HEXUS.sharewatch: mixed week for semiconductors

August is generally a quiet month as half the world goes on holiday and the rest of us wait for them to come back. That doesn't mean there's no activity, just that there's less than usual.

This generally applies to the tech sector too; not much in the way of product launches, etc as companies gear up for September and the run-in to Christmas. So looking at the fluctuations in our tech stocks over the past week, it's hard to point to any specific events to explain them.

Probably the biggest tech news last week was Intel's acquisition of security software giant McAfee. One of things that characterised the deal was that there was no obvious reason for such a big investment and there was general head-scratching all round.

In the end it appeared to be all about the embedded sector, and is another building-block in Intel's plans to make its chips as common-place in embedded applications, such as phones and TVs, as they already are in PCs and servers. And this big move is likely to have affected its competitor's shares as much as Intel's.

Intel itself is marginally down, implying mild disapproval of the deal. AMD however, is down considerably more. Meanwhile embedded incumbent ARM is nice up on the week, as is NVIDIA, although the latter could also be influenced by the likelihood of its Tegra 2 SoC finally making a significant appearance.