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Commentary / Analysis

• China Fabless: Going it alone, GigaDevice targets 'no-growth' NOR flash market (Thursday Sep. 20, 2012)
  While most of China's fabless industry is pursuing apps processors, GigaDevice Semiconductor Inc. is targeting a market most have forsaken: NOR flash memory.
  
  
• MIPI Alliance M-PHY Physical Layer Gains Dominant Position for Mobile Device Applications (Thursday Sep. 20, 2012)
  MIPI Alliance today announced its M-PHY low power, scalable physical layer specification is now the preferred data transport interface technology for mobile applications, based on previously announced relationships with JEDEC UFS, PCI-SIG®, USB-IF– and its member adoption rate.
  
  
• The A6: Apple's SoC Design Team Finally Gets Serious (Thursday Sep. 20, 2012)
  Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Apple's iPhone 5, unveiled last Wednesday, isn't the information that the company disclosed at the launch event itself but what's subsequently come to light in the last few days.
  
  
• Long-Term Forecast Improves for IC Market (Wednesday Sep. 19, 2012)
  The market for integrated circuits is forecast to post much stronger average annual growth through 2021 compared to the average market growth over the past 15 years, according to an analysis recently completed by IC Insights
  
  
• iPhone 5 Carries $199 BOM, Virtual Teardown Reveals (Wednesday Sep. 19, 2012)
  The new iPhone 5 carries a bill of materials (BOM) of $199.00 for the low-end model with 16Gbytes of NAND flash memory, according to a preliminary virtual teardown conducted by the IHS iSuppli Teardown Analysis Service.
  
  
• Renesas: Software is new battlefront in MCUs (Tuesday Sep. 18, 2012)
  The battlefront among microcontroller makers is shifting up the stack as vendors wrap their silicon in middleware, said a Renesas executive in a wide ranging interview just prior to the opening of Design East here.
  
  
• China Fabless: Resurgent Spreadtrum looks to expand (Tuesday Sep. 18, 2012)
  Spreadtrum Communications has emerged as one of China's hottest fabless companies, along with RDA Microelectronics, prompting talk here of a potential merger between the two.
  
  
• Predictable semiconductor cycle ahead? (Tuesday Sep. 18, 2012)
  Despite the increasingly negative predictions of semiconductor forecasters, predictable change in the semiconductor industry comes from monitoring capital investment. From this, we can predict the supply side of the supply/demand balance. Macro-economic factors tend to drive the demand side and these are currently uncertain.
  
  
• The iPhone 5's A6 SoC: Not A15 or A9, a Custom Apple Core Instead (Monday Sep. 17, 2012)
  When Apple announced the iPhone 5, Phil Schiller officially announced what had leaked several days earlier: the phone is powered by Apple's new A6 SoC.
  
  
• Kalray claims 25 customers for 256-core processor (Monday Sep. 17, 2012)
  Kalray SA, the well-supported French launching a parallel processing chip and software, has 25 customers and is hopeful of winning more in Germany and Japan, according to CEO Joel Monnier.
  
  
• Intel's Haswell: a viable platform for tablets? (Monday Sep. 17, 2012)
  Recently at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF), EE Times had the opportunity to sit down one to one with Intel’s executive vice president, David (Dadi) Perlmutter, general manager of the firm’s architecture group.
  
  
• China IP debate: "Everyone's afraid their tech will be stolen..." (Monday Sep. 17, 2012)
  China wants Western technology. It also wants to export its own technology to the West. The key question is whether the rest of the world will be willing to go along given the widely held belief that China is the "knockoff capital of the universe."
  
  
• Intel describes 22-nm SoC process, not chips (Friday Sep. 14, 2012)
  Intel provided the first look at the system-on-chip variant of its 22-nm process technology in a talk at the Intel Developer Forum here Thursday (Sept. 13). However, it declined to provide details on the Atom-based SoCs for tablets and smartphones that will be made in that process.
  
  
• Smartphone is next stop for PCI Express (Friday Sep. 14, 2012)
  PCI Express, the I/O backbone of PCs and servers, is getting a low-power extension that will take it into Ultrabooks, tablets and smartphones starting next year. The enhanced interconnect will draw two to four times less power while helping mobile devices link to high-performance peripherals such as 60-GHz wireless networking controllers and solid-state drives.
  
  
• Chip design’s recycle cycle: Interview with Aart de Geus, chairman and co chief executive, Synopsys (Friday Sep. 14, 2012)
  Some 15 years ago, Synopsys bet on the idea that third party intellectual property (IP) would an important element of the integrated circuit business.
  
  
• Samsung begins building China fab (Thursday Sep. 13, 2012)
  South Korean electronics giant Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has broken ground on a wafer fab for NAND memory production in Xian, in northwestern China.
  
  
• Intel sees quad-patterned path to 10 nm chips (Thursday Sep. 13, 2012)
  Intel Corp. has found a way to create a 10 nm process technology using immersion lithography. In addition, the processor giant is on track to start making chips in a 14 nm process technology before the end of next year, said an Intel fellow in a talk here.
  
  
• Analyst: Apple A6 processor is dual-core Cortex-A15 (Thursday Sep. 13, 2012)
  The A6 processor inside Apple's iPhone 5 mobile phone is a dual-core Cortex-A15 design manufactured for Apple by Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. in its 32-nm HKMG manufacturing process, according to analysts at Nomura Equity Research.
  
  
• Intel's Bohr sees at least 10 more years of scaling (Thursday Sep. 13, 2012)
  Despite the naysayers continually predicting an end to Moore's Law,Intel Senior Fellow Mark Bohr doesn't envision an end to semiconductor CMOS scaling for at least a decade.
  
  
• IPhone 5 bill of materials estimate is $167.50 (Thursday Sep. 13, 2012)
  The bill of materials for Apple’s new IPhone 5 comes in at an estimated $167.50 for the 16-Gb version, or about $35 higher than a comparable version of the IPhone 4S, according to a preliminary estimate by the tear down specialists at TechInsights.
  
  
• Five Companies to Account for 64% of $61.4B Semiconductor Capex in 2012 (Wednesday Sep. 12, 2012)
  The top 5 capex spenders for 2012—Samsung, $13.1 billion; Intel, $11.2 billion; TSMC, $8.3 billion, SK Hynix, $3.7 billion; and GlobalFoundries, $3.1 billion—are forecast to account for 64% of the $61.4 billion in semiconductor capital expenditures forecast for 2012
  
  
• IHS Downgrades Semiconductor Market Outlook (Wednesday Sep. 12, 2012)
  Global semiconductor revenue now is expected to decline slightly for the year, contracting by 0.1 percent compared to an earlier IHS forecast that called for marginal growth of less than 3 percent, according to preliminary results from the IHS iSuppli Application Market Forecast Tool from information and analytics provider IHS.
  
  
• The Linley Group Says Mobile Processor Market Grew 60 Percent in 2011 (Tuesday Sep. 11, 2012)
  Due to strong growth in the mobile device market, The Linley Group estimates that the mobile processor market grew more than 60 percent in 2011.
  
  
• SEMI Reports Second Quarter 2012 Worldwide Semiconductor Equipment Figures; Billings US$ 10.3 Billion (Tuesday Sep. 11, 2012)
  SEMI today reported that worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment billings reached US$ 10.34 billion in the second quarter of 2012. The billings figure is 4 percent lower than the first quarter of 2012 and 13 percent lower than the same quarter a year ago.
  
  
• Apple puts audio processor on hold for iPhone 5 (Tuesday Sep. 11, 2012)
  Audience Inc., a supplier of audio processing ICs and intellectual property, said Apple is unlikely to "enable" Audience's IP in its next generation iPhone 5, which is expected to be launched on Wednesday (Sept. 12).
  
  
• IPhone 5 expected to sport quad-core, LTE (Tuesday Sep. 11, 2012)
  Apple is expected to launch its iPhone 5 this week, sporting a custom quad-core processor, LTE, an upgraded image sensor and a new, smaller connector. Pundits debate whether the new handset will pack near-field communications and a larger display.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Increase Slightly in July (Tuesday Sep. 11, 2012)
  SIA today announced that worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $24.40 billion for the month of July 2012, a slight increase of 0.2 percent from the previous month when sales were $24.34 billion.
  
  
• Intel preps interconnect for server CPUs (Monday Sep. 10, 2012)
  Intel Corp. is not providing details, but it has disclosed plans that confirm industry speculation of recent weeks. The x86 giant is developing a next-generation interconnect it will integrate in future Xeon and Atom server processors addressing a range of uses from supercomputers to microservers.
  
  
• TSMC set to expand 2013 capex to $10bn (Monday Sep. 10, 2012)
  TSMC is planning to set capital expenditure for 2013 at $10 billion, up from about $8.25 billion in 2012, according to reports that reference the Chinese-language Economic Daily News. Reports also reckon TSMC will be making processors for Apple in 2013.
  
  
• As Wintel Dominance Wanes, the Microsoft/Intel Alliance Frays (Monday Sep. 10, 2012)
  After a generation of setting the pace and calling the shots in the computer market, the Microsoft Corp./Intel Corp. cartel known as Wintel now finds itself playing catch-up in the new era of smartphones and media tablets, spurring a widening rift in the historic alliance.