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Commentary / Analysis

• Samsung to spend $1.9 billion on logic fab, says report (Thursday Jun. 07, 2012)
  Consumer equipment giant Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has said it will spend $1.9 billion building a wafer fab line for logic chips in support of smartphones and tablet computers, according to a Reuters report.
  
  
• EuroFab450 is an ambitious dream (Thursday Jun. 07, 2012)
  Malcolm Penn, CEO of technology and market analysis company Future Horizons Ltd. believes in the importance of retaining control of manufacturing passionately. He has many times spoken of the fab-lite business model as a being merely the reprehensible and drawn-out process of abandoning manufacturing.
  
  
• DAC panel spotlights rise of IP subsystems (Thursday Jun. 07, 2012)
  Intellectual property (IP) reuse in SoC design is increasing, creating challenges in compatibility and complexity, according to executives on a Design Automation Conference (DAC) panel. To minimize this complexity, panelists said, the semiconductor industry will increasingly turn to IP subsystems—larger chunks of IP that have been stitched together from many smaller blocks and pre-verified to ensure performance.
  
  
• Intel makes flow processor with ARM inside (Wednesday Jun. 06, 2012)
  Netronome Systems has announced details of the NFP-6xxx family of flow processors, which operate at up to 200-Gbits per second. The chips are made using Intel's 22-nm FinFET manufacturing process technology. Netronome claims they provide more than six times the packet processing performance at less than half the power of alternatives made using 28-nm CMOS.
  
  
• European report considers 450-mm More-than-Moore fab (Wednesday Jun. 06, 2012)
  A report prepared for the European Commission just published discusses the potential role of European authorities in encouraging the creation of both a pilot 450-mm wafer fab to support Europe's chip equipment companies and a volume manufacturing 450-mm plant for a wide variety of More-than-Moore processes.
  
  
• Fab Equipment Spending: Positive Growth for 2012 and 2013; All-Time Record for 2013 (Wednesday Jun. 06, 2012)
  Breaking the barrier into positive growth for 2012, the end-of-May edition of the SEMI World Fab Forecast shows improved growth in fab equipment spending this year — at US$ 39.5 billion, a two percent year-over-year (YoY) increase.
  
  
• Rising Semiconductor Inventories in Q1 Signal Potential Recovery in Demand (Wednesday Jun. 06, 2012)
  Semiconductor stockpiles held by chip suppliers increased during the first quarter of 2012, but the rise in inventory for a second straight quarter was driven by the anticipation of higher demand from customers, according to an IHS iSuppli Inventory Insider Market Brief report from information and analytics provider IHS
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Grow at Fastest Rate in Almost Two Years on Sequential Monthly Basis, Top $24 Billion for First Time in 2012 (Wednesday Jun. 06, 2012)
  The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) today announced that worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $24.1 billion for the month of April 2012, a 3.4 percent increase from the prior month when sales were $23.3 billion. This marks the largest month-over-month growth for the industry since May 2010.
  
  
• Four reasons why its 'game over' for foreign chip firms in China (Wednesday Jun. 06, 2012)
  Multinational semiconductor companies are no longer able to compete with China’s fabless chips vendors in the consumer electronics IC business, according to Vincent Tai, CEO of RDA Microelectronics Inc. “It’s game over” for them, Tai asserted in a recent interview with EE Times here.
  
  
• Synopsys exec sees whole new ball game at 20 nm (Tuesday Jun. 05, 2012)
  The requirement for lithography double patterning on many layers makes moving to the 20-nm node a major undertaking that will require customers to invest in new design tool sets, according to Saleem Haider, senior director of marketing for physical design and DFM at Synopsys Inc.
  
  
• GloFo, TSMC report process tech progress (Tuesday Jun. 05, 2012)
  Globalfoundries reported progress ramping four flavors of its 28nm process and early work qualifying its 20 nm process and developing 3-D IC technology at the Design Automation Conference here. Its larger competitor TSMC also announced progress in the same three areas working in collaboration with Cadence Design Systems.
  
  
• Gary Smith hails multi-platform design methodology (Monday Jun. 04, 2012)
  design methodology based largely on intellectual property (IP) reuse employing minimal new design work to add proprietary value is being used by chip firms to create high-end system-on-chips (SoCs) with significantly lower costs, according to veteran EDA analyst Gary Smith.
  
  
• Insufficient baseband chip supply hurting LTE smartphone sales (Thursday May. 31, 2012)
  Since there has been greater than originally expected demand for LTE (Long Term Evolution) smartphones (and tablets), international vendors, including Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and HTC are worried that their shipments are not enough to meet demand due to short supply of LTE solution chips from Qualcomm, currently the only provider of integrated multimode 3G/4G LTE baseband chips.
  
  
• Why chip makers are buying software firms (Thursday May. 31, 2012)
  The owners of embedded software companies have long considered an acquisition by a semiconductor partner a logical exit strategy. We took a look at semiconductor acquisitions over the past two years with the aim of better understanding the dynamics of the market, and we came up with four critical questions.
  
  
• Renesas cuts 14,000 jobs; fab sale to TSMC (Monday May. 28, 2012)
  Renesas Electronics Corp. plans to eliminate up to 14,000 jobs, while selling the company’s leading system-chip fab in Yamagata to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., according to a report in Nikkei, Japan’s economic newspaper.
  
  
• Reports: Renesas to tie up with TSMC, cut jobs (Thursday May. 24, 2012)
  Renesas Electronics Corp., Japan's largest maker of logic chips, is expected to announce business partnership with foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. for the production of chips on Monday (May 28), according to reports.
  
  
• ARM CTO looks at architecture scaling for 2020 solutions (Thursday May. 24, 2012)
  Anticipating the propagation of the Internet of things, Mike Muller, chief technology officer at ARM Ltd., discussed the needs for architecture scaling at the annual IMEC Technology Forum this week at the Square meeting center in Brussels, Belgium.
  
  
• One Counterfeit Part Every 15 Seconds (Tuesday May. 22, 2012)
  More than 12 million parts have been involved in counterfeit incidents during the period spanning the start of 2007 through April 2012, according to Rory King, director, supply chain product marketing at IHS, citing data from ERAI. King delivered the news here on Friday to an audience of electronics industry participants attending the ERAI Executive Conference, co-hosted by IHS.
  
  
• Report: ARM aims to take 20% of notebook PC market (Friday May. 18, 2012)
  Warren East, CEO of processor IP licensor ARM Holdings plc, has said he expects companies making processors based on the ARM cores will take between 10 and 20 percent of the notebook PC market in 2014 or 2015, according to a Dow Jones report.
  
  
• ESilicon set to reap rewards of Asian gamble (Friday May. 18, 2012)
  Design services provider eSilicon Inc. has helped several fabless chip companies and OEMs enter the market by managing their ASIC and SoC flows. It services include everything from IP selection and chip design to foundry and packaging.
  
  
• Report: UMC benefits from TSMC 28-nm supply shortage (Friday May. 18, 2012)
  Chip foundry United Microelectronics Corp. has been the leading beneficiary of 28-nm chip supply shortages at the leading foundry and rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd., according to a Taiwan Economic News report.
  
  
• GSA Reports an Increase in April Semiconductor Funding Activity (Wednesday May. 16, 2012)
  In April 2012, venture investment dollars received by semiconductor companies (i.e., fabless companies, integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) and semiconductor suppliers) was $194.2 million; a 901.0% increase month-over-month (MoM) and a 461.3% increase year-over-year (YoY).
  
  
• Handicapping the field of possible MIPS suitors (Tuesday May. 15, 2012)
  Correct us if we’re wrong, but many readers may be writing off MIPS Technologies way too soon.
  
  
• Qualcomm, Micron, and GlobalFoundries Gain in 1Q12 Top 20 Ranking (Tuesday May. 15, 2012)
  A ranking of the 1Q12 top semiconductor suppliers is included as part of IC Insights' soon-to-be-released May Update to The McClean Report. Qualcomm moved into fifth place. GlobalFoundries moved into, and Elpida fell out of, the top 20.
  
  
• Four reasons why MIPS new cores may make it relevant again (Monday May. 14, 2012)
  MIPS Technologies rolled out this week a new generation of microprocessor cores called Aptiv. With the new cores’ smaller die size and reduced energy consumption compared to ARM’s midrange core like A15, MIPS is hoping that the new family of cores can put the company back on track.
  
  
• MIPS challenges ARM's Cortex with Aptiv launch (Friday May. 11, 2012)
  In a move reminiscent of ARM's three-tiered Cortex product launch a few years back, struggling processor IP licensor MIPS Technologies Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) has introduced three families of Aptiv processor cores addressing the mid, high and low ends of the licensible processor core market.
  
  
• Silicon Ventures tips plan to stem fabless VC drought (Friday May. 11, 2012)
  Ken Lawler, founding partner with Silicon Ventures Inc., laid out his firm's innovative approach to backing chip companies with a $200 million fund, at a European executive conference organized by the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA), held here this week.
  
  
• Bozotti has a dream: to turn round ST's digital problem (Thursday May. 10, 2012)
  Carlo Bozotti, CEO of European chip company STMicroelectronics NV, has a dream. It is to have both sides of his company be successful and that means fixing mobile chip joint venture ST-Ericsson.
  
  
• Counterfeit-Part Risk Expected to Rise as Semiconductor Market Shifts into Higher Gear (Thursday May. 10, 2012)
  With the semiconductor industry entering a phase of accelerating growth, the number of counterfeit-part incidents also is expected to rise to new record highs, according to an analysis of trends conducted by information and analytics provider IHS
  
  
• ARM dominates 10B unit CPU core market (Thursday May. 10, 2012)
  Driven by the growth of mobile devices, merchant CPU cores shipped in more than 10 billion chips last year, up 25 percent over 2010, according to a new report. ARM Ltd. commanded 78 percent of that market while Ceva and Imagination Technologies took even larger chunks of the smaller markets for DSP and graphics cores.