Finance

A new device to help tackle sleep apnea has claimed first prize in the ARM Smart Product Design Competition. The Apnea Observer was designed by developer Clemente di Caprio from Rome who has been awarded $5,000 to help advance his prototype. Sleep apnea affects up to a quarter of the general population according to the British Journal of Anaesthesia, with ...

Dialog is to take over Atmel in a deal said to be aimed at strengthening Dialog’s position in IoT markets. “Dialog will complement its leadership position in power management ICs with a leading portfolio of proprietary and ARM-based microcontrollers in addition to high performance ICs for connectivity, touch and security,” says the company, “our new, enlarged company will be a diversified, high-growth ...

Fujitsu Semiconductor and Tera Probe have formed a jv for the wafer test business called Aizu Fujitsu Semiconductor Probe. Aizu Fujitsu Semiconductor Wafer Solution, a subsidiary of Aizu Fujitsu Semiconductor, offers both 150 mm wafer foundry services and 150 mm and 200 mm wafer test services. It provides low volume high-mix support, while Tera Probe offers a low-cost test service ...

The NXP and Freescale merger has been approved by the EC. The condition was the disposal of NXP’s power amplifier business which has been sold to JAC Capital of China. The EC’s ruling stated: “The Commission found that NXP and Freescale are the two largest players and close competitors in the RF power transistors market, in particular those used in base stations ...

China and Japan are working together to produce a robot called Torobo-kun capable of passing the University of Tokyo’s entrance exam, reports the Nikkei. iFlytek, a Chinese artificial intelligence company, is to work with Japan’s National Institute of Informatics (NII) on the project for which China has a budget of $24.6 million – considerably more than the NII’s budget. The ...

The SEMI August book-to-bill ratio was 1.06. Bookings were $1.67 billion which were 5% up on July and 23.8% up on August 2014. Billings were $1.58 billion which was 1.3% above the July billings and 21.9% higher than August 2014. “Given the trends through the year so far, the book-to-bill ratio stayed above parity on a three-month average basis,” says ...

ARM has set itself some aggressive targets in the mobile computing, networking and data-centre markets. ARM expects to double its royalties from mobile computing applications in the next five years, says CFO Chris Kennedy, this will take the figure to around $750 million. Units are expected to grow 7% CAGR till 2020, and the increasing ARM content in SoCs e.g. ...

HP is to cut another 25,000 to 30,000 jobs as it splits into HP Inc and HP Enterprise. The cuts are expected to be implemented by the end of October. The latest job losses, announced yesterday, will hit HP Enterprise, although HP Inc is expected to lose 3,300 jobs over the next three years. “We’ve done a significant amount of work ...

Harriet Green, formerly boss of distributors Macro, Arrow Asia/Pac and Premier Farnell, is to run IBM’s internet of things (IoT) business. Green is vice-president and genreal manager of IBM’s IoT division, which says it will invest $3bn in analytics and hardware for implementing IoT. Green joins IBM from heading travel company Thomas Cook. As well as heading IoT, Green will lead IBM’s ...

China made $12.5bn-worth of ICs last year, reports the China SIA (Semiconductor Industry Association), of which $5bn came from IC design, $3.7bn from IC fabrication and $3.8bn from IC packaging and testing. China invested $10bn in the memory industry, because it is the largest memory market and buys 75% of the global memory. Most  Chinese IC design companies rely on parent ...