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Commentary / Analysis

• Will GlobalFoundries succeed or fail? (Tuesday Sep. 21, 2010)
  Despite a sudden and disturbing lull in the IC market, GlobalFoundries Inc. is moving full speed ahead with its aggressive silicon foundry strategy.
  
  
• Intel: Light Peak switches on in 2012 (Thursday Sep. 16, 2010)
  Intel Corp. showed a demo of the 10 G bit/second Light Peak optical interconnect at its annual Intel Developer Forum and said it will be ready to go into systems as early as 2012. That's about the same time the USB 3.0 interconnect is expected to ramp into high volume with support in chip sets.
  
  
• Inside Intel's Sandy Bridge architecture (Wednesday Sep. 15, 2010)
  Intel has officially entered the race to heterogeneous computer processors, sketching out the first members of its Sandy Bridge family that will ship before April. The 32nm chips will come in versions with two or four dual-threaded x86 cores and one graphics core on a shared ring interconnect.
  
  
• Intel sketches out 32, 22nm processors (Tuesday Sep. 14, 2010)
  Intel Corp. provided an update on its next two processor generations in the first day of the Intel Developer Forum. Intel showed PCs and servers running its next architecture, the 32nm Sandy Bridge which uses a ring bus to link x86 and graphics cores with cache and I/O.
  
  
• Opinion: Power imperative favors ARM's client-to-server play (Friday Sep. 10, 2010)
  The Cortex-A15 'Eagle' processor announcement from announcement from ARM is set to help the company secure its position in next-generation mobile clients and make in-roads against its rivals in some high-margin applications. Indeed ARM's A15 processor could be described as a cloud on Intel's cloud computing horizon.
  
  
• Samsung's Orion is an ARM graphics win, says analyst (Thursday Sep. 09, 2010)
  The graphics unit in the recently launched Orion dual-core Cortex-A9 processor from Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. is based on the Mali intellectual property from ARM Holdings plc, according to an analyst with Royal Bank of Scotland.
  
  
• Rumor mill: Apple to buy Cirrus (Monday Sep. 06, 2010)
  There are rumors that Apple Inc. could buy Cirrus Logic Inc., according to Barrons.com, which cites TheFlyOnTheWall.com as its source.
  
  
• Gartner Says Worldwide Semiconductor Revenue to Grow 31.5 Percent in 2010 (Wednesday Sep. 01, 2010)
  Worldwide semiconductor revenue in 2010 is forecast to reach $300 billion, a 31.5 percent increase from 2009 revenue of $228 billion, according to the latest outlook by Gartner, Inc. Analysts project worldwide semiconductor revenue to total $314 billion in 2011, a 4.6 percent increase from 2010.
  
  
• Intel will run wireless as separate business (Wednesday Sep. 01, 2010)
  Intel Corp. will operate the wireless business it is set to acquire from Infineon Technologies AG as a separate business, according to executives speaking at a press conference called to discuss the deal.
  
  
• Intel-Infineon deal: What analysts are saying (Tuesday Aug. 31, 2010)
  Corp. plans to purchase Infineon Technologies AG's Wireless Solutions Business (WLS) for $1.4 billion in cash with the deal expected to close in the first quarter of 2011. Here's what analysts said about the Intel-Infineon deal
  
  
• Analysis: Intel's wireless move no guarantee of success (Monday Aug. 30, 2010)
  Repeatedly leaked in advance and therefore fully expected, Intel and Infineon have agreed that the world's largest chip company should acquire the wireless business unit of Infineon for about $1.4 billion in cash.
  
  
• Analyst: Samsung likely to pass Intel in ICs (Friday Aug. 27, 2010)
  Based on its broad semiconductor product offerings and expansion plans, South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. is on track to catch Intel Corp. in semiconductor revenue and will most likely become the No. 1 chip vendor by the middle of this decade, according to a prominent semiconductor industry analyst.
  
  
• The future of SoC verification: Enterprise computing? (Friday Aug. 27, 2010)
  Perhaps the world of SoC verification gives the appearance of gradual and organized development. But the real story, as it emerges from an interview last week with Mentor Graphics DVT Division general manager John Lenyo, looks more like the modern view of evolution: sporadic change along many different axes, driven not so much by a master plan as by the crushing and impersonal weight of every-growing complexity.
  
  
• Opinion: Apple should build a fab (Friday Aug. 27, 2010)
  Apple should think about building a wafer fab. I'm not joking or merely trying to be provocative. I'd even bet that Steve Jobs has flirted with the idea.
  
  
• Mentor moves tools toward 16-nanometer (Tuesday Aug. 24, 2010)
  A conversation last Friday (Aug. 20) with Joseph Sawicki, vice president and general manager of the Mentor Graphics Corp.'s Design to Silicon Division, provided a snapshot of the conundra facing foundries and EDA vendors as they approach sub-20-nm process geometries.
  
  
• Almost 280 Million Combination Chipsets to Ship This Year (Monday Aug. 23, 2010)
  Shipments of “combo” chipsets for mobile devices that gather a variety of connectivity types in one small package are expected to approach 280 million worldwide by the end of 2010. Integrating different radio technologies such as FM, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS on a single chip may sometimes involve performance compromises, but saves money, space and power. ABI Research forecasts that more than 979 million such chipsets will ship in 2015.
  
  
• Analyst: McAfee buy moves Intel toward IBM model (Friday Aug. 20, 2010)
  Intel Corp.'s proposed $7.68 billion acquisition of security software vendor McAfee Inc. moves the No. 1 chip vendor further down a diversification path that could eventually see the company relying less on chip sales and more on software and consulting services, according to a Wall Street analyst.
  
  
• Market shows signs of soft spots, says NXP's Clemmer (Wednesday Aug. 18, 2010)
  NXP BV, which has closed several fabs in recent quarters, could not meet demand for its chips in the second quarter. But Rick Clemmer, the company's CEO, is not worried that this will allow others to capitalize in Q3 at NXP's expense.
  
  
• Outsourced IC design revenue up in 2009, says Gartner (Monday Aug. 16, 2010)
  Although the absolute number of ICs designed each year continues to decline, an increasing proportion of IC designs are getting outsourced to service companies and they are charging more for their work, according to market research company Gartner Inc.
  
  
• SMIC revamps fab deals, confirms capital infusion (Thursday Aug. 12, 2010)
  Chinese foundry provider Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) has revised the business model for its fab arrangements in Chengdu and Wuhan.
  
  
• Analyst: Slowdown seen in fab tool biz (Wednesday Aug. 11, 2010)
  The sky is falling on the fab tool sector, according to an analyst. So far, 2010 has been a boom year for fab tool makers. But now, ''the business climate for the semiconductor industry is deteriorating and pushouts of front-end equipment are forthcoming,”
  
  
• Red flags seen as TSMC, UMC post monthly sales (Wednesday Aug. 11, 2010)
  There is good news and bad news in the IC industry.
  
  
• Apple iPad upgrade likely to get STMicro gyro (Wednesday Aug. 11, 2010)
  Apple apparently tested a three-axis gyroscope from InvenSense in its iPad, but probably plans to use a similar device from STMicroelectronics in a future version of the tablet, according to an analysis by UBM TechInsights.
  
  
• Semiconductor Roid Rage Prompts iSuppli to Pump Up 2010 Forecast (Thursday Aug. 05, 2010)
  iSuppli now predicts global semiconductor revenue in 2010 will rise by 35.1 percent to reach $310.3 billion, up from $229.6 billion in 2009. iSuppli’s previous forecast, issued on May 6, predicted growth of 30.9 percent this year.
  
  
• Comment: Andy Grove, startups and job creation (Friday Jul. 30, 2010)
  Andrew Grove, the co-founder of Intel Corp., doesn't buy the again-fashionable argument that startups, preferably technology startups, are the best way to create new American jobs.
  
  
• Semiconductor input costs vs output prices -- managing the squeeze (Thursday Jul. 22, 2010)
  Increasing commodity costs and decreasing consumer prices place big pressure on profit margins. How can IC companies and EDA vendors manage the input costs/output prices squeeze?
  
  
• No way into server market for ARM, says analyst (Wednesday Jul. 21, 2010)
  Next year will be the year of the low-power server, according to Mike Bryant, an analyst with Future Horizons. However, it will be based on Intel processors, rather than those based on ARM intellectual property, he said.
  
  
• EDA Consortium Reports Revenue Increase for Q1 2010 (Tuesday Jul. 13, 2010)
  EDAC Market Statistics Service (MSS) today announced that the EDA industry revenue for Q1 2010 was $1247 million, a 4.6 percent increase compared to $1192.1 million in Q1 2009. Sequential EDA revenue declined 1.2 percent, while over the last four quarters it declined 5.9 percent.
  
  
• The analog IC "shortage": real or hype? (Thursday Jul. 08, 2010)
  It's that time again: we have a shortage of some IC types, as opposed to a glut, yet why do we never have the "just right" balance?
  
  
• Worldwide Semiconductor Revenues Will Increase to $295 Billion in 2011 and Surpass $340 Billion in 2014, According to IDC (Thursday Jul. 08, 2010)
  International Data Corporation (IDC) expects global semiconductor revenue to reach $274 billion, $295 billion, and $344 billion in 2010, 2011, and 2014, respectively, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.8% over the 2009-2014 forecast period.