Despite alarm about the state of semiconductor inventories, particularly from the foundries, Bill Jewell’s Semiconductor Intelligence says that: “Semiconductor inventories appear to be under control throughout the semiconductor device supply chain.” At the semiconductor manufacturers inventory ratios have been stable for eighteen months, says Jewell Exceptions are Intel and Qualcomm where lower revenues caused Intel’s inventory ratio to go from ...

Ambient RF signals are a viable source of energy, claims UK-based Drayson Technologies, which has patented a technique to harvest them. Branded Freevolt, it uses an antenna, ‘non-linear device’, RF filter and a power manager (PMM in diagram). “To integrate Freevolt into different devices, Drayson Technologies has developed standard harvesters but can also provide different antenna and rectifier designs, depending ...

Raspberry Pi has a new “Windows lookalike” Linux operating system. Q4OS is a Linux distribution that uses the Trinity desktop environment and one of its features is that it looks and imitates Windows-based on operating systems. There is now a version of the OS for Raspberry Pi and Raspberry Pi2 devices. The developers write of the Softpedia website: “We announce the ...

Google has officially unveiled the next generation of Android, version 6.0, codenamed “Marshmallow”. At a launch event in San Francisco, also beamed around the world, CEO Sundar Pichai ran through an overview of the latest platform. Pixel, Nexus, Chromecasts In what was a plethora of announcements, there was also a release of a Google designed Android tablet-laptop, the Pixel C, ...

AMD has introduced its most powerful line of AMD PRO A-Series mobile and desktop processors. Formerly called Carrizo and Godavari PRO, the processors are intended to run Windows 10, said AMD. PRO A-Series Mobile  These have the firm’s fastest mobile processor – version A12 running at up to 3.4GHz. There are 12 cores (4 CPU + 8 GPU). Graphics are ...

AMS has launched an optical heart rate sensor for wrist wearables. Called AS7000, it measures heart rate by shining light into blood vessels, which expand and contract as blood pulses through them, and analysing scattered reflections – which is called photoplethysmography (PPG). In a 6.1 x 4.1 x 1mm package, the device include two green LEDs and a photo-sensing signal processing ...

This year is the 30th anniversary of the Austrian anti-freeze scandal. In 1985, it was discovered that Austrian wine-makers had been lacing their products with a chemical which was also used to make anti-freeze. It killed the Austrian wine industry stone dead. In 1985, Austria exported 45 million litres of wine. In 1986 it exported 4.4 million litres. It was ...

The French business weekly magazine Challenges reports that the future of ST’s digital division is now in the hands of President Francois Hollande. The French Economics Minister and the Defence Minister have reviewed the possible divestment or closure of Crolles, the Finance Ministry has had its say, the CFE-CGC union has been to see Hollande’s advisers and now the decision ...

The French business weekly magazine Challenges reports that the future of ST’s digital division is now in the hands of President Francois Hollande. The French Economics Minister and the Defence Minister have reviewed the possible divestment or closure of Crolles, the Finance Ministry has had it say, the CFE-CGC union has been to see Hollande’s advisers and now the decision ...

Google is getting further into hardware design. Following the Chromebook Pixel, which runs its Chrome OS, the new Pixel C is the first Android tablet built by Google. It’s a laptop-tablet, to be precise.