Huawei investing $250m in global partner program

Huawei is banking on its partner program to the tune of $250 million to help deliver innovations across software, hardware, and systems, also announcing plans to have 24 OpenLabs by 2020.

Chinese networking giant Huawei has announced that it will invest $250 million in a new integrated partner program to bring independent software vendors, independent hardware vendors, systems integrators, and consulting partners on board.
The investment in the new Huawei Solution Partner Program includes $70 million to be spent on "co-marketing" with its partners, with Huawei to fund the technical, marketing, and sales resources needed for its partners to develop, construct, and market Huawei-based solutions.
The solution consolidates Huawei's previously separate programs run through its Enterprise, Products and Solutions, and Carrier business groups, which it said have attracted more than 1,000 partners, with over 100 of their solutions available in the new Huawei Marketplace.
The program also provides partners with access to its open labs for testing and development, and has also simplified the process by which companies can gain certification as a Huawei solution partner.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/huawei-investing-250m-in-global-partner-program/

Samsung increases chip orders to Taiwan fabless firms

Samsung Electronics has stepped up purchases of IC parts from its Taiwan-based suppliers, including fingerprint sensor supplier Egis Technology (Egistec) and RF component specialist Richwave Technology, and other fabless firms specializing in LCD driver ICs, touchscreen controllers, and other chips components for use in smartphones, according to industry sources.

Egistec, which used to supply fingerprint sensors to Samsung's entry-level and mid-range smartphones, has obtained orders for high-end and flagship models from the Korea-based vendor, said the sources.

Egistec has also started shipping fingerprint sensors to its new customers based in China, the sources said. Egistec will be striving to expand the number of its China-based customers in 2018, since orders from Samsung reportedly account for over 50% of the company's revenues.

Richwave with its new-generation RF solutions reportedly will enter the supply chain of Samsung's high-end smartphone line, the sources noted. Orders placed by Samsung are expected to buoy Richwave's sales performance through the end of 2017 or even 2018, the sources said.

In addition, Samsung, which used to source analog chips from mainly Richtek Technology - now a unit of MediaTek - has begun to diversify its analog suppliers. Champion Microelectronic has grabbed analog chip orders from Samsung, with the orders set to boost the company's revenues during the second half of 2017, the sources indicated.

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20170905PD210.html

Toshiba Fails to Pick Winner as Three Groups Bid for Chip Unit

Toshiba Corp. disclosed it’s in talks with three consortiums for its memory chip unit and that it’s still unable to make a final decision on a buyer.
There’s one group that includes Western Digital Corp., a second that includes Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. and a third comprised of Bain Capital, the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan and Development Bank of Japan. The board hasn’t been able to choose a winner even though the company “exercised its best efforts to reach a mutually satisfactory definitive agreement with one of the consortia,” Toshiba said in a statement Thursday.
The Japanese electronics conglomerate has been negotiating for months to sell off its chips business and pay for multibillion-dollar losses in its U.S. nuclear business. Although Toshiba identified the Bain-led group as the preferred bidder in June, the process has been complicated by legal action from Western Digital, which argues that it should have a say in any sale because of its partnership with Toshiba in the chips business.
Toshiba needs to raise the money by March to avoid being delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Any delay could result in it missing that deadline because of the time needed to get regulatory approval and close the deal.
“They need to come to an agreement in September to get all of the anti-trust approvals in place, but it’s really beginning to feel like they don’t really want to sell.” said Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Ace Research Institute. “They could still keep the business. If Toshiba is not so hung up on staying public, they can get delisted and still survive.”

Any successful bidder would need to be able to pay enough cash to repair Toshiba’s balance sheet and finance large capital investments in the chip business after the purchase, the Japanese company said in its statement. The buyer would also need to possess the ability to make decisions flexibly and quickly, it said. The Tokyo-based company said it’s aiming to reach an agreement at the “earliest possible date.”

Bain Capital had previously submitted a 2.1 trillion yen ($19 billion) offer with INCJ and Development Bank of Japan. Western Digital is offering about 2 trillion yen, according to people familiar with the matter. Hon Hai founder Terry Gou has indicated his willingness to pay as much 3 trillion yen.
Apple Inc. is also wading into into the middle of the battle. The iPhone maker is in talks with Bain Capital , people familiar with the matter said this week. Apple depends on flash memory from Toshiba in its iPhones and iPods, and wants a continued supply so it’s not dependent on rival Samsung Electronics Co.
In recent weeks, Japan’s powerful Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry had encouraged Toshiba to accept the offer from the Western Digital consortium, the people said, in an effort to end the litigation and reach a deal quickly. Top Toshiba executives and its deal advisers are resisting the current offer, arguing it doesn’t do enough to protect the interests of the chips unit or the parent, the people said.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-31/toshiba-says-in-talks-with-3-groups-no-decision-on-chip-sale

Winbond announces equipment purchases

Winbond Electronics, a memory chipmaker specializing in specialty DRAM and flash memory chips, has disclosed two purchases of machinery equipment from Lam Research and Tokyo Electron for a total of about NT$3.31 billion (US$109 million).

Winbond said previously its capex for 2107 will reach a record NT$17.4 billion, up from the NT$16.6 billion estimated previously.

Winbond plans to expand production capacity at its 12-inch fab in Taichung, central Taiwan to 48,000 wafers monthly by the end of 2017 from the current 44,000 units, the company was quoted in previous reports. The monthly capacity will grow further to 53,000 units in 2018.

Winbond also plans to build a new 12-inch wafer plant in Tainan, southern Taiwan, according to the company. Details of the new plant will be given later in 2017.

Winbond saw its net profits reach a nine-quarter high of NT$990 million in the second quarter of 2017. EPS for the quarter came to NT$0.28. Winbond posted consolidated revenues of NT$11.41 billion in the second quarter, up 9% sequentially. Gross margin climbed to 32% from 29% in the prior quarter.

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20170823VL201.html

Counterfeit products caught out by machine-learning tool

Nearly every high-value object – from watches to helicopters – will suffer from the manufacture of counterfeits.
The growth of the market for counterfeit consumer products has proved a major problem all around the world. Researchers have found that counterfeit trafficking has increased by 10,000 per cent in the past 20 years and now makes up 5-7 per cent of the world’s trade. Profits collected by counterfeit traders have been shown to be a major source of funding for activities such as human trafficking and terrorism.
Existing methods to detect counterfeit products tend to be invasive and risk damaging high-value products. Researchers at New York University have now developed a new, non-invasive detection method which only requires a high-quality photograph of the product.
“The underlying principle of our system stems from the idea that microscopic characteristics in a genuine product or a class of products – corresponding to the same larger product line – exhibit inherent similarities that can be used to distinguish these products from their corresponding counterfeit versions,” said Professor Lakshminarayanan Subramanian, who leads the Open Networks and Big Data Lab at New York University.

The hardware necessary for their detection method is a wide-angle microscopy device, compatible with a smartphone. This allows the user to capture a microscopic image of the object being tested. Based on these microscopic images, supervised machine-learning algorithms – trained on a dataset of known genuine and counterfeit products – are able to classify the product.
According to the researchers, the use of microscopic photographs allows for the detection of “‘super-fake’ counterfeits observed in the marketplace that are not easily discernible [by] the human eye.”
Professor Subramanian and his team put the system to the test with images of fabric, pills, leather, electronics, toys and shoes. They found that the system returned accurate results approximately 98 per cent of the time
The counterfeit detection system is being brought to market by Entrupy Inc, a start-up founded by Professor Subramanian and colleagues. So far, Entrupy has assessed $14 million of products for authenticity.

https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2017/08/counterfeit-products-caught-out-by-machine-learning-tool/

Single molecule transistors work at room temperature

For the first time a team of researchers from Columbia University in the city of New York claims to have reproducibly demonstrated current blockade – the ability to switch a device from the insulating to the conducting state where charge is added and removed one electron at a time – using atomically precise molecular clusters at room temperature.

According to the research team, this could enable smaller electrical components and improve data storage and computing power.
To create the transistor, the researchers developed a single cluster of geometrically ordered atoms with an inorganic core made of 14 atoms and positioned linkers that wired the core to two gold electrodes.
The researchers then used a scanning tunneling microscope technique to make junctions comprising a single cluster connected to the two gold electrodes, which enabled them to characterise its electrical response as they varied the applied bias voltage. The technique is said to allow them to fabricate and measure thousands of junctions with reproducible transport characteristics.
"We found that these clusters can perform very well as room-temperature nanoscale diodes whose electrical response we can tailor by changing their chemical composition," says Professor Latha Venkataraman.
"Theoretically, a single atom is the smallest limit, but single-atom devices cannot be fabricated and stabilised at room temperature. With these molecular clusters, we have complete control over their structure with atomic precision and can change the elemental composition and structure in a controllable manner to elicit a certain electrical response."
"Most of the other studies created single-molecule devices that functioned as single-electron transistors at 4K, but for any real-world application, these devices need to work at room temperature. And ours do," says postdoctoral researcher Giacomo Lovat.
The team evaluated the performance of the diode through the on/off ratio. At room temperature, they observed an on/off ratio of about 600 in single-cluster junctions, which they claim is higher than any other single-molecule devices measured to date.

http://www.newelectronics.co.uk/electronics-news/single-molecule-transistors-work-at-room-temperature/159602/

Nvidia invests in China self-driving startup

Tusimple, a Beijing-based startup focused on developing autonomous trucks, has disclosed that Nvidia will make a strategic investment to take a 3% stake in the company. Nvidia's investment is part of a a Series B financing round, Tusimple indicated.

Tusimple has plans to raise more than US$30 million through this financing round in the fourth quarter of 2017. The company previously completed its Series A financing round in early 2016 and raised a total of CNY50 million (US$7.5 million).

Nvidia's investment in Tusimple is part of the GPU vendor's GPU Ventures program, industry observers believe.

According to Nvidia, its GPU Ventures program is aimed at supporting startups across the globe as they build their businesses around GPU-based platforms. Nvidia is targeting startups that are aligned with its strategy in fields as diverse as artificial intelligence (AI) and life sciences to automotive, robotics and virtual reality (VR). The GPU vendor has invested in more than 25 companies, building relationships that span strategy, technology, sales and marketing, development and distribution, and beyond.

Momenta, another China-based self-driving startup, has also drawn investments from an international vendor. Mercedes-Benz parent Daimler has reportedly participated in a US$46 million funding round for Momenta.

http://digitimes.com/news/a20170808PD216.html