On May 22, 2007, STMicroelectronics, Intel, and Francisco Partners announced an agreement to create a new memory company. This company will combine Intel’s NOR assets with ST’s NOR and NAND business with the financial acumen of Francisco Partners.
Rumored to be in the works for months, the new company combines the NOR revenues of the [...]

This week Renesas presented the technology roadmap for a new MCU architecture. At this time this is more of a pre-announcement. The company expects the specification to be complete by 2Q 2008 and first samples will be available by 2Q 2009.
When Hitachi and Mitsubishi merged their semiconductor operations to form Renesas a few years ago [...]

This week MIPS announced the MIPS32 74K core, a next-generation processor core family offering an innovative embedded microarchitecture. It is the industry’s first fully synthesizable 32-bit processors to achieve operating frequencies greater than 1 GHz in TSMC 65nm process technology.
The MIPS architecture has a dominant position in high end consumer electronics, in particular DTV, Set [...]

If you were an embedded systems software engineer, a very smart assistant who could check programs for you would be invaluable. Embedded systems are designed to perform a very specific and limited array of functions in systems ranging from consumer handheld devices to complex machine tools.
Because changing embedded software is relatively expensive, it is critical [...]

Last week Intel and AMD reported their 1Q 2007 financial results which were widely covered. What is the significance of these results and what does it portend for the coming year and beyond?
A brief review
Intel reported corporate revenues of $8.852 B, down 9% q to q and down 1% y-over y. The MPU revenues were [...]