Atheros to acquire GPS chip maker u-Nav
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Silicon vendor Atheros Communications has agreed to acquire u-Nav Microelectronics, a GPS chip maker, for approximately $54 million in cash and stock, the companies announced after the close of trading Thursday.As GPS becomes part of the toolkit users are looking for in networked devices, Atheros wants to add that technology to its lineup. Customers of Atheros put its Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips into notebooks, dual-mode phones, and other products.&quot;GPS is something that these guys were asking us for,&quot; said Atheros CFO Jack Lazar.Broadcom, a rival of Atheros, acquired GPS chipset maker Global Locate earlier this year. Atheros chose u-Nav because it makes a single-chip GPS system using CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor), a standard technology that has been key to Atheros&#39; own success in Wi-Fi, Lazar said. Using CMOS has helped to reduce the size and lower the cost of many types of chips.Privately held u-Nav was founded in 2001 and is based in Irvine, California. Its approximately 54 employees will join Atheros but remain in Irvine and at u-Nav&#39;s European engineering facility in Tampere, Finland, Lazar said. Greg Winner, CEO of u-Nav, will become the head of Atheros&#39; GPS business following the close of the deal, expected this month. Atheros is based in Santa Clara, California.Although GPS is an obvious fit for cell phones, there are many reasons to put it in other devices too, Lazar said. For example, GPS in a notebook PC could be used by enterprises to track the PC, and a notebook with built-in GPS could serve as a personal navigation device without any external hardware. UMPC (ultramobile PC) devices for specific purposes such as construction already have GPS built in, Lazar said.It should be possible in a year or two to integrate Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS in a single chip, though Atheros probably wouldn&#39;t do that unless a customer asked for it, Lazar said.
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Gizmondo Europe, the UK-based subsidiary of Jacksonville, Florida firm Tiger Telematics announced yesterday that a one year distribution agreement has been signed with United Electronics to distribute the Gizmondo GPS-based handheld gaming console
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Graphics-chip suppler ATI Technologies Inc. recently announced it would introduce 90-nm graphics chips in mid-2005 and contract foundry giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
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Onboard satnav data to replace scanning radar The US aviation regulator has selected ITT Corp to provide a new generation of GPS satnav-based air traffic control equipment, awarding a $207m, three-year initial contract.â¦
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SiS will next month join ATI, Nvidia and VIA in becoming a supplier of PCI Express chipsets for AMD processors. November will see the company commence volume production of its SiS761 North Bridge, which will
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European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company NV, the parent of aircraft maker Airbus, has acquired US military electronics company Racal Instruments Inc.
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Siemens (Quote, Chart) will acquire wireless LAN technology player Chantry Networks to fill out its HiPath lineup, executives said Thursday.
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(InfoWorld) - Satellite navigation boxes using the GPS (global positioning system) are no longer the preserve of luxury car owners in Europe. Now you see them in the humblest vehicles on the Continent's highways. That's part of the reason why the European Commission Wednesday proposed taking on the entire â¬3.4 billion ($4.7 billion) cost of creatingÂ Galileo, Europe's answer to GPS, which is based in the U.S. "Do consumers really want this product? To answer that you must ask why consumers like GPS so much," said transport commissioner Jacques Barrot at a press conference Wednesday. "Consumers are answering the question by buying more and more GPSes," he said. "Galileo will make money, and with the E.U. as its owner, it will generate income for the E.U. budget." Barrot's confidence wasn't shared earlier this year byÂ the companies picked to share the cost and benefitsÂ of building the 30-strong constellation of satellites. Unsure of the costs and unconvinced of Galileo's eventual commercial potential, theÂ companies dragged their feetÂ to a point in June where the Commission abandoned the partnership with the private sector. Under the original plan, public money was supposed to pay for the first four satellites and then the private consortium of companies building the satellites were to pay for two-thirds of the 26 remaining satellites. This amounted to a private sector cost of â¬2.4 billion. The companies -- AENA, Alcatel-Lucent, EADS, Finmeccanica, Hispasat, Inmarsat, TeleOp, and Thales -- were to recoup their investment costs by then operating the satellites and collecting fees once they were in operation. Barrot said Wednesday that the Commission wants the â¬2.4 billion to be paid for out of European Union funds. The E.U. has already committed â¬1 billion to the project. He said that he initially wanted the 27 member states of the E.U. to fill the funding gap through payments directly to the European Space Agency (ESA). But as 10 countries in the E.U. aren't members of the ESA this was dismissed, leaving the E.U. budget as the only possibility for ensuring that the project is financed. With the E.U. as the sole owner of Galileo, it will still need companies from a variety of industries to build the system's infrastructure, Barrot said. Astrium (EADS group) and Thales Alenia Space (Thales and Finmeccanica groups) approached the ESA for some of this work recently, the commissioner said. "Galileo is extremely important for the strategic autonomy of Europe. We can't let this opportunity to manage the know-how in this advanced technology pass," Barrot said. Transportation ministers of the E.U. member states will meet in Luxembourg on Oct. 2 to debate the Commission's proposal. Countries with most to gain from the project include France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. They are believed to support the Commission. However, others including the U.K. and the Netherlands, remain to be convinced that there is a real need for a European GPS. Separately, U.S. president George W. Bush said in a statement issued by the U.S. mission to the E.U. Wednesday, that he will stop the GPS signal from being interrupted or degraded by military purposes. One of the main justifications for launching Galileo was that GPS is ultimately at the mercy of the U.S. Department of Defense, and could be jammed for strategic reasons, potentially endangering private users' lives. Galileo is intended to be purely for civilian use. However, the U.S. recently has taken steps to assure GPS users that they can count on the system. "President George W. Bush has accepted a recommendation to end procurement of Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites that have the capability to intentionally degrade the accuracy of civil signals," the White House press secretary said in a statement Tuesday. Although the U.S. stopped the intentional degradation of GPS satellite signals in May 2000, this new action will result in the removal of "Selective Availability" capabilities, thereby eliminating a source of uncertainty in GPS performance that has been of concern to civil GPS users worldwide. This decision reflects the nation's commitment to GPS users that this free global utility can be counted on to support peaceful civil activities around the world, the statement said.
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Advanced Micro Devices Inc. said Monday it will pay $5.4 billion to acquire top graphics chip maker ATI Technologies Inc., as Intel Corp.'s biggest rival in the market for personal-computer microprocessors attempts to expand its product portfolio.
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TomTom, the world's No. 1 maker of personal navigation devices, has increased its bid to $4.2 billion in cash for digital map provider Tele Atlas. TomTom announced it would immediately begin purchasing and acquiring 25.8 million Tele Atlas shares, which represent about 28.3 percent of the software provider's share capital.
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Upcoming chip set will support 802.11a, b, and g networks.
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ATI Technologies Inc. (TSX:ATY, NASDAQ:ATYT), a world leader in the design and manufacture of innovative 3D graphics and digital media silicon solutions, today announced that PCI Express (PCIe)-enabled graphics
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(InfoWorld) - One of Europe's largest shoe companies plans to embed wireless chips in shoes sold at hundreds of stores across the continent. Under a deal announced Friday, Checkpoint Systems will provide RenoÂ with RFID (radio frequency identification) tags and store tagging systems. The tagging specialist will deliver wafer-thin RFID chips designed especially for shoes from its Asian production facilities, in addition to systems that allow check-out clerks to quickly and easily deactivate tagged products. By having the tags integrated into it shoes, Reno aims to curb theft for both boxed products and those on display, as well as shoes customers try on in the stores. Reno has been using RFID technology to track product shipments from its factories to its stores for several years but has not yet used the technology to track individual products inside each store. The shoe company, based in Thaleischweiler-Froschen, Germany, operates more than 700 stores in 15 countries. It is a member of the Hamm-Reno-Group (HR Group), which has more than 1,700 outlets across Europe. Last year, Checkpoint Systems landed a deal with GermanÂ retail giant MetroÂ to supply RFID systems. The German retail giant, with more 2,300 supermarkets and wholesale, department and electronics stores, is collaborating with several IT companies, including IBM, Intel, and SAP, and more than 40 additional consumer goods and technology suppliers to develop RFID systems for the retail sector. RFID tagging is expected to be a main theme at this year's Cebit trade show, which begins March 15 in Hanover, Germany.
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GPS data from many thousands of vehicles helps support a real-time traffic reporting system from Inrix, which recently won a $5 million contract to help travelers along the East Coast's I-95 corridor.
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Global Tower Partners, a U.S. wireless  tower operator, is to be bought by a consortium of  infrastructure funds managed by members of Australia&#39;s  Macquarie Group.
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Access points for 802.11g wireless networks should become even cheaper next year after WLAN chip maker Atheros begins full-scale production of what it claims is the world&#39;s first &#39;base-station on a chip&#39; product.
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Built in GPS in N-series phones Nokia last week kicked off its plan to build GPS-based satellite navigation technology onto its N-series "multimedia computer" handsets with the acquisition of German route-planning software developer Gate5.â¦