The Week In Review: Jan. 22
By Ed Sperling
Actel’s ProASIC FPGAs are all over the new Boeing 787, which is supposed to be significantly more fuel-efficient than previous Boeing jets. Actel has been developing chips that use flash instead of SRAM to make them more resistant to single-event upsets caused by stray neutrons, which are about 150 times more prevalent at 35,000 feet than at sea level.
Synopsys began laying the groundwork for the next big market, namely India. The company’s VLSI design curriculum was adopted by five regional centers of excellence. This is similar to what many of the EDA players did in China at the beginning of the last decade.
AMD raked in $1.65 billion in sales in Q4, up 18% from the previous quarter and up 42% from the same period in 2008. The company also reported a profit of $1.18 billion. But dig a little further into the numbers and you find that Intel paid AMD $1.25 billion to settle its longstanding dispute. How long can AMD live on the Intel settlement and can it reach profitability on its own before the money runs out?
Rambus settled its longstanding patent infringement case against Samsung, taking home $900 million. But the bigger win may be a joint development deal between the companies to work together on a variety of new memory technologies.
