Intel + STMicroelectronics. Space Sight Deal

The field of digital technology and components is so large that it has corners where the average person’s feet have literally not gone. Only experts and amateur enthusiasts know that they live there for “bison” and “mammoths”, without worrying about their obscurity at all. One of the world's largest manufacturers of various chips for everything and everyone - the company STMicroelectronics resides in such a reserved corner. Why did she get a mention on the Intel blog? Read this small post to the end and realize that the reason is very significant for both parties.

Some time ago in our blog it was already told about one of the heroes of the “invisible front” - Applied Materials. It is thanks to its equipment that the implementation of Intel processors in silicon takes place. Here the case is a little different: STMicroelectronics is “hiding” in digital devices around us; until you open the case, you will not notice their presence. However, we started something wrong. Let's take it in order.

STMicroelectronics is one of the oldest manufacturers of chips and semiconductor components in the industry. If you wind off the entire series of acquisitions, mergers and acquisitions, of which the company’s history was abundant, and get to the bottom of the roots, it turns out that its history should be kept as early as 1957, and the founding father of STMicroelectronics can be considered none other than Adriano Olivetti . True, he, of course, did not know about it. If you don’t look into ancient times, then the official year of creation of STMicroelectronics is 1987, when a company with this name appeared as a result of the unification of the Italian SGS Microelettronica (Società Generale Semiconduttori) and the French company Thomson Semiconducteurs. By the time of the merger, both players managed to acquire a substantial amount of assets, so their “joint venture” was quite drawn to the transnational corporation, which is in the Top 20 semiconductor industry. The location for the headquarters was chosen in Geneva, Switzerland.

By the way, the process of purchases and associations with the formation of STMicroelectronics, of course, is not over. Thus, an important milestone in the modern history of the company was the formation of a joint venture with the participation of its wireless division and the telecommunications giant Ericsson, called ST Ericsson.
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To date, the main activities of STMicroelectronics are as follows:

• Automotive electronics - diagnostic systems, microcontrollers of various intelligent systems, multimedia components;
• Power systems - protection circuits and devices, power transistors, converters and power switches;
• Analog and digital decoders - ADC / DAC converters, processors for digital TV and TV set-top boxes;
• Components of photo and video equipment - sensitive sensors, ready-made camera modules, processors for processing graphic data;
• Navigation components - solutions for onboard automotive systems and portable digital devices.

It is the last area of ​​activity of STMicroelectronics and attracted the attention of Intel. Attracted to such an extent that after the agreed arrangements and formalities, it was announced that Intel purchased a satellite navigation unit.

Now about mutual benefit. Judging by information from reputable sources , the ST Ericsson consortium was not getting along to everything, and for the management of STMicroelectronics, transferring business to good hands seemed like a good way out. As for Intel, its interest is even more transparent. The team of ST Ericsson has developed a number of very good navigation products, and among them - the Teseo II chip (we see this at KDPV). The chip has good performance characteristics, including a number of promising features. For example, it can work in any of 4 satellite systems: GPS (USA), Galileo (Europe), GLONASS (Russia) and QZSS (Japan), as well as the promising Chinese BeiDou, which accelerates the cold start time and also increases the positioning accuracy in Any point where there is a signal from more than one system.

Intel does not hide its intention to include its own navigation chip in its mobile platform for smartphones, tablets and ultrabooks - this will happen in 2015. The chip will also be available to third manufacturers as a separate product. I note that this is not the first experience of cooperation between Intel and STMicroelectronics - in 2008, with their participation, Numonyx was created for the production of flash memory, later, however, quickly sold to the side. There is every reason to believe that this time the joint work will be more productive.