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| More Taiwan IC designers to use foundries in China |
12/6/2019 |
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Top executives of Taiwanese IC designers have recently paid intensive visits to not only foundry fabs operated in China by TSMC and UMC but also fabs run by China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) and Hua Hong Semiconductor, aiming to increase their chipset production ratios in the country in line with the Chinese government's efforts to boost semiconductor self-sufficiency and reduce reliance on US suppliers.
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| Qualcomm announce all out support for 5G next year |
12/6/2019 |
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Qualcomm announced its new top-tier chip for 2020, Snapdragon 865, which it sells to phone makers for use in high-end Android phones like Samsung’s Galaxy or Google’s Pixel. Qualcomm says the 865 will be shipped only in new 5G devices and will be bundled with a separate 5G modem.
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| Two top Google founders to step down |
12/5/2019 |
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Larry Page and Sergey Brin are stepping down as CEO and president, respectively, of Google parent company Alphabet. The move caps more than two decades during which the pair have shepherded the one-time startup they founded in a Silicon Valley garage.
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| Shenzhen ChangXin Memory (CXMT) claim success in DRAM production |
12/5/2019 |
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The company has completed its Fab 1 and R&D facility in Hefei, the capital of Anhui province, and is currently running 20,000 wafers per month. It is scheduled to double its capacity to 40,000 wafers per month in the second quarter of 2020. Using a 19-nm process technology, ChangXin has begun producing this fall LPDDR4, DDR4 8Gbit DRAM products.
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| German top automaker maker to let go 10,000 |
12/4/2019 |
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The company had said Nov. 14 that it plans to slash costs by 1.4 billion euros ($1.54 billion) by cutting every tenth managerial position and through other measures.
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| Cadence Design move to integrate RF expertise from acquired AWR |
12/4/2019 |
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AWR specializes in design tools for millimeter wave (mmWave) and microwave products, largely at the board and system level, while Cadence’s heritage is in chip design and IP. AWR also has more experience with III-V semiconductors that out-perform silicon in high-frequency devices.
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| Demand for 5G peripheral chips to skyrocket |
12/3/2019 |
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Taiwan-based IC designers are gearing up to cash in on the growing demand for high-speed, high-performance peripheral chips including Type-C interface chipts, USB 4.0 chips, diverse ASICs and server ICs, driven by the upcoming commercialization of 5G services.
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| Taiwan Nuvoton Technology to buy Panasonic semiconductor unit |
12/3/2019 |
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Nuvoton, which is a subsidiary of memorychip maker Winbond Electronics Corp, said the acquisition of PSCS would generate greater value for the customers and shareholders of both companies, while increasing its presence in the global semiconductor industry through greater scale and volume of semiconductor solutions.
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| New startup's 4D imaging sees through walls |
12/3/2019 |
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Vayyar claims it has designed a small, sensor-based chip that, with its 72 transmitters and 72 receivers, tracks and maps everything without a camera. It detects obstacles and monitors people’s location, movement, height, posture and vital signs wirelessly, in all lighting and weather conditions, and in real time. A key differentiator is its ability to “see” through walls, closed doors, and other solid objects.
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| Amid trade tension, RISC-V Foundation is moving headquarters from the U.S. to Switzerland |
12/3/2019 |
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The RISC-V Foundation’s CEO Calista Redmond said she wants to ensure that universities, governments and companies outside the United States can maintain access to and develop the open-source RISC-processor core technology. She said that its members, which include Qualcomm, NXP Semiconductors, Huawei and Alibaba, are concerned about possible geopolitical disruption.
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| Examine accuracy of quantum computers |
12/2/2019 |
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"A quantum computer is only useful if it does two things: first, that it solves a difficult problem; the second, which I think is less appreciated, is that it solves the hard problem correctly. If it solves it incorrectly, we had no way of finding out. So what our paper provides is a way of deciding how close the outcome of a computation is to being correct."
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| NAND-based eMMC memory found in older Tesla Model S, X units are wearing out |
12/2/2019 |
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The problem with the embedded eMMC chips is that they regularly update Tesla’s vehicle logs, and over time, the storage medium begins to lose space and thus will have to overwrite new data over the old. These constant updates wear out the Flash memory faster than normally expected, which ultimately leads to failure.
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| Dell sales fell due to Intel chip shortage |
11/29/2019 |
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Intel said last month that demand for its processors used in PCs was outstripping its ability to add capacity, prompting it to rely on contract manufacturers to ease shortage.
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| MediaTek forms 5G alliance with Intel |
11/29/2019 |
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In the meantime, MediaTek has entered into an alliance with Intel to provide 5G modems for use in laptop computers. In August this year, Apple said it would pay about $1 billion to acquire Intel’s smartphone modem business, signaling that Apple aims to design its own silicon for 5G.
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| ADAS and AV have parallels, the two are not directly related |
11/29/2019 |
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“ADAS and Autonomous have been, of necessity, on very different development paths, typically with different teams,” And it is becoming apparent that most carmakers cannot afford to keep these parallel projects alive at the same time.
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| Carbon nano-tube challenge Silicon when it breaks 100 GHZ RF barrier |
11/27/2019 |
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Reported in a paper published this month, “Wafer-scalable, aligned carbon nanotube transistors operating at frequencies of over 100 GHz," it added the milestone ‘eclipses’ the performance — and efficiency — of traditional RF CMOS technology ubiquitous in modern consumer electronics. That includes cell phones, where the superior performance could boost 5G wireless and other mmWave technologies.
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