Finance

Philips Semiconductors has bagged up a tenth of the world’s total number of taped out 90nm designs. According to Philips’ chief technology officer, Rene Penning de Vries, the company has now taped out five designs on 90nm. The total number of tape-outs worldwide on 90nm is in the region of 50 to 60, said Aart de Geus, founder and CEO ...

As manufacturing continues to move away from the UK to take advantage of the cheap labour which is available abroad, it seems now is the time for us to have a rethink. If cost is the only advantage that manufacturing abroad has, then why is it that Nokia can not only design its mobile phones in Finland, but also manufacture ...

Apparently some semiconductor market analysts at Gartner Dataquest didn’t get the Wall Street memo about the semiconductor capital equipment sector. During its annual Semicon West market briefing Wednesday morning, analysts from the market research firm said the equipment industry in reality is enjoying the upside of its original 2004 forecast. And while the risk of overcapacity is growing, the chip industry ...

Rolls-Royce has launched a major initiative to help improve science teaching in UK schools. The move is the company’s response to the 2002 review by Gareth Roberts of the state of the country’s science, engineering and innovation capabilities. “Recent statistics show a worrying decline in the number of students studying science, engineering and technology subjects and we hope the Rolls-Royce ...

An investment organisation that doesn’t make time consuming demands or put financial pressure on its portfolio firms? Yes, you are awake and it’s not a dream – it’s the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta). Since being set up in 1998, Nesta has been using the interest on a National Lottery endowment to fund ideas and early ...

When Gordon Moore made his famous observation in 1965, the electronics industry was quick to seize the exciting implications. However it was less quick to perceive the potential issues implicit in rapid technology change. One of these would be the speed at which today’s technology would rapidly become obsolete. And what that might mean to designers of electronic products destined, ...

Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, has increased spending on science by £2.5bn and of which £1.5bn will be contributed over the next five years by the Wellcome Trust. Moreover he has extended his budget commitment that R&D spending should be a fixed percentage of GDP from a four year period to a ten year period. “Government funding for science ...

Bristol start-up Icera has negotiated a $22.5m funding round taking total investment in the firm to $33m. The fabless firm said the investment was sufficient to take it through to production of its wireless chips and will allow it to double head count in the next 12 months. “Over the last 18 months we’ve been building up the company, we’re ...

Chelmsford-based sensor specialist e2v technologies has won a contract to supply 36 image sensors to the major Chinese ground-based LAMOST (Large sky-Area Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope) project. The telescope is expected to take images from tens of thousands of objects each night and the charge-coupled device (CCD) image sensors will be used to capture images of faint objects during mass spectral ...

With China being the third-largest market for semiconductors – projected to grow to be the second-largest before 2010 and representing a huge business opportunity – semiconductor industry executives applauded an agreement reached on the contentious value added tax (VAT) levied by China on semiconductors. The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) said it was pleased to learn that China would eliminate the ...