D&R Headline News (January 2017)

Headlines for Tuesday Jan. 31, 2017

Top Story

Slow India may lose Cricket wafer fab

Cricket Semiconductor, an analog and power pure-play foundry project that was being prepared for touch down in India, is running late and could end up being constructed in a different country.

• Xilinx Displays Pro AV Solutions with Any-to-Any Connectivity at ISE 2017
• 25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium Members Validate Multi-Vendor Interoperability
• Rambus Reports Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2016 Financial Results
• Credo Demonstrates 112G PAM4 SR, 56G PAM4 LR, and 56G NRZ SerDes Technology at DesignCon

Headlines for Monday Jan. 30, 2017

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Toshiba Confirms Memory Chip Selloff

At a press conference here Friday(Jan. 27), Toshiba Corp. formally announced that it is in the market to sell a chunk — less than 20 percent — of its memory chip business.

• Aquantia Announces the Industrys First FPGA-Programmable Multi-Gigabit Ethernet PHY Device
• Synopsys Extends Verification FastForward Program, Enabling Cadence Incisive and Mentor Graphics Questa Users to Adopt VCS Simulation with Fine-Grained Parallelism Technology
• Persistent Memory Platform Support Will Take Time
• Telink Semiconductor's RF system on chip (SoC) passes ZigBee 3.0 certification tests using DSR's wireless software stack
• Bosch joins MIPI Alliance as new member

Headlines for Thursday Jan. 26, 2017

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Starblaze Achieves First-Pass Silicon Success for Storage SoC with Synopsys ARC Processor and Interface IP

Synopsys, Inc. (Nasdaq: SNPS) today announced that Starblaze has achieved first-pass silicon success for its new MB1000 enterprise SSD controller using Synopsys' DesignWare® ARC® HS38 processor as well as DDR4 and PCI Express® controller and PHY IP.

• Mn_nH release 360 degree image stitching IP for VR camera SoC.
• Memory compressor IP can save time, energy
• Xilinx Announces Third Quarter 2017 Results
• Ex-Elpida CEO's China Fab Plan Dropped?
• Sonics Collaborates with GLOBALFOUNDRIES to Accelerate Adoption of Power and Performance Capabilities of the 22FDX Process by SoC Designers

Headlines for Wednesday Jan. 25, 2017

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Is Semiconductor M&A Wave Dissipating?

The unprecedented wave of semiconductor industry consolidation over the past three years may finally be slowing down. Or it it?

• Spin Transfer Technologies Samples Fully Functional ST-MRAM Devices
• Synopsys' ARC SEM Security Processors Win Linley Group's 2016 Analysts' Choice Award for Best Processor IP
• UMC's 28nm Ramp to Slip This Year
• ZTE Wireless Institute Achieves Performance Breakthrough for Deep Learning with Intel FPGAs

Headlines for Tuesday Jan. 24, 2017

• Concept Engineering's RTLVision Debugger and Viewer to Power Real Intent's Verification Solutions
• Silicon Labs Acquires Wi-Fi Innovator Zentri

Headlines for Monday Jan. 23, 2017

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TI Reorgs Analog Group

Texas Instruments laid off a small but undisclosed number of people mainly in Silicon Valley as part of a restructuring of its Analog and Embedded Processing groups. No products will be eliminated in the reorg.

• Flex Logix Works With DARPA To Develop Flex Logix's Embedded FPGA IP For Government Projects
• Gartner Says Worldwide Semiconductor Revenue Forecast to Grow 7.2 Percent in 2017
• Dolphin Integration Receives Open-Silicon's Award for the Emerging IP Partner of the Year 2016 in the Low Power IoT Ecosystem
• Qualcomm Feels Smartphone Squeeze

Headlines for Friday Jan. 20, 2017

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2015-2016 Deals Dominate Semiconductor M&A Ranking

More than two dozen acquisition agreements were announced by semiconductor companies worldwide in 2016 with a combined value of $98.5 billion compared to the record-high $103.3 billion in purchases struck in 2015, when over 30 deals were reached.

• Tsinghua to Build $30 Billion Memory Fab in China
• Aldec provides Finite State Machine Coverage for verification of safety-critical FPGAs
• Market for Power Semiconductors in Automotive to Rev Up by $3 Billion by 2022, IHS Markit Says
• Neurala Announces $14 Million Series A to Bring Deep Learning Neural Network AI Software to Drones, Self-Driving Cars, Toys and Cameras

Headlines for Thursday Jan. 19, 2017

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Faraday: World's First ISO 26262 Certified ASIC Service Company

Faraday Technology has received the certificate of ISO 26262 (Road vehicles-functional safety) from SGS-TÜV Saar on its design development process. Faraday is the first ASIC design service company in the world approved to ISO 26262; it demonstrates that Faraday is capable of implementing the automotive functional safety standard on its hardware design from product concept to mass production.

• Blue Pearl Software Appoints John Molyneux President After Record Year
• SMIC Reaffirms Fourth Quarter 2016 Guidance
• NRAM's Day Is Finally Here: Report
• WiLAN Provides Litigation Update
• Future of Chip Research Group Questioned
• Synopsys Releases New Version of Coverity Static Analysis Tool with Enhanced Security for Mobile and Web Applications

Headlines for Wednesday Jan. 18, 2017

Top Story

New Video Compressor and Camera Processor Cores Expand CAST's IP Line

CAST, Inc. recently added two media processing cores to its extensive line of semiconductor intellectual property cores and subsystems.

• Automotive safety hypervisor announced for ARM Cortex-R52
• Gartner Says Worldwide Semiconductor Revenue Grew 1.5 Percent in 2016
• Mantaro Introduces an Advanced Development Platform for the Altera Arria 10 SoC
• Imagination's new PowerVR GPUs deliver leading performance in lowest area for mid-range markets
• Toshiba Mulls Chip Business Spinoff
• MIPI Alliance Introduces MIPI Discovery and Configuration (DisCo) Base Architecture and Class Specifications

Headlines for Tuesday Jan. 17, 2017

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Arteris announces 9 new licensees, multiple interconnect IP product releases and profitable operation in 2016

Arteris today announced that it has added nine new licensees of Arteris interconnect IP for use in a variety of SoC applications. New Arteris customers added during 2016 include Kyocera, Movidius (acquired by Intel), Dream Chip Technologies, Istuary Innovation Group, Octasic, and four as-of-yet undisclosed customers. Arteris added nine new licensees in both 2014 and 2015.

• Rambus Signs Patent License Agreement with Winbond
• Hundreds of Xilinx Space Grade FPGAs Deployed in Launch of Iridium NEXT Satellites
• Beyond Semiconductor partners with Rubicon Labs to deliver full stack solution for cryptographically secure execution processor
• NVM Express, Inc. Elects Facebook and Toshiba to Board

Headlines for Monday Jan. 16, 2017

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Moortec Announce Embedded Temperature Sensor on TSMC 16FF+ & FFC

Moortec Semiconductor, specialists in Process, Voltage and Temperature (PVT) sensors, announce the availability of their Embedded Temperature Sensor on TSMC’s 16nm FF+ and FFC processes.

• Crossbar ReRAM in production at SMIC
• Trilinear Technologies Adds Display Stream Compression (DSC) Encode and Decode Solutions to IP Portfolio
• Socionext Accelerates Test Generation and Lowers Test Cost Using Synopsys TetraMAX II
• Sidense Receives Coveted ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management System Certification
• ATopTech, Inc. Initiates Voluntary Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection Proceeding
• No Sign of 450mm on the Horizon

Headlines for Friday Jan. 13, 2017

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Pure-Play Foundry Market Surges 11% in 2016 to Reach $50 Billion!

The pure-play foundry market is forecast to play an increasingly stronger role in the worldwide IC market during the next five years, according to IC Insights’ new 2017 McClean Report

• TSMC Expects Flat Year for Foundry
• BaySand enhanced MetalCopy Program to Support 14nm FPGA Transition to ASIC

Headlines for Thursday Jan. 12, 2017

Top Story

Born Secure: Could ARMv8-M Become the Leading Microcontroller Architecture for the Industrial IoT?

In November ARM announced Cortex-M23 and Cortex-M33, the first microcontroller cores based on the ARMv8-M architecture. In a connected world where everyday devices can be compromised to launch distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, these cores offer the IoT something new; Born Secure.

• TSMC Reports Fourth Quarter EPS of NT$3.86
• Gartner Says Worldwide Semiconductor Capital Spending Is Forecast to Grow 2.9 Percent in 2017
• China Expected to Poach More Taiwan Chip Execs
• Google Searches for Better Silicon
• IFI CLAIMS Announces Top Recipients of U.S. Patents in 2016

Headlines for Wednesday Jan. 11, 2017

• Mediatek Licenses Sonics' NoC and Memory Scheduler IP
• Synopsys Extends Software Integrity Platform with Acquisition of Forcheck
• China Company Receives Working First Silicon for SingMai's Analogue Video Decoder

Headlines for Tuesday Jan. 10, 2017

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Arasan Announces Total IP Solution for MIPI I3C Standard

Arasan Chip Sytems announces the immediate availability of its MIPI I3C Master & Slave IP cores compliant to the just released MIPI I3C Specification Ver 1.0.

• Sequans Extends Collaboration with TSMC to Develop World's first LTE-M chip for IoT
• OmniPHY Joins TSMC IP Alliance Program
• TSMC December 2016 Revenue Report

Headlines for Monday Jan. 09, 2017

Top Story

Cadence Announces Availability of Industry-First Bluetooth 5 Verification IP

Cadence today announced the immediate availability of its Cadence® Verification IP (VIP) for Bluetooth® 5, the industry’s first VIP for the latest version of Bluetooth technology.

• Open Source Reaches Processor Core
• UMC Reports Sales for December 2016
• MIPI Alliance Releases MIPI I3C Sensor Interface Specification
• Faraday Monthly Consolidated Sales Report - December 2016
• CEVA Announces Record Revenues for the Fourth Quarter
• ARM Exec Dizzy for Open-Source Twizy
• Creonic Announces FMC Board with L-Band RF Input for Satellite Applications
• Almalence Video SuperSensor Software Now Improves Video Image Quality Powered by Cadence Tensilica Vision DSP
• Fortemedia Licenses Tensilica Fusion F1 DSP for Use in Always-On Smart Microphone Processor

Headlines for Thursday Jan. 05, 2017

Top Story

Apple joins SoftBank's Vision Fund with $1 billion investment

Today, Apple confirmed plans to invest in SoftBank’s massive $100 billion Vision Fund, the international tech fund the telecom giant announced last October.

• Imagination appoints industry expert to lead PowerVR business unit
• Imagination collaborates with Socionext on advanced video and display technologies
• MIPS I6500 CPU sub-system with NetSpeed's Gemini IP provides highly efficient processing for vision applications
• Wi-Fi CERTIFIED TimeSync brings precise synchronization to Wi-Fi devices
• AndesCore Ultra Low-Power, High Performance N705 CPU Core Wins Design Socket In Sino Wealth Electronic's New Bluetooth Low Energy Chip Design
• Waves Nx Now Available on ARM-Based Platforms
• DeepGlint Harness the Power of CEVA-XM4 Imaging and Vision Platform for Intelligent Video Analytic and ADAS Solutions
• Altek License CEVA Imaging and Vision DSP for Deep Learning in Mobile Devices
• GUC Monthly Sales Report - December 2016
• VESA Rolls Out Early Certification Program for Video Source and Display Products Using HBR3 High-Bandwidth Link Rate
• Faraday Extends SoC Design Services to Include Virtual Prototyping Solution Using Synopsys Virtualizer
• Cadence and Dolby Collaborate to Enable the World's First TVs Featuring Dolby Atmos Technology
• HDMI Forum Announces Version 2.1 of the HDMI Specification
• Telink Semiconductor's RF system on chip (SoC) passes ZigBee 3.0 certification tests using DSR's wireless software stack

Headlines for Wednesday Jan. 04, 2017

Top Story

ON Semiconductor License CEVA Imaging and Vision Platform for Automotive ADAS

CEVA today announced that ON Semiconductor has licensed CEVA's imaging and vision platform for its automotive advanced driver assistance (ADAS) product lines.

• Retune DSP Multi-Microphone Beamforming and Echo Cancellation Now Available for Cadence Tensilica HiFi Audio DSPs
• Global Semiconductor Sales Up 7 Percent Year-to-Year
• Rambus to Demonstrate IoT Security Technology in Qualcomm Booth at CES
• CSEM announces Bluetooth 5-ready silicon RF IP
• SingMai's aCVi decoder successfully tapes out in China
• Socionext Develops New Large Scale, High Efficiency Distributed Processing Server, Fully Utilizing Multi-Core Processors

Headlines for Tuesday Jan. 03, 2017

Top Story

Trilinear Technologies Advances Industry Leading DisplayPort Transmitter and Receiver Link Controllers

Continuing the highly successful line of DisplayPort link controller cores, the Trilinear VF-111T DisplayPort Transmitter and VF-117R DisplayPort Receiver cores have been updated to include full support for the Video Electronic Standards Association (VESA) DisplayPort 1.4 standard.

• Fraunhofer Announces MPEG-H Trademark to Identify Interoperable Products
• ARM Adds DSR Corporation ZBOSS ZigBee 3.0 Stack to Its Cordio Radio IP
• Genesys Logic Announces USB3.1 Gen 2 Hub Controller with Multiple Upstream Port Support and USB-C Integrated
• Shenzhen Micro & Nano Institute License CEVA Audio/Voice DSP for 8 Microphone Far-Field Voice Pickup Applications
• Wi-Fi Expands with .11ax at CES