A pick of the main stories crossing the ElectronicsWeekly.com News Index this week, from layoffs at MIPS and Intel SuperSpeed USB specs, to European chip sales stablising and nanotransistor research...

Friday 15 August 2008

Rambus lays off a fifth of its workforce
Rambus, the litigious memory interface specialist, has laid off a fifth of its workforce with the aim of saving $17m annually.

Intel preps USB 3.0 xHCI draft spec
To allow a standardised method for USB 3.0 host controllers to communicate with the USB 3.0 software stack, Intel releases its Extensible Host Controller Interface (xHCI) draft specification revision 0.9 in support of the USB 3.0 architecture, also known as SuperSpeed USB.

MIPS plans 15% layoff on $108.5m loss
MIPS Technologies will cut some 75 employees, mostly from analogue business and corporate positions, after reporting a fiscal Q4 loss of $108.5 million and a $103.1 million write-down. More than $101 million of the write-down was associated with MIPS' Chipidea analogue business group.

Thursday 14 August 2008

Philips sells last shares in TSMC
One of the best investments ever made in the semiconductor industry? Philips, which 22 years ago started TSMC in partnership with the Taiwan government, today sold its remaining shares in the company.

Artificial intelligence lets glider find its own thermals
Hampshire-based lab Roke Manor Research is developing an artificial intelligence (AI) system that looks at clouds to allow autonomous gliders to find lift in the sky.

Wednesday 13 August 2008

Solar power boosts Applied but casts industry shadow
A warning omen for the semiconductor industry is that the world's largest supplier of semiconductor production equipment, Applied Materials, saw orders for its solar generating equipment grow by six times in calendar Q2, while orders for its semiconductor production equipment shrank by 57 per cent.

Surrey University unveils nanotransistor theory
Researchers at the University of Surrey and Hitachi in Japan have established further design constraints for their high-performance thin-film transistors, unveiled earlier this year.

Materials bend visible and infra-red light backwards
Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have fabricated negative refractive index materials for visible and near-infrared light.

Gartner 'surprised' by semiconductor market's robust 1H
While remaining cautious and warning of a coming widespread slowdown in the electronics sector, Gartner this week shared its view of the semiconductor market, one that describes an industry that may have dodged significant damage done by the harsh economic situation for the time being.

Tuesday 5 August 2008

Numonyx reported as closing R&D centre
According the magazine FabTech, which quotes correspondence received from Numonyx employees, the company is reducing headcount and closing facilities.

Bucky gel enables stretchable conductors
Researchers at Tokyo University, led by Takao Someya, have developed a stretchable, flexible conducting material from a mix of carbon nanotubes and a polymer material.

Monday 4 August

LiMo mobile Linux takes on Google and Nokia
LiMo’s Linux open software platform seems to be cleaning up as the main mobile phone operating system despite the best efforts of Nokia and Google to convince the market of their open platform credentials.

Farnell signs European deal with Rohm
Farnell has signed a pan-European distribution agreement with Japanese manufacturer Rohm, covering its ranges of ICs, discrete semiconductors, displays and passive components.

European chip sales down, but stablising, says DMASS
Although there was a year-on-year fall in sales of semiconductors through distribution channels in the second quarter, the fall was considerably less than in Q1, according to figures from DMASS (Distributors’ and Manufacturers’ Association of Semiconductor Specialists).

Let the latest news - and jobs, products and blogs - come to you, instantly. Get the Electronics Weekly News Feed via RSS, delivering stories as they are posted, whether to your browser or Feed Reader.