Whittling down the amount of remotes in one's living room has long since been a challenge for the amateur home theater builder, and while there are some decent universal solutions on the market, the RF4CE Consortium is hoping to make things painfully simple. The group has been formed in order to "drive the adoption of an open radio frequency (RF) entertainment control specification based on IEEE 802.15.4." If you'll recall, this isn't the first time we've heard that standard called, as it's also used in MaxStream's XBee Xtender. Notably, Freescale is hoping to incorporate its Synkro technology into the specification, and in an ideal world, we'd see said protocol filter into DVD players, AV receivers, set-top-boxes and all manners of components. Let the IR-to-RF transition begin, we say.

Read - Sony's RF4CE Consortium release
Read - Freescale's RF4CE Consortium release

Toshiba just announced its membership in an alliance to develop system chips using 32-nm circuitry. That's well below the existing 45-nm processes used in manufacturing Intel's Penryn, for example. The alliance includes IBM, AMD, Samsung (already pushing 30-nm NAND), Infineon, Freescale, and Singapore's Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing. No surprise really, what with Tosh already in bed with IBM to develop chips using 32-nm processes. The agreement is good until 2010 and covers design, development, and the production of the itty bitty circuitry. A move which should reduce manufacturing costs for the alliance with the savings passed along to us consumers.

Android might have launched last month in a cloud of vapor, but since then we've seen a couple of concrete developments from Google's mobile phone project. The latest comes courtesy of Japan's Willcom, which recently demonstrated what appears to be an early prototype of an Android reference board running on a FreeScale CPU. The unit was shown taking a call while running Google Maps to show off the operating system's multitasking abilities, but other than that, nothing earth-shattering was revealed. Check the read link for a few more pics.

Update: Link fixed, sorry about that.

[Via Digital World Tokyo]

Make no mistake about it, accelerometers have certainly been all the rage of late, and Freescale Semiconductor isn't missing its chance to cash in on the bonanza. The firm has recently announced what it calls the "world's thinnest 3-axis digital-output accelerometer" for use in motion-based user interfaces, and it checks in at around "77-percent smaller" than existing offerings. The MMA7450L is available in a 0.8-millimeter thin plastic land grid array, eliminates the need for a dedicated analog-to-digital converter, includes three g-select sensitivities, and is almost ready to rock in tomorrow's most diminutive controllers, handhelds, and mobile handsets. Currently, only major manufacturers are getting their hands around samples, but general availability of the $2.66 device (when you order 10,000, that is) is expected by Q3 of this year.

[Via TGDaily]

IBM has most certainly been on a tear of late when it comes to microprocessors, as this tidbit comes right on the heels of the firm's 4.7GHz POWER6 and self-assembling CPUs. Presumably thinking that two five heads are better than one, IBM has garnered support from Chartered, Samsung, Infineon, and Freescale to "develop and manufacture advanced 32-nanometer semiconductors." Of course, we're still not sure if the loose ends surrounding IBM's 65-nanometer team effort are all tied off, but onward and upward they go regardless. The collaborative agreements between the firms "include 32-nanometer bulk complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process technologies and joint development of process design kits (PDKs) to support that technology," which basically means that the companies will attempt to work together at IBM's East Fishkill plant through 2010 to produce "high-performance, energy-efficient chips at 32nm." Unfortunately, we've no idea when these speedsters will be ready for the commercial world, but it's pretty safe to assume it won't be soon.

[Via PCWorld, photo courtesy of Semiconductor-Technology]

Just recently, we finally heard a bit of good news from the IEEE camp in regard to 802.11n's progress, and now wireless freaks can celebrate a little more as UWB has been officially published as an ISO / IEC international standard. We've already seen a number of related certification programs, prototypes, and even products, but just a few months after edging legality in the UK, it seems the deal is done. WiMedia-based ultra-wideband technology, which is the "approved format for Wireless USB," unsurprisingly enables "short range multimedia file transfers" at data rates up to 480Mbps that operate in the UWB spectrum of 3.1 to 10.6 GHz. So while the brief rivalry was indeed entertaining, we're sorry about your luck, Freescale.

[Via ExtremeTech]

While cellphone giant Motorola has been busy selling endless iterations of the RAZR and other oddly-named phones, their semiconductor spin-off Freescale has been doing quite well for itself, and is on the verge of being purchased for quite a few billion dollars. Freescale just got a $17.6 billion offer from some private-equity types led by Blackstone, which values Freescale stock at $40 a share -- quite an improvement from the $13 a share Freescale went public with in 2004. Freescale has accepted the offer, on the condition that they can accept a better offer within 50 days, with a break-up fee to be paid to the Blackstone types if they do. We just looked between all the couch cushions, but we're still coming up a few billion short, so if you've got $18 bil or so burning a hole in your pocket, now's your chance to break into the hip and happenin' world of UWB, MRAM and other fancy microchips.

[Via El Reg]

Remember those new MRAM (magnetoresistive RAM) chips the industry's been working on for the last decade or so? Well Freescale stepped away from all that UWB bidness long enough to develop what they're calling the world's first commercially available MRAM chips to combine RAM's endurance with the hard disk's ability to keep data while powered down. What about Flash memory you ask? Kicked to the curb son, since MRAM (or universal memory) is faster than flash and doesn't degrade over time. Only don't expect these new chips to hit your price sensitive consumer electonics just yet. The first markets for MRAM will most likely be automotive or industrial settings where durability is critical. So hold tight and let the invisible hand work some magic, mkay?