Recent example: helping a top semiconductor maker quickly diversify out of the depressed memory business by developing complex new systems on a chip.

FORBES: Greasing the wheels

Ruiz would rather have Motorola expand its business of developing whole systems on a chip, where margins are 40% to 50%, double those of components.

FORBES: Motorola inside

Qualcomm, which is supplying its Snapdragon systems on a chip (SoCs) to several vendors about to launch WinRT systems, highlights several capabilities that distinguish these high mobility devices from PCs.

FORBES: Windows Devices: The Future Is Called RT

Each group had its own submicron laboratories, fabs and systems-on-a-chip design libraries.

FORBES: Motorola inside

The design, which combines a CPU and modem on a single chip, is more affordable, efficient and compact than systems that use two chips, said Lin.

FORBES: Asus Brings Five Android Devices To China In Bid For Billions Of New Customers

This highly integrated system-on-chip enables a cost-effective design for mid- to high-level infotainment systems and can scale to add the functionality of an external applications processor.

ENGADGET: TI to be driving force behind Audi's next-gen MIB High infotainment platform

The idea of analysing or synthesising small quantities of chemicals in a chip-sized apparatus is not new, but labs on chips have conventionally relied on systems of tiny pipes etched into them to move the chemicals around.

ECONOMIST: An attempt to mimic part of a cell on a chip