Apple buys chip maker Semiconductor Passive

Apple's acquisition of Passive Semiconductor, a California company specializing in the manufacture of low power radio chips. This could be linked with the future iWatch.
Apple has acquired Passive Semiconductor, a company specializing in the manufacture of low power radio chips for an undisclosed sum. This operation, which was revealed on the blog of the Wall Street Journal, was confirmed by the Cupertino company. The company acquired by Apple was founded in 2007 by Ben Cook and Axel Berny, who both studied electrical engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, according to their LinkedIn profiles. She raised  1.6 million $ in funding next year from Khosla Ventures, a well-known Silicon Valley investor founded by Vinod Khosla.

If Apple has confirmed the transaction, the firm declined to comment. Except the perennial "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time. We generally do not discuss our projects. "

This transaction follows investments chips, such as the acquisition of PA Semi in 2008, comes as Apple is widely believed to want to go beyond smartphones and tablets, creating other types of terminals which may require radio components, such as watches connected. Passive Semiconductor has several patents, as noted journalist Jessica Lessin including one called a Bluetooth LE, very promising on the terminal market monitoring health and fitness technology.

Nec threw in the towel in smartphones

The Japanese automaker announced the closure of its smartphone division to compete with iOS and Android

After Mitsubishi and Sanyo, a third Japanese manufacturer NEC, stop his adventure in smartphones. Japanese manufacturers are rolled by the surf and Samsung and Apple are not the way to independence. Operators and SoftBank KDI offer the iPhone, NTT Docomo favors Sony and Samsung.

Last fall, NEC had yet signed an agreement with Lenovo to produce and market all types of smartphones, it was terminated this joint-venture. NEC has only 5% of the domestic market and is absent elsewhere. The maintenance will be kept and NEC will continue to make more conventional phones and tablets.

"We were late to enter the smartphone market and we have been unable to develop attractive products" confessed Isamu Kawashima, CFO of NEC.

devices.

10 Cloud Computing terms you need to know

The term cloud computing induced about 90% of the population in a state of confusion. However, this should not be the case. With the help of this brief glossary, you will have no problem to sort your PaaS and IaaS your more ...

SaaS is a date acronym for Software as a Service. SaaS refers to cloud applications running on the Internet. The advantage of this is that do not have the cloud applications to install or run on the user's computer. Popular examples of SaaS email clients are web-based and on Twitter. Many people use the SaaS services without realizing it.

Marvell: a dedicated processor for Chromecast Google

Marvell processor specialist, is the company that the team Chromecast Google. Marvell already fitted to some models of Google TV with its Armada chip, and it is still a model in this range is the game.
 

Very good for video

Armada 1500 is a mini-ARM SoC that uses the core house Marvell, the PJ4B. This CPU is already used in the Armada 1500 classic offers - according Marvell - about the same performance as the ARM Cortex A9 (2.61 DMIPS / MHz against 2.5). It integrates with Vivante GPU (GC1000), rare but which is also found at Freescale. Marvell does not indicate the differences between the classic Armada 1500 (88DE3100) and Armada 1500-mini (88DE3005) but we can assume that it is slower and has only one core.