Freescale Semiconductor, the chip manufacturer taken private in 2006, was expected to announce yesterday that it will join with several venture capital firms to spin off a unit that focuses on a newer kind of computer memory.
The new entity, EverSpin Technologies, comes as Freescale seeks to pare its product line.
Freescale will give its portfolio of a memory technology called MRAM to EverSpin and hold a stake in the new company, the companies involved said. A group of outside firms, including New Venture Partners, Sigma Partners, Lux Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Epic Ventures, will invest a total of about US$20 million, they said.
MRAM, which stands for magnetoresistive random access memory and has been in development since the 1990s, is intended to improve on current memory technology because it uses less power than conventional designs and is considered more stable. But it is not widely used yet.
“MRAM technology is one of our crown jewel technologies,” Lisa Su, Freescale’s chief technology officer, said.
Plans for the spinoff began about six months ago, as Freescale began talking with Lux Capital about a way to commercialize its MRAM technology. Memory technology is not Freescale’s core business, Su said, and while the company had not considered selling the MRAM unit outright, it and Lux had hit upon the spinoff as a possible solution.
But it also comes amid a tougher time for the chipmaker, which was acquired for US$17.6 billion in 2006 by a consortium of private equity firms. Since then, demand for its products from Motorola, its onetime parent, and from automakers has fallen, and it is coping with the debt added after its leveraged buyout.
Su said the new venture was not linked to financial troubles at Freescale.
The National Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology yesterday showcased its locally developed variants of the Vision 60 robotic patrol dog, which it plans to deploy on the nation’s outlying territories in the South China Sea. The variants were produced under the Joint Lab project — created by the institute and domestic companies — and assembled with domestically produced motors, lenses and artificial intelligence (AI) systems alongside licensed tech from the US, Missile and Rocket Systems Research Division deputy director Jen Kuo-kang (任國光) told the media event at a military base in Taipei’s Dazhi (大直) area. Taiwan has built up its strengths
RIGHT DIRECTION: Taiwan’s efforts to prevent forced labor include a proposal to ‘fully prohibit’ employers from withholding workers’ documents, an official said Taiwan is to establish a mechanism to restrict imports of goods linked to forced labor, the Executive Yuan said yesterday, after the US proposed imposing additional tariffs on Taiwanese goods over labor concerns. “The Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Economic Affairs are to establish an interministerial review procedure,” Executive Yuan spokesperson Michelle Lee (李慧芝) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “The government is to use the Foreign Trade Act [貿易法] as the legal basis to restrict imports of goods produced with forced labor” and bring its supply chain governance more in line with international standards on human rights, resilience
NOT IMMEDIATE: Taiwan has a chance to appeal the proposed 10 percent tariff before it starts, while other countries face a 12.5 percent tariff from the trade office Taiwan is among 60 economies determined by the US to have failed to impose or enforce a ban on the importation of goods produced with forced labor, according to a notice released on Tuesday by the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), which proposed imposing an additional 10 percent or more tariff on them. The USTR in a statement said that following an investigation, it had determined under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 that the failure of the 60 economies to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor is
TIT-FOR-TAT: The US allegedly revoked the visa of a Chinese national working at Xinhua News Agency in the US in response to Beijing’s expulsion of Vivian Wang The Presidential Office yesterday condemned China for expelling a New York Times correspondent from Beijing following the newspaper’s interview with President William Lai (賴清德), saying the move highlighted Beijing’s suppression of press freedom and its threat to international news media. Taiwan has noted a series of recent incidents in which Beijing used similar tactics to “threaten and pressure international media outlets and journalists,” Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said in a statement. “This concerns not only press freedom and freedom of expression, but also the safety of journalists, and Taiwan and relevant partners are paying close attention to the situation,” she
RSS