2011-07-29

Andy Bryant, Intel, Chairman, Otellini Former CFO to become Intel's next chairman

SAN FRANCISCO—Intel Corp. said Tuesday (July 26) that Andy Bryant, Intel's chief administrative officer, was elected to the new position of vice chairman of the board of directors in preparation for him to be elected the company's next chairman following Intel's annual stockholder meeting in May 2012.

Bryant will serve alongside Intel's current chairman, Jane Shaw, until she retires from the board in May, Intel said. Intel's board was temporarily expanded to 11 members from 10 members until Shaw's retirement, Intel said.

Bryant joined Intel in 1981 and served as the company's chief financial officer from 1994 to 2007. Bryant becomes the second Intel executive to serve on the company's current board, joining Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini.

When Bryant becomes executive chairman, the board will re-establish the position of lead director to be held by an independent, non-employee director, Intel said. Bryant will transition out of his role as chief administrative officer next May as he takes on the full-time chairman responsibilities, Intel said.

"The board welcomes the addition of Andy Bryant to its ranks and looks forward to his service as the next chairman," Shaw said through a statement. "His deep knowledge of Intel and his unmatched wisdom will serve the company well."

Intel said the election of Bryant follows a long corporate practice of senior officer and board succession planning in which the board seeks to identify a person with the particular skills and experience considered most appropriate at the time.

"I am excited about this new position for Andy and look forward to continuing to work closely with him as he assumes his new responsibilities," Otellini said.

Andy Bryant is currently a member of the board of McKesson Corp., the leading healthcare distributor in the U.S., and is also a director at Columbia Sportswear Co. and Kryptiq Inc.


Andy Bryant, Intel, Chairman, Otellini Former CFO to become Intel's next chairman

TI, PowerStack, 3-D, Packaging TI touts 3-D packaging technology

SAN FRANCISCO—Texas Instruments Inc. said Wednesday it has shipped more than 30 million power management devices featuring its PowerStack 3-D packaging technology, which the company says offers performance, thermal, power consumption and board space advantages compared with conventional packaging technologies.   

Matt Romig, analog packaging product manager at TI, said the PowerStack technology is the first 3-D packaging technology to stack high-side vertical mosfets. PowerStack  combines both high-side and low-side mosfets held in place by copper clips and uses a ground potential exposed pad to provide thermal optimization, Romig said.

TI has been shipping power management devices with PowerStack for about a year, Romig said. So far, most of the adoption has been in applications that require very high performance such as telecomm equipment and servers. "This isn't something you are going to see in a cellphone or a tablet," Romig said.


PowerStack's combination of stacking and clipping techniques provide significant benefits over traditional side-by-side discrete mosfets, according to Texas Instruments.

TI, PowerStack, 3-D, Packaging TI touts 3-D packaging technology

IEEE, white, space, WRAN, standard, radio, cellular, broadband IEEE publishes 'white space' WRAN standard


LONDON – The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has published the 802.22 standard for Wireless Regional Area Networks (WRANs). The standard covers broadband wireless access at up to 22-Mbps per channel over distances up to 100 kilometers from a transmitter without interfering with terrestrial television broadcasts that use the same part of the spectrum.

The standard covers much the same ground as the Weightless standard being developed by Neul Ltd. (Cambridge, England) in that it is intended to provide a framework for "white space" reuse of UHF and VHF spectrum.

However, while Neul's Weightless standard is intended to open up access for relatively small data payloads that are part of an internet-of-things IEEE 802.22 is trying to provide secure high-speed broadband communications that are not served by other forms of wired and wireless communications.

Under 802.22 each WRAN will deliver up to 22 Mbps per channel without interfering with reception of existing TV broadcast stations, using the so-called white spaces between the occupied TV channels. The technology is useful for serving less densely populated areas, such as rural areas, and developing countries, the IEEE (Piscataway, New Jersey) said.

As well as channel specifications, 802.22 covers the required cognitive radio capabilities including dynamic spectrum access, incumbent database access, accurate geo-location techniques, spectrum sensing, spectrum etiquette, and coexistence for optimal use of the available spectrum.


Related links and articles:

http://www.ieee802.org/

News articles:

Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung join Neul radio club

Should Google be in 'white-space' radio?

Neul raises $12.8 million for M2M radio

Neul opens up on 'white space' radio network

CSR co-founders form M2M wireless startup

IEEE, white, space, WRAN, standard, radio, cellular, broadband IEEE publishes 'white space' WRAN standard

Brain-Controlled Prosthetics, Brain Interfaces, Artificial Limbs, Prosthetics, Research Researchers to link brain, artificial limbs

Four universities won a $1.2 million grant to develop prosthetics that deliver sensory information to patients and can be controlled by their thoughts. Rice University, the University of Michigan, Drexel University and the University of Maryland will work on the four-year project with funds from the National Science Foundation's Human-Centered Computing program.

Researchers at Rice will build a prosthetic arm that can be controlled by a cap of electrodes that read electrical activity on the scalp using electroencephalography. The EEG information will be combined with real-time data about blood-oxygen levels in the user's frontal lobe using functional near-infrared technology developed by Drexel's brain imaging lab.

The prosthetic will include sensors that gather tactile data from its artificial fingertips and information from the hand about the amount of force it uses in grasping. The data will be fed back to the user via touch pads that vibrate, stretch and squeeze the skin where the prosthesis attaches to the body.

The approach is seen as a more capable alternative to today's interfaces that use muscle contractions on the chest or arm to control a prosthetic. "Long term, we hope prosthetics have the same capabilities as natural limbs," said Marcia O'Malley, a co-principal investigator at Rice, speaking in an online video.

The group previously demonstrated a prosthetic gripper that allowed amputees to correctly perceive and manipulate objects based upon sensory feedback. University of Maryland researchers have demonstrated a technique using EEG signals that allowed test subjects to move a cursor on a computer screen simply by thinking about it.

"What remains is to bring all of it--noninvasive neural decoding, direct brain control and tactile sensory feedback--together into one device," said O'Malley, speaking in a press statement.

"Ideally, [our] tactile or haptic feedback will make it easier for patients to get their prosthetic arms to do exactly what they want them to do," said Patricia Shewokis, a researcher at Drexel.

O'Malley said the new technology is a big leap over existing prosthetic devices which don't allow amputees to feel what they touch. Some prostheses today use force-feedback systems that vibrate--like the vibrate mode on a mobile phone--to provide limited information about objects a prosthetic hand is gripping.

"Often, these vibro-tactile cues aren't very helpful," O'Malley said. "Many times individuals simply rely on visual feedback--watching their prosthesis grasp an object--to infer whether the object is soft or hard, [or] how tightly they are grasping it, [so] there's a lot of room for improvement," she said.

A year ago the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded Johns Hopkins a $34.5 million grant to create an interface using neural sensors implanted in the brain to control a prosthetic. The four-year project will use an artificial arm with 22-degrees of motion developed at the university.

Better prosthetics has been a focus for DARPA since the start of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars where bombs have maimed many soldiers. The agency's Human-Assisted Neural Devices program aims to let an amputee's thoughts control a mechanical hand. A follow on program on prosthetic arms includes the latest work with Johns Hopkins.



Brain-Controlled Prosthetics, Brain Interfaces, Artificial Limbs, Prosthetics, Research Researchers to link brain, artificial limbs

Zigbee Network Devices, ZigBee Gateway, ZigBee, Wireless, ZigBee gets gateway specification

SAN JOSE, Calif. – The ZigBee Alliance has released ZigBee Gateway, its tenth standard and the first in a new family of planned ZigBee Network Device standards.

ZigBee Gateway defines a low cost ZigBee Pro device that lets service providers, businesses and consumers link to the Internet. Future ZigBee Network Device standards will define bridges and range extenders.

ZigBee Gateway supports existing ZigBee standards in areas such as building and home automation, health care, retail, smart energy and telecom. The spec also will be covered under the existing ZigBee certification program.

"ZigBee networks today routinely access the Internet and ZigBee Gateway makes the job of integrating Internet connectivity simple, especially for developers with little networking experience," said Bob Heile, chairman of the ZigBee Alliance, speaking in a press statement.


Zigbee Network Devices, ZigBee Gateway, ZigBee, Wireless, ZigBee gets gateway specification

Analog Devices, Raheen, Limerick, Ireland, semiconductor, R&D, analog, R&D ADI invests $70 million in Irish R&D


LONDON – The Industrial Development Agency of Ireland (IDA Ireland) has announced that chip company Analog Devices Inc. is embarking on a 50 million euro (about $70 million) R&D investment program at its Raheen campus near Limerick.

The program is expected to create approximately 100 jobs in areas such as IC design and applications engineering over the next five years, the IDA said. The plan includes the construction of a 140,000-square-foot R&D center.

IDA Ireland is supporting the expansion plan but the level of support was not disclosed.

The announcement builds on a 23 million euro (about $30 million) investment in Ireland made by ADI in June 2010 as part of a manufacturing expansion program (see ADI to spend $28 million on Irish R&D).

ADI has been operating in Ireland for 35 years and currently employs over 1,000 people in Limerick, where it a wafer fab and conducts R&D on data converters, mixed-signal and RF ICs.

"The contributions of our Limerick-based team over the past 35 years guided our decision to build a dedicated R&D facility here in Ireland," said Jerald Fishman, president and CEO of Analog Devices, in a statement issued by IDA Ireland. "I would like to thank the Irish Government and its agencies — specifically IDA Ireland — for its continued commitment and support for our growth and expansion plans."


Related links and articles:

Silicon Labs buys Irish sensor startup

ADI to spend $28 million on Irish R&D

Analog Devices' CEO:'Our enemy is us'


Analog Devices, Raheen, Limerick, Ireland, semiconductor, R&D, analog, R&D ADI invests $70 million in Irish R&D

ST-Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, ST, Ericsson, Basingstoke, Bristol, Daventry, semiconductor, mobile ST-Ericsson to close R&D sites


LONDON – Mobile chip company ST-Ericsson is set to close R&D sites as part of the latest round of restructuring, according to CEO Gilles Delfassy. A site in Basingstoke, England, has already been earmarked for closure with a loss of up to 139 jobs, according to a local report.

ST-Ericsson announced a net loss of $221 million on sales revenue of $385 million in the second quarter of 2011 and on telephone conference with analysts to discuss the results Delfassy was asked whether closure of R&D sites would happen.

"Yes, we have a lot of R&D sites; not always easy to handle; not the most inexpensive solution," said Delfassy on the conference call and webcast. "Yes, you can assume our direction is to concentrate on fewer, bigger R&D sites. That's a safe assumption," he concluded.

ST-Ericsson is 50:50 joint venture between STMicroelectronics NV and Ericsson AB and also includes employees from NXP's wireless business that were wrapped up into ST-NXP prior to the formation of ST-Ericsson in February 2009. As such, it has numerous legacy sites in France, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and China and the far-east.

ST-Ericsson sites listed at the company's website include: Lund in Sweden; Nurnberg in Germany; Crolles, Le Mans, Rennes and Sophia Antipolis in France; Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hong Kong in China; Taipei in Taiwan; and Tokyo and Yokohama in Japan.

ST-Ericsson also has development staff in Bristol, Basingstoke and in Daventry, England.

In June, shortly after ST-Ericsson announced a restructuring plan that would affect 500 jobs, it was reported by the Basingstoke Gazette that the company had decided to close its base in Basingstoke with a loss of up to 139 jobs.

ST-Ericsson's two other U.K. offices, in Bristol and Daventry, will not be affected by the restructuring, the Basingstoke Gazette said. The decision to close Basingstoke was based on the projects being worked on at the various sites, the Basingstoke Gazette quoted an ST-Ericsson spokesman as saying.


Related links and articles:

http://www.basingstokegazette.co.uk/news/local/9108992.139_jobs_may_go_at_telecoms_firm/

How long has ST-Ericsson got?

Losses swell, outlook flat at ST-Ericsson

ST-Ericsson restructures, break-even recedes




ST-Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, ST, Ericsson, Basingstoke, Bristol, Daventry, semiconductor, mobile ST-Ericsson to close R&D sites

Lam Research, Equipment, Semiconductor Lam sees steep decline in tool spending

SAN FRANCISCO—Shares of semiconductor equipment vendor Lam Research Corp. halted trading Wednesday (July 27), before the company reported quarterly results that beat analysts' expectations but warned of a significant decline equipment spending that would cause its revenue to contract in the previous quarter.

"We are seeing significant near term declines in wafer fab equipment spending, and as result our September quarter shipments, revenues and earnings per share will be well below our June quarter results," said Steve Newberry, Lam's CEO, in a statement.

In a conference call with analysts following the quarterly report, Newberry said investment by foundries and in DRAM capacity has slowed in recent months, although NAND capacity and conversion investments remain strong.

Newberry said Lam now expects total wafer fab equipment spending to be between $29 billion and $32 billion in 2011, an increase of as much as 10 percent over 2010, but down from Lam's previous 2011 forecast for the equipment market of $32 billion to $34 billion. Lam projects that total equipment spending in the first half of 2011 was tracking at roughly $32 billion on an annualized basis, meaning that second half spending will be flat to down 19 percent compared with the first half, Newberry said.

Newberry said that since April foundries have adjusted their 2011 spending plans in response to reduced demand for 65-nm and above capacity, which has resulted in lower utilization rates. Foundries are telling Lam they plan to delay their 32- and 28-nm ramp plans while they address typical yield ramp issues, Newberry said.

Lam now expects total equipment spending by foundries and logic IDMs to be between $10 billion and $13 billion this year, depending on the pace of yield improvement, Newberry said.

Newberry said memory players are being "very cautious" with DRAM capacity expansion plans because of concerns over slowing PC demand. Investment in NAND capacity and conversion to new technology nodes remain strong, Newberry said.

Lam reported sales for the quarter ended June 26 of $752 million, down 7 percent from the previous quarter but up 8 percent compared with the year-ago quarter. The company reported a net income in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) of $125.9 million, or $1.01 per diluted share, down 31 percent from the previous quarter and up 10 percent from the year-ago quarter.

On a non-GAAP basis, excluding charges, Lam reported a net income of $142.3 million, or $1.14 per share.

Consensus analysts' expectations had called for Lam to report sales of $748.8 million and non-GAAP earnings per share of $1.09, according to Yahoo Finance.

Gross margin for the June quarter declined to $338.5 million or 45 percent, compared to gross margin of $374 million or 46.2 percent in the previous quarter, Lam said.

"Lam delivered solid operating performance and financial results for the June quarter," Newberry said.

Newberry said Lam expects sales for the currentquarter to decline to between $650 million and $690 million. Lam expectsshipments in the current quarter to be worth between $555 million and$605 million, Newberry said.

Lam Research, Equipment, Semiconductor Lam sees steep decline in tool spending

Food and Drug Administration, Institute of Medicine, Medical Devices, Ralph Hall, Regulations, FDA, Medical, IoM, Advamed, MDMA Report: FDA should scrap 510(k) process

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Industry groups are blasting a much-anticipated report from the Institute of Medicine (IoM) that calls for scrapping the current regulatory process used by the vast majority of medical devices.

A panel of 13 experts convened by the IoM said he U.S. Food and Drug Administration should replace the 35-year-old 510(k) process used to approve moderate-risk medical devices. It called for creating an entirely new process but only provided rough guidelines for what that process might be.

"It's not clear that the 510(k) process is serving the needs of either industry or patients, and simply modifying it again will not help," said David Challoner, emeritus vice president for health affairs at the University of Florida, Gainesville who chaired the IoM panel.

"While current information is not adequate to immediately start designing a new framework, we believe the agency can get the necessary data and establish a new process within a reasonable time frame," he said.

The bold conclusion stunned many in the medical electronics sector. Two top industry lobbying groups were quick to criticize the recommendations, saying they added too much uncertainty to a process that was imperfect but basically sound.

"The report’s conclusions do not deserve serious consideration from the Congress or the Administration," said Stephen J. Ubl, president of the Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed) which represents many top U.S. medtech companies.

The report "proposes abandoning efforts to address the serious problems with the administration of the current program by replacing it at some unknown date with an untried, unproven and unspecified new legal structure--a disservice to patients and the public health," he said in a press statement.

Ubl said the FDA's plan released in January to take more than 20 steps to improve the 510(k) process was a better step forward. "Other targeted reforms may also be appropriate," he added.

Mark Leahey, president of MDMA which represents many small and medium-sized medical device companies, issued a more moderate response. "We remain concerned about efforts to overhaul a regulatory pathway that would create additional uncertainties and slow patient access to medical therapies," he said.

Prior to the release of the report, one leading academic criticized what he characterized as the relatively opaque process of the IoM committee and its lack of representation of some stakeholders.

For its part, the IoM panel said "the 510(k) process lacks the legal basis to be a reliable premarket screen of the safety and effectiveness of moderate-risk Class II devices and cannot be transformed into one.

"FDA's finite resources would be better invested in developing a new framework that uses both premarket clearance and improved post-market surveillance of device performance," it added.

The 510(k) process lets companies get approval for devices characterized as moderate risks that are "substantially equivalent" to devices that have already been approved by the FDA.

"Substantial equivalence cannot assure that devices reaching the market are safe and effective," the panel said. "The majority of the devices used as the basis for comparison were never reviewed for safety or effectiveness," it added.


Food and Drug Administration, Institute of Medicine, Medical Devices, Ralph Hall, Regulations, FDA, Medical, IoM, Advamed, MDMA Report: FDA should scrap 510(k) process

Short Circuit: Intel Loses Ground in Mobile Battle: Surely the Glasses are Half the 3D Fun? Electronics News

IBM, the U.S.-based technology and services giant, recently celebrated its 100th birthday. But the company was lucky to make it after a ‘near death’ experience in 1993 following the highest loss (US$5 billion) in U.S. corporate history at that time.IBM had failed to take competitors seriously and found its dominant market position in PCs irretrievably eroded as more nimble companies ‘cloned’ IBM’s products and undercut its prices.IBM was saved by then CEO Lou Gerstner’s realisation that it couldn’t compete in hardware and should therefore refocus on services and software. For the first quarter of 2011, IBM generated revenues of US$24.6 billion ($22.7 billion) and a pre-tax profit of US$4 billion ($3.8 billion).This got the Saint thinking about how many of today’s tech giants would still be around in the late 21st Century. Apple, for example, was founded in 1976, so despite its apparently unassailable position, it has another 65 years to go to match ‘Big Blue’. And the Cupertino-based firm has already had one near death experience in the late 90s before Steve Jobs returned to resurrect the company he founded. Microsoft is a mere stripling too, having been founded just 361 days before Apple.Intel (founded in 1968, 2010 revenue US$43.6 billion ($40.3 billion), net income US$11.5 billion ($10.6 billion)) is another apparently invincible giant of the technology sector. The company is the World’s top chipmaker with around an 83 percent market share in the microprocessor sector. Surely its longevity is assured?Not necessarily. A report in Electronics News this week notes that the company is experiencing a slow down in growth for its chips used in PCs.Intel is troubled by the gradual move away from desktop PCs and laptops to portable devices such as tablet computers and smartphones. These devices can now do almost everything a PC can do, with the added bonus that they can be carried around in a pocket.The problem for Intel is that many of these products don’t use the company’s chips. For example, the iPhone - unlike Apple’s desktop and laptop computers that do have “Intel Inside” - uses Apple’s own A4 processor. This chip is based on British-based ARM’s licensed technology, the technology that is becoming increasingly popular in the processor market for mobile devices. This is because ARM chips are reduced instruction set computing (RISC) devices that don’t need to run as fast as Intel x86 chips to do the same amount of work, and hence require less power. And low power is critical for battery-powered products.Intel dabbled with ARM-based processors, but got out of the business in 2006, selling its XScale technology to Marvell in 2006. Now the company offers its Atom range for mobile computing applications, but the chip is struggling for sales.To predict Intel’s immediate demise would be foolish. The company is powerful and innovative and, despite the hype, the PC market is still over ten times larger than that for tablet computers (and unlikely to collapse any time soon). Despite slower sales, over 80 million PCs sold in the first quarter of 2011, compared with 7.2 million tablets.But will the company be around in 57 years time? The Saint would wager Intel would be just a footnote in history by then, along with Google, Microsoft, Oracle and Facebook. (Sadly, your correspondent won’t be around then to see if his rash projection pans out.)He will stick his neck out further and predict that some of today’s big names will celebrate their first century though, backing Apple and Amazon to make it through to the 2070s and 2090s respectively. Both companies’ business models revolve around services and content rather than product lines (Apple’s product are just part of its business, and are primarily designed to make it easy to access content from its iTunes and App Stores) which make them more likely to last in the fast moving tech sector.       

Surely the Glasses Are Half the 3D Fun?

Much of today’s technology has its roots further back in history that most would think. While this week’s news featured the latest incarnation of 3D courtesy of Hitachi Display’s lenticular-lensed display for mobile devices, a particularly popular online encyclopaedia notes that the public first stumped up for the 3D experience as far back as 1922.The heyday of 3D cinema was the 50s when North American audiences were treated to classics such as “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” and “It came from Outer Space” (“Fantastic sights leap at you!”, notes the latter’s promotional poster). Audiences wore glasses with polarised lenses such that each eye received the same image but from a slightly different perspective. Apparently, the plot was secondary to the effects in these cinema epics.After a resurgence in the late 80s, 3D became big again at the beginning of this century and has latterly migrated to the home courtesy of several consumer electronics companies offering 3D TV.The common thread that has linked 3D since its inception is the glasses. The Saint is guessing that manufacturers make these particularly unflattering to remove any temptation for patrons to steal them at the end of the movie. The result – in your correspondent’s opinion – is highly comical. The Saint has spent many an hour in his local multiplex giggling at his fellow audience members rather than what’s on the screen (particularly if it’s Hollywood’s latest attempt at humour).So he’s hoping that efforts to make the novelty spectacles unnecessary for 3D portable device displays will come to naught. The thought of early adopters of 3D portables wandering the streets wearing ‘unconventional’ heavy-rimmed dark glasses – and bumping into sundry street furniture - is just too appealing.
Short Circuit: Intel Loses Ground in Mobile Battle: Surely the Glasses are Half the 3D Fun? Electronics News

MEMS, Sensors, Consumer, Yole Consumer electronics turn to MEMS for gesture control, precision location

The first MEMS accelerometers in iPhones and the Wii revolutionized the user interface by introducing natural motion as an input mechanism, but it's taken a while for designers to figure out how best to use these capabilities. Now the inertial sensors are starting to move into a wider range of motion control and precision location applications, helped along by lower costs, and by the generally maturing of the knowledge base and infrastructure that are making the sensor data easier to use.

Yole Développement projects these developments will drive accelerometers and magnetometers to be designed in to close to 50 percent of all mobile phones within five years, and gyroscopes to be included in some 20 percent, mostly at the higher-end smart phone part of the market. Gyroscopes are already in almost all tablets, mostly because Apple still so dominates that market with better than 90 percent share. We expect usage of inertial sensors in consumer electronics will increase by about 24 percent on average annually for the next five years, to reach some 5 billion individual sensor units by 2015.

Lower prices and better software and infrastructure help drive adoption

Major applications for inertial sensors outside of games so far have actually been somewhat limited. Accelerometers have become a must-have in mobile phones for switching between portrait and landscape mode, and seen scattered use in pedometer functions. Magnetometers hit mass adoption in phones last year, to supply correct heading for navigation. Multiaxis MEMS gyroscopes have just reached consumer price points and volumes and are showing up in first phones and essentially all tablets, although initially largely for games.
    
But lower prices are helping drive wider adoption. Yole sees costs of discrete inertial devices continuing their steep decline, with the ASP of a three-axis accelerometer, for example, dropping from $0.70 in 2010 to around $0.30 by 2015—or less than $0.10 per axis. Part of these cost savings will be driven by sharing the cost of one controller ASIC between two sensor devices, by packaging the accelerometer and the magnetometer, or the accelerometer and gyroscope together as one combination sensor with one ASIC. This can also improve the sensor data, directly building in the corrections of each sensor for the deviations of the other.
    
Also driving adoption is the fact that it's getting much easier to turn the sensor output into useful applications. The leading MEMS device makers like STMicroelectronics and InvenSense are supplying more software and libraries to make it easier for the phone and tablet makers to add basic motion functions to their systems. Dedicated motion sensor software suppliers like Movea and Hillcrest Labs are supplying device-agnostic software to allow wider applications, particularly for air mice and TV remotes to do control by gestures. And the latest version of Android operating system software supports some motion processing APIs, with more sophisticated versions expected to come.  
    

Next: Bellwether applications worth noting
MEMS, Sensors, Consumer, Yole Consumer electronics turn to MEMS for gesture control, precision location

Researcher hacks into Apple’s laptop battery’s microcontroller Electronics News

A SECURITY researcher has found a way to exploit the microcontroller in Apple’s laptop batteries.

According to Accuvant Labs’ Charlie Miller, the security problem could allow malicious exploiters to cause fire or explosions. The microcontroller’s flash memory can also be exploited to create a permanent malware infection which keeps re-infecting a computer after it has been cleansed.

Laptop batteries are no longer dumb power-supplying units. Modern batteries include microcontrollers which monitor the battery voltage, current, and temperature. They can also control these factors to optimise battery performance.

Miller claims Apple left the default passwords on its Smart Battery System, which he accessed with help from publicly-available documentation.

By hacking the microcontrollers, he can reprogram the firmware, causing the battery to erroneously report values, or making the charger overcharge the battery. If the parameters are tampered with incorrectly, the battery could fail or explode.

Miller has passed on details of the security weakness to Apple, and will present the findings at the Black Hat conference, 4 August.
Researcher hacks into Apple's laptop battery's microcontroller Electronics News

Tucker Taft, SofCheck, ParaSail, parallel, programming, language, processor, multicore SofCheck preps ParaSail parallel language


LONDON – SofCheck Inc., best known as a vendor of software analysis and verification technology and Ada Compilers, is working on a parallel programming language called ParaSail that has been presented at two learned conferences recently.

ParaSail – for Parallel Specification and Implementation Language – is being developed "from scratch" and is particularly aimed at safety-critical systems where C/C++, and parallelizations of C/C++ are notoriously unsafe but it is also intended to make use of abundant processing resources that will soon be potentially available. It is SofCheck's assertion that chips with more than 64 cores will become relatively easy to make, but they will prove difficult to program effectively without a well-constructed parallel programming language.

SofCheck (Burlington, Mass.) is led by chairman and chief technology officer Tucker Taft who is well known as an industry leader in compiler construction and programming language design. It was Taft, while employed at Intermetrics Inc., who was the lead designer of the Ada 95 programming language and who helped add formal methods to parts of the Ada language.

Taft presented a paper entitled An introduction to ParaSail at the Ada Europe conference held in Valencia, Spain, in June 2010 and a paper by the same title at the Open Source Convention being held this week in Portland Oregon. Taft was also scheduled to present a tutorial on experimenting with ParaSail, for which there is now a prototype compiler.

According to the abstract of Taft's Oscon paper "ParaSail is a new language, but it borrows concepts from other programming languages, including the ML/OCaml/F# family, the Lisp/Scheme/Clojure family, the Algol/Pascal/Modula/Ada/Eiffel family, the C/C++/Java/C# family, and the region-based languages, especially Cyclone."

The language is described as being simpler than many others with only four basic concepts; modules, types, objects, and operations. It does not include pointers, exceptions and uses stack- and region-based data storage management rather than garbage collection. It supportds implicit parallelism, making programmers have to work to achieve sequential operation, rather than the other way around. By default the program constructs run in parallel and it promotes a formal approach to software with compile-time checks for correctness with respect to the formal annotations.

In the Oscon paper Taft was set to describe the status of a prototype compiler and a ParaSail Virtual Machine.

Progress in the development of the ParaSail language is the subject of a dedicated blog at http://parasail-programming-language.blogspot.com


Related links and articles:

www.sofcheck.com

http://www.sofcheck.com/news/AdaEurope_ParaSail_2010.pdf

http://www.oscon.com/oscon2011/public/schedule/detail/18557

http://conferences.ncl.ac.uk/adaconnection2011/tutorials/T1.html

http://parasail-programming-language.blogspot.com

News articles:


SOFTWARE TOOLS: CodePeer to automate code review

Software checker gains European channel



Tucker Taft, SofCheck, ParaSail, parallel, programming, language, processor, multicore SofCheck preps ParaSail parallel language

Food and Drug Administration, Institute of Medicine, Medical Devices, Ralph Hall, Regulations, FDA, Medical, IoM Report on FDA draws fire before release

SAN JOSE, Calif. – A major report on the future of medical device regulations to be released tomorrow is already drawing criticism.

The Institute of Medicine will release tomorrow a report commissioned last year by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The report is expected to provide recommendations about several of the most controversial issues around regulating medical devices.

In January, the FDA released plans for as many as 25 changes it will make starting this year to its so-called 510(k) process, the primary regulatory pathway for medical devices. The agency deferred to the IoM report on about seven contentious questions. They include:

  • Should the FDA have power to revoke a 510(k)?
  • Should the FDA create a new Class IIb category for devices?
  • Should the FDA consider "off-label" uses of a device when reviewing it?
  • Should the FDA continue reviewing products even after they have been approved for use?
  • Should companies be required to keep on hand examples of all their products in case the FDA needs a review model?

In May, a University of Minnesota law professor and medical device expert co-authored a paper criticizing the makeup of the IoM committee and its process for creating the report.

"I have absolutely no idea of the substance of the report, it's the IoM process I have concerns about," said Ralph Hall who also acts as a legal adviser to medical device companies on a part time basis and has founded his own cardiac implant startup.

The IoM committee consists of physicians, academics and lawyers who have worked with medical device clients. Hall said he had no issues with the existing members of the IoM panel, only those left out.

"There are no patient representatives, no one from industry, no entrepreneurs or innovators--those are all critical stakeholders," Hall said. "Other IoM committees usually have these sorts of people," he said.

The group has not held a public meeting for a year, and it was relatively opaque at that July 2010 meeting, Hall added. The group has held no meetings since January when the FDA specifically added the contentious questions to its charter, he said.

At the July 2010 meeting, "they said almost nothing, it was unidirectional--you might get a question or two, but there wasn't a give-and-take exchange," said Hall who addressed the group at the meeting.

"Most government reports are released in a draft form for public comment before they are made final," said Hall. "I have absolutely no idea of the substance of the report, but I wish I had some insight," he said.

The FDA will likely provide time for public comment before it decides what actions it will take based on the report.

A representative of the IoM said the committee has followed the processes outlined by its parent group, the National Academies.

"The IoM assembled a committee of experts who have the necessary backgrounds and expertise to respond to the task and who do not have financial conflicts of interest," an IoM spokeswoman said.

"The IoM followed the same study process that it has used to issue hundreds of reports," she said. "We believe that upon reading the report, people will be able to make up their own minds about the committee and its recommendations for improving the Class II device clearance process," she added.

The medical device industry has lobbied for some time in an effort to relax FDA regulations. A PriceWaterhouseCoopers report earlier this year ranked the FDA as the seventh of nine global agencies in the speed of its approvals.


Food and Drug Administration, Institute of Medicine, Medical Devices, Ralph Hall, Regulations, FDA, Medical, IoM Report on FDA draws fire before release

Trident, Video, License, Loss Trident signs IP license deal amid Q2 loss

SAN FRANCISCO—Digital TV chip vendor Trident Microsystems Inc. Thursday (July 28) announced it reached an agreement to license some of its video processing technology and reported a narrower second quarter loss on sales that fell short of consensus analysts' expectations.

Trident said it  agreed to license its motion estimation and motion compensation (MEMC) video processing technology to multimedia SoC vendor Sunplus Technology Co. Ltd. Financial terms of the royalty-based license agreement were not disclosed.

Trident (Sunnyvale, Calif.) said the non-exclusive patent licensing deal is part of the company's ongoing effort to make a limited number of licenses for its MEMC patent portfolio available to TV OEMs and consumer electronics semiconductor providers.

This is the second patent license agreement that Trident has announced for its MEMC patents. Earlier this year, the company announced a licensing agreement with Taiwan's MStar Semiconductor Inc. covering part of Trident's MEMC portfolio.

According to Trident, MEMC technology has become a de facto standard by enabling superior picture quality when displaying high-definition and 3-D video on televisions, computer monitors, tablet computers and other video-enabled consumer electronics devices.

"Our MEMC technology represents decades of development that was originally started at Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. and has become widely recognized as the highest quality solution in the industry," said Tony Francesca, Trident's vice president of corporate and business development, in a statement.

Trident claims a portfolio of patents relating to MEMC, demodulators, audio, video, television interfaces, 3-D, conditional access and general semiconductor circuit technology.  

Also Thursday, Trident reported that its second quarter revenue slipped to $69.6 million, down 21 percent from first quarter revenue and down 59 percent from the second quarter of 2010. Trident reported a net loss in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) of $29.6 million, or 15 cents per share, narrower compared to GAAP net losses of $40.8 million and $48.8 million in the previous and year-ago quarters, respectively.

On a non-GAAP basis, excluding charges, Trident reported a net loss of $21.7 million, or 12 cents per share, compared to non-GAAP net losses of $22.4 million and $14.6 million in the previous and year-ago quarters, respectively.

Consensus analysts' expectations for the second quarter called for Trident to report sales of $72.5 million and non-GAAP earnings of 13 cents per share, according to Yahoo Finance.  

"Although financial results for the second quarter were in-line with the company's guidance range, the negative trends for both revenue and profitability underscore the need for a comprehensive turnaround," said Bami Bastani, Trident's president and CEO, in a statement.

"The turnaround's aim is to restore Trident to profitable growth by focusing resources on the key capabilities that differentiate us in the highly attractive connected home market and achieving an appropriate cost structure," Bastani said.

For the current quarter, Trident said it expects revenue to increase to between $72 million and $78 million.

Trident, Video, License, Loss Trident signs IP license deal amid Q2 loss

NEON-EK presents SMD LEDs based on EPISTAR chips by REFOND Optoelectronics. Electronics News

NEON-EK stock has been supplied with RF-INRA30DS- EB (warm white, 120 degree, 900 mcd) and и RF-WNRA30DS-EB (white, 120 degree, 1200 mcd) packaged  in PLCC-2. It is SMD LEDs based on EPISTAR chips by REFOND Optoelectronics.Apart from such advantages as high quality chips and low degradation they have moderate price 0.036$
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NEON-EK presents SMD LEDs based on EPISTAR chips by REFOND Optoelectronics. Electronics News

Maxim, LSI, KLA-Tencor Earnings: Maxim, LSI, KLA beat estimates

SAN FRANCISCO—Chip makers Maxim Integrated Products Inc. and LSI Corp. and semiconductor capital equipment vendor KLA-Tencor Corp. delivered quarterly results this week that exceeded analysts.

Maxim (Sunnyvale, Calif.) reported record revenue of $626.5 million for the quarter ended June 25, up 3 percent from the prior quarter and up 11 percent compared to the same period of 2010. The company posted a net income based on generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) or $125.6 million, or 42 cents per share, down 8 percent from the previous quarter and up 115 percent from the year-ago quarter.  

Consensus analysts' expectations called for Maxim to report sales of $625.5 million and earnings of 42 cents per share, according to Yahoo Finance.

Maxim said it expects revenue for the current quarter to be between $625 million and $655 million.

"We are aware of the current macro economic uncertainty and are prepared to react to various revenue scenarios," said Tunc Doluca, Maxim's president and CEO, in a statement. "However, based on multiple design wins across our end markets we are confident of our long term growth."

LSI (Milpitas, Calif.) reported second quarter sales of $501 million, up 6 percent compared with both the previous and year-ago quarters. The company reported a GAAP net income from continuing operations of $28 million, or 5 cents per share, compared to a GAAP net income of $3 million in the year-ago quarter.

On a non-GAAP basis, excluding special items, amortization of acquisition-related items and stock-based compensation expense, LSI reported a net income from continuing operations of $60 million, or 10 cents per diluted share, compared to second quarter 2010 non-GAAP income from continuing operations of $61 million, or 9 cents per diluted share.

Consensus analysts' expectations had called for LSI to report sales of $482.3 million and non-GAAP net income of 10 cents per share, according to Yahoo Finance.

For the third quarter, LSI said it expects revenue for continuing operations to be between $535 million and $565 million, a sequential increase of 10 percent at the midpoint.

"With our transformation complete, we are well positioned to drive above-market growth, generate greater profitability and increase shareholder value," said Abhi Talwalkar, LSI president and CEO, in a statement.

LSI said its capital spending is projected to be around $20 million in the third quarter and approximately $55 million in total for 2011.

KLA-Tencor (Milpitas, Calif.) reported sales of $892 million for its fiscal fourth quarter, ended June 30, up 7 percent from the previous quarter and up 60 percent compared to the year-ago quarter. The company reported a net income for the quarter of $245 million, or $1.43 million for the quarter, up 17 percent from the previous quarter and up 117 percent year-over-year.

Consensus analysts' expectations called for KLA-Tencor to report sales of $872.7 million and earnings of $1.37 per share, according to Yahoo Finance.

For its fiscal year, also ended June 30, KLA-Tencor reported sales of $3.2 billion, up 78 percent from fiscal 2010.

Maxim, LSI, KLA-Tencor Earnings: Maxim, LSI, KLA beat estimates

Model-Based Design for Hybrid Electric Vehicle Systems Electronics News

Energy security, fuel prices, and environmental concerns have increased pressure on the automotive industry to create energy-efficient and environment-friendly vehicle designs. Research in the last decade and a half has led to a range of vehicle designs based on electric drives. These designs include pure electric, hydrogen fuel, and various forms of hybrid electric vehicles (HEV). Challenges abound for electric drive design in general and HEV in particular. Model-Based Design can help automotive engineers effectively address the challenges inherent in implementing these designs in an organisation.

The general concept of a hybrid electric vehicle is to combine the right proportion of an electric drive with an internal combustion engine depending on driving conditions, so both can work in their optimal operating range as much as possible. Figure 1: This simplified diagram of an HEV vehicle illustrates one possible arrangement of system elements. Figure 1 shows a simplified schematic of one possible arrangement for an HEV. The electric motor and the gasoline engine are coupled through a power splitter and supply energy to the driveshaft. In practice, planetary gears are used for the power-splitter function. This leads to coupling of the nonlinear dynamical equations governing the electromechanical components, leading to added mathematical complexity of the system. To improve fuel efficiency, the design requires a strategy for managing these coupled power sources. To increase the energy density further, permanent magnet synchronous machines (PMSM) are often used. Also, optimising the core design of the various components such as the engine, the motor, the planetary gear, the generator, and the battery can also bring about significant fuel savings.

HEV Design Challenges

In addition to the inherent design complexity, there is also development process complexity involved in building an HEV. The high coupling of various components requires that the various engineering teams collaborate and share their designs with each other. This leads to a design with multi-domain complexity. For example, there will be specialised teams involved in engine design, battery design, and power electronics design. To ensure that the final design meets the overall design goals, these teams need to collaborate, communicate, and exchange their component designs regularly. At the system level, these components need to be integrated to form the overall design. Also, the teams need to conform to timelines while ensuring that their design meets requirements and is free from errors. Such constraints impose the need for a concurrent design process that will let the various teams collaborate productively. Traditional approaches such as paper-based processes with linear workflows increase the possibility that design bugs will be detected late in the development process, leading to higher costs. Such a process is not amenable to implementing an HEV design that requires nonlinear workflows. Even with design approaches based on software tools, the diversity of development environments used by the different teams can make it very challenging to create interfaces for the different component designs.

Model-Based Design seeks to resolve and improve upon many of the weaknesses associated with these processes. The key idea is that the development process centers on a system model--from requirements capture and design to implementation and test. This system model is an executable specification that is elaborated throughout the design using simulation as a key verification and validation step. In other words, this executable specification forms the sole “truth” source for all the teams to check their designs against requirements via simulation. When software and hardware implementation requirements are included, such as fixed-point and timing behavior, code can be automatically generated for embedded deployment and test benches created for system verification, saving time and avoiding the introduction of hand-coding errors.

Using Model-Based Design for highly complex systems such as an HEV, with its highly specialised functional components, typically fits into the “divide and conquer” methodology. The initials steps are to come up with an executable specification for a model of the overall system with the interconnected components that meets broad-level requirements. With the right level of detail or model fidelity, faster simulations can be carried out to address feasibility concerns early in the development process. Specialist teams can then elaborate on the component designs by using these executable specifications as a guideline. As model elaboration progresses, the requirements undergo refinement both at the system and the component levels. After design iterations, the components are integrated to form the final solution. In the next section, a case study illustrates how Model-Based Design supports these key ideas.

Case Study

The case study is based on a design experiment to understand how Model-Based Design, in particular the use of an executable specification and design with simulation, along with the latest design tools can be effectively applied to HEV development.

In the initial stages of the HEV design, it was very easy to define the broad requirements for the entire system. For example, requirements centered primarily on fuel economy. We were willing to compromise with the performance requirements if necessary. We used the following modest fuel economy and performance requirements for a set of drive cycles:

•          Fuel efficiency: >36.5 mpg

•          0-1/4 mile in 25s: Initial acceleration helps in identifying the motor requirements because the engine cannot provide torque at low speeds, and most of the power is supplied by the motor.

•          Top speed of 120 mph: Maximum velocity is necessary because the power required at this speed should be met by the combination of the engine and the motor supply. It guarantees that all speeds between rest and this maximum speed can be attained by the combination of electric battery and gasoline engine power sources.

A functionally componentised system-level model of the HEV realised in Simulink is shown in Figure 2. Note the similarities with Figure 1. System-level modeling enables visualisation of the system architecture with modular interconnectivity, aiding in understanding the complex system better.Figure 2: This diagram shows in componentised form a system-level model realisation of the hybrid electric vehicle design.

Next, we illustrate the design of the synchronous generator and drive component with Simulink. Figure 3 shows a low-fidelity model based on mathematical relationships between the generator drive torque, speed, and control voltages. This level of detail greatly enhanced the speed of simulation, because we did not have to deal with the high-frequency switching that would be present in the associated power electronics circuitry.Figure 3: This illustration shows the synchronous generator and drive in the system-level model. The associated controllers for the torque and speed control are simple PI controllers.

Figure 4 shows the implementation of the system power management algorithm. In Figure 4(A), we show the conceptual framework consisting of ON/OFF states of the engine, motor, and generator. We define the vehicle modes as follows:

·         Low speeds/Start: The electric motor provides all the torque for initial acceleration.

·         Acceleration: As the vehicle reaches a predefined speed, the engine kicks in to supply power along with the motor.

·         Cruising: If the car maintains constant speed, the motor is switched off and the generator is switched on. A portion of the engine’s power is used by the generator to recharge the battery.

·         Braking: If brakes are applied, the engine and the generator are switched off. The motor is made to behave like a generator to recharge the battery.


 Figure 4: One the left is the conceptual framework (A), and on the right is the associated executable specification in Stateflow (B).

In Figure 4(B), we translated this conceptual design into a hierarchical state chart modeled in Stateflow. This executable specification is simulated and tested with the rest of the model.

The following results came from simulating and testing the system-level model compared with the requirements:

•          Fuel efficiency > 36.5 mpg (requirement met)

•          0-1/4 mile in 25s: 0-1/5 mile in 25 s (requirement not met)

•          Top speed of 120 mph: top speed of 100 mph (requirement not met)

Since fuel economy is more important for us than performance, we leaned toward compromising the last two requirements. Once we were satisfied with the level of fidelity and the results, the components in the system-level model were handed over to the domain specialists to elaborate on them.

We offer an example of how such elaboration took place for one of the components mentioned earlier—the synchronous generator and drive. The electric machines and drives specialist researched various machine manuals and checked specifications of available machine drives and their library of Simulink controller models. The broad-level requirements in the system-level components provided enough opportunity for the engineer to refine and improve upon them while ensuring the practicality of the design.

Figure 5 shows the elaborated model consisting of the machine, power electronics circuitry, and the associated controllers. The use of a three-phase AC permanent magnet synchronous machine with a DC battery source entailed the use of a three-phase inverter/rectifier. As the machine design was elaborated, the associated controllers became increasingly complex with the use of speed and multiple control loops.Figure 5: This diagram shows the model elaboration of the synchronous generator and the drive. The associated control loops are shown in pink.

These elaborated designs were integrated into the same system-level model by replacing each of the components piece by piece. Here is a snapshot of the results of the first design iteration of the elaborated system-level model:

•          Fuel efficiency > 36.5 mpg (requirement not met--30.0 mpg)

•           0-1/4 mile in 25s: Requirement met

•          Top speed of 120 mph: top speed of 96 mph (Requirement not met)

Through this first iteration of the design, it is clear that model elaboration has led to many requirements not being met. Using a model as the executable specification and design with simulation helped us to detect these difficulties early. Also, using a collaborative environment enabled us to be innovative with our choices — to relax system-level requirements, to redo the entire system-level design with better requirements, or to redo the component design. In this case, we found that power losses in the synchronous machine and drive were primarily responsible for the deterioration in performance, and we focused our limited resources more on improving that aspect of the design. Going through several more design iterations helped us to meet our design requirements.

Summary

HEVs have become an important trend in the automotive industry. However, compared to traditional gasoline vehicles, their designs are significantly more complex. HEV development requires collaboration and optimisation across multiple engineering domains. Model-Based Design allows for the reuse of design information across all teams and through various stages of development. This approach — modeling and simulating the system behavior prior to building the actual hardware — leads to the added benefits of lower costs, increased time savings, and customer satisfaction.
 

About the Author

Saurabh Mahapatra is a Product Manager at MathWorks. He holds a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University and a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). He can be reached at saurabh.mahapatra@mathworks.com
 
Model-Based Design for Hybrid Electric Vehicle Systems Electronics News

Cadence, EDA, Sales, Million Cadence lifts sales target after strong Q2

SAN FRANCISCO—Cadence Design Systems Inc. Thursday (July 28) adjusted its sales target for 2011 after reporting sales for the second quarter that beat consensus analysts' expectations.

Cadence (San Jose, Calif.) reported second quarter revenue of $283 million, up 8 percent from the previous quarter and up 25 percent compared with the second quarter of 2010. Cadence recognized a net income in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) of $27 million, or 10 cents per share, up 2 percent from the previous quarter but down 45 percent compared with the second quarter of 2010 (when Cadence recognized $67 million in acquisition-related tax benefits).

On a non-GAAP basis, excluding charges, Cadence reported a net income of $32 million, or 12 cents per diluted share, compared to $18 million, or 7 cents per share, in the second quarter of 2010.

Consensus analysts' expectations called for Cadence to report second quarte sales of $276 million and a non-GAAP net income of 10 cents per share, according to Yahoo Finance.

"Demand for our products and services in the second quarter continued to be strong with run rates on renewals increasing," said Lip-Bu Tan, Cadence president and CEO, in a statement. "We saw acceleration in adoption of our end-to-end digital solution at advanced nodes and very positive response to our new Cadence System Development Suite."

For the third quarter, Cadence said it expects revenue of between $280 million and $290 million. The company expects to report a GAAP net income for the quarter of 4 to 6 cents per share.

Cadence said it adjusted its 2011 guidance upward to reflect ongoing the ongoing strength in the company's business. The company said it now expects to record sales of $1.12 billion to $1.14 billion. The company expects to report a GAAP net income for the year of between 20 and 26 cents per share.

Cadence previously said it expected 2011 sales to be between $1.08 billion and $1.12 billion, with a GAAP net income of 11 to 19 cents per share. 

Cadence, EDA, Sales, Million Cadence lifts sales target after strong Q2

NXP, Quarter, Clemmer, Revenue NXP grew again in Q2; may decline in Q3

SAN FRANCISCO—NXP Semiconductors NV Thursday (July 28) reported a sequential increase in product revenue for the ninth consecutive quarter, but said the streak could come to an end in the third quarter because of a pause in demand from automotive customers following the March 11 earthquake in Japan, slower-than-expected deployment of near field communications (NFC) technology and global macroeconomic weakness.

Richard Clemmer, NXP's CEO, said in an interview that NXP continued to grow product revenue faster than peer companies despite experiencing a slowdown in gross margin expansion within the company's high-performance mixed signal product segment that stemmed from changes in product mix combined with increased costs.

"We had some headwinds that came from Asian currencies that did not continue to operate in line with the U.S. dollar, which increased our cost basis," Clemmer said.  Gross margins were also hit by increased costs for precious metals and costs associated with increasing capacity for embedded flash production, Clemmer said.

NXP (Eindhoven, the Netherlands) reported revenue for the quarter of $1.12 billion, up 4 percent from the previous quarter and up slightly from the year-ago quarter. The company reported a net income in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) of $84 million, compared with a net income of $187 million in the previous quarter and a GAAP net loss of $362 million in the year-ago quarter.

On a non-GAAP basis, excluding charges, NXP reported net income of $130 million, or 51 cents per diluted share, compared with non-GAAP net incomes of $117 million and $74 million in the previous and year-ago quarters, respectively.

NXP reported product revenue from continuing operations of $1.03 billion, up 5 percent compared to the previous quarter and up 11 percent compared to the year-ago quarter. It was the ninth consecutive quarter in which NXP's product revenue from continuing operations grew sequentially, NXP said. Product revenue is the combination of sales from the company's high-performance mixed-signal and standard products segments.

NXP said its net debt total was down $383 million compared with the year-ago quarter and stood at $3.85 million. The company said the Standard and Poor's credit rating agency raised the company's credit rating to "B+" from "B-."

NXP said revenue from its high-performance mixed signal product segment increased 5 percent sequentially, paced by strong demand from its Wireless Infrastructure, Industrial and Lighting business with high-performance RF power amplifiers, 32-bit ARM-based MCUs and lighting products all showing strong sequential growth.

For the third quarter, NXP said it expects product revenue to be down 5 percent to up 1 percent sequentially. Clemmer cited a slight pause in demand from automotive customers related to inventory issues in the wake of the Japan earthquake, macroeconomic uncertainty, and pushouts of NFC deployments.

NXP now expects NFC growth this in 2011 to be lower than previously expected, Clemmer said, adding that the company's NFC technology is currently being designed into 62 cellular handsets. "NFC is clearly not experiencing the kind of growth that we had originally anticipated this year," Clemmer said.

NXP, Quarter, Clemmer, Revenue NXP grew again in Q2; may decline in Q3

Japanese earthquake and macroeconomic weaknesses challenge Texas Instruments Electronics News


TEXAS Instruments’ second-quarter revenue report indicates the company has been challenged by Japan’s March earthquake.

In the second quarter of 2011, Texas Instruments had a revenue of US$3.46 billion, and net income of $672 million.

The results represent a profit fall of 13 percent, due mostly to the earthquake. However, the company is also warning of macroeconomic weaknesses ahead.

The company experienced growth in the analogue and embedded processing sectors, and resumed production ahead of schedule at the damaged Japan factories.

TI said its backlog has increased, and demand from Japanese customers is also increasing.

However, the company warned that demand for its chips from some computing and consumer electronics manufacturers is “lukewarm” despite the incoming holiday seasons. TI told shareholders that “mixed macroeconomic and market signals” means growth will only be modest.
Japanese earthquake and macroeconomic weaknesses challenge Texas Instruments Electronics News