INDUSTRY NEWS
* Narda, an L-3 Communications company, Hauppage, NY, has acquired Wavetek Wandel & Goltermann's Safety Test Solutions based in Eningen, Germany. The new entity, Narda Safety Test Solutions, will be the holder of 95 percent of the patents related to the detection of RF radiation. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
* Peregrine Semiconductor Corp., San Diego, CA, has completed its acquisition of IDT's wafer fabrication facility in Sydney, Australia. The move is expected to significantly increase Peregrine's Ultra-thin Silicon (UTSic) production capacity for its IC products for highly integrated RF synthesizer and transceiver chips for the wireless industry. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
* STMicroelectronics has invested $68 M to acquire programmable system device manufacturer Waferscale Integration Inc. (WSI), Fremont, CA. WSI's operations will continue to be headquartered in the Silicon Valley area, but will now function as a fully fledged operational business unit within STMicroelectronics' Memory Products Group.
* PMC-Sierra Inc., Burnaby, BC, Canada, has acquired Datum Telegraphic, a privately held wireless semiconductor company. PMC-Sierra will exchange approximately 681,000 shares of PMC-Sierra common stock for the remaining 92 percent of Datum Telegraphic that the company does not already own.
* Stanford Microdevices Inc., has established a sales and applications engineering organization in Asia. Cosmidea, located in Korea, will represent the company in Korea and greater Asia.
* Epitaxial Products International Limited has changed its name to IQE (Europe) Ltd., and Quantum Epitaxial Designs Inc. has changed its name to IQE Inc. Sales and marketing activities and business transactions conducted in Europe and the Far East will now be handled by IQE (Europe) Ltd., while sales and marketing activities in North America will be handled by IQE Inc.
* Molecular beam epitaxy system developer EPI MBE Products Group has changed its name to Applied Epi Inc. to better describe its mission and expanding operations within the compound semiconductor manufacturing business.
* EZ Form Cable Corp. has opened a new facility located at 275-285 Welton Street, Hamden, CT 06517 (203) 785-8215, fax (203) 785-0466. The manufacturing campus is situated on seven acres with production and administration space in excess of 60,000 square feet.
* APLAC Solutions Inc. has opened a US office at 320 Decker Drive, Suite 100, Irving, TX 75062. The company has also moved into a new office in Finland located at Atomitie 5 C, 003070 Helsinki, Finland.
* Rogers Corp. has opened a new sales and marketing office in Singapore to service the growing market in the region. The office is located in Eunos TechPark and is called Rogers Technologies Singapore Inc.
* PureCoat International LLC, West Palm Beach, FL and Belmont, MA, has completed the expansion of two silver plating facilities. Increased capacity will improve customer service and double production of plated filter hardware for the rapidly growing international telecommunications market.
* EMCORE Corp. has completed the second phase of expansion at its Somerset, NJ manufacturing facility and moved its corporate offices to a new facility located nearby. The expansion significantly increases production capacity for the company's existing photonics, RF materials, devices and MOCVD tool product lines.
* Motorola Inc. has completed the process of moving its largest volume assembly and test manufacturing facility for high power RF products from Seremban, Malaysia to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The move provides growth opportunities for manufacturing RF power devices that are required to continue to meet the needs of customers and the growing wireless market.
* Corning Cable Systems has announced plans to build a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Hickory, NC, adjacent to its existing telecommunications cable plant, to produce flame-retardant optical fiber cable. The new 250,000-square-foot facility is expected to be completed in mid-2001 and will initially employ 300 people.
* Hytel Group Inc., Hampshire, IL, and California-based International Technologies Network Inc. have signed a letter of intent with Dalian Daxian Group Inc., Dalian, China, to set up a facility to manufacture hybrid circuits and assemble small form components in China. The facility is expected to cost $8 M and generate gross annual revenues in excess of $16 M.
* ANADIGICS Inc. has teamed with Agilent Technologies Inc. to develop a breakthrough intellectual property virtual sampling encoder design tool that revolutionizes the sample prototyping stage for RF communication system designs.
* The Semiconductor sector of Motorola and Atmel have announced a licensing agreement that will enable the companies to provide a reliable supply of radio frequency BiCMOS technology.
* GHz Technology and Lucent Technologies' Microelectronics Group have reached an agreement to develop and manufacture custom RF power transistors for wireless base stations.
* Raytheon RF Components has extended its distribution relationship with Avnet to include millimeter-wave power amplifiers. Avnet will continue to supply Raytheon's extensive line of low frequency RF components used in the cellular telephone, base station and ISM-band products. In related news, Raytheon RF Components has developed a Ka-band mHEMT low noise amplifier featuring a 1.4 dB noise figure, 24 dB gain and 15 mW DC power consumption fabricated on a low cost GaAs substrate.
* Circuit Assembly Corp. has licensed VSO Electric Co. Ltd. to manufacture and market ATAS,® Circuit Assembly's proprietary 40-pin ultra ATA connector.
* RF Industries' wholly owned Neulink Division has become a value-added distributor for Zeus Wireless Inc. frequency hopping spread spectrum products.
* STMicroelectronics, ARM and Sony Corp. have invested $14 M in CoWare Inc. All three investors are long-term customers or partners of CoWare and consider the company's N2C hardware/software co-design system solution critical to their future successes.
* Rogers Corp. and Chang Chun Plastics Co. Ltd. have formed a joint venture to manufacture and distribute Rogers' R/flex® flexible circuit laminates for the Taiwan marketplace. The joint venture, Rogers Chang Chun Technology Co. Ltd., is located in Hsin-Chu, Taiwan.
* Heraeus Inc.'s Circuit Materials Division has signed a licensing agreement to produce Motorola's T2000 low temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) technology, a material system for microwave, wireless and automotive applications. Heraeus will manufacture the complete T2000 LTCC material system, including dielectric tape, capacitor dielectrics and conductors.
* RFIC provider RF Micro Devices Inc., Greensboro, NC, has formed a collaboration with Atmel Corp., San Jose, CA, to provide reference designs based on the IEEE802.11b 11 Mbps wireless LAN standard. Together, the companies are providing complete reference designs to qualified customers, including schematics, layout files and bills of materials.
* Nogatech Inc. and Kenwood Corp. have signed an agreement for the development of a new Nogatech chip that will enable high quality digital TV and music to be streamed to computers via satellite.
* Simpod Inc., an EDA company in the embedded systems verification space, has announced its support of IBM's PowerPC Architecture. The company is improving the verification of designs using PowerPC Architecture with its hardware modeling system and models for IBM's PPC603e, PPC740 and PPC750 PowerPC processors.
* Ultima Interconnect Technology Inc.'s Ultima Millennium delay analysis tool has been validated for use on UMC's 0.18 µm process. The Ultima Millennium is a comprehensive full-chip delay analysis tool that is used by customers who also use UMC as their primary foundry.
* Kingston Technology Co., Fountain Valley, CA, has announced its readiness for the market introduction of double data rate (DDR) synchronous memory module technology later this year, and is sampling DDR modules to OEM customers. As part of its strategic growth plan, the company is also expanding its module manufacturing capacity by 30 percent with the addition of state-of-the-art SMT lines.
* Circuit Assembly Corp. (CA) has directly informed 21 companies within the electronic connector/cable assembly industry that licensing for its patented ATA technology is available to them. The letter references the SFF Committee 8049 Specification for the 80-conductor ATA cable assembly, the ATA/ATAPI standard and related CA patents, and informs the companies that CA is offering a license agreement under US patent numbers 6,077,105 and 5,902,147 and related foreign applications.
* Merrimac Industries Inc. has received a patent for its Multi-Mix Microtechnology from the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
* Intersil Corp., Irvine, CA, has announced that a new manufacturing process optimized for building highly integrated wireless communications chips is now fully qualified and in production. This new capacity will help the company satisfy the rapidly growing demand for wireless chips.
* EMS Technologies Inc., Atlanta, GA, has successfully completed the first flight of its new CALTRAC Star Tracker system aboard the NASA Space Shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-101. The tracker provided critical navigation functions to the mission crew during an experiment of orbital attitude readiness involving the International Space Station. The EMS system will also fly on Genesis, one of NASA's Discovery missions, scheduled for launch in January 2001.
* Real Intent Inc., an electronic design automation company that is creating an Intent-driven Verification approach that fundamentally alters functional verification methodology, has shipped Verix, its first product. The product verifies a design by ensuring that its implementation is consistent with the designer's intent.
* Silicon Motion Inc. has announced plans to expand into the digital voice, digital music and wireless markets. Supporting that decision, the company has invented its own low power embedded DSP technology. The technology can be used for wireless communications and digital audio processing and allows a more economical and efficient design with a smaller footprint and lower power requirements.
* Interstate Electronics Corp., a division of L-3 Communications, claims that GPS C/A Code still does not achieve the same accuracy as the P(Y) Code in test range environments. The statement was issued due to the growing concern and customer confusion regarding C/A Code accuracy in light of the US government action to discontinue selective availability in the GPS Constellation.
* The International Engineering Consortium has added an Electronic Design Automation Executive Council to its current roster of councils that provide insight, industry knowledge and planning assistance to the Consortium's many information-industry forums.
* Precision Tube Co., North Wales, PA, a prime manufacturer of high quality, non-ferrous seamless drawn metal tubing and tubular parts, has been awarded ISO 9002 certification.
* Circuit Components Inc.'s hybrid-type transient voltage surge suppressors have recently passed the UL 497B listed requirements for data communications and fire alarm circuits. The devices tested are intended for data transmission, telecommunication, 4-20 mA loops and general applications.
* Mesa Microwave Inc. has become certified in the Small Disadvantaged Business Section 8(a) program and the Small Business Administration HUBZone program, and has obtained two General Services Administration sole source contacts as a possible option for customers to do business with the company.
* According to ElectroniCast Corp.'s newly published "Fiber Optic Fusion Splicer Forecast," the global consumption of fusion splicer products in 1999 was $257.4 M. Over the 20042009 period, the consumption value growth is projected to slow but reach $793 M. For additional information, contact Theresa Hosking (650) 343-1398, fax (650) 343-1698 or e-mail: electronicast@msn.com.
* Intel Corp. has recognized Racal Instruments Inc. with its 1999 Supplier Continuous Quality Improvement award. Racal supplies system testers to Intel.
* David Pasechnik of HCJB World Radio was named the winner of Anritsu Co.'s Toughest of the Tough Site contest. Network operators and service providers submitted photographs of their "toughest of the tough sites" with a brief description of how or why the Anritsu Site Master was the best tool for solving their problem by providing accurate, repeatable measurements in an intense RF interference environment. Pasechnik was awarded a new Anritsu Site Master.
FINANCIAL NEWS
* RF Micro Devices reports record sales of $289 M for the fiscal year, ended March 31, compared to $136.2 M for the previous year. Net income was $50.1 M (58¢/diluted share), compared to $19.6 M (27¢/diluted share) for FY 1999. In addition, the company's board of directors approved a two-for-one stock split. Shareholders of record on August 8 will be issued a certificate representing one additional share of common stock for each share of common stock held on the record date.
* Cymer Inc. reports sales of $86.3 M for the second quarter, ended June 30, compared to $43.4 M for the same period last year. Net income was $15.3 M (50¢/diluted share), compared to a net loss of $1.5 M (5¢/diluted share) for the second quarter of 1999.
* Cerprobe Corp. reports sales of $31 M for the second quarter, ended June 30, compared to $14 M for the same period last year. Net income was a record $3.2 M (33¢/diluted share), compared to a net loss of $1.5 M (20¢/diluted share) for the second quarter of 1999.
* Radyne ComStream reports record sales of $17.9 M for the second quarter, ended June 30, compared to $12.9 M for the same period last year. Net income was $2.5 M (15¢/diluted share), compared to $422 K (6¢/diluted share) for the second quarter of 1999.
* Microwave Power Devices Inc. reports sales of $14.5 M for the second quarter, ended June 30, compared to $19.1 M for the same period last year. Net loss was $656 K (6¢/share), compared to a net gain of $1.3 M for the second quarter of 1999.
* STMicroelectronics reports record sales of $1.9 M for the second quarter, ended July 1, compared to $1.2 M for the same period last year. Net income was $336.5 K (37¢/diluted share), compared to $122.5 K (14¢/diluted share) for the second quarter of 1999.
* Superconductor Technologies Inc. reports sales of $1.59 M for the second quarter, ended July 1, compared to $239 K for the same period last year. Net loss was $4.1 M (23¢/share), compared to a net loss of $2.7 M (35¢/share) for the second quarter of 1999.
CONTRACTS
* ASTRIUM (formerly Matra Marconi Space) has selected EMS Technologies Inc., Atlanta, GA, for a contract valued at $25 M to supply three combined transmit/receive antenna feeds for the INMARSAT Broadband Global Area Network program. The contract will extend until March 2002.
* ARINC Inc., Annapolis, MD, has been awarded a major contract from Lockheed Martin Aeronautical Co. to build and modify C-5 maintenance training devices for the US Air Force. The C-5 Galaxy aircraft is the largest cargo aircraft used by the Air Force. Financial details of the contract were not disclosed.
* EMS Technologies Inc. and Amphitech International Inc. have signed a memorandum of agreement for the design, manufacture and test of a Ka-band radar antenna and gyro-stabilized platform subsystem for a new helicopter Obstacle Awareness System (OASys radar). The system is the first that permits helicopter pilots, flying at low altitude, to see obstacles as small as power transmission lines and towers from distances of up to two kilometers, even in the most difficult day and night weather conditions. In related news, the company announced the initial delivery of the Force and Moment Sensor (FMS), a device that enables greater precision and control of robots in space. The FMS will be installed on a special-purpose dexterous manipulator as part of a contract with MacDonald Dettwiler Space and Advanced Robotics Ltd. (MD Robotics).
* RIFOCS Corp., Camarillo, CA, has been awarded a $14.1 M contract by the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, San Diego, CA, to manufacture, test and ship up to 270 units plus spares of the Global Positioning Fiber Optic Antenna Link (GPS FOAL) subsystem over a five-year period.
* Andrew Corp. has won a contract to supply RF communications infrastructure for Chicago's Midway Airport Terminal Development Program. The new network will provide essential communications for fire, police and emergency services, as well as the Chicago Department of Aviation. Financial details were not disclosed.
PERSONNEL
* Jeannine M. Davis has been elected to the CTS Corp. board of directors. Davis, a 20-year employee of the company, currently serves as executive VP, administration as well as general counsel and secretary. In related news, CTS has named Chang-Min Sohn sales manager of its new Korea branch sales office in Seoul. Sohn brings more than 16 years of electronic system design, sales, marketing and design application experience to the position.
* Tropian Inc. has named Rogers AT&T Wireless senior VP and chief technology officer Robert F. Berner to its board of directors. In related news, the company expanded its senior leadership team by naming Murray R. Vince VP and general counsel. Vince has held senior positions at Apple Computer, Silicon Graphics and HearMe.
* EPI MBE Products Group has named David Reamer president. Most recently, Reamer was director of business development for ADC Telecommunications.
* Silicon Wave Inc. has named Everett Roach to the company's executive management team as VP, sales. Roach brings more than 20 years of experience in sales, marketing and product development with a number of leading semiconductor companies.
* I-Cube Inc. has promoted four executives to VP positions. Bill Moss, formerly director of crosspoint switch development, was named chief technical officer; Robert Olah, formerly director of ASIC engineering, was named VP of engineering; Sean Long, previously director of marketing and sales, was named VP, marketing and sales; and John Morris, formerly director of finance and administration, was named VP, finance and chief financial officer.
* Lawrence Behr Associates Inc. (LBA) has promoted Charlie Martin to VP, site services. Martin will manage transmission site-related services provided by LBA for the wireless telecommunications industry. The company also named William Harris manufacturing engineer. Most recently, Harris was testing systems manager at the FARR Company.
* RocketChips Inc. has named Brian Seemann VP of its Wireless Products Group. Seemann brings more than 19 years of electronic industry experience to the company.
* ANADIGICS Inc. has appointed Barak Maoz VP and managing director of European operations. Previously, Maoz was VP, amplifier products. The company also named Ali Khatibzadeh VP, power amplifier products to replace Maoz. Previously, Khatibzadeh was director of technology at Ericsson's American Standards business unit.
* Advanced Hardware Architectures (AHA) has named Jeff Presley VP, business development. Presley joins the company from World Wide Packets, where he was also in business development.
* Timothy M. Shroyer has been promoted to the new position of VP, new business development for TriPoint Global Communications. Shroyer was formerly VP, systems engineering at the company's VertexRSI facility.
* Micro Networks Corp. has appointed Geofferey Key director of North American sales. Most recently, Key
* Timothy M. Shroyerwas the senior VP of sales and marketing for the datacom and mobilecom markets at C&M Corp. In addition, the company has named Ken Mazerolle SAW R&D engineering technician. Mazerolle joins the company from Vectron International.
* Narda has appointed Thomas O'Rourke to regional sales manager. In this position, O'Rourke will provide technical and sales support for the company's international customers and sales representatives.
* EMS Technologies has named Willliam P. Reiner director of military space business development and Nick A. Fuhrman director of NASA business development. Both men will report to Paul R. Cox, VP and general manager of the EMS Space & Technology Group Atlanta.
* Micro Networks Corp. has appointed Johan Welgemoed and David Audette senior microwave design engineers. Both men have extensive microwave design experience.
* Racal Instruments has appointed Jack Pouchet as its new marketing director. Prior to joing the company, Pouchet was the director of sales and marketing at Switching Systems International.
* Quad Systems Corp. has named Frank E. Gordon senior manager, technical support. Gordon has more
* Jack Pouchetthan 20 years of experience in the semiconductor industry and most recently served as production manager at Quad.
* Ramon Martinez has been promoted to operations manager for the J.W. Miller Division of Bell Industries Inc. Martinez has been with Bell Industries for more than 20 years and, most recently, was the Lawson (ERP) business manager.
* Robinson Nugent Inc. has named Mark Murphy plant manager for its Dallas manufacturing plant. Murphy was promoted from his previous position of assembly manager at the same facility.
* RIFOCS Corp. has completed the setup of its Beijing, China office with the naming of Cheng Yuan as country manager. Yuan will oversee the local fiber-optic test and measurement instruments distributor network and post-sales activities.
REP APPOINTMENTS
* IFR Systems Inc., Wichita, KS, has been named the exclusive reseller for Hameg Instruments, Frankfurt, Germany, in the US and Canada. The arrangement gives Hameg a wider distribution in North America and fills out IFR's offerings with a line of reliable, cost-effective test equipment.
* PCB Engineering Inc., a manufacturer of printed circuit boards, has signed Microwave Component Sources, Sorrento, FL, as its sales representative in that state.
* BCP (Bird Component Products), Largo, FL, has appointed two companies to represent its line of attenuator, loads, power divider/combiners and couplers. Matrix Controls Corp. will cover Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. Wes Tech Associates will cover Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois.
WEB SITE
* Microwave Journal has entered into a partnership with TestMart to provide feature articles and industry news in the Microwave Journal Corner on www.testmart.com and provide links from its own site at www.mwjournal.com.