Discretes specialist Diodes of Texas is to buy Milton Keynes analogue and mixed signal company Pericom Semiconductor. The price is said to be ‘about $400m’, including the company’s cash. The combined companies will have revenues of $1bn plus. The price is about 40% more than the company’s market cap before the bid was made. “The proposed acquisition of Pericom accelerates the ...
Finance
Hirai talks Sony
Kaz Hirai, CEO of Sony, has just given the following interview to CNBC: CNBC: A number of new products launched today, what are you most excited about? “We are really excited about a range of products that we highlighted today. We are talking about the new Xperia Z5 smart phones, series there, including the first 4K smart phone – the ...
Spectrum adds pre-amp to digitiser
For applications where low-level electronic signals need to be acquired and analysed, Spectrum has added a range of pre-amplifiers that can be used to boost signal levels. When combined with a Spectrum digitiser these low noise pre-amplifiers can greatly increase the measurement systems overall dynamic range and sensitivity. The pre-amps are designed to complement the built-in amplifiers of the digitiser, ...
Robust growth for server revenues
Q2 server shipments grew 8% year-on-year, while revenue increased 7.2% from Q1 2014, says Gartner. “X86 server shipments increased 8.3% in the second quarter of 2015 and revenue grew 9%,” says Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice-president at Gartner. “RISC/Itanium Unix server shipments declined 18.7% globally for the period, while RISC/Itanium revenue declined 9.7% compared with the same quarter last year. The ...
UK quantum computing start up gets first round funding
Grupo Arcano has invested in Cambridge Quantum Computing (CQCL). Although undisclosed, the amount has been reported to be $50m by Tech City News. Established in early 2013 CQCL was founded to create tools and algorithms for the commercialisation of quantum computers. It has an operating system called ‘ t|ket> ‘ and is focusing on field including: cryptography, financial services, medicine, ...
Microwave pioneer gets Frank Whittle Medal
British microwave engineer Professor Peter Clarricoats is to receive the Sir Frank Whittle Medal, one of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s highest accolades. Clarricoats, CBE FREng FRS, gets the Whittle Medal for influential achievements spanning more than half a century. According to the Academy, these achievements include: Research with Sir Charles Kao optical fibre technology – Kao got a Nobel prize ...
TSMC exiting solar
TSMC is exiting solar by the end of the month. Steve Tsu, chairman of TSM Solar, says the company couldn’t turn a profit with its solar manufacturing and that even the most aggressive cost-reduction plan wouldn’t make the solar subsidiary viable. “TSMC continues to believe that solar power is an important source of green energy and that solar module manufacturing ...
Cavendish Kinetics raises $36m for RF R&D
Cavendish Kinetics, the RF MEMS specialist, has completed its final funding round with a strategic raise of $36 million, to accelerate the development of its next generation RF components. The company’s new generation of RF components adds a range of virtually loss-less RF MEMS switches to its portfolio of RF MEMS tuners. Together the new components will enable radio front-end applications, ...
SEMI book-to-bill goes positive
The SEMI book-to-bill went positive in July after a 0.98 in June and a 0.99 in May. July’s ratio of 1.02 represented bookings of $1.59 billion and $1.56 billion of billings. The $1.59 billion bookings figure is 5.1% higher than the final June 2015 level of $1.52 billion, and is 12.5% higher than the July 2014 order level of $1.42 ...
Smart-meter IC market worth $1.2bn
Smart-meter chips were worth $1.2 billion last year, says IHS, at an ASP of $11. They went into 132 million meters. “The semiconductor industry for electric meters is moving toward a single-chip solution for measuring and communicating with the grid station, which is an important industry trend to watch,” says IHS’ Robbie Galoso. “Water and gas meters require fewer semiconductor ...