D&R Headline News | Most Popular | SoC News Alerts | |

Commentary / Analysis

• Intel, Samsung 2012 Capex Budgets in a League of Their Own (Monday Jan. 23, 2012)
  Announcements this week by Intel and Samsung regarding their planned capital expenditures in 2012 reveal there is, and will be, wide and growing separation between these two companies and their competition. Intel, with a capex budget of $12.5 billion, and Samsung, with $12.2 billion budgeted for semiconductor capex, are each forecast to more than double the 2012 capex spending of TSMC, the next largest supplier, which has budgeted $6.0 billion in capex.
  
  
• Opinion: ARM is no longer an underdog (Monday Jan. 23, 2012)
  On the one hand, ARM loves comparing itself to Intel, if only to whimper that the firm is so insignificantly tiny in terms of pure employee numbers. On the other hand, ARM points out it has a completely different business model to Intel and ships significantly more products.
  
  
• Could 450-mm wafers play away from the leading edge? (Monday Jan. 23, 2012)
  Many people have assumed that when the processing of integrated circuits on 450-mm diameter wafers comes, it will do so first for the most advanced digital manufacturing processes. But does it have to be that way?
  
  
• New Report Outlines Trends in U.S. Global Competitiveness in Science and Technology (Monday Jan. 23, 2012)
  The United States remains the global leader in supporting science and technology (S&T) research and development, but only by a slim margin that could soon be overtaken by rapidly increasing Asian investments in knowledge-intensive economies.
  
  
• TSMC's 28-nm process in trouble, says analyst (Friday Jan. 20, 2012)
  Mike Bryant, technology analyst with Future Horizons Ltd. has said that foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. is in trouble with its 28-nm manufacturing process technologies, which are not yet yielding well.
  
  
• M&A Activity Shakes up Mobile Device Semiconductor Market, But Qualcomm Still Holds 30% of the over $25 Billion Market (Thursday Jan. 19, 2012)
  2011 marked a big year for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the mobile device semiconductor market. From Intel’s acquisition of Infineon Technologies AG Wireless Solutions to NVIDIA’s purchase of Icera, the mobile device semiconductor market has seen a lot of moving and shaking. Despite all the M&A activity, however, the market is still projected to remain relatively flat, with only 5.6% CAGR from 2010 to 2016, pushing the market from $25 billion in 2010 to $35 billion in 2016.
  
  
• Analyst warns of chip downturn in 2013 (Wednesday Jan. 18, 2012)
  The semiconductor industry is expected to grow by 6 to 7 percent this year, but will contract in 2013 as the U.S. economy slows, according to Handel Jones, founder and CEO of International Business Strategies Inc. (IBS).
  
  
• 36% of Fabs in High-Risk Zones (Wednesday Jan. 18, 2012)
  Semico's 2011 Fab Database study provides key information on changes that occurred in 2011, and what plans are in place for upcoming fab construction and closures in 2012-2013. Key issues addressed in this report are the development work occurring with 450mm and 3D production.
  
  
• ARM's East unimpressed with Medfield, design wins (Monday Jan. 16, 2012)
  Warren East, chairman and CEO of processor technology licensor ARM Holdings plc (Cambridge, England), is unimpressed by the announcements made by chip giant Intel about the low-power Medfield system-chip and its design wins, according to a Reuters report.
  
  
• SuperSpeed USB-Enabled Device Shipments on Fast Track to 1 Billion in 2014 (Monday Jan. 16, 2012)
  New In-Stat research forecasts SuperSpeed USB-enabled device shipments are on a fast track and will surpass 1 billion in 2014, up from 70 million in 2011.
  
  
• Windows on ARM will not be terribly successful says analyst (Monday Jan. 16, 2012)
  While CES has previously been a show filled with big announcements and brand new technologies, this year’s show was a little different, with more incremental advancements centered on refining devices people already own.
  
  
• EDA Consortium Reports Revenue Increase for Q3, 2011 (Thursday Jan. 12, 2012)
  The EDA Consortium (EDAC) Market Statistics Service (MSS) today announced that the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry revenue increased 18.1 percent for Q3 2011 to $1543.9 million, compared to $1307.0 million in Q3 2010.
  
  
• IFI Announces Top Global Companies Ranked By 2011 U.S. Patents (Thursday Jan. 12, 2012)
  IBM remains in the #1 position, as it has for 19 straight years, with a record 6,180 utility patents, up nearly 5 percent from 2010. A wave of Asian companies fixed on amassing U.S. patent grants, however, continues to grow. Samsung trails second with 4,894, up 8 percent, and Canon, up 11 percent, replaces Microsoft in the #3 slot with 2,821. The next two, Panasonic and Toshiba, each move up one position from where they appeared last year.
  
  
• PwC sees China growth despite IP fears (Thursday Jan. 12, 2012)
  Some companies are still standing on the sidelines of growth opportunities as China expands its domestic market and technical clout, said a PriceWaterhouseCoopers executive.
  
  
• Who are ARM's top ten customers? (Wednesday Jan. 11, 2012)
  The leading customer of processor technology licensor ARM by revenue contribution in 2010, according to Nomura Equities Research, comes as a bit of a surprise. The financial brokerage and analysis house says it was ....
  
  
• Fab Spending Down in 2012 - Dip in First Half, but by Mid-Year Recovery Begins (Wednesday Jan. 11, 2012)
  Semiconductor fab equipment spending is expected to decline by approximately 11 percent in 2012, according to preliminary data from the SEMI World Fab Forecast report.
  
  
• Why the semiconductor industry will rise again (Monday Jan. 09, 2012)
  People ask me is there something wrong with the semiconductor industry if apparently good companies with good technologies such as SiliconBlue Technologies Inc. and PicoChip Ltd. are being sold for less than the venture capital invested in them over several years.
  
  
• Needed: A U.S. manufacturing renaissance (Friday Jan. 06, 2012)
  With the pox that is the U.S. presidential election campaign upon us, it’s a good time to begin looking at concrete proposals for reviving the U.S. economy and identifying a new engine for economic growth. I submit that the incumbent and all of his challengers begin by focusing on what could be called a U.S. manufacturing renaissance.
  
  
• Semiconductor Inventory Declines as Suppliers Adjust to Slow Market Conditions (Thursday Jan. 05, 2012)
  Chip inventories held by semiconductor suppliers declined in the third quarter of 2011, putting a halt to the steady expansion of the previous seven quarters, as the industry cut production in order to reduce oversupply.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Experience Near Term Challenges, Long Term Growth (Tuesday Jan. 03, 2012)
  The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors were $25.1 billion for the month of November 2011, a decrease of 2.4 percent from the prior month when sales were $25.7 billion.
  
  
• Global Mixed Signal System-on-a-Chip Market worth $212.69 Billion by 2016 (Wednesday Dec. 28, 2011)
  The global System-on-a-Chip (SoC) market is expected to grow from $85.9 billion in 2011 to $225 billion in 2016 at a CAGR of 21.24% from 2011 to 2016. The Mixed Signal System-on-a-Chip (MxSoC) market is expected to be $72.16 billion in 2011 (a percentage share of 84% in SoC market)
  
  
• Gartner Says Worldwide Semiconductor Revenue Grew 1 Percent to Reach $302 Billion in 2011 (Wednesday Dec. 21, 2011)
  Worldwide semiconductor revenue grew 0.9 percent from 2010, reaching $302 billion in 2011, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc. After a strong start to the year, worries about the strength of the macroeconomy slowed equipment and semiconductor orders in 2011.
  
  
• ARM Forecast to Accelerate Lead in the Automotive Sector Over the next Five Years (Thursday Dec. 15, 2011)
  Analysis of findings from Semicast’s Embedded Processing Service and Automotive Electronics & Entertainment Systems Service shows that ARM maintained its position as the leading architecture for 32-bit embedded processors in the automotive sector in 2011, ahead of Power Architecture, SH, TriCore and V850. The data also suggests that ARM’s lead in this sector is set to increase significantly over the next five years.
  
  
• Mobile SoC TAM to Exceed 3.1 Billion Devices in 2015 (Wednesday Dec. 14, 2011)
  Driven by consumer's desire to be connected anywhere and anytime and the ever increasing access to any and every type of content, the electronics industry continues to change rapidly.
  
  
• TSMC goes it alone with 3-D IC process (Wednesday Dec. 14, 2011)
  TSMC will try to go it alone with an integrated 3-D chip stacking technology as its only offering for future customers. The approach makes commercial sense for TSMC, but some fabless chip designers said it lacks technical merit and limits their options.
  
  
• Gartner Says Worldwide Semiconductor Spending to Reach $309 billion in 2012, a 2.2 Percent Increase from 2011 (Monday Dec. 12, 2011)
  Worldwide semiconductor revenue is forecast to reach $309 billion in 2012, a 2.2 percent increase from 2011, according to Gartner, Inc. This outlook is down from Gartner's previous projection in the third quarter for 4.6 percent growth in 2012.
  
  
• Samsung Takes Record Share of Global DRAM in Q3 (Monday Dec. 12, 2011)
  South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. in the third quarter managed to rise above challenging conditions in the dynamic random access memory (DRAM) business to achieve an all-time record-high market share, according to a new IHS iSuppli DRAM Market Brief from information and analysis provider IHS
  
  
• In search of new chip startup funding models (Wednesday Dec. 07, 2011)
  We've heard it so many times, by now it sounds like a broken record: venture capitalists, long the lifeblood nurturing a thriving community of semiconductor startups, have all but abandoned the chip industry, turning instead to social media and green energy technologies, where the common wisdom is a smaller investment can go a lot further.
  
  
• Nvidia: ARM supercomputer to be more efficient than x86 (Tuesday Dec. 06, 2011)
  An ARM CPU is inherently more efficient than an x86 CPU and therefore best suited toward the high performance computing needs of the future, according to Nvidia Corp.
  
  
• Worldwide Semiconductor Sales Projected to Top $300 Billion in 2011 (Tuesday Dec. 06, 2011)
  SIA has endorsed the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization’s Autumn 2011 global semiconductor sales forecast which has projected semiconductor sales to grow to $302 Billion for 2011, reaching the $300 Billion mark for the first time and representing a 1.3 percent growth rate over the record-breaking year in 2010.