Home » 2011 » December

Monthly Archives: December 2011

The glitch that stole the FPGA’s energy efficiency

Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are notorious for high power consumption. They are hard to power down in the same way as custom logic – so they have considerable static power consumption – and they use a lot more gates to achieve the same job with their greater flexibility. However, a good proportion of an FPGA’s power consumption is avoidable. A ...

Grace and Hua Hong to merge

Hua Hong and Grace, the Chinese foundries, are to merge in what will be seen as a significant failure for China’s attempts to establish a domestic silicon foundry industry. Hua Hong will own 51% of the combined company with grace holding 49%. The merged company will have revenues of $600m and profits of $100m say the companies. China’s biggest attempt ...

Fable: The Persistent American Company

At a time when no foreign company had ever been allowed to build a fab in Japan, there was an American company which was extremely persistent in its efforts to get the Japanese authorities to give approval.

Elpida on the rack

Elpida has had to ask for a delay in repaying some of the $386m of public money it received to help it out earlier in the year. Investors in the company are bailing out as the prospects for its survival become less hopeful. As well as the $386m from the Japanese government, Elpida also got over $1.1bn from banks. Elpida ...

$900m to settle LCD price-fixing

Seven manufacturers of LCD panels are to pay $538m to settle charges of price-fixing. The sum is in addition to $388m paid earlier this month to settle similar charges. The latest payment goes to indirect purchasers of panels i.e consumers buying TVs, computers etc. The earlier sum goes to direct purchasers of panels i.e manufacturers of TVs, computers etc. The manufacturers ...