chips

Chip design software maker Synopsys announced today it has agreed to acquire rival Magma Design Innovations for $507 million in cash.

Synopsys will pay $7.35 a share for San Jose, Calif-based Magma, a 28 percent premium over its closing price Wednesday of $5.72.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Synopsys was founded in 1986 and competes with Cadence Design Systems and Mentor Graphics in the sector of making software to help designers create and verify complex integrated circuits.

"The dramatic rise in complexity of today's semiconductor designs for all process nodes requires an equally dramatic increase in designer … Read more

More details have emerged on Intel's first system-on-a-chip for mainstream PCs.

That chip, codenamed Haswell, is due by 2013 and will be the first high-performance Intel processor to approach the same level of integration used in smartphones and tablets. Today, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, and Nvidia are the major suppliers of smartphone and tablet SoCs (system-on-a-chip) derived from the ARM design.

What does Haswell mean for future Macs and PCs? Even more powerful ultraslim MacBooks and laptop PCs will emerge--as well as hybrid laptop-tablet designs.

Imagine, for example, a future 15-inch MacBook Pro as skinny as a MacBook Air but … Read more

If you'd like a better understanding of what it takes for sperm to be considered fertile, go grab your measuring spoons and look at the quarter teaspoon. Roughly that amount of ejaculate should boast anywhere between 20 million and 150 million sperm. Anything less than 20 million and fertility just might be an issue.

So Loes Segerink, a researcher at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, has developed a "fertility chip" that can accurately count one's sperm concentration as well as measure its mobility (when discussing sperm the synonym "motility" is often used). What's more, the test can be taken at home, with the ejaculate being, ahem, collected in a more private environment.

While simple home tests are already commercially available, the concentration readings are, well, simple, and indicate only whether sperm concentration is above or below that 20 million mark. But one man's sperm concentration of 19 million is certainly more fertile than another man's count of 1 million.

Segerink, who will be defending her doctoral dissertation in November, says the sperm flows past a liquid-filled channel on the chip beneath electrode "bridges." When cells pass beneath these bridges, a brief fluctuation in electrical resistance occurs. By counting these events, the chip is counting sperm.… Read more

In the face of disappointing sales of Windows smartphones, Microsoft plans to release dual-core and LTE phones.

Windows Phone President Andy Lees told AllThingsD in a story posted yesterday that dual-core phones are coming, though he wouldn't offer specifics. Lees also said the current collection of single-core Windows phones holds up well compared with dual-core Android phones.

"They're all single core, but I suspect that they will be faster in usage than any dual-core phone that you put against it, and that's the point," Lees said.

He also said LTE phones are coming but did … Read more

Missed the big Apple announcement Tuesday? Re-live it with the Buzz crew as we recap the live feeds of Apple's iPhone presentation. Spoiler alert: there's no iPhone 5.

Apple's iPhone 5 will include a whopping 1GB of RAM and a voice-control system known as the Assistant, according to the latest reports hopping onboard the iPhone rumor mill.

Word of these potential new features was apparently leaked to TUAW by an unnamed but "reliable source" last week. However, the tech news site said it was hesitant to publish the details without corroboration.

But yesterday 9to5Mac said it received the same information from a "source familiar with the SOC's manufacturing," which refers to the phone's expected A5 processor, or system-on-a-chip.

Based on details … Read more

"Poor Windows 8. You totally crashed out, but you're so adorable. I just can't be mad at you." That may be the new reaction to operating system failure when Windows 8 finally reaches the masses.

Chip Hazard posted a picture on Facebook of the new Blue Screen of Death from Microsoft's latest version of the Windows operating system. It features a prominent emoticon sad face on the familiar blue expanse of sorrow.

The new BSoD also delivers the simple message, "Your PC ran into a problem that it couldn't handle, and now it needs to restart."

It tells you briefly what the error was about so you can search for more information on what happened to upset Windows so much. Hint: it probably found out you've been spending time with an iPad.

This change may be part of a bid by Microsoft to get more in tune with a younger crowd, the sort of kids who won't get it when Windows spews out a list of obscure error codes. Everybody understands a sad face.

In the past, the appearance of the BSoD has been met with vulgar curses, strangled cries of frustration, and the hammering of fists on keyboards. Now, you may hear, "Awww. What a cutie-pie. Can you restart for Mommy? Come on, you can do it!"… Read more

A Dutch prosecutor has decided not to charge journalist Brenno de Winter with fraud for publicly discussing security weaknesses in the country's new OV transit chip card.

"Given the public interest, (his) meticulous work and the minimal damage caused, the prosecutor stated that the importance of freedom of information in this case outweighs (claims of fraud) and decided to close the case," a statement from the Dutch public prosecutor in Utrecht said.

De Winter told CNET in an interview that he is relieved at the decision and will now be able to resume his writing on the … Read more

IBM and 3M today said they will develop new adhesives designed to build silicon towers that will be packaged on 3D semiconductors.

The collaboration--IBM brings the semiconductor know-how and 3M is the adhesive expert--aims to make commercial 3D chips via new materials.

According to IBM, the idea is to stack semiconductors in layers up to 100 chips. These chip stacks would allow for better integration and system-on-a-chip capability. Compute, networking, and memory could be stacked on one processor.

IBM has outlined nanoscale breakthroughs before, but one big hurdle is finding the materials to package these 3D silicon skyscrapers. New adhesives … Read more