CoFluent readies V3 of ESL modeling, simulation tool
(09:41 AM EDT, 05/23/08)
As part of the pre-DAC drum roll of product announcements, French Electronic System Level (ESL) company CoFluent Design has unveiled version 3.0 of CoFluent Studio, an ESL graphical modeling and simulation toolset leveraging Eclipse technologies. Its availability is expected in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Renesas ready to roll 45-nm system-chips in Q3
(08:32 AM EDT, 05/23/08)
Renesas Technology Corp. is ready to start shipping system-on-chip ICs in the third quarter of 2008. The company is installing equipment for 45-nm production in its Naka-2 wafer fab in Japan, according to Matthew Trowbridge, CEO of Renesas Technology Europe.

Valor appoints acting CEO, partners with Samsung
(07:34 AM EDT, 05/23/08)
Ofer Shofman, president and CEO of Valor Computerized Systems Ltd. (Yavne, Israel) is retiring from the company. Valor, a provider of design and productivity EDA software for the PCB industry, announced that the company's board of directors has appointed Dan Hoz as acting president and CEO.

Xyalis unveils mask data preparation suite
(04:58 AM EDT, 05/23/08)
On the eve of the Design Automation Conference, French design-for-manufacturing and layout EDA provider Xyalis has introduced an integrated environment dedicated to complex masks building.

The DFM melting pot
(02:46 PM EDT, 05/22/08)
The DFM market segment is loosing member companies through acquisition. The remain small companies will find it harder to succeed.

Spec a year away for 40/100G Ethernet
(01:54 PM EDT, 05/22/08)
The IEEE 802.3ba group developing a spec to drive Ethernet at rates of 40 and 100 Gbits/second reports significant progress from its last meeting, but it may take at least another nine months to cook a standard that could be the basis for first-generation products.

Renesas completes exit from flash memory market
(08:37 AM EDT, 05/22/08)
Renesas Technology Corp., the company formed five years ago by the merger of the semiconductor operations of Hitachi Ltd. and Mitsubishi Electric Co. Ltd., has completed its planned exit from the stand-alone flash memory market.

Microsoft's Ballmer opens second R&D site in Israel
(05:43 AM EDT, 05/22/08)
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has opened an R&D center in Hertzliya, Israel, adding to the company's existing R&D campus in Haifa. In the next 12 months, 150 workers will be added, bringing the headcount across the two sites to 750. The Hertzliya campus has two buildings with a total area of 13,000 square meters.

Docomo helps Arteris raise $7.5 million
(05:13 AM EDT, 05/22/08)
Arteris Inc., a supplier of networking-on-chip intellectual property, has raised $7.5 million in a Series C round of financing.

Designers draft multicore programming guide
(12:01 AM EDT, 05/22/08)
The Multicore Association is kicking off an effort to define best programming practices for embedded multicore processors, hoping within a year to define and create a guide to handling the thorniest problems in the growing arena of parallel software.

Indian embedded software seen moving up the value chain
(04:49 PM EDT, 05/21/08)
Indian companies are now moving toward higher-end embedded software development and are increasing their expertise in specific domains, a study has found.

It's not Smell-O-Vision, but MPEG seeks sensory effects
(01:55 PM EDT, 05/21/08)
The MPEG group has set its sights on the development of a standard for representing sensory effects, in hopes of adding real-time sensory experiences to audio-visual content.

Spatial brings 3D to EDA world
(10:44 AM EDT, 05/21/08)
Spatial Corp., an operating division of Dassault Systmes specializing in 3D components for technical applications, has introduced what it claims to be the first integrated suite aimed at accelerating EDA 3D analysis development.

EoPlex raises $4 million towards cellphone antenna factory
(10:38 AM EDT, 05/21/08)
EoPlex Technologies Inc. (Redwood City, Calif.) has added $4 million to a preiously disclosed Series C round of $8 million. The money is set to pay for the company's first full-scale production plant. The Series C, announced early 2007, was lead by ATA Ventures with the backing of all current investors, including Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Labrador Ventures and Draper-Richards. The current increase raises this by an additional $4 million, bringing the total for the C-round to $12 million.

Toshiba adds to licenses with ARM
(05:33 AM EDT, 05/21/08)
Toshiba Corp. has licensed the ARM Cortex-A9 processor, the Cortex-R4F processor, NEON SIMD technology, PrimeCell peripherals and CoreSight on-chip trace and debugging technology. Toshiba signed a license for the Cortex-M3 processor last year

Single-chip coherent multiprocessing is next step
(11:22 AM EDT, 05/20/08)
Driving individual processor performance to the limit in a given implementation technology is never easy or efficient. Faster clocks, deeper pipelines and bigger caches carry silicon area and power dissipation costs that result in diminishing returns for that last 10 percent of performance.

Under the Hood: Universal remote gets on grid
(11:22 AM EDT, 05/20/08)
The Acoustic Research ARRU449 is an LCD-screen-based universal remote control with the twist of Wi-Fi connectivity to link the remote to online resources intended to ease setup and provide programming resources.

Freescale to close down in Cork, say reports
(09:58 AM EDT, 05/20/08)
Freescale Semiconductor Inc. (Austin, Texas) is to close down its design center in Cork, Ireland, with the loss of 47 design engineering jobs, according to Irish media reports.

Wind River, Intel ride Linux into car market
(09:00 AM EDT, 05/20/08)
Intel and Wind River Systems have teamed up to create a Linux/x86 platform for car electronics, debuting at the Telematics Detroit 2008 conference based on Intel's low-power Atom processor and a new variant of Wind River's embedded Linux.

CPBs effectively blow hot and cold
(04:15 AM EDT, 05/20/08)
The thermal copper pillar bump, or thermal bump, is a thermoelectric device made from thin-film thermoelectric material embedded in flip-chip interconnects (in particular, copper pillar bumps) for use in electronics and optoelectronic packaging.

NV memory beyond floating gateNV memory innovators
(04:07 AM EDT, 05/20/08)
Many applications need to archive data or retain system information after power-down.

Top 20 risk factors for tech companies
(03:52 PM EDT, 05/19/08)
According to research findings released by BDO Seidman, LLP, tech companies are more worried about risks associated with international operations (85 percent) than the struggling U.S. economy (73 percent).

Slideshow: Technology in the Dubai desert
(02:27 PM EDT, 05/19/08)
TechOnline editor-in-chief Patrick Mannion recently returned from a technology conference in Dubai. See his slideshow report.

De Geus: EDA has to be rethought
(03:02 AM EDT, 05/19/08)
Seeing where the EDA industry is going is relatively easy. The difficult bit is laying out an EDA offering at the right time, when customers are ready to take it up, according to Aart de Geus, chairman and CEO of the Mountain View based company. And right now, everything in the EDA space has to be rethought, according to de Geus.