Finance

Powerchip of Taiwan is to set up a joint venture fab in China, reports Digitimes. The 40k wafer a month fab will cost $2 billion and run 90nm, 110nm and 150nm processes. The fab will act as a foundry for LCD driver chips. Powerchip is to provide the process technology and a small amount of capital while its jv partner ...

Qualcomm is believed to planning to buy Cambridge-based envelope tracking chipset firm Nujira. Neither company were available to comment. If confirmed, the deal, which is being reported in Business Weekly, will be Qualcomm’s second high profile acquisition this year. The mobile processor company is in the process of acquiring Bluetooth wireless chip firm CSR, also based in Cambridge, for around $2.5bn. Nujira ...

After six competing bids, it looks as though ISSI is going to the Chinese. Although Cypress has upped its bid to $22.6 a share, this is below the $23 offer from Chinese private equity consortium Uphill Investments, led by Summitview Capital of Hong Kong. It is believed that the China government wants ISSI to form the basis of a national DRAM ...

Affordable scaling is the key to the semiconductor industry, it was said at the Imec Technology Forum in Brussels. “If we are not getting scaling affordable there are trillions at stake,” ASML CEO Peter Wennink told the forum, adding that he is an accountant not a technologist so he understands about costs. Affordable scaling depends on getting EUV (extreme ultraviolet ...

  A consortium consisting of BMW, Daimler, Bosch, Volkswagen, Siemens, Infineon Fraunhofer, AVL Software, the University of Applied Sciences Ostwestfalen-Lippe, Lenze Drives, Aachen University and Leibniz University is to investigate how batteries can be charged more efficiently. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is contributing funding in the amount of about Euro 3.9 million to the project ...

At the Imec Technology Forum 2015 in Brussels today, Imec announced a joint venture between Imec, SMIC, Qualcomm and Huawei to develop 14nm process technology in China. The jv is called SMIC Advanced Technology and R&D (Shanghai) Corp. It is majority owned by SMIC. Imec, Qulacomm and Huawei are all minority shareholders. Imec will contribute the process know-how. The jv ...

At the Imec Technology Forum 2015 in Brussels today, Imec and Holst Centre launched an industrial affiliation program to an ‘intuitive internet of things’ (I2oT). The programme aims at leveraging Imec and Holst Centre’s expertise to develop, together with industry partners, the building blocks for an I2oT, a smart internet-of-things (IoT) that eill unobtrusively surround us and interact with us as individuals, ...

At the Imec Technology Forum in Brussels this morning, Imec and the Holst Centre announced that they have developed a small NO2 sensor featuring a low power consumption in the mW range. The sensors have a low detection limit for NO2 (<10ppb) and a fast response time. They are particularly well suited for air quality monitoring and serve as a ...

Today, at the Imec Technology Forum 2015 in Brussels, Imec announced that Toshiba, SanDisk and Imec have expanded their strategic partnership in advanced patterning. This programme tackles the critical challenges that remain in bringing EUVL to high volume manufacturing. The programme also develops other technologies for extending 193nm immersion lithography. Toshiba and SanDisk have been core partners in Imec’s industrial ...

The SEMI book-to-bill was 0.99 in May down from April’s 1.04. Bookings were $1.56 billion, billings were $1.57 billion. The bookings $1.56 billion figure is 0.8% down on April and 11% up on May 2014. The billings $1.57 billion figure is 3.7% than April and 11.6% higher than May 2014. “The May book-to-bill ratio slipped below parity as billings improved ...