The multinational semiconductor producer Qualcomm Incorporated announced that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire NXP Semiconductors N.V., which operates in the same field, for a total of about $47 billion to be paid in cash at $110 per share. This is the largest acquisition in the history in the semiconductor field.
A few days after the attacks incredibly massive attacks suffered in two stages by Dyn, a provider of Internet service including the DNS management, information, estimates on affected devices and theories on the potential culprits keep on arriving. Very high profile sites such as the social networks Twitter and Reddit, famous online services such as e-Bay, Netflix and Spotify and other sites have been hit more or less hard. The involvement of many devices for the Internet of Things shows how their security is too often non-existent.
An article published in the journal “Nature Nanotechnology” describes the creation by IBM of artificial neurons using phase change materials to record and process data. The company created a chip that contains the devices that constitute the “heart” of these neurons on a chip and there may be even millions of them. The aim is to mimic biological neurons to achieve progress in the development of neuromorphic techniques to be applied for example to cognitive computing.
Yesterday came the confirmation of the agreement for which Verizon will acquire Yahoo! web activities for $4.83 billion to be paid in cash. The deal doesn’t include some Yahoo! activities such as the partecipation in the Chinese eCommerce Alibabawhich will form a new company. The acquired business will be integrated with those of AOL, acquired by Verizon just over a year ago.
The Japanese telecommunications holding SoftBank Group Corp. has reached an agreement to buy the British microprocessors company ARM Holdings Plc for 24.3 billion pounds, equivalent to about $32 billion or 29 billion Euros that will be paid in cash. The offer was announced yesterday and after some hours came the confirmation that it was accepted.
