San Clemente, CA -- YESTech has opened a Singapore office to provide sales, training and technical support to its South East Asia customer base.

The office will provide training and sales for the YTV Series of automated optical inspection (AOI) systems and YTX Series of x-ray inspection systems. The company claims these yield enhancement solutions lower board failure rates and insure a high quality product.

 FRAMINGHAM, MA – Investment in IT is beginning to show signs of life, a new study found, based on a survey of over 200 financial institutions.

Financial Insights, an IDC company, estimates that North American capital markets firms are planning to spend a total of $36 billion on technology in 2005 based on current budgets and plans. The firm forecast 5% growth in IT capital buys for the industry.

DALLAS -- Jack Kilby, whose invented the integrated circuit in 1958 and later shared in the Nobel Prize, died Monday of cancer. He was 81.

At Texas Instruments in 1958, Kilby built the first IC into a single piece of semiconducting material half the size of a paper clip. Kilby also co-invented the handheld electronic calculator that made TI a household name.

TORONTO -- SMTC Corp. will build assemblies for Leitch Technology in a deal worth an estimated annualized run rate of $20 million.

SMTC will provide electronics manufacturing services for Leitch, a maker of high-end video systems.

Under the terms of the agreement, SMTC will initially provide complete manufacturing services to Leitch at its new product introduction center in Markham, Ontario, and its facility in Chihuahua, Mexico.

In a statement, SMTC senior vice president of business development Steve Hoffrogge said the "transition ... is well underway, with full roll out of the initial phases expected in the third and fourth quarters of the year."