Samsung, Freescale, Apple pro and con lead weekly story ranking
(09:47 AM EST, 11/27/09)
Here are the top five online stories for the week beginning Sunday, Nov. 22, as ranked by EE Times readers, up to and including Friday, Nov. 27. The ranking is based on the number of reader "views" or "hits" on a particular article.

Organic solar cell startup raises $27 million
(09:07 AM EST, 11/27/09)
Heliatek GmbH (Dresden, Germany), a startup developing organic solar cells, has raised $27 million in a second round of financing, with which it plans to build a manufacturing facility.

European stocks recover from lows on Dubai debt shock
(08:10 AM EST, 11/27/09)
European stock markets recovered lost ground on Friday (Nov. 27) after opening between 1 and 2 percent down on the previous close. The low opening prices had been a reaction to news that state-owned Dubai World had said it would delay repaying some of its debt by six months.

Samsung licenses HD video processor IP from Silicon Hive
(06:44 AM EST, 11/27/09)
Silicon Hive BV (Eindhoven, The Netherlands), a licensor of application processors, has announced that Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd has licensed its HiveGo VSS3000 video processor.

Europe suffers photovoltaic slowdown, says analyst
(05:15 AM EST, 11/27/09)
Europe has experienced a significant slowdown is sales of photovoltaic manufacturing equipment with subsidy reductions in Spain having a major impact.

Global chip sales were flat in October, says analyst
(05:13 AM EST, 11/27/09)
Global chip sales in October are believed to have been flat on the previous month, according to analysts at Carnegie Group (Oslo, Norway). The three-month average of August, September and October chip sales is expected to be reported as $21.0 billion, compared to $20.6 billion for the equivalent figure in September.

Online resource for EU power regulation information
(04:36 AM EST, 11/27/09)
EBV, working with together with the Kopol independent institute, have produced an update on EuP regulations on domestic refrigerators and freezers.

TSMC prepares to make automotive ICs in China
(04:14 AM EST, 11/27/09)
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) plans to launch what it says will be the automotive industry's first process qualification specification and service package for automotive-grade semiconductor manufacturing in China.

Renesas samples 45-nm ARM-based mobile processor
(12:04 PM EST, 11/26/09)
Renesas Technology Europe has begun sampling the SH-Mobile APE4, a Cortex-A8 based processor targeted at mobile phone and mobile device implementations. The processor is implemented in a 45-nm process and can be operated at a clock frequency in excess of 1-GHz, Renesas said.

Creditors hear plan to save Qimonda Portugal, say reports
(11:21 AM EST, 11/26/09)
The Portuguese DRAM test and assembly operation subsidiary of insolvent Qimonda AG (Munich, Germany) has been offered a financial life line and is taking on a new name, according to local reports.

Researchers report room-temperature silicon spintronics
(07:54 AM EST, 11/26/09)
Rsearchers from the University of Twente (Enschede, The Netherlands) are claiming they can control a silicon electron's spin at room temperature. The research team has published a paper to that effect in the Nature.

Evatronix offers NAND flash controller core to ONFi standard
(06:12 AM EST, 11/26/09)
Evatronix SA of Bielsko-Biala, Poland, announced it has updated its NAND Flash memory controller to meet the latest specifications of the Open NAND Flash interface (ONFi).

Texas Instruments spin-off files for $500 million IPO
(05:35 AM EST, 11/26/09)
Sensata Technologies Holding BV, a vendor of sensors and controls used in the automotive and aerospace industries, has filed for an IPO that would raise $500 million.

Synopsys adds data converter IP solutions
(04:53 AM EST, 11/26/09)
Synopsys Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.) announced it has expanded its DesignWare Converter IP portfolio for 40nm process technologies.

Philips receives update on alleged CRT market violations
(03:32 AM EST, 11/26/09)
Royal Philips Electronics says it has received a statement of objections from the European Commission about alleged violation of competition rules in the cathode-ray tubes (CRT) industry.

Embedded control modules use ARM MCUs
(02:49 AM EST, 11/26/09)
The Open Controller OC-8 series of embedded controllers simplify the connection of machines, devices and systems in a network for real time communication and interaction.

LED maker Seoul raises $248 million
(12:15 PM EST, 11/25/09)
LED manufacturer Seoul Semiconductor Co. Ltd. has announced that it and its affiliate company, Seoul Optodevice Co. Ltd., have raised $248 million by way of a share issue.

ST uses Omron MEMS microphone in multi-die package
(11:04 AM EST, 11/25/09)
STMicroelectronics NV (Geneva, Switzerland) has started selling MEMS microphones that use sensor technology from Omron Corp. and has asserted that this will improve the sound quality, reliability, and cost-effectiveness for voice applications in cell phones, wireless devices and games.

'Intel inside' could mean thought-control chip in brain, say reports
(08:56 AM EST, 11/25/09)
Intel researchers are working on functional magnetic resonance imaging as a possible way to allow TVs, computers and cell phones to be controlled by human brain activity picked up by an implanted chip sensor, according to online reports.

Infineon, Nokia agree to push LTE radios towards 1-Gbit/s
(06:04 AM EST, 11/25/09)
Infineon Technologies AG and Nokia have said they are going to cooperate on the development of RF transceivers for use in LTE wireless communications. The work could lead to systems which can deliver 1-Gbit per second data transfer rates.

Hynix backers opt for December auction, say reports
(05:14 AM EST, 11/25/09)
Shareholders who bailed out memory chip maker Hynix Semiconductor Inc. in the early part of this decade are planning to put their holding up for auction in December, according to online reports.

Infineon not a target for Samsung, says report
(04:58 AM EST, 11/25/09)
Samsung Electronics said market speculation that it may bid for German chipmaker Infineon was untrue according to a report from Reuters in Seoul.

Update: Patent office rejects Rambus claims
(06:22 PM EST, 11/24/09)
A patent examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected all 17 claims in three Rambus patents that the company asserted against Nvidia in a complaint filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission.

U.S. pumps another $620M into smart grid projects
(02:57 PM EST, 11/24/09)
The U.S. government has announced a second and final round of economic stimulus grants aimed at accelerating the transition to a smart electric grid with Boeing and two up-and-coming battery makers among the winners of a total of $620 million in grants from the Department of Energy to 32 projects mainly organized by electric utilities.

Israel research team develops silicon-air battery
(01:20 PM EST, 11/24/09)
Created from oxygen and silicon, the batteries are lightweight and said to have unlimited shelf life and tolerance for extreme conditions.

Imagination bundles cores to make 'Connected Processor' series
(12:09 PM EST, 11/24/09)
Imagination Technologies Group plc (Kings Langley, England) has announced a forthcoming series of embedded processors under the name "Meta Connected Processor" intended to support Internet-connectivity in low-cost consumer products.

Comment: Qualcomm's MEMS display is smart but is it bright enough?
(11:32 AM EST, 11/24/09)

iPhone heals, iPhone smells
(10:44 AM EST, 11/24/09)
Apple's iPhone is being applied to more diverse applications that one could have imagined when it first came on the scene.

IMEC honors Wim Roelandts
(10:27 AM EST, 11/24/09)
The IMEC research center and the K.U.Leuven University in Leuven, Belgium, announced it has conferred the degree of doctor honoris causa on Wim Roelandts, ex-chairman and CEO of programmable logic device vendor Xilinx Inc. (San Jose, Calif.).

Energy Micro adds Motorola alumni to the board
(08:43 AM EST, 11/24/09)
Energy Micro AS (Oslo, Norway), vendor of the Gecko 32-bit microcontroller, has added Daniel Artusi and Daniel Hoste, to its board of directors.

No fine for Qualcomm as EC closes antitrust case
(07:01 AM EST, 11/24/09)
The European Commission has decided to close formal antitrust proceedings against communications chipmaker and technology licensor Qualcomm Inc. (San Diego, Calif.) concerning an alleged breach of European rules on abuse of a dominant market position.

Imagination preps GPU/CPU compilers for parallel processing
(06:18 AM EST, 11/24/09)
Graphics core licensor Imagination Technologies Group plc (Kings Langley, England) is preparing compilers that will be able to assign tasks across both graphics and general-purpose processing units.

Nokia spin-off joins the Z-Wave Alliance
(05:00 AM EST, 11/24/09)
There Corporation, a spin-off from Nokia, has joined the Z-Wave Alliance and is focussing on pushing the development and market launch of the smart meter, smart grid and smart home solutions that are based on ThereGate " formerly known as Nokia Home Control Center (HCC).

Mentor joins SOI consortium
(04:40 AM EST, 11/24/09)
Two years after Cadence and Synopsys joined the SOI Consortium, Mentor Graphics has knocked on the door to provide EDA tool and methodology support for the SOI technology.

Netbooks to hit 17% of 2010 portable PC market, says analyst
(09:28 AM EST, 11/23/09)
The market for portable ccmputers will be 165 million units in 2010, according to Will Strauss president of market tracker Forward Concepts (Tempe, Ariz.) And of that market 3.6 percent, or about 6 million units, will be so-called smart book computers.

Qualcomm's MEMS display gains e-reader design win
(07:13 AM EST, 11/23/09)
Qualcomm Corp. has shown off a 5.3-inch full-color non-volatile MEMS-based display and claims a slightly larger version, with a 5.7-inch diagonal size, will be found in an e-reader product to deploy in fall 2010. The display features 1,024 by 768 pixel resolution and around 220 pixels per inch.

Tower makes deal to export know-how, equipment
(05:38 AM EST, 11/23/09)
Loss-making foundry Tower Semiconductor Ltd. (Migdal Haemek, Israel), which trades as TowerJazz, has announced it plans to transfer "manufacturing know-how and certain equipment" to support an un-named Asian company ramp up production.

Chinese PCB market to drop 18% in 2009, says analyst
(04:51 AM EST, 11/23/09)
Frost & Sullivan forecasts that the Chinese market demands for PCB products reach RMB97.2 billion with the decrease of 18.2 percent in 2009, but the market is expected to rebound gradually in 2010.

Keithley sells RF product line to Agilent
(04:09 AM EST, 11/23/09)
Seeking earlier profitability, Keithley Instruments has signed a definitive agreement with Agilent Technologies to sell substantially all of its RF product line to Agilent, for approximately USD9 million.

Living in the (approximately) real world
(04:46 PM EST, 11/21/09)
By necessity, we use approximations to model our world, but you have to keep their limits in mind

Is it time to reap the energy harvest?
(12:00 PM EST, 11/21/09)
Are the factors in place and aligned for this market to really take off?

RTOS supports multiprocessor Windows systems
(04:43 PM EST, 11/20/09)
INtime 4.0 is multi-core enabled and compatible with Windows 7.

OCP-IP adds cache coherence to specification
(09:57 AM EST, 11/20/09)
The Open Core Protocol International Partnership (OCP-IP) announced the release of the OCP 3.0 specification.

Former Bookham executive joins IQE
(05:35 AM EST, 11/20/09)
Adrian Meldrum has joined IQE plc as Group Business Development Director and will be based at the Group's headquarters in Cardiff, Wales.

Synfora names head of Japan business
(03:44 PM EST, 11/19/09)
Synthesis tool vendor Synfora Inc. announced it has appointed Mike Arai as general manager of its office in Yokohama, Japan.

Relaxed tales of the smoke microphone
(11:32 AM EST, 11/19/09)
To get around the dynamic range issues of current microphone pickups, Schwartz Engineering and Design has devised a laser-based pickup that detects voice-induced 'distortions' in a flowing stream of smoke and that then relies on proprietary digital signal processing to translate those distortions into audio. And it works!