October 2005

Product sales for the quarter increased 39% over the prior-year to $2.02 million from $1.45 million. Total revenue, consisting of product sales and contract research and development revenue, declined 1% to $3.05 million for the second quarter of fiscal 2006 compared to $3.10 million in the prior- year quarter.

Income before taxes for the quarter was $592,505 or $0.13 per diluted share, compared to $423,298 or $0.09 per diluted share for the prior- year quarter. After the effect of a provision for income taxes of $228,537, net income for the second quarter of fiscal 2006 was $363,968 or $0.08 per diluted share.

Silicon Laude, a startup fabless semiconductor company, has developed an integrated circuit comprising two 8051 8-bit microcontrollers and a cryptographic engine that can interface directly with Freescale’s MR2A16A 4-Mbit (256k x16) MRAMs.

The chip, packaged in a 144-ball FBGA, is suitable for such applications as financial data terminals, personal identification number (PIN) pads, and similar applications, the company said. A lower-cost, non-secure SL80C051-2002 device is also available for general-purpose 8051 multi-controller applications that do not require such a high level of security.

Both devices are based on a parallel pipeline architecture that is capable of instruction execution speeds of up to 25-MIPs when used with one or more 20-nanosecond access time, Freescale MR2A16A MRAMs.
Silicon Laude, formed in 2005, is accepting orders now for delivery in the first quarter of 2006. The SL80C051-2001 is priced at $60.00 per device, while the SL80C051-2002 is priced at $45.00, both in 100-unit quantities. The company said it is prepared to consider customizing the dual-8051 for orders of 1000 units or more.

In an effort to someday profit off of the manufacturer of surface-conduction electron-emitter display or SED devices, Canon yesterday bought 53.9% of NEC Machinery and all of NEC Machinery’s shares in Anelva Corp., a subsidiary of NEC Corp. Anelva is a japanese company that manufactures major equipment for the fabrication of semiconductors and LCDs using vacuum technology. Anelva developed a 200- to 300-mm-wafer-compliant deposition (sputtering) equipment for MRAM, the C-7100, using their unique low-pressure plasma deposition technique.

A $5.8 million project to develop a 300mm production tool for MRAM will kick off this month in the United Kingdom after a year’s delay.
The funding is part of the first round of awards from the Government’s Micro and Nanotechnology Manufacturing (MNT) initiative.

NVE Corporation announced today that it has been awarded additional funding by the U.S. Navy's Office of Naval Research (ONR) to continue the development of deep sub-micron Vertical Transport Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory (VMRAM).
The funding will be used by NVE to test and optimize VMRAM cell fabrication methods. The funding is under an ONR program announced by NVE in May 2003, and brings total funding under the ONR VMRAM program to more than $600,000. The ONR VMRAM program is one of a number of Department of Defense contracts awarded to NVE for the development of MRAM.

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