CB Insights has been looking at the prospectors for the gold mine, or the Fools’ Gold, of the autonomous car aspiration, and has unearthed 44 companies on the trail of the Grail:

Read full article: On The Trail Of The Grail

Check out this serious bit of research kit, MIAMI-2. The University of Huddersfield is announcing the completion of a £3.5 million research facility for the use of ion beams.

Read full article: Picture of the Day: MIAMI-2 boosts UK National Ion Beam Centre

If you’re serious about Android development, you’ll want to keep up with the developments around Android Studio, Google’s official IDE for Android app development.

Read full article: Android Studio 3.0 supports Android Things for IoT

Thanks to the EC for this one – the top eleven (and only) net contributions paid to the EU between 2010 and 2014 in billions of Euros: Germany 60 France 36 UK 32 Italy 24 Netherlands 14 Sweden 9 Belgium 7 Austria 5 Denmark 4.7 Finland 3 Luxembourg 0.18

Read full article: Top Ten (+1) Net Contributors To EU Budget

SEMI reports April billings of $2.17 billion – 4.6% higher than the March 2017 level of $2.08 billion, and 48.9% higher than the April 2016 billings level of $1.46 billion. “Semiconductor equipment billings levels exceed two billion dollars for the second month in a row,” says SEMI CEO Ajit Manocha, “solid market fundamentals, coupled with …

Read full article: SEMI April billings up 49%

Central and Eastern Europe are beginning to see significant VC investment, according to Dealroom.co. In 2016, start-ups in the region raised €177 million – not much compared to Europe and Israel’s €4.5 billion of VC investment last year – but significantly up on 2012’s CEE VC investment of €15 million. A catalyst for CEE VC …

Read full article: CEE VC funding soars

 Imec and wafer-probe specialist Cascade Microtech have developed  an automatic system for pre-bond testing of advanced 3D chips. Pre-bond testing is important to increase the yield of 3D stacked chips. The new system enables probing and hence testing of chips with large arrays of 40µm-pitch micro-bumps, on 300mm wafers.   As an emerging technology, 3D …

Read full article: Imec develops pre-bond tester for 3D chips

In Q1 the output value of China’s IC design industry was $5.1 billion, says the China SIA, and the output value of China’s backend industry was $4.88 billion. The design output figure was 23.8% up on Q1 2016 The backend output value was up 11.2% on Q1 20162 The output value of China’s IC manufacturing …

Read full article: China chips looking chipper

Chuck Swoboda has guided LED and SSL manufacturer Cree for 16 years but plans to leave his position following a just-begun search for a replacement; meanwhile, the company reaffirmed its financial projections for Q4 of its fiscal year.

Steve Barlow returns to Lumileds after stints with Cree and Intematix, while Lumileds has launched new mid-power and chip-on-board LEDs and company SSL fellow George Craford receives IEEE Edison Medal.