National Semiconductor is seeking to sell its Information Appliance unit, consisting primarily of the Geode family of products, as well as its cellular baseband business.

National Semiconductor is seeking to sell its Information Appliance unit,
consisting primarily of the Geode family of products, as well as its
cellular baseband business. The company has engaged outside advisers to
assist in the process. In the meantime, National will continue to operate
these businesses and support customer programmes.
The companys president and CEO Brian L Halla says that these businesses
require more capital than National Semiconductor is prepared to invest. "We
are prioritising R&D spending on product areas that drive higher returns
sooner," he reports.
National has also entered into a new long-term technology and manufacturing
agreement with Taiwan foundry TSMC. The strategic agreement establishes TSMC
as Nationals supplier of wafers for products with feature sizes at and
below 0.15microns.
"With TSMC as our foundry partner, National will continue to be able to
offer products at leading edge line geometries without having to commit the
huge capital required for a 300mm fab," explains Halla.
Realignments designed to streamline Nationals cost structure will
immediately reduce 500 positions from the companys worldwide workforce of
10,000.

US automated IC packaging inspection tool provider August Technology has
re-entered into a settlement and purchase agreement with ASTI Holdings of
Singapore to acquire all of the outstanding stock of its Semiconductor
Technologies and Instruments (STI) subsidiary in Texas. The acquisition
purchase price consists of $1.25mn in cash and 215,385 shares of August
Technology common stock. This represents a total of $1.8mn based on the
closing prices on February 24, 2003.
The company had previously announced the signing of a definitive agreement
to acquire STI in May 2002, but terminated that deal in August 2002. The new
agreement does not include the Singapore-based die sort product line agreed
in May 2002, but does include probe floor related intellectual property.
This transaction is still subject to approval by the shareholders of STIs
parent company and other customary conditions and is anticipated to close in
Q2 2003.

US display developer eMagin plans to sell semiconductor-like equipment
previously used in field emission device (FED) processing that is not being
used in its current process flow for manufacturing organic light emitting
diode (OLED) microdisplays. The company also wants to offer its field
emission intellectual property portfolio for license or sale. The company is
not selling equipment or intellectual property needed for OLEDs.
Susan Jones, eMagins chief marketing and strategy officer, says: "In the
past, we considered continuing investigations of field emitter (FED)
technology applications beyond flat panel displays, but our efforts have
fully shifted to OLEDs."
The company also has for sale its unique laser interference equipment that
can pattern large arrays of small dots or lines for control gates for use in
both carbon nanotube and conventional field emission devices.
The equipment sale will occur on Thursday, March 20, 2003, coordinated by
auctioneers DoveBid.