Power management market is in decline in 2012

Power management market is in decline in 2012

MANHASSET, NY -- The market for power management semiconductors is predicted to decline by 6 percent by year-end, due mostly to pronounced softness in the global consumer markets.

Revenue derived from the use of power management chips will amount to $29.9 billion by the end of 2012, down from $31.8 billion last year, according to an IHS Report. The industry posted a small 1.5 percent increase last year, from revenue of $31.4 billion in 2010.

The previous IHS forecast for 2012, issued in September, called for slight 1.7 percent growth for the market.
“Despite the popularity of devices like smartphones and tablets, the consumer markets as a whole remain soft, with specific segments—like notebooks and other computer platforms—registering perceptible slowdowns.” said Marijana Vukicevic, senior principal analyst for power management at IHS.

A deceleration of energy initiatives in Asia is also contributing to the decline. Government incentives encouraging improved-efficiency cooling systems for residential and commercial use have expired, but new replacement stimulus efforts never took place in 2012.

The market is set to return to growth in 2013 and a modest rate of expansion ensues after that for the next three years, with industry revenue reaching an estimated $38.7 billion by 2016.



TAG:Power management market

AMD recasts foundry deal to save cash

AMD recasts foundry deal to save cash

LONDON – Struggling processor vendor Advanced Micro Devices Inc. said it has renegotiated its wafer supply agreement with foundry partner Globalfoundries Inc., moving on to fixed-price wafer deal to reduce its costs during the fourth quarter and into 2013.

Under terms of the deal, AMD (Sunnyvale, Calif.) will be liable for a "take-or-pay" termination fee of $320 million, but Globalfoundries (Milpitas, Calif.) has agreed to accept a promissory note for more than half the amount.

AMD said it expects to start generating cash in the second half of 2013. The chip maker currently estimates that it will purchase wafers from Globalfoundries valued at $115 million of wafers during 4Q12, resulting in a saving $65 million. It expects to save another $1.15 billion in fiscal 2013. AMD also committed to purchase $250 million worth of wafers from Globalfoundries during the first quarter of 2014.

The reduced wafer supply for the fourth quarter is in line with declining demand for PC processors. AMD said it will go to a fixed-price wafer deal for the duration of 2013, thereby reducing its purchasing commitments for next year.

In addition, AMD said it will reduce R&D payments to Globalfoundries by approximately $20 million per quarter over the next several years as it moves off proprietary AMD manufacturing processes and onto standard Globalfoundries' CMOS process technologies at 28 nm and below.

AMD will be liable for a termination payment of $320 million related to a "take-or-pay agreement" with Globalfoundries stemming from the adjusted wafer purchase commitments in the fourth quarter. However, the impact is being spread over several quarters, with Globalfoundries agreeing to accept $80 million by Dec. 28, and a $40 million by April 1, 2013. AMD supplied a promissory note for $200 million that falls due on Dec. 31, 2013, to cover the remainder.

AMD said the termination fee would result in a net one-time charge of approximately $165 million.

"Today's announcement demonstrates that the long-term strategic partnership between AMD and Globalfoundries continues to benefit both companies," AMD CEO Rory Read said in a statement. "Globalfoundries' performance in meeting our delivery requirements in 2012 was strong, and they remain a strategic and important foundry partner moving forward."

Read added that AMD is "committed to develop and grow our business with Globalfoundries," adding that the wafer agreement "is another step we are taking to further strengthen our relationship with Globalfoundries as well as AMD's financial foundation."

AMD negotiated a fixed-price wafer deal with Globalfoundries' in April 2011, although that agreemeent was thought to have stemmed from low manufacturing yields for 32-nm circuits.


Related links and articles:

www.amd.com

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TAG:AMD Globalfoundries semiconductor wafers price bail out

Voyager: Electronics for the long haul

Voyager: Electronics for the long haul

Man-made objects launched by the United States in 1977 are about to leave our solar system to begin an infinite journey through interstellar space.

Back when Voyagers One and Two were launched, mission planners at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory calculated that the probes would last five years. It would not be the first time scientists would drastically underestimate the staying power of an American space machine.

Very soon, the twin spacecraft (NASA opted for redundancy to ensure the success of the mission) will emerge from the sun’s magnetosphere, sometimes referred to as the “heliospheric bubble” that divides the solar and stellar winds, and become the first spacecraft to leave our solar system to explore the Milky Way. Each carries a gold-plated copper disk containing, among other data, greetings in 55 Earth languages.

It appears the only thing that can silence the Voyagers, whose signal strength in messages back to Earth is now measured in femtowatts, is the depletion of their plutonium power sources. That isn’t expected to happen until around 2020, meaning the craft will actually be traveling through the extreme foreground of deep space seen in all those spectacular Hubble Telescope images.

The Voyagers are hardly the only planetary probes that have far exceeded their expected lifetimes. The spunky Mars rover named Opportunity recently resumed operations after surviving its eighth Martian winter. Opportunity and its stalled mate Spirit landed on Mars in January 2004 and were expected to operate for perhaps a few months.

Both the Voyager and Mars rover programs illustrate the remarkable reliability of space electronics and the genius of the system engineers who in many cases used off-the-shelf systems, such as real-time operating systems, to design these magnificent machines. Their ingenuity stands as one of the foremost achievements of the electronics age.


Next: Learning from failures
TAG:Voyager: Electronics 40th eet

Intel upping Atom ante

Intel upping Atom ante

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Intel fellow and wunderkind Matthew Adiletta gave a history dating back to 2006 of how the company developed its Atom-based microserver. But he failed to shed much light on the future of the new processor which will face competition from a half dozen 64-bit ARM server SoCs in 2014.

“Intel will soon launch Centerton, a 64-bit, [dual core Atom processor] with ECC and server features—it’s just the first step and the road map coming will be compelling,” said Adiletta who helped develop Intel’s first network processor and now directs a lab that pioneered the Atom server work. Aditletta spoke on an Intel call on Thursday to brief the press on server strategy.

Hewlett-Packard said earlier this year that Centerton will be the first of several processors it will use in a new low power server family. Intel said it will roll a 22 nm version of the chip in 2013 called Avoton.

Industry reports said Avoton will sport a new out-of-order Atom core along with a DDR3 memory controller, multiple Gbit Ethernet MACs and support for serial ATA and PCI Express 2.0. Longer term, Intel has said it is working on a new cluster interconnect for all its server processors using technology acquired from Cray and others.

Adiletta confirmed Intel plans out-of-order Atom cores and more integrated SoCs with lower idle power levels, but would not give details.

“A lot of performance can be gained very quickly as we add sophistication to Atom cores,” Adiletta said. “We are finally doing well now with SoC integration and tool suites for integration with the right IP blocks,” he said

Initial Intel projections that low power microservers might grow to ten percent of the overall server segment are a “reasonable first approximation based on the parallel workloads this is well suited for, but the software is evolving,” he said. “Frankly I don’t think we know but if it gets to be more [than ten percent]…and I think our customers don’t know either,” he added.

Adiletta’s work toward microservers began in 2006 when Pat Gelsinger, then manager of Intel’s server group, asked him to meet with a Wall Street CTO who used blade servers. “I quickly appreciated the need for density for ease of cabling, management and quickly getting compute online,” Adiletta said.

In 2007, he started comparing performance per watt characteristics, developing integrated CPU cards using Atom and Core 2 Duo processors. When management asked for external validation of his findings, he took the Atom board to Andy Bechtolsheim, a serial entrepreneur who co-founded data center companies including Sun Microsystems and Arista Networks.

“It was a fun meeting--Andy reviewed all information and then shook his head,” Adiletta said. “He said it hurt his head to think of all the opportunities if we could realize this,” he recalled.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon used the boards for some of their studies in 2009 of fast arrays of so-called wimpy processors. By then Intel clearly saw some server workloads such as Hadoop that use many small highly parallel chunks of code would benefit from an Atom server.

“More chefs in the kitchen helps up to a point depending on what’s served,” he said.

By 2009, Intel started working on Centerton and its follow ons. “Intel has a head start in microservers, we are very bullish and have an excellent road map,” he said.

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Quanta QCT preps server using Atom CPU

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ARM servers: Heavy lifting, big payoffs ahead
TAG:Intel Atom Microservers ARM Servers Processors CPUs Centerton Avoton HP

Earthquake, tsunami strike Japan's northeast

Earthquake, tsunami strike Japan's northeast

A one-meter high tsunami has come ashore in Japan's Miyagi prefecture following an earthquake of an estimated 7.3 magnitude occurred under the ocean about 150 miles off Japan's northeast coast.

The earthquake and tsunami have struck the area that was devastated in March 2011.

According to NHK World reports the powerful earthquake, which occurred at about 5:18pm local time, prompted authorities to post a tsunami warning and to advise inhabitants of Miyagi prefecture to move away from the coast and head towards higher ground, according to reports.

A one-meter high tsunami wave came ashore at Ishinomaki city in the Miyagi prefecture at about 6:00pm local time. The earthquake also shook northeastern and eastern Japan and shook buildings in Tokyo.



TAG:Earthquake tsunami Japan Miyagi

3-D printers for medical use ahead says researcher

3-D printers for medical use ahead says researcher

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Medical device companies could someday use 3-D printers to quickly make an array of products from custom implants to valves and ultra fine micro-needle arrays for drug delivery. But the technology is not quite ready for prime time, said an expert in the field.

A handful of current 3-D printing techniques all hold promise and pitfalls. The systems are typically much faster and simpler than conventional manufacturing techniques, but they are still relatively imprecise, expensive and lack bio-compatibility, said Roger Narayan, professor of biomedical engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

“There’s a lot of interest in honing these techniques for medical apps,” said Narayan in a talk at the BioMeDevices Forum here. “We are getting to the point where surgical implants can be made with rapid prototyping—some dentists are already using it for temporary crowns,” he said.

In the near term, some forms of 3-D printers could be used to create molds or casts for a wide variety of small implants, valves and disposable devices. They could also be an alternative for making micro-needle arrays where traditional processes are seen as a bottleneck, Narayan said.

“It’s really about lower cost systems, wider choice of input materials and improved bio-compatibility” for these applications, he said.

Long term, 3-D printing holds promise to make combination devices that mix living cells with other materials to create implants that are less frequently rejected by the human body. But that will require a generation of more cell-friendly 3-D printers.

Narayan has conducted 3-D printing experiments using an argon fluoride excimer laser, one of many approaches that can use cells as an input media. But currently, “the scaling is not there, throughput is too low,” he said.

Meanwhile, some stereo lithography systems using liquids are creating features that range from 75 to 10 microns. A relatively new two-photon polymerization approach has created features measuring as little as 100 nm. “So you can get to truly small scale structures nowadays,” he said.

Roger Narayan gave a walk through of current 3-D printing approaches and their medical uses.

TAG:3 D Printers Medical Devices Rapid Prototyping Medtech Implants Microneedles Valves Manufacturing BioMeDevices

Broadcom sees rising 20 nm costs amid handset push

Broadcom sees rising 20 nm costs amid handset push

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Cost-per-transistor may rise at the 20- and 14-nm generations, Broadcom CEO Scott McGregor said during in the company’s annual analyst day here. Nevertheless, the company will “judiciously” drive more products to newer nodes next year as it rolls out its first LTE chips and gears up for a push into integrated applications processors.

Separately, Broadcom expects handsets using its near-field communications chips will ramp next year. TVs and set-tops using 4K x 2K displays and the new high-efficiency video codec (likely to be re-named MPEG-5) will be a big focus at next month’s Consumer Electronics Show, he added.

“Moore’s Law is going through an interesting phase,” said McGregor. “We use to have improvement in cost per transistor at every node, and at 28 nm it’s coming down, but in 20 or 14 nm it may even come up and that may be a shock for everyone."

Nevertheless, Broadcom expects to gain economic advantages by driving a greater percentage of products to leading nodes when they need it for lower power or higher density.

“We have been a generation or two behind others in the node we use, but we believe it makes sense to move closer to the leading edge,” McGregor said. “We won’t be the first in a process tech but we will get more competitive."

“When we went to 65 nm, we moved the whole product portfolio, but that won’t happen going forward,” said McGregor. “We will be judicious, 28 nm will have long life and some products won’t make sense to move maybe ever and that is very different from the past."

Broadcom expects to tape out 50 new SoCs in 2012. “This is the engine of Broadcom’s growth, a large part of what you get for spending $2 billion in R&D,” according to McGregor.

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Broadcom lifts Q4 sales target

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Next: Move to integrated apps processors
TAG:Integrated Applications Processors Process Technology 20 Nm Broadcom Handsets LTE NFC

Opinion: Innovation for a disruptive world

Opinion: Innovation for a disruptive world

Innovation is a much overused word in the electronics industry and innovation is closely associated with disruption. Both phenomena are always linked to a vision. Some come to pass, such as Arthur C. Clarke’s 1945 vision of geostationary satellites, and others such as Alex Lewyt’s 1955 revelation of a nuclear-powered vacuum cleaner may never come to fruition.

Great visions are often counterintuitive, scary or just plain annoying.

However, many of us seek such ideas (and invest significant amounts of money) to help drive businesses, re-elect governments and improve people’s lives. Whatever we seek, we have to react to disruption when it happens, as too many good ideas have simply withered on the vine due to the risk associated with being different. We have to believe in people like Alan Turing and back them in their time, not wait for periods when the appetite for risk is driven by less savory catalysts, such as war.

Technology has the opportunity to help people, and that is enough. The question is, which disruptive technologies should we back and how should we do it?

What excites me at the moment?


Click on image to enlarge.
Mike Muller

TAG:Innovation ARM 40th 40 EET

Medtech prize, wireless FDA unit proposed in bill

Medtech prize, wireless FDA unit proposed in bill

SAN JOSE, Calif. – The U.S. government would create a national prize for disruptive medtech innovators and establish a wireless health unit in the Food and Drug Administration if a new bill proposed by a Silicon Valley lawmaker is adopted.

The Healthcare Innovation and Marketplace Technologies Act (HIMTA, H.R. 6626) proposed by Rep. Mike Honda (D., Calif.) calls for spending roughly $10 million a year or more on a Disruptive Technologies Prize Program administered by a group of private and public experts. It also would fund a set of small innovator challenge grants.

The bill would lay the groundwork for clarifying existing regulations on wireless health care. It calls for setting up an Office of Wireless Health at the FDA and a mobile health developer support program at the Department of Health and Human Services. The latter group would advise developers on privacy regulations via a national hotline, an educational website, and an annual report.

Under the new law, doctors would get access to a pool of $25 million in low-interest loans as well as tax incentives for buying IT systems for use in health care. In addition, the proposal would spend $10 million a year for two-year grants to train medical care providers on health care IT systems.

“Investments, development, and adoption of [medtech] technologies remain stagnant,” said Rep. Honda in a prepared statement.

“Currently, our health care system works against small-to-large startup entrepreneurs with a multitude of barriers to entry,” said Honda who represents California’s 15th district covering the San Jose area. “There is also a lack of an established marketplace for new technologies and a lack of trained workers to handle the implementation and use of these technologies--this bill begins to bridge these gaps,” he added.

The bill aims to spur what's perceived as lagging investments in health technologies such as tele-medicine, personal health connected devices, mobile devices, and patient/doctor communication tools. Rep. Honda. "worked with dozens of private industry stakeholders in the drafting of this bill and has received interest from Senators as well as Republicans in the House," said a spokesman.

The bill faces an unclear future at a time when Congress is locked in debate over the looming fiscal cliff. It comes in the wake of controversial health care reforms passed in President Barack Obama's first term.

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Home patient monitoring slowly gets on its feet

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TAG:Health Care IT Medical Electronics Health Care Wirelesss Health Medtech FDA Law HIMTA

We should pay for patents by the pound

We should pay for patents by the pound

SAN JOSE, Calif. – I’d like to offer a modest proposal to help cut through all the controversy around the value of patents. Simply put the documents on a scale, like grapes or ground beef, and pay the holder 50 cents per pound.

The proposal could save patent holders tens of millions of dollars in legal fees to say nothing of the time and effort in patent negotiations. Whole intellectual property departments could be streamlined, saving money for R&D.

I know this may seem like a radical proposal, but hear me out. It’s true, I am not an engineer, and I have never earned a single patent, but I have been to the sausage factory.

I covered calls for patent reform that spanned more than a decade. When a bill finally came no one was satisfied that they were significantly better off.

Later, I sat for weeks in the Apple vs. Samsung patent case. Two of the largest companies in the electronics industry brought some of the greatest litigators in intellectual property to bear on the questions in the case. They marshaled a small army of experts including some of the leading minds from academia, industry and standards groups.

I heard experts--some paid nearly a million dollars each--for their testimony make convincing cases one company infringed another company’s patent. The opposing side then brought equally pedigreed (and well paid) experts to testify exactly the opposite. At the end of the trail, the foreman (himself a veteran EE) said the jury threw out all the expert testimony because they could not trust people who were paid such high sums.

I left the case wondering how anyone can determine if a patent is valid or not, whether a product infringes a patent or not or whether a given patent is essential to a standard or not. There quite simply are no simple, clear tests a jury of anyone’s peers can apply to answer these questions decisively.
Next: Cloak of secrecy
TAG:Standards Essential Patents Patent Reform Intellectual Property Patent Suits Patents

Sony, Toshiba to buy more chips, says IHS

Sony, Toshiba to buy more chips, says IHS

LONDON – Japan's consumer electronics giants have been hit hard in 2012 but Sony and Toshiba are two companies that look set to try an innovate their way out of trouble in 2013, according to market research firm IHS.

Companies such as Panasonic, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba have been hit by multiple challenges including: economic slowdown in key markets of the world, lower demand plaguing certain product segments, and competition from South Korean and Chinese rivals. According to the latest financial forecasts, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba and Sharp will all suffer losses this year and as a group, the four companies will see their revenue decline by nearly 7 percent in 2012 compared to 2011.

Nonetheless Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp. are expected to increase chip purchasing over the next two years. Sony is expected to purchase $8.4 billion worth of semiconductors, up nearly 5 percent from $8.0 billion in 2012. Toshiba's spending will increase 2.0 percent to $6.1 billion in 2013, up from $6.0 billion in 2012. Toshiba’s spending will surge by another 6.3 percent in 2014 reaching $6.5 billion, IHS said.

In contrast, spending at the other major Japanese consumer electronics OEMs, Panasonic and Sharp, will decline in 2013 — with Panasonic enjoying a minor rebound of 2.4 percent in 2014.

Sony and Toshiba remain optimistic about the future, and are taking steps to invest in innovative products. This will cause their spending on semiconductors to rise in the coming years," said Myson Robles-Bruce, senior analyst for semiconductor spending and design activity at IHS, in a statement.

IHS predicts Sony will bounce back with 3.7 percent revenue growth in 2013. However, Toshiba will suffer another 1 percent decline. Declines in 2013 revenue are expected at Panasonic and Sharp as well.


Related links and articles:

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TAG:IHS Panasonic Sharp Sony Toshiba semiconductor consumer electronics

Broadcom lifts Q4 sales target

Broadcom lifts Q4 sales target

SAN FRANCISCO—Fabless chip vendor Broadcom Corp. Wednesday (Dec. 5) narrowed its fourth quarter sales target to the high end of the previously guided range based on better-than-expected revenue from the company's mobile and wireless products.

Broadcom (Irvine, Calif.) said it now expects fourth quarter sales to be between $2 billion and $2.1 billion. The company said previously it expected fourth quarter sales to be between $1.95 billion and $2.1 billion.

Broadcom's announcement that it expects to hit the high end of its guided sales target came one day after programmable logic vendor Altera Corp. moved the needle in the opposite direction, narrowing its fourth quarter guidance to the low end of its previous range. Altera said it expects fourth quarter sales to be down 8 to 10 percent sequentially after previously saying it expected a sequential decline of 6 to 10 percent.

Related stories:

• Broadcom posts first $2 billion quarter
• Qualcomm overtakes TI in chip sales rankings
• Broadcom intros IPv6 network processor
• Teardown: Apple iPad Mini
• ARM, Imagination divvy up MIPS

TAG:Broadcom Altera Sales Chip

Top 10 electronics business deals of 2012

Top 10 electronics business deals of 2012

LONDON -- Despite a rocky global economy in 2012, consumer spending on tablet computers and smart phones remained strong as the era of the personal computer fades. These realities helped shape the electronics landscape this year, creating winners and losers in the semiconductor industry and a considerable number of significant mergers and acquisitions.

One of the most intriguing deals, the sale of processor IP licensor MIPS Technologies Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) is still playing out. In November, graphics IP specialist Imagination Technologies it had agreed to buy MIPS' operating business for $60 million while another U.K. company, ARM, would lead a consortium called Bridge Crossing. that would acquire rights to the MIPS portfolio of patents. Bridge Crossing would pay $350 million in cash to purchase the rights to the MIPS portfolio, of which ARM will contribute $167.5 million (see ARM and Imagination divide up MIPS)

Two weeks later, however, Ceva Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.) sought to trump Imagination's offer for MIPS by bidding $75 million. MIPS shareholders are undoubtedly hoping Imagination or another bidder will respond with an even better offer.

There were other deals this year in the mixed-signal and RF market segments, including GPS and wireless chip company U-blox acquiring chip startup Cognovo for $16.5 million along with 4M Wireless for $9 million, both for their expertise in 3GPP LTE technology (see U-box buys Cognovo and 4M Wireless).

Here's the list:

The semiconductor mergers and acquisitions described below and on the following pages represent some of the key technology deals of 2012. They also illustrate the constant churn and reshaping of the global electronics industry. (Please note they're not ranked or ordered; all are considered significant.)

Deal: Apple Bites Anobit



TAG:Intel Apple Anobit AMD SeaMicro Qualcomm Synopsys ARM Imagination Ceva MIPS Cognovo Rambus Cypress Ramtron

奇石玉器精品陶瓷博览会揭幕

奇石玉器精品陶瓷博览会揭幕

　　本报长沙讯 12月1日,2012中国(长沙)奇石玉器精品陶瓷艺术品展在长沙红星美凯龙家居广场揭幕,来自全国20余个省市、100余位展商和奇石爱好者携数万件奇石及根雕玉器艺术品亮相,摆起“石门阵”免费供石友观赏品鉴,本次展览将延续至12月10日.

　　此次奇石玉器精品陶瓷艺术品展,有来自安徽、新疆、、青海、贵州、云南、广西、宁夏、江苏、山东、东北、江西等省区及本地的石友带来的收藏珍品.包括了山东青州红丝石,湖南湘西国画石、吉首武陵石、西藏藏玉、贵州千年乌江石、江苏东海水晶、黄河小浪底天然石、辽宁岫岩石雕、青海源头石、北京平谷金海石、新疆和田绿碧玉原石、广东阳春孔雀石等.除此之外,来自伊朗、阿富汗的绿玉,巴西亚马逊河域的花梨木大板、彩色玛瑙,马达加斯加斜长月光石,越南的石雕,埃及的木化玉等更令观者大开眼界.记者郑辉

来源:新浪收藏


TAG:奇石玉器精品陶瓷博览会揭幕 翡翠 翡翠手镯 中国翡翠网 翡翠新闻

Opinion: A graduate-entrepreneur looks forward 40 years

Opinion: A graduate-entrepreneur looks forward 40 years

[Editor's note: Simon Barker has a bachelors degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, a PhD in Resilient Energy Harvesting Systems and is now the CTO of a U.K.-based startup called Radfan. Like any entrepreneurial-minded engineer he has an keen interest in how the future will develop and how engineers, with a good grasp of business, can be at the forefront of building this future. To that end we asked students and young people what they think technology could do for their world over the next 40 years and what they would like it to achieve. Their opinions follow this one by Barker--Peter Clarke]

NEWCASTLE, England – Thinking, and writing, about the future sometimes seems to be both a curse and a gift of the human condition. Our ability to think about the past and use it to inform and transform our futures sets us apart from most of the animal kingdom.

But with it comes the burden of worry. Will things turn out ok? Will Greece remain in the Euro? Will my house plunge in value? Will climate change leave Africa a completely inhospitable desert? Will my kid get a good enough college degree to get a job? Will she even need to go to college?

I could go on.

If that all sounds a bit depressing, don't worry. In this article I will propose a positive vision of 2052 that develops from what we are currently doing. There are some hiccups along the way but overall things will get a lot better.

It may seem utopian, even naive to some, but looking at where we have come from in the last 10 years I think a hopeful and benign future on this planet – and beyond – is within our grasp.


Click on image to enlarge.
Simon Barker

TAG:40th eet Harvesting Systems Radfan

London Calling: At IEDM heat improves flash memory

London Calling: At IEDM heat improves flash memory

Flash memory maker Macronix has come up with a way to improve the cycling endurance of flash memory from 10,000 cycles to in excess of 100 million cycles which it is due to present at the International Electron Devices Meeting of 2012.

The event is almost upon us and the paper from Macronix International Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan) looks set to be one of the most intriguing and one that could simplify flash memory deployments such as in solid-state disk drives.

It is well known that flash memory endurance reduces with scaling. So read/write cycling endurance which used to be at the levels of 100,000 to 1 million cycles in the early days of flash non-volatile memory has now reduced to 10,000 cycles or less. This has, in turn, produced requirements for complex software algorithms to implement wear-leveling in flash-based memory systems and to provide extra memory for some applications.

The paper (9.1) is entitled: Radically extending the cycling endurance of flash memory (to >100 million cycles) by using built-in thermal annealing to self-heal the stress-induced damage.

The technique seems to borrow something from phase-change memory, which uses a heating cycle to reset the material phase of the chaclogenide material that offer variable resistance.

In the case of flash memory repeated program/erase cycles degrades the tunnel oxide which separates the floating gate where charge is stored. According to the paper abstract Macronix researchers observed that heating the oxide could repair the damage but was impractical at the macroscopic level. However, a scheme could be implemented by including memory cell heaters that provide thermal annealing exactly where it is needed.

The Macronix engineers have modified a single-ended word line to a double-ended structure so that current could be passed through the gate to generate Joule heating. Temperatures of more than 800 degrees C were generated adjacent to the gate, the abstract states. It also states that endurance cycles of more than 100 million program-erase cycles were achieved with "excellent data retention." The researchers also noticed that the heating enabled faster erasing.




Click on image to enlarge.
Structure of diode-strapped wordline with local interconnect used to connect to metal heat plates. Source: IEDM advance program.

Of course the devil is in the detail and it remains to be seen whether an annealing cycle needs to be added every read/write cycle and thereby impacts access times or can be called up every few thousand cycles but which thereby retains some software complexity.

Nor has it yet been related as to what process node the annealing flash memory has been implemented although there is a hint in the diagram of 30-nm. Nor do we yet know what it will it do for electromigration of materials in the device.

It is unlikely that this technique will help flash memory scale but it could be useful for vertical NAND flash memories and and it is definitely a paper and a technology development to look out for.


Related links and articles:

IEDM website

News articles:

IEDM targets next-gen memory technologies

Intel, rivals gird for IC manufacturing showdown

Intel describes 22-nm SoC process, not chips

Intel’s Haswell boosts battery life, graphics


TAG:Peter Clarke London Calling IEDM semiconductor Macronix flash memory endurance anneal heat

PMC’s Lang talks of comms, storage and mergers

PMC’s Lang talks of comms, storage and mergers

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Although carriers spent less than expected this year, the outlook in wireless and optical telecom remains good, said Greg Lang, chief executive of PMC-Sierra Inc. In a wide ranging interview, Lang gave his views on PMC’s core markets and deflected reports the company is under pressure to consider a sale.

Activist investor Ralph Whitworth said in a regulatory filing in January his company acquired a 7.17 percent stake in PMC and said the chip vendor should explore strategic alternatives. “The reports [of a possible sale] came out in February and here we are,” said Lang, a finance specialist who climbed the management ranks at Intel and became CEO of PMC in 2008.

“I feel very comfortable with our ability to compete with the resources we have,” said Lang, noting the telecom chip designer now gets most of its revenues from storage components, particularly expanders for the Serial-attached SCSI (SAS) interface used in high-end disk drives.

PMC announced a 12 Gbit/s SAS controller earlier this year it expects to have in production in late 2013, when a 12G SAS ecosystem is ripe. The company also serves as editor of the SCSI Express standard that will marry the server reliability features of SAS with the faster transport of PCI Express, expected to serve a growing market of flash drives and subsystems.

“Flash is the most disruptive thing in storage in a long time, so there will be a lot of opportunities,” said Lang. Intel has not yet weighed in on the SCSI Express standard but “I think they will eventually see the value proposition it brings, and it doesn’t take away” from Intel’s work on the separate NVMe interface, he said.

PMC’s archrival, LSI Corp., has a larger share of the storage chip business and is making hay with the flash controller it acquired with startup SandForce. Despite the rivalries in storage and wireless with LSI, Lang downplayed talk of a merger of the companies.
Next: Outlook for optical, wireless telecom
TAG:PMC Sierra PMC Storage SAS Communications Optical Wireless OTN Backhaul LSI

Global chip sales stay strong in October

Global chip sales stay strong in October

LONDON – Strong growth in the Americas region pushed the three-month average of worldwide semiconductor sales to increase at above seasonal rates in October. The averaged sales reached $25.22 billion in October, up 1.7 percent from September, but down 2.3 percent compared with October 2011, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association trade group.

Monthly sales topped $25 billion for the first time in 2012 and growth came despite predictions earlier in the year of a chip inventory correction coming from such luminaries as Morris Chang, CEO of foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

The total year-to-date sales in 2012 were down 3.7 percent compared with the first 10 months of 2011 but the deficit was the smallest it has been all year, the SIA observed in a statement.

For the Americas region sales increased sequentially in October by 8.1 percent more than compensating for a weakness in Japan. Comparing the October three-month average year-to-year and the Americas region was up 2.6 percent while Europe and Japan were down 9.4 and 9.1 percent respectively.

"The global semiconductor industry has demonstrated impressive resilience this year, despite operating in a challenging global macroeconomic environment," said Brian Toohey, president and CEO of the SIA, in a statement. "Sales for 2012 continue to lag behind 2011 totals, but the gap has closed in recent months thanks largely to growth in the Americas. Sales for October were significantly above seasonal trends, and we expect to carry this momentum into 2013 and 2014, with moderate growth projected for both years."


Click on image to enlarge.
Global three-month average chip sales for October 2012 and by regions in U.S. dollar billions. Source SIA.

Additionally, SIA today endorsed the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization’s Autumn 2012 global semiconductor sales forecast, which projects that the industry’s worldwide sales will reach $290 billion in 2012 – a 3.2 percent decrease from the 2011 sales total. WSTS projects year-over-year declines for 2012 in all four major regions: the Americas (-4.4 percent), Europe (-10.7 percent), Japan (-2.1 percent) and Asia Pacific (-1.4 percent).

Beyond 2012, the industry is expected to grow steadily and moderately across all regions, according to the WSTS forecast. WSTS predicts 4.5 percent growth globally for 2013 ($303 billion in total sales) and 5.2 percent growth for 2014 ($319 billion).

Monthly data is given by the SIA as a three-month average although the source of the data, WSTS, tracks actual monthly data. The SIA and other regional semiconductor industry bodies like to use averaged data because it smoothes out the actual data that usually show troughs at the beginnings of the quarters and peaks at the ends of the quarters.


Related links and articles:

www.sia-online.org

News articles:

Chip market to fall in 2012, rise in 2013, says WSTS

Chip sales face 5 percent decline in 2012, says SIA

Chip sales flat in August


TAG:SIA WSTS semiconductor October sales

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Handbags The most Essential Fashion Accessory Womens Leather Handbag On Sale

TAG:accessory essential fashion handbags

Nokia selling headquarters for $223 million

Nokia selling headquarters for $223 million

SAN FRANCISCO— Finnish mobile phone vendor Nokia Corp. said Tuesday (Dec. 4) it plans to sell its headquarters in Espoo, Finland, to a real estate investment firm for 170 million euro (about $223 million).

Nokia said it plans to lease the office building from the real estate investment firm, Finland-based Exilion Capital Ltd., on a long-term basis. Nokia said it expects to complete the sale by the end of 2012.

"We had a comprehensive sales process with both Finnish and foreign investors and we are very pleased with this outcome," said Timo Ihamuotila, Nokia's chief financial officer. "As we have said before, owning real estate is not part of Nokia's core business and when good opportunities arise we are willing to exit these types of non-core assets."

Last week, chip vendor Advanced Micro Devices Inc. announced its intention to sell its main campus in Austin, Texas, and lease the facility back from the buyer on a long-term basis.


Nokia's headquarters, known as Nokia House. The building was designed by architect Pekka Helin.

TAG:Nokia Headquarters Sale Exilion Finland

Staples to offer 3-D printing

Staples to offer 3-D printing

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—Mega store Staples is launching a new 3-D printing service in the Netherlands and Belgium starting in the first quarter of 2013, the firm has announced.

The office equipment retailer is trying to get a head start on the 3-D printing craze, by allowing customers to print their designs in stores, instead of having to purchase the machine themselves. Some of the smallest 3-D printers available today cost in the region of $1000.

The service, Staples Easy 3D, will also allow customers to upload their designs via the Staples website and then pick up their printed product from their local store when it’s ready.

Staples said it would be using Iris 3-D printers, manufactured by Mcor Technologies. That particular model uses reams of paper instead of plastics and resins to create products, with the paper cut to size, and stacked tightly together using glue in between layers. This allows for high-resolution layers at a thickness of 100 µ, which is the average quality for 3-D printing. The finished product has a consistency similar to wood and can be drilled, tapped, or screwed.

High definition 3-D printers can achieve resolutions of down to 25 µ.

As of yet, there is no word when Staples in the U.S. will start rolling out the service.

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TAG:3d printing electronic materials

Home patient monitoring slowly gets on its feet

Home patient monitoring slowly gets on its feet

SAN JOSE, Calif. – An historic shift in moving chronic health care out of the hospital and into the home is going slower than expected but is inevitable, said the chief executive of a company pioneering the field.

“We’ve been fighting this battle for six to ten years--health care doesn’t move fast,” said Kent Dicks, CEO of Alere Connect, formerly MedApps. “We still need more proven test cases, but you will see this come in your lifetime—in the next four to ten years,” Dicks predicted in a talk at the BioMeDevice event here.

Alere Connect makes a range of portable health care devices using a mix of Bluetooth, MICS and Wi-Fi currently used in a range of trials with at least six health care providers. About 100,000 remote patient monitoring systems are in use in the U.S. today, a number that is expected to leap to 1.3 million within eight years, Dicks said.

The systems are primarily used to monitor chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and congestive heart failure. They are being employed by a range of hospitals, clinics and health care organizations trying to prevent costly hospital visits as well as by drug makers in clinical trials.

Dicks claimed a “perfect storm” of factors will accelerate the trend including emerging standards and increasingly low cost cellular links.

“Data transmissions for biometric readings that use to cost $5 to $8 now cost $1.50 and they are going to the 20 to 50 cent range,” he said. “When you have that kind of pricing, it’s a game changer."

Regulations and reimbursement practices still don’t widely support remote monitoring services, and some doctors express concern about a flood of real-time data from home systems. As for patients, the 20 percent who consume 80 percent of health care services are typically seniors, the uninsured or homeless.

“For some Medicaid patients we found out the smartphones and tablets we gave them wound up in the pawn shop, so we had to create a non-hock-able device that couldn’t be used for anything but taking and sending readings,” Dicks said.

Related stories:

• House Calls for Medtech
• Photo gallery: Medtech on display in Anaheim
• Medtech prognosis: Going digital, under stress

TAG:Remote Patient Monitoring Health Care Medical Electronics Alere Connect Medical Wireless MedApps

Handset shipments set to grow just 1% in 2012

Handset shipments set to grow just 1% in 2012

SAN FRANCISCO—Shipments of cellular handsets are set to grow just 1.4 percent in 2012, the lowest level of growth in the past three years, despite a projected record number of fourth quarter smartphone shipments, according to International Data Corp. (IDC).

While overall handset shipment growth is expected to be tepid, shipments of smartphones for the year are projected to rise 45.1 percent, reaching 717.5 million units, IDC (Framingham, Mass.) said. Fourth quarter smartphone shipments are projected to hit 224.5 million units, up 39.5 percent from the fourth quarter of 2011, the firm said.

According to IDC's quarterly mobile phone tracker report, total handset shipments are expected to eclipse 1.7 billion units in 2012. The firm expects total handset shipments into the sales channel to grow to more than 2.2 billion by 2016.

"Sluggish economic conditions worldwide have cast a pall over the mobile phone market this year," said Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC's worldwide quarterly mobile phone tracker, in a statement. "However, the fourth quarter will be relatively bright due in part to sales of high-profile smartphones, such as the iPhone 5 and Samsung’s Galaxy S3, in addition to lower-cost Android-powered smartphones shipped to China and other high-growth emerging markets."




TAG:Handset IDC Smartphone Android iOS

IEDM targets next-gen memory technologies

IEDM targets next-gen memory technologies

This year’s International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in San Francisco (Dec. 10-12) offers a mix futuristic academic research and evolutionary industrial technology approaching commercialization.

It’s no surprise that many interesting papers are related to non-volatile memory. It seems like there’s been a decades-long wait for flash to crash and a replacement technology emerging to pick up the pieces. As you might expect, this year's IEDM offers no shortage of papers related to emerging or "next generation" technologies. If you don't think 3-D NAND is the next generation, you can accuse me of ignoring new technology. But I think with 3-D stacking, flash will be its own replacement.

For those who think of emerging memory as an alphabet soup of RAMs, perhaps more interesting than any of the new technologies described in the IEDM papers might be the corporate dance that has been going on with the various floating-gate NAND replacements.

Since flash memory is ever approaching its demise, let’s start by looking at scaling. Both today's planar technology and future 3-D cells are covered in the joint Intel-Micron effort titled, "Scaling Directions for 2-D and 3-D NAND Cells."

What really caught my eye in the 2012 IEDM program was the number of presentations by Macronix. Perhaps best remembered as the company that helped spread video game titles to the masses via Nintendo, Macronix will present five IEDM papers on advanced semiconductor technology. Compare that total with a traditional powerhouse like STMicroelectronics with six or major flash player Hynix with three.

The first Macronix paper picks up on the theme of the invited paper. Macronix employed staircase contacts and a split-page bit line layout to produce an eight-layer 3-D NAND with vertical gate structures.

Another Macronix 3-D NAND paper. (“Design Innovations to Optimize the 3-D Stackable Vertical Gate (VG) NAND Flash,”) illustrates how many technologists see 3-D NAND in our near future.

Moving beyond memory, there are three papers related to CMOS platform technology that are definitely worth a look. First is IBM's 22-nm SOI technology with embedded DRAM. It's the first time dual stressors have been implemented adding Si:C for electron mobility enhancement in N-channel FETs along with the now commonplace SiGe source/drains for compressive strain-enhanced P-channel operation. If you don't think SOI technology with eDRAM is enough, IBM tops off their 22-nm platform with 15 levels of metal.

You’re probably thinking “Gaming." IBM probably is too.

Next: Foundry fate
TAG:International Electron Devices Meeting Don Scansen IEDM Memory

Qualcomm invests in Sharp to drive MEMS display

Qualcomm invests in Sharp to drive MEMS display

LONDON – Communications technology company Qualcomm has agreed to invest up to 9.9 billion yen (about $120 million) to take about a 5 percent stake in struggling consumer electronics and liquid crystal display manufacturer Sharp.

The proposed equity investment will be used to expand an agreement between Qualcomm subsidiary Pixtronix Inc. and Sharp to develop and commercialize MEMS-based displays that could be manufactured using Sharp LCD production lines.

Qualcomm Inc. (San Diego, Calif.) announced it had acquired Pixtronix Inc. (Andover, Mass.) early in 2012 for a sum reportedly between $175 million and $200 million. The Pixtronix display – called PerfectLight – is based on a MEMS-based digital micro shutter that modulates light from an RGB LED backlight. A high switching speed makes it suitable for applications ranging from full-speed video to e-reader operation and Pixtronix claimed that the display offered greater than 170 degree viewing angles, more than 3,000:1 contrast ratio and 24-bit color depth at one quarter of the power consumption of equivalent size and resolution liquid crystal displays.

In a statement Sharp said investment from Qualcomm, of up to 9.9 billion yen, would be devoted to development and capital costs to establish commercialization of the MEMS display. Sharp plans to use its LCD panel plant in Yonago, Tittori prefecture to develop the MEMS display.

Qualcomm said its equity investment in Sharp would take place in stages, and the consummation of the transaction is subject to certain contingencies.

"Expanding our existing relationship with Sharp to jointly commercialize new MEMS display technologies will help both companies realize their shared goal of driving high performance, lower power displays for a variety of devices, including smartphones and tablets," said Derek Aberle, executive vice president and group president of Qualcomm, in a statement.

"Sharp is targeting to accelerate the commercialization of MEMS displays by combining Sharp's cutting-edge IGZO technology and Pixtronix's MEMS display technology," said Yoshisuke Hasegawa, executive managing officer of Sharp, in the same statement.

The wording, while not absolutely clear, suggests that Qualcomm will not try to be the sole source for the MEMS display but will let Sharp manufacture and sell the technology under its own name.

Indium gallium zinc oxide [IGZO] is a semiconductor material introduced by Sharp as an alternative to amorphous silicon as the transparent thin-film transistor in the active matrix for an LCD screen. With higher electron mobility it allows smaller pixels faster reaction times.

Although Sharp is recognized as a technology leader in displays it has been struggling for some time and entered into a deal with Terry Gou, the founder of contract manufacturer Hon Hai Precision Industry, which trades as Foxconn. However, Sharp's falling share price since March of 2012 led to calls to renegotiate the deal.


Related links and articles:

www.qualcomm.com

www.sharp.co.jp

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Sharp said to be in talks with Intel, Qualcomm

Sharp, dulled by losses, running out of options

Sharp mortgages factories to keep going

Foxconn outfoxes Sharp’s sharpest


TAG:Qualcomm Sharp Pixtronix MEMS display semiconductor Foxconn

Marvell rolls Wi-Fi 802.11ac SoC

Marvell rolls Wi-Fi 802.11ac SoC

SAN FRANCISCO—Marvell Technology Group Ltd. Monday (Dec. 3) introduced a wireless local area network (WLAN) SoC that it claims is the industry's first 802.11ac 4x4 SoC to improve the throughput of enterprise and retail access points and the robustness of wireless video distribution.

Marvell (Santa Clara, Calif.) said the Avastar 88W8864 offers up to a three times increase in Wi-Fi throughput compared with its predecessor and more than two times the power efficiency when processing high-speed loads.

"This is another breakthrough capability that Marvell is driving in the industry," said Weili Dai, a Marvell co-founder and vice president and general manager of the company's communications and consumer business. "It's becoming very important and very critical. Consumers want reliable, robust and high-per capability through the Wi-Fi pipe."

According to Dai and Bart Giordano, director of director of wireless marketing at the Avastar 88W8864, sampling now, is timed to be generally available when certification for the 802.11ac flavor of the Wi-Fi standard is available from the Wi-Fi Alliance next year. The executives said the industry is hoping to avoid a replay of the 802.11n rollout, when many devices that shipped based on a draft version of the spec did not actually operate in concert.
"I think 802.11n is widely regarded as a failure because many of the devices didn't work together," Giordano said.

Marvell claims a competitive technological advantage in beamforming technology, a critical part of the 802.11ac spec that is said to greatly improve connectivity. According to Giordano, while most W-Fi chips that use beamforming technology require that the chips its is connecting with also use beamforming, Marvell's beamforming technology works with other W-Fi chips whether or not those chips use beamforming.

"There is such an advantage in Marvell's beamforming that our customers have gone off and branded it," Giordano said, mentioning as an example Cisco Systems Inc.



Next: 4x4 architecture
TAG:Marvell Chip Wi Fi 802 11ac

Globalfoundries cuts jobs in Singapore

Globalfoundries cuts jobs in Singapore

LONDON – Despite long term plans for expansion in Singapore, foundry chip maker Globalfoundries said that it is cutting 300 jobs there due to a "softening of the current macro-economic climate."

The cuts represent about 4 percent of Globalfoundries' Singapore employee base, the company said. They were announced at the same time as Globalfoundries Inc. (Milpitas, Calif.) said it was embarking on a long-term initiative to expand 300-mm manufacturing capacity in Singapore. The initiative is called "Vision 2015" but the company did not provide a budget for the project.

Globalfoundries said it intends to tune the Singapore mix of existing and new process technologies to better serve growth markets and to position Globalfoundries as a partner to companies that need advanced analog, digital, high-voltage and RF functionality. The initial phase of the plan will include a capacity expansion of Fab 7 300-mm facility to be on a trajectory of nearly 1 million wafers per year. The expansion is expected to be completed by the middle of 2014.

"When this initiative is completed, Singapore will provide the widest range of technologies and the best choice for a broad base of semiconductor and integrated device customers," Ajit Manocha, CEO of Globalfoundries, said in a statement.


Related links and articles:

www.globalfoundries.com

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TAG:Globalfoundries Singapore foundry semiconductor jobs

Why Intel should make chips for Apple, Cisco

Why Intel should make chips for Apple, Cisco

SAN JOSE – To use Andy Grove’s well-worn phrase, Intel Corp. is at an inflection point. It’s time for the company to re-think what it wants to be in the next phase of its life.

One of its options is to strategically pivot. For years, Intel has led with an identity as a microprocessor designer that has great chip-making capabilities. Maybe it’s time to lead with its left foot. Intel could be one heck of a foundry that happens to have its own line of very successful products.

Face it, the market has shifted from the desktops Intel dominates to tablets and smartphones where it barely participates. But world-class semiconductor manufacturing is as valuable as ever, even as Moore’s Law slows.

Here, Intel is still tops. First with high-k metal gate transistors. First with FinFETs. Tons of capacity in leading-edge fabs all over the world. There’s little doubt it will be first to field the extreme ultraviolet lithography that is key to next-generation processes.

I’m not saying Intel should pull the plug on processors. It has a huge position with the x86 today and is doing a reasonable job playing catch up in the new game of SoCs. This is just a re-balancing. The corporate weight shifts from the front to the back foot.

I’m not alone in thinking this way. Jim Turley of Silicon Insider sees Intel’s x86 on a slooooow decline along with the PC market and says it’s time for a change. “Intel needs a piece of good news, something that shows they have caught on to next-generation products, not hoping PCs will make a comeback,” Turley said.

The shift may already be in the works. Intel has been making chips for a handful of mainly small FPGA companies for a couple years.

“I think they used those deals as training wheels, a trial run for a couple years before they would consider taking on some big customers,” Turley said,


Next: Next Intel CEO
TAG:Intel Apple Cisco TSMC Foundry PCs Tablets Smartphones ARM Otellini

Chinese display suppliers flex muscles

Chinese display suppliers flex muscles

When it comes to display production, Taiwan and South Korea have long been the leaders, with a particular expertise in flat-panel displays and LCDs. Recently, though, Chinese display producers seem to be poised to narrow the competitive gap.

In the last few weeks, some headlines coming out of Asia point to China's increased focus on display development and production investments.

Last week, for instance, there was news that coatings and specialty products maker PPG Industries has ramped up fiberglass manufacturing in China. The Shanghai-based company announced that PFG Fiber Glass (Kunshan) Co., Ltd.-- its joint venture in Kunshan, China, with Nan Ya Plastics Corp. -- started a fourth furnace. With 38,000 metric tons of annual capacity, the additional furnace will serve the expanding Asian electronics industries. C.F. Lee, general manager of PFG Fiber Glass (Kunshan) Co., Ltd., said:

The printed circuit board industry continues to grow in Asia. Nan Ya built a vertically integrated production campus in Kunshan that included resin, copper foil, glass fabrics, copper-clad laminates and printed circuit boards. With this expansion, we will continue to support the demands of our business at this location as well as the larger electronics industry.

Ramp-ups like this have caused some increased worry among the Taiwanese. The Taipei Times paper reported last week:

The rise of China's LCD panel makers is posing a growing threat to Taiwanese panel suppliers and may narrow the once wide gap between the two nations' display industries as local firms struggle to upgrade their technologies to safeguard their technological lead.

And, there are ongoing concerns about unfair competitive practices and intellectual property leaks as Chinese rivals rapidly close the gap and present a growing threat to longtime display producers. Citing again the Taipei Times, Taiwanese electronics giant AU Optronics Corp. recently filed a lawsuit against two former executives who were previously in charge of developing advanced technologies. AUO alleges that they leaked company secrets to their current Chinese employer, China Star Optoelectronics Technology Co. (CSOT), "the second-biggest LCD panel maker in China and the only Chinese firm operating an advanced 8.5-generation factory like its bigger Taiwanese rivals," the paper said.

Taiwan Today paper reported that CSOT's 8.5-generation panel plant will be capable of producing 24 million 32-inch television panels annually, and that the company is also expected to invest in an experimental production line, which will attempt to make next-generation active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) products.

For the Taiwanese, the stakes are pretty high, moneywise at least, if production demand shifts to China. Taiwan's flat panel display production was $12.5 billion in the third quarter, a 12.5 percent increase from the previous quarter, according to Digitimes, citing reports from Industrial Economics & Knowledge Center (IEK). IEK estimates that FPD production value will grow sequentially by 7.1 percent in the fourth quarter.

If nothing else, China's growing position in the display space will force competitors to stay on their toes. We'll see how they fight back.

TAG:LCD Panels China Displays

John Goodenough: Li-ion work kick-starts mobile revolution

John Goodenough: Li-ion work kick-starts mobile revolution

When John Goodenough began working on lithium batteries in the late 1970s, the academic world was searching for a high-energy solution to the challenges of the original oil crisis. But before Goodenough's ideas could begin laying the groundwork for a transportation revolution, the world had found another use for his light, high-energy battery chemistry.

"It was the electrical engineers who wanted the high energy density for their cell phones," recalls Goodenough, a professor of mechanical engineering and material science at the University of Texas-Austin. "They needed a rechargeable battery. And the rechargeable batteries of that time were lead-acid, which was just too heavy."

Goodenough has since established himself as one of the key figures behind the development of three distinct lithium battery chemistries. He is credited with the creation of lithium cobalt oxide, which later served as the backbone for Sony Corp.'s mobile phone batteries in the early 1990s. He spearheaded breakthroughs in manganese spinel lithium batteries, now employed in electrified vehicles such as the Chevy Volt. And his lithium-iron phosphate chemistries have served in products ranging from handheld power tools to plug-in hybrid cars.

"He's an incredibly bright physicist and materials scientist," says Michael Thackeray, a distinguished fellow and senior scientist at Argonne National Laboratory who has teamed with Goodenough on battery work. "He's been involved in the development of all the major lithium technologies."

To be sure, Goodenough wasn't alone in those development efforts. He worked with Thackeray on manganese spinel while the two were at Oxford University in the 1980s. And he will be honored later this year by the IEEE for groundbreaking battery work done in parallel with Rachid Yazami of Nanyang Technological University and Akira Yoshina of Yoshina Laboratory in Japan.

The impact of Goodenough's work has been so broad that it's almost impossible to measure. His chemistries continue to exert an effect beyond the mobile phone world, with use in handheld consumer products ranging from laptops to tablets.


Click on image to enlarge.
John Goodenough's development of chemistries for lightweight lithium-ion batteries earned him the Enrico Fermi Award for lifetime achievement, given by the White House. (Source: University of Texas-Austin)

TAG:John Goodenough Li ion Battery 40th EE Times

Holiday tablet sales expected to rise 60%

Holiday tablet sales expected to rise 60%

SAN FRANCISCO—Sales of media tablets are expected to grow 60 percent this holiday season compared with last year, according to a financial research and banking firm that this week released its inaugural "tablet tracker" report estimating production of top-selling tablets.

Craig Berger, an analyst with FBR Capital Markets, wrote in a report circulated Thursday (Nov. 29) that the projected 60 percent year-over-year growth is "impressive, considering the iPad as already very popular and widely available one year ago." Berger's report also concluded that non-Apple tablets are starting to become a meaningful part of the tablet market and that Qualcomm Inc., Broadcom Corp. and Atmel Corp. are the three chip vendors benefitting most from the tablet craze.

FBR estimates that Apple will ship 21 million iPads in the fourth quarter, up from 15 million in the fourth quarter of last year. For the year, FBR estimates that Apple will ship 67.7 million tablets, up from 46.5 million in 2011. The firm also estimates that Apple will ship 5.5 million units of the recently introduced iPad mini in the fourth quarter, giving it a total of 7.5 million units for the year.


Click on image to enlarge.
Berger wrote that iPad mini is gaining momentum after a somewhat muted launch. He said FBR expects the mini will boost Apple's tablet market share to peak at 64 percent in the second quarter of 2013, up from 58 percent in the third quarter of this year.

"However, we expect that by the end of 2013, the constant deluge of cheaper Android-based tablets will begin to chip away at Apple's market share," Berger wrote.


Click on image to enlarge.
Earlier this week, ABI Research estimated that Apple's share of the media tablet market fell to 55 percent in the third quarter as a flood of less expensive Android-based tablets continued to chip away at iPad's lead.

FBR estimates that Apple's tablet market share will be 61 percent for all of 2012, falling to 59 percent in 2013.
Next: Android tablets rising
TAG:Apple Ipad Android Tablet FBR Berger

Youth, execs meet at chip gala focused on STEM

Youth, execs meet at chip gala focused on STEM

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Mark Sinks, a student at Monta Vista High School in Cupertino, Calif., brought his TI 89 calculator hoping to get Rich Templeton to autograph it.

Sure enough the Texas Instruments chief executive was there and happy to sign the calculator. He also autographed one of the basketballs Sink’s team uses in its FIRST Robotics competition.

It was the kind of moment Templeton and many others at the annual dinner of Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) love--stoking a fire for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) in the next generation.



TAG:Dean Kamen STEM Education SIA FIRST Robotics TI

Attractive Leather Purses For females Womens Leather Handbag On Sale

One of many most popular components of ladies are purses. They’ve been pretty important assortiment for contemporary women’s fashion. Each individual female desires to point out off one of the most trendy and gorgeous purse she has. They are wishing for any elegant and modern purse, that is certainly cozy and also easy to use. There are so many variety of purses for girls, among the list of most widely used are leather purses. Leather bags typically are available in regular,superior and lavish look. They’ve got been very fashionable and beloved by girls simply because of their beautiful characteristic and long lasting good quality. Lather handbags give a complex sophisticated glimpse that is certainly excellent with any woman’s wardrobe.

Leather purses for girls can be found in huge variety of various kinds and designs. The layouts fluctuate based on the customer’s demand and latest style trends. It also alterations in accordance to use and situations, these as school events, office environment get-togethers, club parties etc. leather purses also come in different shape and measurements to choose from, this kind of as touch bags, clutch bags, looking bags, night bags, shoulder bags and and many others.

Carrying a leather handbag currently can only exhibit off the kind of individuality a girl has. Equipment like handbags are becoming more of expression of women’s character, habits and taste. As a result, women when buying are a lot more thorough and passionate even though selecting the ideal handbags for them.

In contrast, leather purses are more costly that many bags that are built of other artificial materials. Sure, they really are costly but extremely deserving given that they will not be only beautiful but durable at the same time. Commonly, leather purses are known to the longevity from the leather coated canvas, lather straps and handles, stitching, linings and remarkable designs. You are able to see many designer lather bags, which can be remarkably priced. But occasionally there are actually opportunities to buy discounted leather purses much too.

There are many criteria when browsing a purse that’s includes a top quality. You’ll be able to decide an outstanding handbag if it has a very good kind, proportion, line, finishing, harmony, and cloth. Handbags are a lot more closely link to a lady’s particular character than any other components, and an ideal handbag can incredibly end her all round appear. For that reason, it is very critical to select essentially the most great handbag that matches by yourself.

As to the different sizes of handbags, you will discover bags that matches just about any woman’s system form and construction. You will find alternatives of purses which have been greater than a purse but scaled-down than a briefcase. These types of bags also are often known as tote bags. Tote bags are perfect for women that are usually for the go. These handbags flawlessly go together with the working women.

You could see an countless choice of leather handbags on the net. There are such a lot of on the net outlets which are providing different kinds of purses, from leather, synthetic, material to many other number of products purses are created. In addition there are personalised purses, these types of as monogrammed tote bags, evening bags, and even jeu bags, luggages and backpacks. Just constantly make sure to decide on a good good quality handbag, not simply because it’s attractive and also it may possibly final very long and has a multi-purpose.

Attractive Leather Purses For females Womens Leather Handbag On Sale

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George Heilmeier: Inventor of LCD did so much more

George Heilmeier: Inventor of LCD did so much more

George Heilmeier began his career at RCA’s Sarnoff Research Center where he discovered that an applied voltage could change the color of dye-doped liquid crystals in the 1960s. Credited as the inventor of the LCD* by the US Patent and Trademark Office’s National Inventors Hall of Fame (Akron, Ohio), Heilmeier had secured his place in electronic history, alongside other hall-of-famers like Thomas Edison and Steve Wozniak, after working at RCA for only six years.

In the 1970s Heilmeier entered government service as a White House Fellow and special advisor to the Defense Department. Then in 1975 he was appointed Director of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency. At DARPA he shepherded-in the modern era of high-tech weaponry including stealth aircraft, space-based lasers and smart-bombs using artificial intelligence (AI).


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George Heilmeier

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