IN THE NEWS

Business and technology news from the semiconductor and design tool industries.

In the News

Motorola Inc. (Schaumburg, IL) Communication and Advanced Consumer Technologies Group (CACTG) licensed the pay-per-view (PPV) copy protection technology from Macrovision Corp. (Sunnyvale, CA).

Microtec (Santa Clara, CA), a Mentor Graphics company, opened a new subsidiary in China. Beijing Microtec Research Software Technology Ltd. will provide applications support, consulting, and educational services for embedded applications in China. In other news, Microtec teamed with Nippondenso Co., Ltd. (Kariya, Japan) and Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Inc. (Torrance, CA) to develop the engine management systems for Toyota's two, 1996 Indy cars.

Silicon Valley Research (Mountain View, CA) announced an agreement with Bell Labs Design Automation (BLDA), a division of Lucent Technologies (Berkeley Heights, NJ), to acquire exclusive worldwide marketing rights to BLDA's Clover line of deep submicron verification products, except in Japan and Taiwan, where BLDA already has distributors.

Atmel Corp. (San Jose, CA) announced that IAR Systems AB (Uppsala, Sweden) is developing a complete development environment--C language compiler, assembler, debugger, linker, and run-time library--for use with Atmel's family of RISC microcontrollers.

An existing OEM agreement between Synario Design Systems (Redmond, WA) and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD, Sunnyvale, CA) has been extended to include AMD's MACH 5 family of devices. Under the terms of the agreement, AMD will market a specific version of the Synario design system and ABEL 6 for Windows for front-end PLDs.

Movers and Shakers

Logic Vision Inc. (San Jose, CA) named Najmi Jarwala chief technologist, and Fadi Maamari senior technologist.

After hitting bottom in March, the semiconductor book-to-bill ratio continues its steady climb toward 1.0, a level that semiconductor equipment manufacturers will hit this month, according to market research firm VLSI Research Inc. (San Jose, CA).

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC-USA) of Hsin-Chu, Taiwan, promoted Ronald C. Norris vice-president of North American business. In addition, TSMC-USA named Monty Botkin director of planning and customer service.

Escalade Corp. (Santa Clara, CA) named Jean-Pierre Braun president and CEO.

The Alta Group (Sunnyvale, CA) of Cadence Design Systems Inc. named Bob Silver the new vice president of marketing.

Steven Robbins has joined Synchronicity Inc. (Boston, MA) as vice-president of worldwide sales.

NEC electronics Inc. appointed Shigeki Matsue its new president and CEO.

Money Bits

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (San Jose, CA) predicted Q2, 1996 sales and earnings per share (EPS) to be approximately $150 million.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (Sunnyvale, CA) predicted a Q2 loss on revenues below Wall Street expectations and lower than the immediate-prior quarter. The company expects total sales will decline by more than 15 percent from its first quarter. More than half of this revenue decrease is attributable to a decline in sales of flash memory products in the face of soft demand and sharply lower prices.

Lucent Technologies (Murray Hill, NJ) declared a quarterly dividend of $0.75 per share, payable August 1, 1996, to shareholders of record June 28, 1996.

California Micro Devices Corp. (Milpitas, CA) predicted Q1 revenue, ending June 30, 1996, will be lower than the $11 million reported for the previous quarter, which ended March 31, 1996.

Data I/O Corp. (Redmond, WA) expects Q2 revenues and earnings will be lower than Q1 of 1996. The company reported $15.7 million in revenues and earnings of $0.01 per share in Q1 of 1996.

Editorial Call

To voice an opinion on this or any Integrated System Design article, please e-mail your message to michael@asic.com.

integrated system design  August 1996