Noncommutative super Yang-Mills theories with 8 supercharges and brane configurations

In this paper we consider D = 4 NCSYM theories with 8 supercharges. We stud y these theories through a proper type IIA (and M-theory) brane configurati on. We find the one loop beta function of these theories and show that ther e is an elliptic curve describing the moduli space of the theory, which is in principle the same as the curve for the commutative counter-part of our theory. We study some other details of the dynamics by means of this brane configuration. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.