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Steve Appleton, chairman and CEO of DRAM producer Micron Technology, was killed at the weekend in a plane crash in Boise, Idaho. The 51-year-old became president of Micron in 1991 and succeeded Micron founder Joe Parkinson in 1994 as company chairman and CEO. Under Appleton's leadership Micron, as the sole remaining DRAM producer, managed to overcome the crises of recent years. Appleton was a professional stunt pilot, and had already survived a crash with serious injuries in 2004.

Rambus has acquired privately held Unity Semiconductor for an aggregate $ 35 million in cash. The boards of directors of both companies have approved the takeover. Unity Semiconductor ranks as a specialist for nonvolatile memory technologies, having been granted almost 150 patents. Unity is the originator of socalled CMOx, a memory cell technology that, compared to ongoing NAND, features greater memory density, faster speed, lower fabrication costs and higher reliability.

The market for semiconductors is set to grow 3.3 percent this year to reach a figure of $ 323.2 billion according to the latest IHS iSuppli study. That would make growth at least more than the 1.25 percent plus of 2011. If the world market recovers in 2013, the analysts are looking to substantially higher annual growth rates of between 6.6 and 7.9 percent from 2012 through 2015. For 2015 they forecast global semiconductor turnover of $ 397.7 billion.

Scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a new algorithm that makes the fast Fourier transform even faster. The Fourier transform is a fundamental concept in information sciences. It enables complex signals to be broken down into a combination of discrete sinusoidal signals. It is also used to compress image and audio signals, to solve differential equations or price stock options.

Japanese chip producer Renesas Electronics has downed its forecast for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2012 - in terms of both turnover and expected losses. Compared to the last forecast of October 31, 2011, Renesas Electronics is now looking for turnover of only 885 billion yen (11.6 billion US dollars). The earlier figure was 968 billion yen. Expected losses at the end of the fiscal year (March 31) are now put at 57 billion yen (747 million US dollars) instead of the previous 40 billion yen.