At a gala celebration in Silicon Valley, TechInsights' EE Times feted the recipients of its 4th Annual Creativity in Electronics (ACE) awards. Industry luminaries and Embedded Systems Conference attendees converged on the Fairmont Hotel, here, for an evening of accolades

E Ink and Seiko Epson jointly developed a controller chip for electrophoretic displays (electronic paper) that they claim makes the e-paper as responsive as LCDs for interactive applications.

RF Micro Devices Inc. will consolidate its production test facilities for high-volume cellular products--a move that impacts 80 jobs.

Intel Corp. chief Paul Otellini said the company is not experiencing any negative impact on its revenue from the weakening U.S. economy; indeed, the world's biggest semiconductor manufacturer sees additional opportunities ahead in emerging markets as the dollar continues to

The director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office said frivolous patent claims are gumming up the system.

NOR flash supplier Spansion Inc. posted a loss of $118.5 million, or minus $0.85 a share, in the quarter.

Recent analysis of some of the latest DDR2 and DDR3 DRAM devices from leading manufacturers has revealed a couple of interesting trends.

Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer supplier Soitec SA (Bernin, France) announced that its sales dropped by 32.3 percent, to 65.7 million euros, for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2007-2008, and by 19.8 percent, to 298.2 million euros, for the full fiscal

European scientists, working in New Mexico, have triggered lightning strikes with ground-based lasers. The goal is to create miles-long plasma filaments that would extend from clouds to the ground, providing an economical conduit to channel surefire strikes for the purposes

SSDs remain significantly more expensive than hard disk storage, and the theoretical performance advantage is still largely unrealized.

The sky is falling in semiconductor equipment.

Researchers at the University of Glasgow (Scotland) have devised a molecular scale switch that they claim could dramatically improve the data storage capability of devices without increasing their size.

AuthenTec Inc., a provider of fingerprint sensors, has acquired the software assets of EzValidation Inc., a California-based provider of fingerprint sensor authentication and user interface software.

Japan's Sumitomo Heavy Industries Ltd. has changed its stance, saying that it will still pursue a takeover bid of its U.S. partner in Axcelis Technologies Inc.

The UK-headquartered firm hopes that its global reach will help it to fully exploit TDI's nitride growth technology.

X-ray metrology provider Jordan Valley Semiconductors Ltd. (Migdal Haemek, Israel) has acquired the business of Bede plc (Durham, England), a supplier of similar tools for the semiconductor and compound industries with revenues of $11.6 million in 2007.

Future Technology Devices International Ltd. (Glasgow, Scotland) has developed a 2.5 meter USB-to-USB null modem cable (NMC) suitable for connecting to PCs together.