Industry News
NTT DoCoMo, Renesas, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi Electric, Sharp, and Sony Ericsson to Jointly Develop Platform for 3G Mobile Phone Handsets
Representatives of NTT DoCoMo, Inc., Renesas Technology Corp., Fujitsu Limited, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Sharp Corporation, and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications announced that they plan to jointly develop a next-generation mobile phone platform for dual-mode handsets supporting HSDPA/W-CDMA (3G) and GSM/GPRS/EDGE (2G). Development of the platform is targeted to complete during Q2, FY2008 (July-September).
The six companies agreed to the joint development project in an effort to provide a platform with advanced functionality for 3G mobile phones. The new platform will be based on the SH-Mobile G3, a single-chip system LSI which implements a baseband processor supporting HSDPA cat. 8/W-CDMA and GSM/GPRS/EDGE communications and an application processor with high-end multimedia functions, together with a reference design integrating audio, power supply, and RF front-end modules. The platform will also include common software for basic functions, including a sophisticated operating system such as Symbian, device drivers, middleware, and communication software.
NTT DoCoMo and Renesas have already jointly developed the SH-Mobile G1, a first-generation single-chip LSI for dual-mode handsets supporting W-CDMA and GSM/GPRS. The SH-Mobile G1 is now in mass production and handsets built around it first appeared on the market in the fall of 2006. The second-generation successor, the SH-Mobile G2, and a mobile phone platform integrating core software are currently under development by NTT DoCoMo, Renesas, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi Electric, and Sharp. (Handsets employing the G2 are scheduled to appear in the fall of 2007.)
By implementing the platform as a base system, mobile phone manufacturers Fujitsu, Mitsubishi Electric, Sharp, and Sony Ericsson can eliminate the need to develop common handset functions. This will significantly reduce development time and costs, allowing the manufacturers to invest more time and resources in developing distinctive handset features and expanding their product portfolio.
Renesas plans to provide the platform to the worldwide W-CDMA market, in addition to customers in Japan, aiming to further reduce costs.
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Italian Insurance Giant Fondiaria-Sai Signs $463 Million IT Services Agreement with EDS
Representatives of EDS and Fondiaria-Sai Insurance Group, Italy's second largest and one of the country's oldest insurance companies, announced a new, 10-year, $463 million agreement, signed in December 2006, for information technology (IT) infrastructure management services.
Fondiaria-Sai Insurance Group (the group), which consists of more than 100 companies and subsidiaries offering insurance, financial services and asset management as well as real estate, agricultural and other services, selected EDS to improve the Group's productivity and help enable the flexibility needed to grow and meet market requirements. As the group grows, its needs for secure, scalable support for connecting with its companies and subsidiaries also expand.
With this agreement, EDS will fully manage and maintain the group's IT infrastructure, resulting in reduced costs and modernized IT processes and foundation. This consists of the Group's mainframe and midrange computer server environment of approximately 500 midrange servers across Italy. EDS will also manage the company's communications network, transform its core software applications development, and manage and provide helpdesk support for the group's desktop computers for more than 5,000 employee users.
As a part of the agreement, EDS and Fondiaria-Sai Group will form a joint venture called Fondiaria-SAI Servizi Tecnologici s.r.l.
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Intel Research Chip Advances 'Era Of Tera'
Intel Corporation researchers have developed the world's first programmable processor that delivers supercomputer-like performance from a single, 80-core chip not much larger than the size of a finger nail while using less electricity than most of today's home appliances. This is the result of the company's innovative 'Tera-scale computing' research aimed at delivering Teraflop -- or trillions of calculations per second --performance for future PCs and servers. Technical details of the Teraflop research chip will be presented at the annual Integrated Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) this week in San Francisco.
Tera-scale performance, and the ability to move terabytes of data, will play a pivotal role in future computers with ubiquitous access to the Internet by powering new applications for education and collaboration, as well as enabling the rise of high-definition entertainment on PCs, servers and handheld devices. For example, artificial intelligence, instant video communications, photo-realistic games, multimedia data mining and real-time speech recognition - once deemed as science fiction in Star Trek shows - could become everyday realities.
Intel has no plans to bring this exact chip designed with floating point cores to market. However, the company's Tera-scale research is instrumental in investigating new innovations in individual or specialized processor or core functions, the types of chip-to-chip and chip-to-computer interconnects required to best move data and most importantly, how software will need to be designed to best leverage multiple processor cores. This Teraflop research chip offered specific insights in new silicon design methodologies, high-bandwidth interconnects and energy management approaches.
The first time Teraflop performance was achieved was in 1996, on the ASCI Red Supercomputer built by Intel for the Sandia National Laboratory. That computer took up more than 2000 square feet, was powered by nearly 10,000 Pentium Pro processors, and consumed over 500 kilowatts of electricity. Intel's research chip achieves this same performance on a multi-core chip that could rest on the tip of a finger.
Also remarkable is that this 80-core research chip achieves a teraflop of performance while consuming only 62 watts - less than many single-core processors today.
The chip features an innovative tile design in which smaller cores are replicated as "tiles," making it easier to design a chip with many cores. With Intel's discovery of new and robust materials to build future transistors and no immediate end in sight for Moore's Law, this lays a path to manufacture multi-core processors with billions of transistors more efficiently in the future.
The Teraflop chip also features a mesh-like "network-on-a-chip" architecture allowing super high bandwidth communications between the cores, and capable of moving Terabits of data per second inside the chip. The research also investigated methods to power cores on and off independently, so only the ones needed to complete a task are used, providing more energy efficiency.
Further Tera-scale research will focus on the addition of 3-D stacked memory to the chip as well as developing more sophisticated research prototypes with many general-purpose Intel Architecture-based cores. Today, the Intel Tera-scale Computing Research Program has over 100 projects underway that explore other architectural, software and system design challenges.
Intel is presenting eight other papers at ISSCC, including one which will cover the Intel CoreTM micro-architecture and its use in dual and quad core processors spanning laptops to desktop PCs and servers, using both 65nm and revolutionary 45nm process technologies. Other papers cover such topics as a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) reader transceiver chip, a low power cache for mobile applications, a reconfigurable Viterbi accelerator, as well as novel circuits for on-die supply resonance suppression, on-chip phase-noise measurement and adaptive techniques for variations and aging.
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Lockheed Martin Awarded $186 Million Contract to Upgrade P-3C Maritime Surveillance Aircraft Mission Systems for Pakistan Navy
The U.S. Navy's Naval Air Systems Command has awarded Lockheed Martin a $186.5 million Foreign Military Sale contract to continue providing mission system upgrades and sustainment work for seven P-3C Orion maritime surveillance aircraft for the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
Lockheed Martin will continue to support the Pakistan Navy's P-3C Upgrade Program, which began in March 2006. Lockheed Martin has delivered one upgraded surveillance aircraft, which was inducted into the Pakistan Navy in January. A second aircraft is expected to join the fleet in March. The modified P-3Cs will further enhance the Pakistan Navy's capabilities to conduct maritime surveillance in littoral and deep water environments, supporting anti-ship and anti-submarine warfare operations.
As prime contractor to the U.S. Navy's Naval Air Systems Command, Lockheed Martin is the mission system integrator for the P-3C aircraft's mission avionics, including surveillance sensors, acoustic sensors, weapons control, communications, survivability, displays, and controls. The P-3C weapons system is the primary maritime surveillance aircraft operated by the U.S. Navy and 17 international allies.
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General Dynamics Awarded $43 Million Contract for Submarine Support Work
The U.S. Navy has awarded General Dynamics Electric Boat a $43.3 million contract modification for planning yard work, engineering and technical support for nuclear submarines. Electric Boat is a wholly owned subsidiary of General Dynamics.
Under the terms of this modification, Electric Boat will provide support for submarine research, development, test and evaluation. Initially awarded in March 2004, the contract could be worth more than $1.1 billion over five years if all options are exercised and funded.
Work performed under this modification is expected to be completed by February 2009.
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IBM, AMD and Novell Team on Linux Offering for Informix Dynamic Server
Representatives of IBM announced that it is teaming with AMD and Novell to create an integrated Linux offering built around IBM's next generation Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) data server, code-named "Cheetah." IBM also revealed that Cheetah has now entered an open beta testing for customers and business partners.
The new Linux offering will combine IDS Cheetah, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell and IBM xSeries 3105 highly-scalable servers powered by second-generation AMD Opteron 1000 Series processors to provide new availability and security features in a low cost solution to help small and medium businesses (SMBs) meet their critical needs.
Scheduled for release in 2007, IDS Cheetah is designed to offer new capabilities to help customers meet their changing data management goals by enabling users to extract more value from their business information.
Cheetah features significant enhancements to application development that are aimed at helping customers accelerate time-to-value for new applications and in porting existing applications to IDS. Cheetah also will offer extended support for applications collaboration and integration for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Also included in the new version will be enhanced support for hierarchical data structures, built-in flexible text searches unstructured documents and enhanced support for datatypes support for distributed queries across multiple IDS instances.
Early Cheetah customers include ProSiebenSat.1 Produktion, the technology competence center of Germany's largest private television company the ProSiebenSat.1 Group, who plan to utilize the next-generation IDS data server to help manage their comprehensive range of TV, mobile and multimedia production services. With the IDS software simplifying and automating many database management tasks, the company is able to employ only three database administrators.
IDS is a strategic element of IBM's Information Management software portfolio and delivers exceptionally fast OLTP performance, high reliability and low cost administration. IDS is a leading integrated data server in many market segments such as retail, telecommunications, healthcare, government, banking/finance, entertainment, and SMB. IDS also delivers a broad spectrum of high availability features to ensure business continuity for customers from SMB businesses to global enterprises. The continued popularity and use of IDS is illustrated by the fact that in North America alone, eight of the top ten retailers and twenty of the top twenty-five supermarkets use IDS.
The new IDS Cheetah Linux bundle is expected to be available through the ValueNet business partner program beginning in 2007. Specific terms on the program are being worked out and will be announced at product launch.
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Dell Announces New Global Operations Organization with Responsibility For All Manufacturing, Procurement and Supply Chain Activities Worldwide
Representatives of Dell announced Wednesday the appointment of Michael R. Cannon to serve as President, Global Operations, effective February 26, 2007. Mr. Cannon, who was most recently President and Chief Executive Officer of Solectron Corporation, will report to Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO of Dell Inc.
Cannon will lead a new global organization that will combine all of Dell's manufacturing, procurement and supply chain activities. These activities for the Americas, EMEA and Asia Pacific/Japan will report to Mr. Cannon.
Dell has nine manufacturing plants in five countries, including the U.S., and will soon add new plants in Poland, India and Brazil to meet the growing needs of customers in emerging markets.
Cannon, who has more than 25 years of manufacturing and technology experience, was previously president and CEO and a director of Solectron Corporation, a leading global provider of electronics manufacturing services. Prior to joining Solectron, he was President, CEO and director of Maxtor Corporation (now part of Seagate), a leading global provider of hard-disk drives and storage systems. Cannon also worked at IBM's Storage Systems Division and began his career at The Boeing Company, where he held engineering and manufacturing positions.
Cannon studied mechanical engineering at Michigan State University and currently serves on the boards of Adobe Systems, Seagate Technology and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. He is also a member of the U.S. Business Roundtable serving on the International Trade and Investments Task Force.
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Raytheon Names Salvador Vice President for New Product Lines at Raytheon Technical Services Company LLC
Blaine A. Salvador has been named vice president of Mission Support Solutions and Integrated Range an Installation Solutions product lines for Raytheon Company's Raytheon Technical Services Company LLC (RTSC).
Mr. Salvador is responsible for the management and growth of the two product lines that are part of the new RTSC business unit named Integrated Support Services. He will report to David Dacquino, Integrated Support Services vice president and general manager, and will be located at RTSC's headquarters in Reston, Va.
Salvador joined Raytheon from Lockheed Martin Corp., where he served as the director of Logistics Solutions and was responsible for defining and growing the logistics business within the company's Information and Technology Services business area. Salvador was instrumental in the development of the defense and civil agency logistics market strategy and defining various market opportunities.
His career includes more than 17 years of supporting the U.S. Naval Nuclear Propulsion program and leading a commercial machine tool corporation. He holds a bachelor's of science degree in marine engineering systems from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy.
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SAP Names Christoph Liedtke Vice President of Global Media Relations
Representatives of SAP AG announced Monday the appointment of Christoph Liedtke as new vice president of Global Media Relations. Effective February 1, 2007, Mr. Liedtke is responsible for all global media relations activities for SAP, including business, finance, trade, technology media, as well as new and social media.
Based in Walldorf, Germany Liedtke reports directly to Herbert Heitmann, head of SAP Global Communications.
Liedtke joins SAP from Qimonda AG, the world's second-largest DRAM semiconductor company, where he served as head of global public relations. Qimonda was a part of Infineon Technologies AG until May 1, 2006, when it became its own entity.
Prior to this role, he was spokesperson for Infineon Technologies North America, based in San Jose/Silicon Valley, and responsible for all media relations and executive communication activities of the company in North America. Before his international assignment, he was director of public affairs for Infineon Technologies in Munich.
Liedtke holds a master's degree in political science from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in the United States.
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3M Expands its Medical Diagnostics Platform with Acquisition of Acolyte Biomedica Ltd.
Representatives of 3M announced it has acquired Acolyte Biomedica Ltd., a Salisbury, U.K.-based provider of an automated microbial detection platform that aids in the rapid detection, diagnosis, and treatment of infectious diseases.
Early detection of dangerous microbes is becoming more important as multiple resistant bacteria strains become more prevalent. Acolyte Biomedica helps hospitals control high-risk infections through improved screening and targeted treatment of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a type of bacteria that is resistant to certain antibiotics and occurs most frequently in hospital patients who have weakened immune systems.
Acolyte Biomedica brings to 3M's infection prevention platform a pipeline of rapid culture-based screening tests for microbes, such as MRSA and vancomycin-resistant enterococcus (VRE), that simplify the diagnostic process by automating traditional culture methodology resulting in reliable confirmed 'negatives' in hours rather than days. The addition of Acolyte Biomedica allows 3M to expand more quickly into the emerging market of infection prevention diagnostics, especially in Europe where Acolyte Biomedica has commercialized product for MRSA. Now, 3M will be able to provide customers around the world with rapid, easy-to-use microbial diagnostics that help to reduce the impact of resistant microbes and improve hospital laboratory efficiency.
Complementary acquisitions such as this support both 3M's core business and growth strategy to expand into adjacent markets. 3M's long-standing infection prevention platform offers innovative solutions to help reduce the risk of healthcare-associated infections. 3M's infection prevention portfolio includes diagnostic testing, sterilization assurance, skin preparation, sterile field and surface, wound management and environmental cleaning.
Acolyte Biomedica employs 13 people at its facility in Salisbury, U.K.
