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SAN FRANCISCO – Some of the biggest names in computing have committed a collective $10 billion toward standardizing the Itanium platform.

Senior executives from a number of top firms who met yesterday in San Francisco to map out a strategy for Itanium say they are targeting the mission-critical computing market.

The announcement came at the Itanium Solutions Alliance’s first Executive League meeting. Representatives came from Bull, Fujitsu, Fujitsu-Siemens Computers, Hitachi, HP, Intel, NEC, SGI and Unisys.

Itanium platform revenue currently makes up 58% of Sun's SPARC and 33% of IBM's Power2. Over 6,000 applications are said to be running the architecture.

In a statement IDC group vice president and general manager Vernon Turner said, “Itanium solution delivery to mission critical environments represent a new business model for enterprise and technical computing users bringing choice of hardware platform, operating system, and applications to environments which heretofore have been limited by proprietary vertical solution stacks. A change this substantial takes collective industry commitment and investment.”

The investment is comprised of planned funding of research and development, capital expenditures, sales and marketing, and ISV enabling activities.

Itanium application support has doubled within the past 12 months, the Alliance said in a press release.

The Alliance was founded last September, bringing together companies seeking to accelerate Itanium solution deployments.

WILSONVILLE, OR – Mentor Graphics announced record fourth quarter revenue of $221.3 million, up 3% from the prior fourth quarter. Bookings were up more than 5% from Q4 2004.

"We were pleased to see continued growth in bookings in the fourth quarter of 2005, especially considering the tough comparison to last year's fourth quarter growth of more than 35%," Walden C. Rhines, chairman and CEO, said in a press release. "Renewals showed strong growth, with contract values up nearly 30% over prior contract levels. Mentor's book-to-bill ratio was positive for the year, and the fourth quarter was the highest quarterly book-to-bill ratio since 1996."

Three of the four major product categories set quarterly and annual bookings records. Compared to Q4 2004, bookings grew 50% in Integrated Systems Design, 15% in IC Design to Silicon and 20% in New and Emerging.

Mentor's Questa verification platform, launched in May, was installed in over 1,000 seats installed by the fourth quarter. TestKompress bookings more than doubled during the year, while automotive products grew 40%. Strength in FPGA-related products like synthesis and I/O Designer helped increase bookings in the Integrated Systems Design category.

Calibre resolution enhancement technology continued to expand with annual bookings growth of 25%. Calibre DFM bookings grew 1000% over 2004 thanks to two new product launches.

Mentor's automotive solution was adopted at Shanghai Motors. The resulting orders were the largest Mentor has ever received from China.

North America and Europe both saw bookings up 20% over Q4 last year. Japan was weaker with bookings down 35%, while the Pacific Rim bookings dropped 5% over the year ago levels.

FRAMINGHAM, MA — The fourth quarter of 2005 saw new records for mobile phone shipments, largely driven by vendors stocking the channels in time for the holiday season. According to IDC, worldwide mobile phone shipments rose 19.3% year over year and increased sequentially 16.8%, good for reach a quarterly record of 245.2 million units.

An analyst with the firm said the quarter portends solid growth into 2006.

ST. GALLEN, SWITZERLAND – Companies exporting electronics to Switzerland should be advised of a new regulation for chemicals called the ChemRRV. According to a senior engineer at the EMPA Technology and Society Laboratory, ChemRRV bans the same substances outlawed in the RoHS directive.

SAN JOSE -- Sanmina-SCI Corp. last night reported first-quarter revenue rose 3.5% to $2.86 billion sequentially but fell 12% year-on-year.

For the quarter ended Dec. 31, the GAAP net income was up 300% to $21.2 million sequentially but fell 13% from a year ago. The company received a one-time income tax adjustment of $64 million.

SINGAPORE -- Tiny in size but strategically vital, Singapore is eyeing big gains in electronics manufacturing even as its competitors in Southeast Asia grow by the month.

In a report released this week Sinagpore's Electronics Development Board agency set a target of $5 billion in new manufacturing investments for 2006 and is looking to double manufacturing output to $185 billion by 2018.

In 2005, the EBD said, the nation attracted about $5.2 billion worth of new fixed-asset investment commitments for manufacturing, up 2.4% over 2004. Electronics accounted for over half of these new commitments, and are expected to make up half of the 16,700 new manufacturing jobs expected.

Major investments included semiconductor wafer fabs and assembly and testing including a Micron plant expansion, a new $50-million wafer-level packaging plant by Schott Electronics, and a massive $1.2 billion, two-year commitment from STMicroelectronics.