Business briefs

28 Nov 2003

Including news from Intel, Cree, Jobin Yvon, International SEMATECH and more.

•  Intel, US, says it has built fully functional static random-access memory (SRAM) chips using its 65 nm technology. The company says this process will allow it to double the number of transistors that it can build on a single chip. Intel added that it is on track to put this technology into production in 2005 using 300 mm wafers.

•  Cree, US, says that it has reached an agreement with Eric and Jocelyn Hunter over a lawsuit that they filed last summer. Eric Hunter, Cree’s former CEO and the brother of current Cree chairman Neal Hunter, filed a lawsuit against Cree in June alleging that he had been defamed by the firm. As a result of the agreement, the lawsuit has now been dropped and Eric and his wife, Jocelyn, are barred from suing Cree again in the future.

•  Jobin Yvon (JY) has acquired fellow UK firm IBH for an undisclosed sum. IBH makes time-correlated single photon counting spectroscopy systems. JY says that it is now the only firm supplying both frequency and time-domain fluorescence lifetime spectrometers.

•  The University of Potsdam in Germany has signed an exclusive license agreement with Sacher Lasertechnik, a German maker of high-power tunable diode lasers. Under the terms of the agreement, Sacher will have full access to a Potsdam patent describing an external cavity set-up that produces a diffraction-limited beam. Sacher now plans to launch a Raman laser product line based on this technology in 2005.

•  International SEMATECH is forming a consortium to help semiconductor manufacturers reduce cost-per-wafer and cost-per die. Called the International SEMATECH Manufacturing Initiative, the new subsidiary will begin operations on 1 January 2004.

•  UK-based distributor Pro-Lite Technology is relocating its headquarters to Cranfield Technology Park, near Milton Keynes, UK. The firm hopes to complete the move by 5 January 2004. Pro-Lite distributes lasers, safety eyewear and optical radiation measurement kit to both the scientific and industrial markets in the UK and the Repulic of Ireland.