ST had Q2 revenues of $1.7 billion up from $1.6 billion in Q1 but down from the $1.76 billion of Q2 2015. There was an operating profit of $28 million compared to Q1’s loss of $33 million. Auto and discretes had revenues of $721 million up 7.5% on Q1; analogue snd MEMS did $376 million …

ST expects strong Q3

Security company Rapid7 has found multiple security flaws in Osram’s Lightify remote-controlled lighting system. “Practical exploitation effects ranging from the accidental disclosure of sensitive network configuration information, to persistent cross-site scripting [XSS] on the web management console, to operational command execution on the devices themselves without authentication,” said Rapid7, whose lead researcher Deral Heiland discovered the …

Even reputable companies can have IoT security flaws

Today, Toshiba starts sampling a 64-layer 3D NAND memory. The Chip has 3-bit-per-cell technology and has a 256Gbit (32GB) capacity. next on the development roadmap is a 512Gbit (64GB) device, also with 64 layers. The new device succeeds the 48-layer BiCS FLASH, and delivers a 40% larger capacity per unit chip size than 48-layer stacking …

Tosiba sampling 64-layer 3D NAND

Which comes first – the drone or the loon? It looks like Google’s Project Loon will bring the internet to the internet-deprived before Facebook’s Project Aquila, but there’s many a slip ‘txixt cup and lip. Loon, of course, uses balloons and Aquila uses drones. Loon kicked off its service in New Zealand three years ago …

Loon or Drone?

  Murata has announced the MGJ1 1Watt dc-dc converter series for driving high and low-side IGBTs and SiC mosfet gate circuits. With isolation up to 5.2kVdc, output combinations include: +15/-5, +15/-9 or +19/-5V. Input choice is +5, 12 or 24Vdc. “The MGJ1 provides optimised voltages for powering gate drives for best system performance and efficiency. …

Medical dc-dc converter drives IGBT and SiC mosfet gates

Tantalum metal has been deposited with sub-nanometer control for the first time at low temperature without plasma by Wayne State University scientists Kyle Blakeney and Professor Charles Winter “This opens up the prospect of using tantalum in layers just a few nanometers thick as the liner for interconnect wiring in the complex geometries of next-generation electronic chips,” …

First low temperature tantalum deposition with fab-level accuracy

Over the past 20 years, China has become increasingly frustrated over the gap between its IC imports and indigenous IC production, says IC Insights. China’s imports of semiconductors exceeds that of oil. In the late 1990s China began to contemplate ways to grow its indigenous IC industry and assisted in creating Hua Hong NEC, which …

China Chip Frustration Growing

The US Department of Energy has released a new Caliper Snapshot report on linear LED tubes intended as fluorescent replacements and such lamps now represent the majority of all lamps listed in the Lighting Facts database.

IDG Capital Partners, MLS, and Yiwu State-Owned Assets Operation Center pay EUR 400 million for the LEDvance lamps and lighting business that had recently been carved-out from its Osram parent.

Amazon RDS for SQL Server now supports SQL Server Native Backup/Restore using Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3). You can now take database level backups as SQL Server backup files (.bak) and store them in your Amazon S3 bucket. SQL Server full backups are commonly used to migrate or move databases among different SQL Server instances, whether in the cloud or on-premises, for data ingestion, disaster recovery and other backup purposes. You can export a full backup of your on-premises database, store it in S3 and then use the custom stored procedures offered by RDS to restore that backup to an existing RDS instance. You will also be able to backup an RDS database into S3 and restore the backup file later onto an on-premises or RDS database. Storing and transferring backup files into and out of AWS through S3 affords customers an added layer of protection for disaster recovery and gives customers a peace of mind that their data can be moved around easily. On RDS, you can encrypt your backup files across SQL Server Express, Web, Standard and Enterprise Editions.