QUALCOMM has acquired Berkana Wireless, a Silicon Valley-based fabless semiconductor company, for approximately $56 million in cash. Berkana supplies CMOS radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs) to the wireless industry.
QUALCOMM said the addition of Berkana’s RF CMOS intellectual property, design portfolio and engineering resources, as well as its cellular systems expertise, would reinforce its leadership in the RFIC industry and help it deliver CDMA2000 and WCDMA (UMTS) RF solutions.
Every article published by Converge Digest is researched, curated, fact-checked and editorially reviewed by Jim Carroll, Editor & Publisher. AI-assisted drafting may be used to accelerate production, but all content is reviewed, refined and approved prior to publication.
You just read about Qualcomm. One of the companies whose work it now carries:
Airgo Networks built MIMO Wi-Fi chipsets. What became of it?
Airgo Networks brought MIMO Wi-Fi chipsets to Semiconductor. That work was distinctive enough to lead to its acquisition by Qualcomm. The standalone name now passes into the archive — but the team and technology continue inside Qualcomm today. One of 430 names here whose work outlived the company.
You just read about CMOS. Here is what it replaced:
ECL / bipolar mainframe logic served 1960–1990. What ultimately replaced it?
ECL / bipolar mainframe logic emitter-coupled logic switched non-saturating bipolar transistors for raw speed, at the cost of running hot and power-hungry - used where speed beat all else (mainframes, Cray supercomputers). Its job passed to CMOS — but the problem it solved, and the ideas it proved, live on in what replaced it. The standard rests here in the archive. One of 198 technologies here that opened a door and then held it for the next.
