AlgolTek's digniPHY for USB 3.0 is a Physical Layer IP compliant with the USB 3.0 specification, and is backward compatible to support 3rd party or customers' proprietary USB 2.0 IP that is USB 2.0 specification compliant.

Uniquify has become a TSMC Design Center Alliance (DCA) partner.

MStar has licensed the ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore and ARM926EJ-S processors, in addition to a range of ARM system IP for use in smart TVs, set-top boxes (STBs) and smartphones. MStar is already a licensee of the ARM Mali-400 MP GPU, which is used in mass production for MStar smart-TV system-on-chip (SoC) solutions.

UMC has certified Synopsys' StarRC parasitic extraction solution for its latest 28nm process technologies, according to the EDA and IP vendor.

Faraday will optimize a complete IP portfolio for UMC processes ranging from 0.11-micron to 28nm nodes to help mutual customers shorten their SoC design time-to-market for a variety of applications.

Synopsys has completed the acquisition of nSys Design Systems, a provider of verification IP.

"If you get a buyer who is a significant part of the ecosystem, in which they already play a part, it is likely that they would be excluding part of the market and therefore diminishing part of the value of ARM...

ARM sounded a note of caution about electronic goods sales this Christmas, even as it announced a better-than-expected second quarter in which its technology, already dominant in smartphones and tablets, was licensed for more and more uses.

Imagination Technologies, which designs microchips used in Apple's iPad and iPhone, has doubled its forecast for chip shipments. By 2016, the company expects more than 1bn will be shipped a year, up from a previous forecast of 500m.

This acquisition will expand the breadth of Rambus' breakthrough technologies available for licensing with complementary technologies from CRI that include patented innovations and solutions for content protection, network security, anti-counterfeiting and financial services.

"Shares of MIPS are selling off today because ARM announced a subscription license agreement with Broadcom," said Gary Mobley, an analyst with The Benchmark Company, in a report. "Because of Broadcom's heavy use of MIPS cores, Broadcom is MIPS' largest customer. We estimate Broadcom's royalties paid to MIPS represent 35% of MIPS' royalty revenue, or 15% of total revenue."

Speculation ARM could become a takeover target is misguided and ignores the importance of the chip designer staying independent, ARM's president said.

Net income for the fourth quarter of 2010 was US$33.1 million as compared to net losses of US$20.6 million in the prior quarter and losses of US$23.3 million a year ago. Net profits for 2010 were US$150.9 million, compared to losses of US$92.2 million in 2009.

As reported, Unity recently ousted its chief executive and the company is moving from a fab to an IP model, according to sources. Unity has reportedly been on the block. And a fab alliance with Fujitsu has reportedly fallen through.

The agreement extends access for ARM to assure early time-to-market readiness of the necessary platform of physical and processor IP solutions for nodes ranging from 20nm through 14nm.

The Certitude software enables engineers to raise the quality of verification environments and IP design components required to develop microcontroller unit solutions for automotive electronics applications.

With the acquisition of Avalon Microelectronics, Altera is allowed to expand its portfolio of customizable IP solutions for OTN (Optical Transport Network) applications, supporting data rates at 1.2G, 2.5G and 10G, as well as 40G and 100G.

Nokia and HTC said they persuaded a court to void parts of a mobile phone patent that IP holding company IPCom GmbH claimed the two device makers infringed.

With this arrangement, Samsung Electronics gains access to Intellectual Ventures' patent portfolio, which includes IP in a variety of segments "critical" to Samsung's business operations.

ARM shares, up 120% since the start of 2010, fell to their lowest in nearly two months after a statement overnight from Texas Instruments that end-demand for chips could be weakening.

"With the Embedded Initiative, Altera is enabling designers in markets such as automotive, industrial, military and wireless to easily leverage a rich ecosystem of processor, OS and IP support all through a single design flow, and to reduce overall system cost..."

Adesto Technologies, a memory startup funded by Applied Materials and others, is readying its first conductive-bridging random access memory (CBRAM) product. CBRAM is seen as a potential candidate to replace conventional flash memory. Other candidates include FRAM, MRAM, phase-change and RRAM.

ARM has reiterated that it wouldn't make sense for a rival to purchase the company after shares rose on takeover speculation.

APT has developed ways to improve the quality of audio delivered over bluetooth wireless connections. Its technologies are also widely used in professional audio and broadcasting.

ARM, the UK's largest technology company by market value, declined to raise its full-year 2010 outlook in spite of beating market expectations with its first-half results.

The solution features Altera's low-cost Cyclone III or Cyclone IV FPGAs, and IP from Eyelytics and Apical supporting AltaSens' 1080p60 A3372E3-4T and Aptina's 720p60 MT9M033 HD wide dynamic range (WDR) CMOS image sensors.

ARM is more valuable as a standalone company and a buyer would be wasting money, said company CEO Warren East. The chip designer rose last week to an eight-year high on takeover talk.

ARM CEO Warren East said the company was planning to hire about 100 more engineers in 2010 - the first headcount additions for four years - mainly to work on high-end processors that are used in smartphones and netbooks.

Apple has bought Intrinsity, the Texas-based chip outfit that (supposedly) played a role in the design of the chip driving the iPad.

Currently, Apple pays royalties for ARM's chip designs used in its products. If the company acquired ARM, it could conceivably raise licensing costs to rivals or even take ARM designs off the market.

Avago Technologies has filed a patent infringement lawsuit in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas against STMicroelectronics, alleging that certain STMicroelectronics products infringe four of Avago's patents covering optical navigation technology.

Representatives from GlobalFoundries and TSMC said their companies are focused on tighter cooperation with EDA and IP vendors. The comments were part of a panel discussion at the Design, Automation and Test in Europe (DATE) conference, held last week in Dresden, Germany.

The company, which receives licensing fees from patents of its memory chip designs, lost US$23.3 million compared with a loss of US$15.5 million in fourth-quarter 2008.

Google's struggles here - wrestling both with political compromises and with threats to its intellectual property - raise the question: How much hassle are China's consumers worth?

Tessera Technologies, which licenses miniaturization technology for electronic devices, has said its fourth-quarter revenues were going to fall below its previous guidance due to lower royalties.

Rambus Technology has posted a net loss of US$27.5 million in the third quarter compared to losses of US$24.0 million in the second quarter and US$30.9 million a year ago.

IBM has struck its second major chip deal in China, leaving some to wonder if Big Blue is handing over technology to that nation without thinking about the possible consequences. Thanks to IBM, the Chinese foundry vendor will ramp the 45nm technology in 2010 - a possible bad sign for its rivals.