Synopsys has announced that its Galaxy Design Platform enables 90% of the production tapeouts of FinFET-based designs.

Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore commented on the rumor that BLX IC Design is interested in acquiring Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and outlined some obstacles that may face a potential suitor for the company.

Lee Don-tae, former co-president of UK design consulting firm Tangerine, founded by Apple's Jony Ive, has been hired by Samsung Electronics as its new head of global design.

Globalfoundries has announced a partnership with Invecas, a newly formed design services provider focused on accelerating customer introduction of new products on leading-edge semiconductor process technologies.

Cadence Design Systems has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Forte Design Systems, a provider of SystemC-based high-level synthesis (HLS) and arithmetic IP.

ARM has opened a new Design Center in Noida, North India. The center will focus on IP design in specialized areas such as planar and FinFET CMOS technologies and address the growing needs of ARM partners.

Imagination Technologies will release a new CPU design in 2014 for low-power servers.

If Apple owned capacity at a fab, it would give the company the kind of control over both design and chip manufacturing that Intel has.

Cadence Design Systems has announced an ongoing multi-year agreement with TSMC to develop the design infrastructure for 16-nanometer FinFET technology, targeting advanced node designs for mobile, networking, servers and FPGA applications.

Lenovo, which has maintained a small IC design team consisting of about 10 people over the last decade, is now committed to expanding this team to about 100 engineers by the middle of 2013, according to a China-based industry source with direct knowledge of the company's recruitment of chip designers.

Cadence Design Systems has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Tensilica, a leader in dataplane processing IP, for approximately US$380 million in cash.

Hoping to tame the blizzard of information that has turned off many users and discouraged some advertisers, Facebook on Thursday unveiled a major makeover of the home page that greets users when they log into the site.

SanDisk has announced that the iNAND Extreme Embedded Flash Drive (EFD) supports tablet reference designs based on the Nvidia Tegra 4.

Samsung recently raised eyebrows by beefing up its team of Texas-based chip designers, including those whose backgrounds pointed to an interest in chips for server systems. Now one of the most prominent of those recruits has left the South Korean company for Apple.

The report continues, quoting an anonymous Samsung official speaking about the A6 chip. "Apple did all the design and we are just producing the chips on a foundry basis." That's a change from the past, when Apple worked with Samsung on chip development and/or design.

The QFN package design kit enhances package modeling and simulation accuracy with Agilent's ADS electronic design automation (EDA) software for radio frequency (RF), microwave and high-speed digital applications for RF semiconductors.

Cadence Design Systems has announced that the first products in the Cadence DDR4 SDRAM PHY and memory controller design IP family have been proven in silicon on TSMC's 28HPM and 28HP process technologies.

DesignArt, based in Israel, focuses on small-cell modem and system design for cellular base stations and high-speed wireless infrastructure.

Samsung tablets do not infringe on a registered Apple design because "they are not as cool" and the Galaxy Tablets "do not have the same understated and extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design," a UK judge said in a ruling on Monday.

Socle Technology and Globalfoundries have announced the tape out of Socle's first ARM Cortex-A9 based 28nm ASIC design using Globalfoundries' 28nm super low power technology (SLP) technology with Gate First High-K Metal Gate (HKMG).

Lantiq has announced collaboration with Qualcomm Atheros, the networking and connectivity subsidiary of Qualcomm, to produce an advanced broadband home gateway reference design.

Cadence Design Systems has contributed to STMicroelectronics having taped out a 20-nanometer test chip, incorporating custom analog and digital methodologies to enable mixed-signal SoC design at this advanced process node.

At next week's DAC, Globalfoundries plans to demonstrate an enhanced silicon-validated design flow for its 28nm SLP technology with gate-first HKMG. The flow provides proven and complete front-to-back support for advanced analog/mixed-signal (AMS) design using the industry's latest design automation technology.

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

The California trial between Samsung and Apple is now headed for a scheduled start in late June, after the companies could find "no clear agreement," a Samsung official told The Korea Times. Both companies reportedly held firm in their respective beliefs, as Samsung believes Apple should pay royalties for using wireless transmission technology, while Apple believes Samsung copied the design of its iPhone and iPad.

When Apple launched the iPod nano, it attracted plenty of attention. While consumers swooned over its sleek design, analysts were more likely to hail it as a turning point for the storage industry.

A top Nvidia engineer is calling for a move to 450mm wafers as one part of the solution to the growing complexity, cost and time-to-market challenges in chip design.

Sean Chen, the new premier, said on Monday that Taiwan needed to move beyond export manufacturing to design, research and development - products should not only be made in Taiwan, but also designed by Taiwan.

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.

Leading electronic equipment manufacturers remained the center of the semiconductor world in 2011, accounting for US$105.6 billion of semiconductors on a design total available market basis - 35% of semiconductor vendors' worldwide chip revenue, according to Gartner.

ARM hopes for a serious impact on the server market starting in 2014 when its 64-bit processor design reaches the market, CEO Warren East said.

"It's inevitable Intel will get a few smartphone design wins - we regard Intel as a serious competitor," said ARM CEO Warren East in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. "Are they ever going to be the leaders in power efficiency? No, of course not. But they have a lot more to offer."

The acquisition is one of the most expensive for Apple since it acquired NeXT in 1996 - 15 years ago to the day, in fact-and should cement the company's strategic shift to solid-state flash storage for its products.

SpringSoft has announced immediate availability of the Laker Blitz chip-level layout editor, a new software product targeting chip finishing applications and the latest addition to its popular family of Laker custom IC design and layout automation solutions.