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Commentary / Analysis

• The rise of China's fabless industry (Thursday Jun. 16, 2011)
  China's burgeoning fabless chip sector is leveraging competitive advantages like access to capital and foundry agreements.
  
  
• China's Fabless Market Set to Double by 2015 (Monday Jun. 13, 2011)
  Driven by strong domestic demand and soaring exports, China’s fabless semiconductor market is on a high-growth trajectory, with revenue set to double from 2010 to 2015, new IHS iSuppli research indicates.
  
  
• Intel, Samsung and Toshiba Continue to Lead Softening World Semiconductor Market, According to ABI Research (Monday Jun. 13, 2011)
  As they have for several years, Intel, Samsung and Toshiba (in that order) remain the world’s top vendors of semiconductors, in a market which is expected to see about 4% growth during 2011. That growth, however, is softer than the robust growth seen in 2010 (though still better than 2009’s dismal performance.)
  
  
• EDA earns mixed grades in latest report card (Wednesday Jun. 08, 2011)
  Gary Smith, the proverbial analyst of the EDA industry, predicts that design automation tools will become a $6.6 billion business by 2015.
  
  
• ARM to play in games consoles, says analyst (Wednesday Jun. 08, 2011)
  Having become the leading supplier of processor architecture for mobile phones ARM is set to start making inroads into the games console market, according to Semicast Research. which means variants of PowerPC, according to market research company Semicast Research.
  
  
• Analyst: Qualcomm in, Intel out of iPhone 5 (Friday Jun. 03, 2011)
  Qualcomm Inc. has snagged the baseband socket on the next Apple Inc. iPhone, displacing Intel Corp., according to Craig Berger, an analyst with FBR Capital Markets Corp.
  
  
• HP open to limited licensing of WebOS (Thursday Jun. 02, 2011)
  Hewlett-Packard is willing to license its WebOS environment to a limited number of key partners focused exclusively its mobile operating system. Jon Rubinstein revealed HP's willingness for limited WebOS licensing at the Qualcomm Uplinq event here.
  
  
• Qualcomm cautiously upbeat on Win 8 plans (Thursday Jun. 02, 2011)
  Qualcomm's CEO was high on enthusiasm but low on details about getting a port of the next version of Microsoft Windows for his Snapdragon processor.
  
  
• India starts hunt for fab-building chipmakers (Tuesday May. 31, 2011)
  A committee recently set up by the Indian government to help drive the establishment of semiconductor manufacturing in the sub-continent, has conducted its first meeting and has started approaching chip companies to ask them to set up wafer fabs there.
  
  
• Low power vs high performance at 22 nm & below (Wednesday May. 25, 2011)
  Intel’s recent move to new 22 nanometer CMOS process technology in its Atom CPU road map has upset a delicate balance maintained over the last ten years or so among circuit designers, processor architects, and embedded system hardware and software developers.
  
  
• Intel's embedded chief has big expectations (Monday May. 23, 2011)
  For all the talk about Intel struggling to take a bigger chunk of chip sales to the embedded market from ARM-based devices, the general manager of Intel's embedded unit says the company has grown its embedded business significantly in the past few years by taking market share—a trend he predicts will become more pronounced in the years to come.
  
  
• Up from the patent mine, Rambus sees the light (Monday May. 23, 2011)
  Rambus came to Lightfair in Philadelphia this week to pitch the company’s patented lighting solutions, branded as Pentelic.
  
  
• ST keeps faith in wireless "big-chip-in-the-middle" (Monday May. 23, 2011)
  In contrast to NXP Semiconductors, committed to a turnaround based on its “no-big-chip-in-the-middle” strategy, STMicroelectronics is betting its future on a much broader product portfolio – including such big chips in the middle as digital TV SoCs and ST-Ericsson’s multi-mode modem/applications processor.
  
  
• ST's new ARM-based DTV platform leverages ST-Ericsson (Friday May. 20, 2011)
  Philippe Lambinet, ST’s senior executive vice president, sees ST-Ericsson’s pioneering work critical, as his team switches its core from ST40 to ARM in its upcoming DTV SoC platform.
  
  
• Intel: ARM gets Windows four ways (Thursday May. 19, 2011)
  Microsoft's plan to put Windows 8 on ARM will result in a fragmented set of four releases, none of which will run legacy PC apps, said Intel executives.
  
  
• Intel: Under the smoke and mirrors (Thursday May. 19, 2011)
  The contrast between what Intel was saying and doing at its annual analyst meeting here yesterday was pretty revealing. The context was clear: Analysts think Intel's PC franchise is starting to look like a pair of worn disco pants at a Web 2.0 party where ARM smartphones and tablets are the latest fashion.
  
  
• Analyst: AMD-ARM deal makes no sense (Tuesday May. 17, 2011)
  ARM Holdings plc is trying to persuade Advanced Micro Devices Inc., the long-time rival to global chip leader Intel Corp., to license ARM processors and use them instead of the x86 architecture.
  
  
• Icera exit is good news for startups (Monday May. 16, 2011)
  Congratulations Stan [Boland, CEO of Icera], you did it again! With the news of Icera being acquired, we are sure to be hearing the biggest sigh of relief for a long time from the European venture capital industry.
  
  
• Design starts triple for TSMC at 28-nm (Monday May. 16, 2011)
  The number of IC design starts at 28-nm for foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. is more than three times what they were at the equivalent stage in the roll out of 40-nm manufacturing processes, according to a company executive.
  
  
• Icahn nominees win seats on Mentor's board (Friday May. 13, 2011)
  Preliminary estimates indicate that shareholders of EDA vendor Mentor Graphics Corp. elected three men nominated by billionaire financier Carl Icahn to serve on the company's board of directors, Mentor said Thursday
  
  
• Rambus sowing seeds with memory startups (Wednesday May. 11, 2011)
  Rambus wants to be able to license other companies to make whatever comes after flash and DRAM. And to that end the company has begun investing in startup companies and providing support to universities researching next-generation memory technologies.
  
  
• IHS: Intel's tri-gates to keep ARM at bay (Wednesday May. 11, 2011)
  Intel Corp.'s recently announced 22-nm tri-gate transistor technology gives the world's No. 1 chip vendor the microprocessor ammunition it needs to make headway in the smartphone and media tablet market while simultaneously fighting off a potential incursion into the PC business from devices based on the architecture of ARM Holdings plc, according to a new report by market research firm IHS iSuppli.
  
  
• ESC: Seven takeaways from Microchip CEO (Friday May. 06, 2011)
  During an interview at this week’s ESC, Steve Sanghi, Microchip Technology Inc.'s president and CEO, discussed several subjects.
  
  
• ARM to win 13% PC processor share in 2015, says IDC (Thursday May. 05, 2011)
  The processor architecture of ARM Holdings plc, which is not present in the market for desktop, mobile or x86 servers at present, is going to grab more than 13 percent market share by 2015, according to market research firm International Data Corp. (IDC).
  
  
• Chip market grows, despite revision (Thursday May. 05, 2011)
  The first quarter market for global semiconductor sales was $75.77 billion a sequential increase of 0.4 percent and up 11.75 percent compared with 1Q10, according to World Semiconductor Trade Statistics.
  
  
• Intel tips 22-nm tri-gate, but mobile is MIA (Thursday May. 05, 2011)
  Intel introduced its 22-nm process, based on its long-awaited 3-D transistor design, dubbed tri-gate.
  
  
• If Intel wins Apple, becomes leading ARM maker (Wednesday May. 04, 2011)
  This is kind of obvious, but it seems worth stating explicitly. But we live in interesting times: if Intel Corp. wins foundry business making chips for Apple, which we have been told the company is pitching for, it would become a leading, if not the leading, manufacturer of ARM-based processors.
  
  
• Apple-Samsung friendship turns sour (Tuesday May. 03, 2011)
  Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. were once close friends.
  
  
• Rumor mill: Intel to roll 22-nm (Tuesday May. 03, 2011)
  Rumors are running rampant that Intel Corp. this week will announce its long-awaited 22-nm process.
  
  
• Reports: Intel to fab PLDs for second startup (Tuesday May. 03, 2011)
  Intel, which last year surprised semiconductor industry observers by agreeing to serve as a foundry provider for programmable logic startup Achronix Semiconductor, has apparently agreed to a similar arrangement with another up-and-coming programmable logic startup, according to a reports.