Top ten articles in February
A boosted low cost microcontroller, chip-free RF tag, Nvidia record results and cuts at ST, onsemi and NXP all dominated the top ten news articles on eeNews Europe in February
Nvidia’s record results this week highlighted the boom in datacentre AI, with Blackwell Ultra lined up for later this year as well as its next generation CPU, codenamed Vera, and the Rubin GPU. More on these in the next few weeks.
The re-branding of distributor Avnet’s board business, Tria Technologies, saw significant interest, balancing the distribution and systems integration businesses with the board and module business.
The impact of inventories and the slowing of the automotive industry has hit Europe particularly hard over the last year, and companies are taking measures to address these issues. Franco-Italian chip maker STMicroelectronics is temporarily closing fabs, while onsemi is to cut 2400 jobs and NXP 1600, although NXP points out it is also recruiting so the net impact will be staff numbers remain the same.
However the Italian government has taken the opportunity to suggest that the French CEO of ST should be replaced by an Italian.
ARM providing custom chip designs is an ongoing theme, which many commentators take as ‘ARM making its won chips’. The latest deal to surface is with Meta, which has also worked in detail with the competing RISC-V instruction set architecture, so that move was important for ARM’s relationships with hyperscalers that also include Amazon and Google.
Infineon’s deal with Forvia Hella for 1200V silicon carbide devices also caught the attention of readers, highlighting the move to 800V electric vehicles.
What will happen with Intel under a new CEO is another on-going theme. Splitting the business between Broadcom and TSMC is unlikely, if only for geopolitical reasons, but the prospect of a deal with GlobalFoundries (GF) has moved up the list of options following the restructuring of the management at GF. Tom Caulfield moving from the CEO of GF, along with suspending plans for a joint fab with ST at Crolles, open up interesting possibilities.
But it is a couple of articles on low cost technologies that caught the most attention in February on eeNews Europe.
Chip-free wireless tags are more sustainable and cut e-waste
Researchers at the University of Glasgow have developed an RFID tag that doesn’t need silicon, instead using Inexpensive coils and a sensing material made from a form of silicon rubber called PDMS and carbon fibres. This could help reduce the electronic waste from the 10bn RFID tags used each year.
ST has doubled the memory on its latest entry level M0+ microcontroller, making more room for applications on a chip that costs as little as 41 cents in volume (or just over a dollar at online distributors).
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