Motorola to sell Scottish based smart card chip business to Atmel Tom Foremski Motorola will sell its Scottish based smart card chip business to Atmel for an undisclosed sum as it focuses on becoming more of a systems solutions company. Atmel is buying Motorola’s Smart Information Transfer (SIT) business which is largely located in East Kilbride. Motorola retains the chip ...

Microprocessor architecture claims performance breakthrough Tom Foremski Silicon valley startup TeraGen says it has designed a new class of high performance embedded microprocessor chips. The company has developed a microprocessor architecture called Thread Processor which combines the functions of microcontrollers, digital signal processors and peripheral controllers, and cuts software development time. The Thread Processor architecture is designed to process any ...

Lithium ion batteries set for boom Tom Foremski Lithium ion polymer batteries are a new technology but will soon become the leading battery type in portable electronic devices, claims US market research firm Kline & Company. Thanks to major investments in commercial production lines by Sony, Matsushita and Thomas & Betts, there will be about 16 million lithium ion polymer ...

Mitel puts faith in UK after Swedish closure Richard Wilson A UK wafer fab has been given a major boost. Mitel Semiconductor is transferring all CMOS production from a fab in Sweden to its Plymouth manufacturing plant. Mitel plans to close one of its two Swedish fabs – affecting 200 staff – and shift production of mixed-signal Asics to the ...

Mitsubishi cuts UK jobs Alex Mayhew-Smith Restructuring by Mitsubishi is to lead to the loss of 200 jobs, some of which will go at its personal computer manufacturing facility in Glenrothes, Scotland. The company plans to close a surface mount line at the Scottish site of its Apricot arm, which manufactures motherboards for Apricot PCs and for the OEM markets ...

Political Correspondent

Home Internet access costs more in UK Melanie Reynolds The UK tops Europe as the most expensive place for home Internet access, according to analysts Datamonitor. Despite having the second highest number of subscribers at over two million, the average subscription cost per month for the UK was $25.44 in 1998. Germany, which at over 4.5 million has the largest ...

Lucent/Altera report record results Richard Ball Lucent Technologies and Altera have both reported record results for the last quarter of 1998. Lucent announced revenue of $9.2bn and net income of $1.4bn for the last quarter of 1998. Income rose 26 per cent over the same period in 1997. Altera’s revenue hit $172m in the final quarter of 1998, giving a ...

Filtronic profits up on last year Alex Mayhew-Smith Mobile phone component manufacturer Filtronic Comtek has reported a slight increase in interim pre-tax profit to ?5.8m, compared to ?5.1m for the same period last year. Turnover rose to ?82.71m in the six months to November 30, compared to ?41.78m previously. John David, the company’s chairman, said the firm is set to ...

Internet-over-the-mains to switch on a year late Richard Ball Nor.Web has admitted its Internet-over-the-mains service will be a year late but is denying rumours of technical hitches. “We have finished technical trials and there are no outstanding technical problems,” said a Nor.Web spokesperson. However, she conceded that digital powerline (DPL) services will be rolled out a year later than originally ...