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Industry
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 | Electric fuel charger boost mileage by 20% Recently completed six months of road testing with a diesel-powered Mercedes-Benz. The tests increased fuel efficiency from 32 to 38 MPG on highways (a 20 percent boost) and a 12 to 15 percent gain in city-driving mileage. The researchers claim the device could also be adapted to gasoline, biodiesel and kerosene.
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 | Turn your lights into network connection The initiative seeks to use visible light beams for communications between wireless devices and LED-based lighting fixtures. The LED-based scheme could also be used to communicate between automobiles that are increasingly using LEDs. The overall goal is to build new communications capbilities into all LED lights while alleviating congestion in current RF bands.
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 | Micron to layoff 15% Micron (Boise) blamed the moves on a lingering memory downturn caused by declining demand and product oversupply. The company said NAND average selling prices (ASPs) have fallen significantly below manufacturing costs, particularly for 200-mm lines.
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 | Capex down 25% in 2008 In a survey of what Intel, AMD, Samsung and the rest of the chip industry will spend on processor manufacturing, Gartner found that capital spending will decline 25 percent in 2008 and drop further in 2009. The drop in spending is related to oversupply of DRAM and NAND flash memory. |
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 | Konarka opens Solar Power Plastic plant "Our technical leadership and innovation in flexible thin film solar, along with this facility's capabilities of producing in excess of 10 million square meters of material per year, will allow us to produce Power Plastic for indoor, portable, outdoor and building integrated applications." |
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 | IBM's profit defying market financial crsis Shares of IBM rose 6 percent in after-market trade on the news on Wednesday (Oct. 8), which came after technology shares have been hammered by fears that a global recession would crush corporate IT spending. |
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 | Google to award robotic race to the moon Google is offering $30 million to international competitors in a race to see which can safely land a robot on the lunar surface. The two new teams bring the number of competitors for the Lunar X Prize to 14.
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 | Down economy to affect cell phone market While industry executives often say cellphones are the last thing consumers will give up to save money, analysts are now citing lengthening phone replacement cycles and weakening economies around the world for their weaker sales estimates.
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 | China losing glamour to Vietnam and India As Gartner lowers its forecast for Asia/Pacific semiconductor growth, it notes the China/Hong Kong market is expected to continue to experience sustained lower growth, as compared to emerging markets like India and Vietnam.
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 | Elpida delivers smaller die DRAM Elpida’s chip size shrink was made possible by leveraging a new architecture on first-generation 65-nm process products, and estimates that costs for the shrunken version of 65-nm products will be approximately 20% less compared to first-generation products, the company explained.
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 | Silicon shortage impedes solar growth Solar panel sales have been rapidly rising in the last several years, but the silicon shortage prevented the panel makers using crystalline technology to fully respond to demand. Thus silicon-based panels declined from about 93 percent to about 89 percent market share from 2004 to 2007, said Mints. The solar industry will become the largest user of raw silicon in 2008, outpacing the semiconductor industry |
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