Chip Memory TechnologyChip Memory Technology (CMT) was founded in 2007 to develop and license memory technologies for semiconduc-tors. Several chip industry executives that collectively hold more than 150 patents founded CMT. The company has raised a total of $8 million to date from an undisclosed investor and plans to raise an addition $6 million soon. CMT has 12 employees.
CMT recently unveiled its patented LogicFlash embedded non-volatile memory IP, which offers a unique combination of high density, low power and low cost for embedded SoC applications. LogicFlash enables the implantation of dense NVM using a standard logic CMOS process without extra masks or foundry steps. This re-duces the expense and delay required to qualify and port chip designs that use LogicFlash to new foundries or new processes.
In development for several years, LogicFlash was designed to overcome the challenges facing embedded NVM
tion requirement. In fact, the company said that some customers are using the technology without the foundry’s knowledge.
The technology is currently rated for 10K cycles, but can be designed to support up to 100K cycles. Speeds are similar to standalone FLASH and power consumption is very competi-tive. CMT has tested the technology
JUNE 2013 FOCUSED ON EMERGING SEMICONDUCTOR COMPANIES VOL 18 ISSUE 6
IN THIS ISSUERadar Scope ............................... 1
Startup Profiles .......................... 4
People ......................................... 7
Funding & IPOs .......................... 8
Mergers & Acquisitions ............. 9
Business & Financials ................. 9
Market Research ...................... 10
New Products ........................... 10
Licensing & Partnerships ......... 13
Company Financials ................. 14
Stock Charts .............................. 15
Radar Scope
SIA Mar. 2013 Global Sales ($B)
production. Com-peting embedded NVM technolo-gies require as many as 10 addi-tional masks and 20 to 30 addition-al process steps when implement-ed on a standard logic process, ac-cording to CMT. By eliminating the requirement for extra masks and process steps, Logic-Flash is highly portable and scalable, while supporting densities up to 4Mbit. CMT holds four granted and two pending patents on its LogicFlash technology.
CMT is targeting the entire embed-ded Flash market. The company argues that embedded NVM and OTP memory companies such as Ki-lopass, Sidense, Novocell, Synopsys, eMemory, and Microchip/SST are not true competitors because they have special process requirements. CMT’s technology is easily portable across different processes and does not require any process or mask modifica-
variability tolerance, maximize tech-nology portability, and can be adopted relatively easily into existing SRAM designs. sureCore has proven the tech-nology in simulation, demonstrating greater than 50% power savings, and has filed patents.
Working with the major foundries developing FD-SOI and FinFET tech-nologies, the TSB grant will be used to contribute to the development of a demonstrator chip that will be used to showcase sureCore’s patented array control and sensing scheme, which significantly lowers active power consumption.
Paul Wells, CEO (previously Director of Engineering for Pace Networks and VP Operations at Jennic)
Duncan Bremner, CTO (previously a member of Intel’s CTO office for communications products and led ultrawideband wireless technology development for ITI Techmedia)
2 Wellington Place, Floor 5 Leeds LS1 4AP UK www.sure-core.com
TriLuminaTriLumina was founded in 2010 to develop the fastest and most powerful semiconductor lasers. The compa-ny initially raised $1 million from individual investors, and $200,000 in convertible notes that converted upon the Series A round. In Q4’12, TriLumina received $250,000 from Cottonwood Technology Group and $250,000 from Sun Mountain Capital, the first installment of a $5 million investment that will be completed by Q3’13. The company has raised $3 million to date. TriLumina has 10 employees. The core team worked together at Micro Optical Devices, and then at Emcore, which acquired Micro Optical Devices in 1997.
Asenon, James Watt Professor in Electrical Engineering, leader of the 30 members strong Glasgow Device Modeling Group, and founder and CEO of Gold Standard Simulations, is a sureCore Director.
Below 28nm transistors exhibit severe variability, particularly serious for SRAM, which often dominates SoC silicon area (>50% growing to 70% in the future) and power consumption. Meanwhile, new process architectures (FD-SOI & FinFET) are disruptive to existing physical IP. FinFET has been adopted by Intel and also by TSMC, UMC and GLOBALFOUNDRIES. Fully Depleted Silicon on Insulator (FD-SOI) is being championed by ST. sureCore believes it can take advantage of these technology shifts by developing IP that exploits the underlying technology changes and promises improved power, perfor-mance and manufacturability.
sureCore is developing low power and variability tolerant design techniques that are applicable to a wide range of IP solutions. Initially focused on SRAM, sureCore IP will help SoC developers meet both the power and manufacturability constraints posed by leading edge process nodes.
Today’s approaches focus on reduc-ing the operating voltage and adding circuit level modifications, which increases the variability problem, according to sureCore. In contract, sureCore analyzes the power dissipa-tion mechanisms and reduces them, and applies optimizations at both the architectural and circuit level.
Through a combination of detailed analysis and using advanced statis-tical models, sureCore has designed an SRAM memory consuming less than half the power of existing solu-tions – in normal, sleep and shutdown modes. The techniques also improve
on 90nm and 65nm processes and does not foresee any scaling limitations.
LogicFlash is already qualified in five processes and three process nodes (180nm, 160nm and 130nm). Several companies have licensed LogicFlash for integration into SoCs and multiple customers are currently in volume production with LogicFlash utilizing three different foundries, including Silterra Malaysia and top five foundries. Chrontel is currently incorporating LogicFlash into multi-ple devices being produced in a 130nm standard logic process. LogicFlash embedded NVM is also in volume production in a product from Alps Electric that is fabricated in a 0.13u standard logic process and is used in mobile systems.
Dr. Wingyu Leung, founder and CEO (most recently EVP, CTO and Board Member at MoSys)
25 East Trimble Road San Jose, CA 95131 Tel: 408.907.0033 www.chipmt.com
sureCoresureCore was founded in June 2011 to develop low power physical IP for next generation silicon process tech-nologies at 28nm and below. In May 2012, sureCore closed seed round funding with the Finance Yorkshire Seedcorn Fund. The company recently secured a Technology Strategy Board SMART award of £250K to help real-ize its low power SRAM technology in a leading edge next generation silicon process node.
sureCore works closely with Gold Standard Simulations, a Glasgow University spinout. Professor Asen
decades of research at LIP Laboratory (ENS Lyon and Inria). Zettice has exclusive license over the technol-ogy. This software automates the generation of fully customizable and optimized functions (IP blocks) for hardware accelerators that use FP-GAs. These functions are customized to exact customer requirements. Fast “what-if” scenario explorations are possible without any additional costs. Zettice can generate IP Blocks in min-utes that will be the best performing ones on the market, according to the company. The compiler technology is used with the same success on GPUs and multicore processor technologies in the research community.
Zettice is currently targeting high performance computing (HPC) and DSP applications in the financial, CAD simulation, medical, industrial and robotics markets. Some of the company’s products are ready for the FPGA market. The company will be formerly created in September 2013.
Alexandru Plesco, Ph.D., Founder, CEO & CTO
Adrian Muresan, Ph.D., Founder, R&D Director
ZetticeZettice was founded as a spin-off from Inria (National Research Institute in Computer Science) and ENS Lyon in France to accelerate complex com-putational algorithms onto hardware accelerators like FPGAs, GPUs and multicores. The company is search-ing for a business developer to join its team before the first round of in-vestment, and is open to investment discussions.
According to Zettice, existing design automation tools do not adequately address complex computational algo-rithms in silicon. Zettice has developed advanced compiler technology build on powerful mathematical concepts that excels at processing complex computational algorithms and FPGA function synthesis (ASIC soon), in-creasing performance up to 50% for low complexity applications and up to 10x for complex applications. Zettice argues that its technology also reduces power on FPGAs up to 100x compared to multicore technologies and up to 10x compared to GPUs.
Zettice’s core technology (advanced compiler & arithmetic backend tech-nologies) is based on more than two
TriLumina has developed technolo-gy capable of powering hundreds of individual lasers operating in perfect synchronization at exceedingly high speeds and power. Trilumina’s tech-nology is based on the vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser. John Joseph said the key innovation is, “I pulled everything off the chip and put it on the silicon.” TriLumina laser arrays can “scan,” select, transmit data, and “see” the world in a dramatically new way.
The company’s Light Engines dra-matically improve the capabilities and resolution of Natural User Inter-face (NUI) applications such as the XBox Kinect to enable a real-time 3-D tool that can read fingers, facial expressions and discriminate small movements from across the room. TriLumina claims to have devel-oped the only technology capable of semiconductor–based 10Gbps free space optical wireless communication (FSOC).
Gary Oppedahl, CEO and President (previously CEO of Cell Robotics and TBAB Health Care; history of building VCSEL companies such as Micro Optical Devices/ Emcore and Novalux)
John Joseph, founder, Chief Engineer and VP of Product Development (formerly worked at Motorola, Sandia National Labs, Los Alamos National Labs, MODE/Emcore and Novalux)
David Abell, COO and General Coun-sel (formerly in-house securities and governance counsel for TI)
Kevin Lear, Ph.D., CTO (previously senior researcher at Sandia Labs and chief science officer at MODE)
trans-European research effort on rap-id-prototyping technologies funded by the European Union program FEDER. Researchers in leading universities are using the company’s tools for a variety of applications. The company is also involved in a variety of key research projects in France.
Tour Pleyel, 153 Boulevard Anatole 93200 Paris-Saint Denis, France www.flexras.com
KovioKovio was founded in 2001 as Nano-tectonica in the MIT Media Laboratory to develop printed silicon products for Near Field Communication (NFC) and Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) markets, including RFID tags and NFC Barcodes. Based on its print-ed silicon technology and software platforms, Kovio now views itself as a mobile marketing, advertising and brand development firm.
Kovio has received funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Duff Ackerman and Goodrich Ven-tures, Tyco Retail Solutions, Harris and Harris Group, Flagship Venture Partners, Mitsui Ventures, Panasonic Venture Group, Pangaea Ventures, Toppan Forms, Jerusalem Venture Partners, Northgate Capital, and Yasuda Enterprise Development. In July 2009, Kovio raised $20 million in Series E financing from current investors. In June 2011, Kovio raised $15 million in a new equity financing led by Tyco Retail Solutions and cur-rent investors.
Based on breakthroughs in nanotech-nology and molecular synthesis, Kovio has developed high-performance sili-con, dopant, metal, and insulator inks.
FlexrasFlexras was founded in August 2009, based on ten years of research at the University of Pierre et Marie Curie and LIP6 Lab, to develop technology to reduce time required for prototyp-ing, validation and debug of ICs and SoCs. Flexras is privately funded and is engaged with leading companies around the globe.
Today’s large, complex SoC designs do not fit into one FPGA. Partition-ing the design between FPGAs has a significant effect on the multi-FPGA system performance. Flexras develops EDA partitioning tools that accelerates prototyping with multi-FPGA-based systems. The company revisits the partitioning problem in an innovative way by considering timing aspects in early stages and unifying competitive objectives to obtain optimal solution.
WASGA Compiler, the company’s first product, is a multi-FPGA partitioning software flow for ASIC designers who use FPGA-based system to verify their design and to validate the software integration. WASGA Compiler is a timing-driven partitioning tool for SoC rapid prototyping that automat-ically partitions large designs onto multiple FPGAs while addressing chip resources, connectivity, and the clock frequency constraints required
Radar Scope(Continued from page 3)
for running software applications in near real time.
WASGA solves hardware/software validation bottlenecks by comple-menting rapid prototyping platforms with timing-driven partitioning, offering over 10X increase in clock frequency for complex design pro-totyping. According to the company, Wasga Compiler performs signifi-cantly better than other tools, which often fail to achieve an acceptable timing result, even with manual inter-ventions. It delivers faster results and handles the largest designs (above one billion gates equivalent).
The latest release of Wasga Compiler Design Suite supports Xilinx Virtex-7 FPGAs and includes new features that accelerate SoC rapid prototyping. With its timing-driven automatic partitioning and high-speed Virtex-7 FPGA Advanced Pin Multiplexing (APM) IP for inter-FPGA communi-cations, Wasga Compiler enables very fast prototyping of complex SoCs, achieving efficient results in days or even hours.
The company’s second product, Wasga Architect, is a design-driven multi-FPGA board synthesis tool. Wasga Architect revisits multi-FPGA board design and proposes to do it jointly with design implementation. Thus, it tailors interconnect distribu-tion according to design partitioning and routing results to get the best performance. Wasga Architect takes the user design as input, partitions it according to the user-selected FPGA family, and generates the correspond-ing multi-FPGA board netlist.
The company’s timing-driven par-titioning technology is used by semiconductor manufacturers and is licensed to FPGA-based sys-tems providers. Flexras is currently coordinator of the PPR project, a
By combining these functional inks with printing technologies, Kovio manufactures semiconductor devic-es and integrated circuits over thin, flexible, lightweight, and large area substrates, at a fraction of the cost of conventional silicon technology and with reduced environmental impact. Kovio’s printed silicon products are printed in days, as compared to sev-eral months for conventional silicon technology. The company has more than 220 patents and applications.
Kovio has leveraged this platform to develop low-cost NFC Barcodes and other products that are compatible with existing and emerging standards in NFC markets. By combining compatibility with standards-based ecosystems and breakthroughs in costs and service model, Kovio products expand the potential scope of applications in the emerging NFC market, traditional RFID-based ticket-ing and EAS markets. The company’s low cost printed silicon technology enables its customers and partners to deploy solutions in the areas of mo-bile marketing and advertising, brand authentication, retail operations, and ticketing.
Kovio’s silicon ink-based platform leverages additive printing processes to address limited-transistor intelli-gence requirements including NFC and EAS products. The process uses 4% of the resources of conventional silicon, requires 30% less capex and takes only 5% of the days to manu-facture. The “game changing” cost structure enables item-level intelli-gence by addressing all three aspects of RF tag cost: IC, antenna and attach, and also eliminates programming cost. Through the streamlined in-tegration of printed sensors, Kovio technology can also be extended and customized to produce smart products that enhance consumer experiences
at point of use and smart tags that can report on the world around them.
Kovio’s printed silicon manufacturing platform enables scalable item-level NFC technology for branded product and retail markets. The company’s EAS product improves the retail ex-perience for shoppers while enhancing loss prevention for retailers. Its NFC BarcodeTM products enable real-time, customizable interaction between con-sumers, brands, and retailers.
Mobile digital interactive technologies such as SMS, quick response codes, image recognition and augmented reality have been introduced with lim-ited success. Kovio argues that NFC is the only technology being embedded into mobile phones, point-of-sale terminals, consumer electronics and everyday items, making it the opti-mum mobile interactive technology. NFC is fast, frictionless, contextual, intuitive, immersive, interactive, au-thentic, and contactless, providing an engaging opt-in mobile experience. NFC is projected to go mainstream in 2013 with 285 million NFC-enabled mobile devices this year, growing to more than one billion by 2015.
Kovio NFC Barcode™ is a new cat-egory of ultra-low-cost RF barcode – based on printed silicon technology – that enables item-level interaction between consumers and brands. NFC Barcode enables direct brand-to-con-sumer communication because it can be embedded in trillions of physical goods. Kovio’s NFC Barcode products directly enable the use of NFC for location-based marketing, gaming, access to content, social networking, and healthcare. NFC Barcode™ is interoperable with ISO-standard NFC readers, is a subset of NFC type 2 tags and has been submitted to standards bodies.
INSIDE Secure is the first manufactur-er of NFC solutions to support Kovio RF Barcodes. Using a mobile phone or other device powered by INSIDE Mi-croRead or SecuRead NFC solutions, consumers, while they shop, will be able to interact with smart labels on products and smart posters to receive product details, promotional offers, coupons, loyalty points, nutritional information, and other information to enhance their retail experience, as well as interact with social media, web sites and other Internet-based services.
Kovio Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) solutions reduce shrinkage, improve operational efficiency, and improve consumer satisfaction. Cur-rent anti-theft solutions are based on a polymer capacitor. Kovio’s solution is based on semiconductor-grade printed silicon and features controlled, perma-nent deactivation, eliminating false alarms. It is compatible with existing 8.2MHz EAS theft detection and deactivation systems, which are used worldwide by a majority of retailers. The thin, planar, and flexible form factor is compatible with complex manufacturing environments such as shoes. Source tagging dramatically reduces overall costs compared to hard tags and enables the deployment of loss prevention in previously excluded existing product categories.
Nedap Retail, a developer of solutions for the retail market, in partnership with Kovio, has unveiled !FaST an-ti-theft tags for the retail and fashion industry, which can be invisibly em-bedded into clothing, shoes and other products, and can be deactivated per-manently at point of sale (POS). The tag is embedded into the lining of the clothing or the shoe upon manufac-turing, eliminating the need for bulky plastic hard tags. Several world-class retailers, have already decided to trial the !FaST technology.
Electronics Material, and VP & CTO at Speedfam-IPEC, which was acquired by Novellus)
Lisan Hung, VP, General Counsel, and Secretary (previously held various leadership positions in the law department at AMD)
Richard Carter, VP of Finance and Corporate Controller (previously VP of Finance and Corporate Controller at MiaSole, and Corpo-rate Controller at PortalPlayer and Transmeta)
2865 Zanker Road San Jose, CA 95134 Tel: 408.503.7300 Fax: 408.503.7301 www.kovio.com
Strategic Polymer SciencesStrategic Polymer Sciences (SPS) was founded in 2006 to develop the world’s thinnest Electro-Mechanical Polymer actuators. In Q1’13, the company raised roughly $6.6 million in third round funding from Chengwei Ventures and Life Sciences Green-house of Central Pensylvania. The company has offices in San Francisco California and State College Penn-sylvania.
SPS is focused on developing actu-ators that enable OEMs to deliver advanced multimodal user experi-ences. SPS actuators are designed to animate mobile devices with better haptics and sounds, enrich the user experience and make any device more intuitive, realistic and more attractive to end users.
The core building blocks for SPS’ electro mechanical actuators are pro-prietary Electro Mechanical Polymers (EMP) and the knowhow to create the world’s thinnest high performance EMP actuators. SPS EMP actuators are the world’s thinnest actuators,
The Sacramento Kings have partnered with Kovio and Proximiant to enhance the Season Ticket Holder experience at Sleep Train Arena through creative implementation of NFC and RFID technologies. The Kings have issued card passes to all Season Ticket Hold-ers that embed a Kovio NFC tag that allows fans to accrue reward points by swiping their pass on terminals placed at the Team Store and concession stands throughout the venue. Proxim-iant is a leader in Touch&Go mobile receipts and targeted CRM.
To compliment its tags, Kovio’s ENCORE software and services platform supports ecosystem cam-paign management, analytics, mobile content and applications, and enables customers and partners to focus on engagement, conversion, and reten-tion. Symphony Teleca, a services organization dedicated to helping clients manage the convergence of software, the cloud, connected devices and big data analytics, has become a strategic development partner to Kov-io. Symphony Teleca will leverage its expertise in the development of big data analytics platforms for retailers, brands, and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries to co-develop mobile services and applications that enable marketers and advertisers to conduct dynamic and integrated NFC-based mobile marketing campaigns using Kovio NFC tags activated by con-sumers’ NFC-enabled mobile phones.
Kovio has also established partner-ships with leading brands, mobile phone players and social media part-ners. Nissan Chemical Industries will commercially produce Kovio’s silicon ink technology and supply Kovio with silicon ink products for its RF products and other strategic
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applications. In addition, NCI intends to commercialize silicon ink products based on Kovio’s technology in the Asian display industry.
Kovio offers a conventional ISO 14443/NFC Tag Type 2 IC with 2048-bit OTP memory for a wide range of NFC and ticketing applications. The device is in mass production and is available with multiple inlay options. The company’s EAS solution has been in production since November 2012. The NFC Barcode tag will also be compatible with ISO 14443 and will feature 128 bits of printed ROM. Multiple inlay options will be available. The company will produce the device using a print on demand service model. Early customer sam-ples are available now. Mobile phone compatible versions that allow the use of much lower power readers will ramp later this year. Kovio has a printed silicon manufacturing pilot line in Milpitas, CA and is building a production line in San Jose, CA.
Amir Mashkoori, CEO & Chairman (previously played an instrumental role in the formation of Spansion in 2003, and managed the company’s Wireless Business Unit as EVP)
Vik Pavate, VP of Business Develop-ment (previously held increasingly responsible positions in global product management within var-ious deposition product divisions of Applied Materials, including Physical Vapor Deposition, Copper Barrier-Seed and Integrated Liner Barrier)
Jiang Li, Ph.D., VP of Engineering (previously spent 9 years at AMD and Spansion, culminating in VP of product engineering)
Saket Chadda, Ph.D., VP of Technol-ogy and Manufacturing (previously served as VP of MEMS Engineer-ing and Operations at Spatial Photonics, CTO at Honeywell
vibrate and deform, are ultra light, high strain, cost competitive and cus-tomizable.
They are ultra thin (<50μm), ultra light (<1.0g), highly flexible (bends 180 degrees), robust, fast (<1ms response time), and low cost. Drive voltage is less than 150V. The devices have optimal response in both the acous-tic (0-40kHz) and tactile (0-500Hz) frequency ranges. SPS argues that no other actuator technology competes with so many characteristics.
SPS’ EMP technology offers a unique combination of high strain and high mechanical modulus brought about by the high electrostrictive response of the EMP. When an electric field is applied to an EMP actuator, polar-ization changes cause the polymer to lengthen in high strain stretching. The result is electrostrictive effect rather than electro static force. Due to this, the mechanical modulus can be 100 to 1000 times higher than competitive polymer actuator technologies. EMP technology is highly scalable and EMP actuators can be customized to meet myriad actuation needs and requirements.
By 2015, it is estimated that over 500 million devices will have some form of advance tactile features. Accord-ing to IDTechEx, EAP actuators will achieve penetration of 60% for haptic feedback in mobile phones by 2018. There is urgent need for a new gener-ation of actuators to address this mega trend in the mobile space. SPS EMP actuators are the world’s thinnest, ultra light, low power and cost com-petitive. They support a multi-modal experience with both haptic and sound effects. SPS EMP Haptic Actuators are also the world’s thinnest speaker, according to the company.
The SPS EMP Technology Kit is now available to select partners. Mass
production of SPS EMP actuators for mobile product integration is sched-uled for 2013.
Dr. Christophe Ramstein, President and CEO (previously CTO and SVP of research and engineering at Immersion and founder of Haptic Technologies, which was acquired by Immersion in 2000)
Dr. Li Jiang, VP of Engineering (previously held positions at Im-mersion, where led the development of piezo-based HD haptic actuators, and Apple, where he worked at Apple’s multi-touch hub)
Dr. Stephen Davis, VP of Manufac-turing (previously worked at Zeus, UDRI AFRL CTIO, and Kodak)
Ausra Liaukeviciute, VP of Corporate Marketing (previously worked at Allied International DC and man-aged a Marketing Communications firm)
Dennis Siegel., VP of Finance & Administration (previously served as Controller and CFO at compa-nies such as AccuWeather, Ernst & Whinney, Thermal Industries, Exygen Research, and Drucker Company/QC Dagnostics)
Laura Peter, General Counsel (pre-viously counseled startups and mid-sized companies on numerous legal matters)
Ralph Russo, Co-Founder & Chair-man (previously served as SPS’s first President and CEO)
Dr. Qiming Zhang, Co-Founder & Technical Advisor (IEEE Fellow and Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Material Science En-gineering at Penn State University)
1350 Bayshore Highway, Suite 450 Burlingame, CA 94010 200 Innovation Blvd., Suite 237 State College PA 16803 Tel: 814.238.7400 www.strategicpolymers.com n
Altis Semiconductor, a European based specialty foundry, has appointed Jim Kupec as VP, Worldwide Sales & Marketing. Kupec previously served as SVP worldwide marketing and sales for GlobalFoundries, COO of eSilicon, and President of UMC USA.
ams’ CEO, John Heugle, has resigned. Kirk Laney, currently heading the Optical Sensors and Lighting business unit and former CEO of TAOS, was elected to the management board and will assume the position of interim CEO.
Analog Devices has promoted Eileen Wynne to VP, corporate controller, and chief accounting officer, reporting to CFO David Zinsner. Ms. Wynne, 47, has been the ADI corporate con-troller since 2011.
Atmel has appointed Steve Skaggs as the company’s permanent SVP & CFO. Skaggs had been serving as in-terim CFO since April 2, 2013. Skaggs joined Atmel in 2010 and previously worked at Lattice, where he served as President and CEO and also as CFO.
Exar has appointed Parviz Ghaf-faripour as SVP of Connectivity and Power Management Products reporting to President and CEO, Louis DiNardo. Ghaffaripour previously served as CEO of Akros Silicon and COO at Advanced Analogic Tech-nologies, which was acquired by Skyworks.
Ikanos has named Stu Krometis as VP of sales. Krometis previously was VP of APAC sales for Cavium.
MagnaChip has appointed YJ Kim as EVP and GM of its Display Solu-tions Division. Kim previously was VP of the Infrastructure Processor
Zonoff, creator of the Zonoff Con-nected Home Platform, has appointed Dave DiOrio as VP of Customer Programs. DiOrio previously was COO of Quartics, a semiconductor company, and VP and GM of the DTV Business Unit at Broadcom. n
Funding & IPOsMoSys (NASDAQ: MOSY) has priced an underwritten public offering of 6,500,000 shares of its common stock at $4.00 per share. The compa-ny expects to receive net proceeds of approximately $24.2 million.
Qualtré, a developer of silicon MEMS inertial sensors, has received a $3 million investment from a long-time strategic partner. Qualtré intends to use the additional funds to further the development of its Bulk Acoustic Wave (BAW) MEMS sensor tech-nology. Qualtré has been providing partners and prospective customers with samples over the past few months showing best-in-class perfor-mance on a number of characteristics, such as vibration immunity and drift. Industry experts predict the market for MEMS inertial sensors will exceed $4B by 2015.
Rightware, a provider of embedded user interface (UI) software and per-formance benchmarking tools, has closed a $5.2M Series B Round with Inventure, Nexit Ventures, and new investor Finnish Industry Investment. The investment will be used to further expand global sales and continue the development of the Kanzi UI Solution, which continues to gain traction within the automotive sector and consumer electronics companies in Europe, USA and Asia. The Kanzi UI Solution is already widely adopted by premium car manufacturers such as Audi AG, tier-1 suppliers such as Visteon and is supported by leading
SVP and CFO, replacing Bock in that role. Bock joined Silicon Labs’ Board in 2000 and was appointed CFO in 2006. He retired from Silicon Labs’ management team in 2011, return-ing as interim CFO in early 2013. Before joining Silicon Labs, Bock was president and CEO of DAZEL. The company has also promoted Lyn Herr, a Silicon Labs veteran of 15 years, from senior director of the human resources to VP of worldwide human resources.
SMIC has appointed Dr. Atsushi Hori as GM of SMIC Japan.
STMicroelectronics has appointed EVP Jean-Marc Chery as GM of the Embedded Processing Solu-tions Segment, a new position, and Vice-Chairman of the Corporate Stra-tegic Committee where he has been a Member since 2008. Jean-Marc was formerly GM of ST’s Digital Sector and of Technology R&D and Manufacturing. Chery will now be responsible for the Digital Conver-gence, Imaging, Bi-CMOS ASIC & Silicon Photonics, and Micro-controller, Memory & Secure MCU product groups, as well as for the related Technology R&D and Front-End Manufacturing. He continues to lead the Packaging and Test Manufac-turing and Quality functions for ST.
Tactus Technology, a supplier of tactile touchscreens, has appointed RK Parthasarathy as the compa-ny’s first VP of Sales and Marketing. Parthasarathy was previously Senior Director of Product Management at Qualcomm. Prior to that, he was VP of Marketing at Ubicom, a developer of networking solutions that was ac-quired by Qualcomm in 2012. He also spent 4 years as Product Line Director & Director of Strategic Marketing for Synaptics.
Division and GM of the Multi-core Processor Group at Cavium.
MediaTek has appointed Patrik Persson as GM of global marketing communications reporting to Johan Lodenius, marketing manager.
The MIPI Alliance, an international organization that develops inter-face specifications for mobile and mobile-influenced industries, has appointed Peter Lefkin as managing director and Mike Krell as director of marketing and membership. Lefkin has served as MIPI’s part-time man-aging director since February 2011. Krell has more than 25 years of ex-perience in the electronics industry having worked for AMD, Legerity and most recently Alereon.
Noel Technologies, a Silicon Valley technology foundry offering process development and substrate fabrica-tion, has expanded its capabilities to include lithography services and has hired Keith Best, as director of photolithography. Best previously served as VP, applications at Simax Lithography, an engineering services company that optimized lithography equipment. Prior to Simax, he spent 11 years at ASML, most recently as director of application development, and also worked for LSI Logic and KLA-Tencor.
QLogic announced that Simon Bid-discombe has resigned as president and CEO and also as a director. The Board has appointed SVP and CFO Jean Hu as CEO on an interim basis.
Silicon Labs has appointed interim CFO and board member, Bill Bock as president, reporting to CEO, Tyson Tuttle. John Hollister, VP of business development, will be promoted to
ments in R&D; reinforcing Europe’s three world-class electronics clusters (Dresden, Eindhoven/Leuven, and Grenoble) and connecting with oth-er European clusters; making chips cheaper (transitioning to 450mm wafers), faster and smarter; and mo-bilizing euro 10 billion of private, regional, national and EU funds, in-cluding euro 5 billion through a joint Public-Private Partnership.
The Commission’s level of ambition is backed by researchers and the electronics industry who at the end of 2012 outlined how a total invest-ment of euro 100 billion could be delivered between 2013 and 2020. In Europe, more than 200,000 people are directly employed in micro- and nano-electronics.
Kopin has opened its first Wearable Tech Center in Silicon Valley to accelerate development of wearable computing technologies. The Wear-able Tech Center will help drive development and innovation in voice- and gesture-based technologies and hardware components. Equipped with state-of-the-art acoustic test chambers and measurement systems to provide a full range of acoustic and audio test-ing, the Center will focus on enhanced speech technology development and evaluation, low-power IC design, concept system design, and customer support activities. The Center will be staffed with a team of experts from the group that developed Kopin’s Golden-i wearable headset concept systems, a newly formed speech en-hancement group, and IC designers from e-MDT America, Kopin’s most recent acquisition.
Sankalp Semiconductor has es-tablished a mixed-signal IC Design centre in Bhubaneswar, India. With an established design centre in Kolkata focused around analog solutions, this
to provide its partners the best and most-complete technology portfolio of components and solutions for the wearable computing market.
Mellanox has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Kotura, a developer of silicon photonics op-tical interconnect technology, for approximately $82 million in cash. Mellanox expects the transaction to be accretive to its full fiscal year 2014 earnings. The acquisition is expected to expand Mellanox’s ability to de-liver high-speed networks with next generation optical connectivity of 100Gb/s speeds and beyond. Mella-nox expects to establish its first R&D center in the U.S. at Kotura’s current location. Further, Mellanox intends to retain Kotura’s existing product lines to ensure continuity for customers and partners.
Teledyne Technologies’ subsid-iary, Teledyne DALSA B.V., has acquired Axiom IC B.V., a fabless semiconductor company that de-velops high-performance CMOS mixed-signal ICs. Terms were not disclosed. Axiom IC was founded in 2007 and is a spin-off from the University of Twente. Axiom has delivered breakthroughs including high-speed, high-resolution analog to digital converters and advanced audio signal processing chips. n
Business & FinancialsThe European Commission has launched a campaign for coordinated public investments in micro- and nano-electronics designed to expand Europe’s advanced manufacturing base. The goal is to double chip production to around 20% of global production and to produce more chips in Europe than the U.S. produces domestically. Key elements include higher and more coordinated invest-
semiconductor companies such as Freescale. In Q1’13, UI business revenues more than double compared to Q1’12 and the company forecasts growth to further accelerate towards the end of the year. n
Mergers & AcquisitionsAltera has signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire Enpirion, a provider of high-efficiency, inte-grated power conversion products known as PowerSoCs. Terms were not disclosed. Enpirion’s key enabling power technologies – high-frequency switching, magnetics and packaging – are engineered into complete power SoC products. Ashraf Lotfi, founder and CEO of Enpirion, will serve as an Altera Fellow and chief technolo-gist for Altera’s newly formed Power business unit.
Cadence announced its intent to ac-quire the IP business of Evatronix SA SKA. Based in Poland, Evatronix delivers a silicon-proven IP portfolio, which includes certified USB 2.0/3.0, Display, MIPI, and storage controllers. Evatronix has a broad customer base of approximately 600 customers. Nearly 200 USB controllers have been licensed to customers, including sever-al top-tier semiconductor companies. Evatronix’s controllers, combined with PHYs from Cadence, will enable a complete interface IP solution that combines controller, PHY, verification IP and integration kits.
Kopin has acquired the majority share of e-MDT America, in Santa Clara, an expert in low-power analog/digital circuit designs. e-MDT America spe-cializes in designing ultra-low-power driver ICs and backplanes for many kinds of displays, including reflec-tive liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) displays. The investment in e-MDT America is part of Kopin’s strategy
Market ResearchWorldwide sales of semiconductors reached $23.48 billion for the month of March 2013, an increase of 1.1% from the previous month when sales were $23.23 billion, reports the SIA. Global sales for March 2013 were 0.9% higher than the March 2012 total of $23.28 billion, and total sales through Q1’13 were 0.9% higher than sales from Q1’12. Sales have increased across most end product categories, with memory showing the strongest growth.
North America-based manufactur-ers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.17 billion in orders world-wide in April 2013 and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.08, according to SEMI. The three-month average of worldwide bookings in April 2013 was $1.17 billion, 6.4% higher than the final March 2013 level of $1.1 billion, and 26.8% lower than the April 2012 order level of $1.6 billion. The three-month average of worldwide billings in April 2013 was $1.08 billion, 9.3% higher than the final March 2013 level of $991 million, and 25.7% lower than the April 2012 billings level of $1.46 billion.
The worldwide semiconductor assembly and test services (SATS) market totaled $24.5 billion in 2012, a 2.1% increase from 2011, ac-cording to Gartner. Packaging accounted for 80.5% of ASE’s total as-sembly/test/materials (ATM) revenue. Amkor’s reve-nue was down s l i g h t l y, d u e partially to the aggressive strat-egy in the copper w i r e - b o n d i n g t r a n s i t i o n b y ASE, SPIL and others. SPIL’s revenue was 90%
is its second such design centre in the eastern part of India.
TranSwitch has retained Needham & Company as financial advisor to assist the Board in evaluating various strategic alternatives available to the Company.
UMC has established Fab 12i in Sin-gapore as its “Center of Excellence” to spearhead the company’s R&D and manufacturing for advanced specialty process technologies. The Centre of Excellence was set up with an initial investment of $110 million, and will undertake R&D collaborations with local research institutes such as Sin-gapore’s Institute of Microelectronics. Technologies being developed in-clude CMOS image sensor backside illumination, embedded memory, high voltage applications and TSV (through silicon via) connections. In 2013, UMC plans to increase headcount of Fab 12i by over 80 en-gineers to focus on specialty process development.
Fab 12i is UMC’s only 300mm fab outside of Taiwan. The current ca-pacity is nearly 45,000 wafers per month, accounting for 45% of UMC’s total 12” output. Recent achievements in specialty technologies at Fab 12i include the development of backside illuminated CMOS image sensors and 55nm eFlash cells. Total cumulative investment for Fab 12i is nearly US$3.6 billion to date. The fab cur-rently employs nearly 1,600 people.
Vivante GPU IP cores are deployed in more than 100 million devices and counting. Vivante has grown its IP licensing business with products deployed in the world’s leading con-sumer brands including six of China’s top-selling mobile phones. n
packaging, 10% test. Powertech is differentiated from the others in that the majority of its revenue comes from servicing the memory segment.
LTE chipset sales are dominated by Qualcomm with over two-thirds of shipments in 2012, reports ABI Research. Broadcom and Intel are expected to be significant challengers to Qualcomm over the next few years. Some of the smaller LTE baseband vendors will grab a part of the LTE chipset market that will grow to well over 850 million shipments in 2018 for handsets alone. Only five companies – Altair, GCT, Innofidei, Leadcore, and Sequans – offer sin-glemode LTE chipsets at the moment. Eventually, the larger vendors will offer singlemode LTE products, but only after the opportunity for those products becomes much more siz-able. n
New ProductsAxcelis has shipped the new Purion M medium current implanter to a major semiconductor manufacturer located in Asia. The Purion M is part of the Company’s expanding family of next generation Purion implanters, specifically designed to provide lead-ing purity, precision, and productivity for the 16nm era and beyond. The system will be used to develop and manufacture next generation memory and FLASH devices.
It comes in three form factors – the smallest Wafer-Level Chip-Scale (WL-CSP) is just 2.5 X 2.5 X 0.5mm. The inclusion of a 32-bit ARM Cor-tex™ M0 core in combination with on-chip OTP memory provides design flexibility and eliminates the need for an external processor. Dialog is partnering with Murata to develop small form factor modules. The adoption of Bluetooth Smart is set to grow rapidly, with over 350 million Bluetooth Smart ICs projected to be shipped cumulatively by the end of 2016 according to IHS. Samples now; production in Q4.
E Ink has introduced E Ink Aurora, the first electronic paper display (EPD) able to withstand freezers temperatures as cold as -25C. Aurora has been tuned for non-eReader appli-cations and is ideal for electronic shelf labels (ESLs) and smart cards in the retail, medical and logistics markets. Aurora will be available starting in July 2013. E Ink has introduced E Ink Spectra, the first three pigment EPD, featuring black, white and red pigments. Spectra allows retailers to elevate the impact of their ESLs by adding color to logos and quickly directing consumers’ attention to im-portant information, such as product sales and promotions. Spectra will be available in Q3.
E Ink has also introduced E Ink Mo-bius, a new flexible EPD technology. E Ink Mobius will be the first flexible display technology that will go into mass production for a large format digital paper product based on flexible Thin Film Transistor (TFT) technolo-gy developed by Sony. Mobius uses a TFT technology that will enable the development of much lighter and rugged products. Mobius displays can weigh less than 50% of the weight of an equivalent glass-based TFT.
CrestaTech’s 4th generation X7 Smart Tuner™ family of single chip TV tuners is now available with ex-clusive options addressing the needs of the fastest growing TV markets. Shipping in volume since the be-ginning of the year, the X7 Smart Tuner™ family introduces specialized versions for the fast-growing South America and China markets. CrestaT-ech claims to be the only silicon TV tuner manufacturer that provides a single chip solution for digital TV with a built-in analog demodulator and dual inputs.
Based on the CrestaTech-patented technology proven in tens of millions of flat panel TVs, the X7 architec-ture combines a frequency-agile RF front-end with a DSP-based IF pro-cessor that maintains field-proven performance across diverse real-world signal conditions. The X7 Smart Tun-er™ includes full broadband tuning from 42 to 1000MHz, CPU calibrat-ed LNA, mixers and channel filters, which provide consistent performance across the entire frequency spectrum and maintains that performance in production volumes.
Dialog Semiconductor has launched SmartBond, the world’s lowest power and smallest Bluetooth Smart SoC, according to the company, which more than doubles the battery life of an app-enabled smartphone accessory or computer peripheral in comparison to competing solutions on the mar-ket. SmartBond is the first Bluetooth Smart solution to break the 4mA cur-rent barrier for wireless transmission and reception. Deep sleep current is under 600nA. This means a 225mAh coin-cell battery in a product sending 20 bytes of data per second would last 4 years and 5 months in comparison to just 2 years with previous generations of Bluetooth Smart technology. The DA14580 also has a size advantage.
The ruggedness and lightweight char-acteristics of Mobius are due to the TFT being constructed on a plastic substrate rather than traditional glass. The technology was developed by Sony specifically for use with EPDs in cooperation with E Ink. Sony has now transferred the technology to E Ink for mass production. E Ink will start mass production of the world’s first 13.3 flexible EPD display in 2013.
Energy Micro is shipping its latest and most advanced microcontroller, the EFM32 Wonder Gecko. The de-vice includes the ARM Cortex-M4 processor that provides a full DSP instruction set and a dedicated FPU. The EFM32 Wonder Gecko also utilizes the eLL (extreme low leak-age) process for ultimate low-power operation in active and sleep modes. The Wonder Gecko family consists of 60 scalable memory and package configurations with up to 256 KB Flash and 32 KB RAM, and QFN64 to BGA120 options. Energy Micro has been working closely with TSMC to verify the benefits of using the TSMC eLL process to fabricate its next gen-eration of energy efficient Cortex-M microcontrollers.
Ethertronics has unveiled the lat-est addition to its EtherChip line of RF silicon chips. EtherChip 2.0 is designed to add “smarts” to antenna and RF systems to deliver optimal connectivity and performance for wireless devices. EtherChip 2.0 incor-porates Ethertronics’ patented IMD technology with dynamic Impedance Matching and Band Switching by combining two tunable capacitors and a four-port switch within a very small form factor. Integrating three of Ethertronics’ core active technologies, Air InteRFace Digital Conditioning™ (AIRFDC™), Ac-tive Impedance Matching and Band Switching, EtherChip 2.0 is able to
than 57 million in 2016. Based on its currently shipping VRX200 family, Lantiq’s market share has increased in double digit percentages in each of the last two years.
Marvell has introduced the PXA1088 LTE, the first mass market quad-core 5-mode Category 4 LTE single-chip solution supporting LTE TDD and FDD, High Speed Packet Access Plus (HSPA+), Time Division High Speed Packet Access Plus (TD-HSPA+) and Enhanced Data for GSM Environment (EDGE). Marvell’s LTE modem tech-nology is field proven and certified by major global operators, such as China Mobile. Marvell is making significant progress on LTE design wins with global Tier-1 OEMs.
QD Vision, manufacturer of Color IQ™ optical components for LCD applications, announced breakthrough results on next generation quantum dot light emitting devices (QLEDs), which are currently in advanced development stage. QLEDs are a quantum dot-based light emitting technology, which in the future will be used in applications such as electronic displays and solid-state lighting. QD Vision reports achieving 18% Exter-nal Quantum Efficiency (EQE), which puts QLEDs near the fundamental ef-ficiency limit of the technology. These results are two times higher efficiency than previously reported state-of-the-art efficiency of a QLED device.
Redpine Signals has introduced a set of RTLS hardware and system com-ponents that include the industry’s first 2.4GHz and 5GHz dual band Cisco Compatible Extensions (CCX) certified RTLS tag – the WiSeMote WM1-50 device. The company also extended its Cloud-based Location as a Service (CLaaS) offerings by adding SuperMote and NetworkMote. The complete RTLS solution includes a location engine that provides accurate
quickly tune to a frequency band and then fine tune the antenna for optimal efficiency. EtherChip 2.0 measures 3x3x0.45 mm and is able to cover one frequency or a wide range of frequen-cies (100 MHz to 3 GHz), including 2G, 3G and 4G cellular as well as Bluetooth, ISM, WiFi and ZigBee.
Global Communication Semicon-ductors, a pure-play III-V compound semiconductor wafer foundry, has introduced new InGaP HBT D5 and P7 foundry processes to address the wide tuning range VCO and the 12V PA requirements.
InvenSense has introduced the IDG-2030 and IXZ-2030 dual-axis Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) gyroscopes. OIS eliminates the effects of hand jitter to achieve blur free images and jitter free HD video. The benefits of OIS are most evident in low light con-ditions where longer exposure times are required. The IDG-2030 expands the dominant position established by the IDG-2021 in the OIS market. At 2.3x2.3x0.65mm, the IDG-2030 pro-vides a 41% foot print reduction, 28% lower profile, and 50% lower power than the nearest competitor. The first wave of OIS enabled smartphones has already hit the market.
Lantiq has introduced the indus-try’s most integrated and highest performance VDSL chipset family, the XWAY™ VRX300. Gateway designs based on the new chipset can reach data rates of 200 Mbits (two pair bonded) and up to 150 Mbits (vectoring) while supporting an array of home networking features, including integrated Wireless LAN (Wi-Fi), Gigabit Ethernet and VoIP. VDSL-ready CPE system shipments are forecast by IHS iSuppli to grow from about 22 million in 2012 to more
locationing in beaconing, associated and CCX mode of operation. The WiSeMote tag family provides two-way messaging, with simultaneous multi-mode capability. They can also work with standard off-the-shelf access points for locationing through their associated mode of operation. Redpine’s SuperMote and Network-Mote devices allow creation of a Wi-Fi RTLS infrastructure even in environments with limited or no pre-vious Wi-Fi deployment at reduced cost than installing a standard Wi-Fi infrastructure first.
Rockchip has introduced the RK3168 featuring an ARM Cortex-A9 du-al-core architecture with 1.2GHz operation. Compared with today’s dual-core chips, the RK3168 dual-A9 chip has three major advantages: Power consumption: Dual-core chip with the world’s lowest power con-sumption, 1X lower than Cortex-A7 dual-core chips; Performance: 2X higher than dual-A7 program with half the power consumption, because it uses 28nm; Design: Quad-dual compatible, one board for double purposes. The dual-core RK3168 can be replaced with a high-end 28nm RK3188 quad-core chip pin to pin. A 7-inch tablet PC with 3000mAh battery can play HD video for eight hours continuously.
SanDisk has begun customer sam-pling of flash memory products based on its 1Ynm process tech-nology, which represents its second generation 19nm manufacturing tech-nology. SanDisk’s achievement takes its memory cell size from 19nm-by-26nm to 19nm-by-19.5nm, delivering a 25% reduction of the memory cell area. SanDisk’s three bits per cell X3 technology, implemented in the second-generation 19nm node will deliver the lowest-cost flash solutions
Crocus will make its MLU blocks, including magnetic sensors and secure embedded memories, available to TowerJazz customers for integration into SoCs. Crocus has developed, and is making available for customer evaluation, MLU-based field sensor blocks that replace hall effect sen-sors as well as embedded memories that operate below 3 volts. Crocus’ MLU will enable better performance with NVM speed like DRAM. It will include unique security options that are not available in other NVMs and uniquely provide SoCs with magnetic sensor technology. The NVM and sensor markets are expected to reach $2 billion each by 2016.
TowerJazz has started porting and installing the MLU technology at its Migdal Haemek manufacturing facility in Israel. Products manufac-tured by TowerJazz are expected to hit the market before the end of 2013 with a few customers that are already being engaged. In addition to manu-facturing MLU-based products for SoC customers, Crocus also intends to use TowerJazz’s manufacturing capability to bring its own magnetic sensor and NVM products to market later this year.
Microchip has selected ioBridge to be its first “Em-bedded Cloud” design partner. Embedded cloud technology al-lows products based on Micro-chip’s embedded control solutions to be Internet connected via io-Bridge firmware and protocols, to
to address multiple growing end-mar-kets for flash memory.
Toshiba, SanDisk’s partner, has also developed a second generation 19nm process technology that it will apply to mass production of 2-bit-per-cell 64 gigabit NAND memory chips later this month. Toshiba has used the new generation technology to develop the world’s smallest 2-bit-per-cell 64 gigabit NAND memory chips, with an area of only 94 mm2. Using a unique high speed writing method, the chips can achieve a write speed of up to 25 megabytes a second, the world’s fastest class in 2-bit-per-cell chips, according to the company. With SanDisk, Toshiba is also developing 3-bit-per-cell chips by using this process technology and aims to start mass production in the second quarter of this fiscal year.
TriQuint has produced the industry’s first gallium nitride (GaN) transistors using GaN-on-diamond wafers that substantially increase thermal con-ductivity and reduce semiconductor temperatures while maintaining high RF performance. TriQuint’s tech-nology enables new generations of RF amplifiers up to 3X smaller or up to 3X the power of today’s GaN solutions. n
Licensing & PartnershipsCrocus Technology, a provider of magnetically enhanced semiconduc-tors, and TowerJazz, have signed a licensing and joint promotion agree-ment for the use of Crocus’ Magnetic Logic Unit™ (MLU) process technol-ogy by TowerJazz in embedded SoC applications. Crocus and TowerJazz have been engaged for several years in bringing MLU technology based on the 130nm process node to produc-tion. MLU requires only the addition
leverage ioBridge Internet services, such as remote firmware upgrades, alerting, remote monitoring, and re-mote control via mobile apps. Since 2008, ioBridge has been selling patented Web gateways that incor-porate Microchip’s devices and are used by thousands of customers to connect almost anything to the In-ternet. In recent years, ioBridge has Internet-enabled consumer products using Microchip’s embedded Wi-Fi technology.
Silex Microsystems, a pure-play MEMS foundry, has joined an in-ternational European Union-funded program aimed at developing a new MEMS manufacturing platform based on advanced inkjet-based printing technologies. The program, “Pro-cesses for MEMS by Inkjet Enhanced Technologies,” or PROMINENT, is leveraging the proven benefits of inkjet technologies to enable higher manufacturing efficiencies, increased product innovation, faster time-to-market, and lower costs throughout the entire MEMS manufacturing process. Silex’s contributions will include new low-cost technologies for through-wafer vias, hermetic high-vacuum seals for wafer-to-wafer bonding including advanced material deposition, advances in piezo-MEMS
Engineering (CNSE); the Center for Nanoferroic Devices (CNFD) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln; and the South West Academy of Nanoelectronics (SWAN) 2.0 at the University of Texas at Austin. NIST will provide $2.6 million to the effort each year for up to five years, matched by $2.4 million each year from NRI. NRI is made up of participants from the semiconductor industry including GLOBALFOUNDRIES, IBM, Intel, Micron Technology and Texas Instru-ments. www.src.org/program/nri/
Soitec has unveiled the first four-junc-tion solar cell, which works under concentrated sunlight, putting the company on the solar-energy in-dustry’s technology roadmap at a world-class level of 43.6% efficiency.
STMicroelectronics and Quan-tenna, a provider of ultra-reliable 802.11ac Wi-Fi SoCs for whole-home entertainment, have signed a non-exclusive worldwide licensing agreement giving ST the ability to integrate Quantenna IP into its SoCs
fabrication, and other functional materials processing. www.promi-nent-mems.eu
Semiconductor Research Cor-poration (SRC) and the National Institute of Standards and Tech-nology (NIST) announced the second phase of the Nanoelectronics Re-search Initiative (NRI). SRC and NIST will provide a combined $5 million in annual funding for three multi-university research centers tasked with demonstrating non-con-ventional, low-energy technologies that outperform current technologies on critical applications in 10 years and beyond. The second phase of NRI fea-tures joint projects with the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the multi-university research network involves 34 universities in 17 states.
The three research centers are: the In-stitute for Nanoelectronics Discovery and Exploration (INDEX) at SUNY’s College of Nanoscale Science and
and giving Quantenna the ability to leverage the entire ecosystem of ST’s entertainment, networking and security products. The two companies have started joint engineering integra-tion efforts and the first ST products incorporating Quantenna Wi-Fi are expected to be introduced next year.
WiTricity, a pioneer in highly res-onant wireless power transfer over distance, has joined the Power Mat-ters Alliance. WiTricity, the exclusive licensee of MIT’s patents for wireless energy transfer, will help define a highly resonant implementation for the PMA’s “Power 2.0” set of specifications. PMA recently formed a technical working group to add a resonant implementation to the “Power 2.0” group of specifications. WiTricity has been appointed to Vice-Chair this working group, whose first task is to create a specification for smartphone-ready highly resonant wireless power. PMA was founded by Powermat Technologies and Procter & Gamble in 2012. www.power matters.org n
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