Fujitsu Limited, which is known for many fine products from laptops to degaussers, is allegedly poised to spin off one business it is not so well known for, its semiconductor division. Both NHK and the Asahi Shimbun are reporting that the Japanese firm will cut loose the organization "in a few months and form a new company by consolidating its chip production bases in Japan." According to Japan Today, while accounting for 10% of the multinational conglomerate's sales, the division continues to see heavy losses due to steep development costs, and may eventually have to merge with one of its rivals in order to survive.

Update: It's official. Fujitsu says it will form a new subsidiary in March. The consolidation efforts will be complete in September to a tune of ¥10 billion (about $93 million).

While Moore's Law has held up pretty well over the last 40 years, it may not be able to stay true forever. It turns out that as the components inside semiconductors get smaller and smaller, electrical resistance goes up, thereby reducing performance; experts say that eventually there will be a breaking point for "copper interconnects," reaching the point where Moore's Law falls apart. Scientists have been well aware of this roadblock, and have invested heavily in everything from quantum computing to optical processors. Intel is also working on a solution for this electrical engineering problem by attempting to determine whether these semiconductor interconnects can be replaced by carbon nanotubes. The ubiquitously researched microscopic tubes can conduct electricity far better than metals, due to their "ballistic conductivity," a property where no electrons are dispersed or blocked. But, the problem with carbon nanotubes, as CNET reports, is that they're really tough to mass produce; once created, some act as great semiconductors, while others don't. So now, Intel has to figure out how to get carbon nanotubes to act more uniformly, or to separate the bad ones from the good. Thankfully, consumers won't have to worry about this problem for about another decade, which is why Intel has brainiacs working on a solution as we speak.

[Via Slashdot]

Although you may have never given a thought to what transistors do to repair themselves when certain sectors fail, there are a few organizations who make it their life's work. Researchers from the National Science Foundation, the Semiconductor Research Corporation, and the University of Michigan have a mission to complete before their grant money runs dry: to create semiconductors that can heal themselves without the burdensome redundancy currently used. The goal here, which could seem a tad superfluous until you consider these chips operate in things like airplanes and medical devices -- you know, fairly critical applications -- is to design a semiconductor that runs more efficiently and can be counted on to function no matter how crucial the situation. By designing a chip that can auto-detect a problem, then shift the resources to a functioning area while the chip diagnoses and repairs the issue with help from "online collaboration software," you'll get a slimmer semiconductor that suffers no noticeable loss in performance while self-repairing. If this circuitry talk has your wires all crossed up, here's the skinny: more dependable chips will make everyone's life a bit easier, and if the team's plan is free of defects, we can expect to see prototypes within the next three years.

[Via Mobilemag]