TECH ROUNDUP: Intel manufacturing chief to retire; Mentor Graphics to buy out half of Carl Icahn stakes; Navex Global relocates after rapid growth.
Bill Holt, Intel manufacturing chief, will leave the semiconductor company after a 42-year career.
Intel vice presidents Sohail Ahmed and Ann Kelleher, who share the title of general manager of the company’s technology and manufacturing group, will take over for Holt. Both work at Intel’s Ronler Acres campus, the chipmaker’s most advanced site in the world.
… Under Holt, Intel has adapted by changing the basic materials it uses to build computer chips and by altering the structure of the transistor – adding a third dimension to give added control to the current flowing through the processor.
Recently, though, even those revolutionary improvements have proven inadequate. Intel’s current, 14-nanometer generation of computer chips has been beset by delays due to stubbornly persistent defects. Defective chips are useless, so Intel slowed the 14nm rollout and has had fewer of the new chips available than in past generations.
(READ MORE: Oregon Live)
Mentor Graphics will buy out half of Carl Icahn stakes.
Five years after losing a heated proxy fight with billionaire Carl Icahn, Wilsonville-based Mentor Graphics said Friday it will buy out half of his remaining stake in the business.
Mentor said it will pay Icahn $146 million for 8 million shares in the company – close to 7 percent of all Mentor’s stock. Icahn still has another 8 million shares.
(READ MORE: Oregon Live)
Navex Global moved to a bigger headquarters in Portland. The Lake Oswego company forecasted $200 million in revenue this year.
The new digs are 20 percent bigger than the ones the company left behind. But at least as important as size, Conlin said, is the fact that they’re designed specifically to help Navex compete in the Portland area’s hot market for technology workers.
Oregon’s tech ecosystem, once largely suburban, is now concentrated in the Portland’s core – favored by coders who enjoy biking to work and spending their lunch hours exploring food carts. Navex said it couldn’t find a big block of space in downtown’s jammed-up office market and didn’t want workers who commute from the suburbs to have to pay the rising cost of city parking.
…The new headquarters space is arrayed to put workers along the windows with big, open meeting spaces – including theater-style seating in an open meeting area for all-hands gatherings. A broad stairway connects Navex’s two floors, unfinished ceilings resemble vintage tech offices downtown, and the new office comes equipped with tables for shuffleboard and ping pong.
(READ MORE: Oregon Live)
