The Chancellor Philip Hammond has presented his 2017 Spring Budget to Parliament. What is of interest to an electronics audience?

Read full article: Budget 2017 Overview: 5G, Education, Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund

The motivation behind the purchase of ARM is looking more sombre today.. Purchaser Softbank was $120 billion in debt before it paid $32 billion for ARM. Since then Softbank has got involved in a raft of odd deals. First off, Massa Son, Softbank’s boss, told President Trump he would invest $50 billion in the USA …

Read full article: Poor Old ARM

Imagination Technologies has announced the next generation of its PowerVR graphics processor architecture for mobile applications – phones, tablets and headsets. Called Furian, in 8XT guise it will produce 35% more Gflop/mm2 and a 80% improvement in fill-rate/mm2 compared with the top-end implementations of the existing (Rogue 7XT) architecture – both on the same semiconductor …

Read full article: Imagination announces Furian PowerVR GPUs for phones, with 70-80% better gaming performance

Microsoft has ported its server OS to the ARM-based server processors of Qualcomm and Cavium. At the moment this is for Microsoft internal use only, but Microsoft vp Jason Zander says that deployment into the market is “the next logical step”. Microsoft revealed the port at this week’s Open Compute Project Summit in Santa Clara. …

Read full article: Microsoft server OS ported to Qualcomm and Cavium ARM processors

Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have produced a composite material combining silicon nanosheets and a polymer that is both UV-resistant and easy to process bringing flexible displays and photosensors a step closer. Silicon nanosheets have exceptional optoelectronic properties similar to graphene and could find applications in flexible displays, FETs and photodetectors. With …

Read full article: TUM makes robust, workable, silicon nanosheets

Guerrilla RF, the four year-old North Carolina RF and MMIC specialist, has closed a $2.8 million Series D funding round from angel investors. The $2.8 million funding is composed of a combination of equity and debt. Guerrilla expects to employ 20 total associates by year-end. It has 30 chips in production and has raised $7.8 …

Read full article: Guerrilla taps angels for $2.8m

French chip technology research institute Leti develops a shield that can help protect electronic devices against physical attacks from the underside of an IC.

Read full article: Leti closes back-door on chip attacks

The CIA is facing allegations – via WikiLeaks – that a ‘hacking arsenal’ of malware has been exposed and released into the public domain.

Read full article: WikiLeaks alleges Vault 7 CIA security hacks

Congatec introduces a low profile industrial-grade motherboard family featuring the new 7th Gen Intel Core U (Kaby Lake) processors.

Read full article: Low profile Intel Core U industrial card 

ON Semiconductor is targeting digital radiography in medical treatments with a new CCD image sensor that enables video imaging under reduced x-ray dosage conditions. The KAF-09001 image sensor incorporates an improved output architecture that supports a high sensitivity video mode, facilitating patient positioning while minimising overall x-ray exposure. With a resolution of 9 megapixels, the …

Read full article: Medical video imager works under reduced x-ray dosage