zero g, as free-fall...