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Commentary / Analysis

• Analysts lag 'actual' chip market growth (Monday Jul. 05, 2010)
  The "actual" global market for chips was $24.02 billion in May, as calculated from the three-month average of $24.65 billion given out by the European Semiconductor Industry Association (ESIA).
  
  
• Analyst: China's IC manufacturing spend paying off (Monday Jun. 28, 2010)
  Semiconductor fabs in China produced 40 billion ICs in 2009, accounting for 25.1 percent of domestic demand, up from 20.9 percent in 2004, according to a new report that concludes that massive investments in China's semiconductor industry are paying dividends.
  
  
• Apple's A4: Are we there yet? (Thursday Jun. 17, 2010)
  A team of experts reviews the evidence on Apple's A4 processor in an attempt to determine its origins and the influence of chip design houses recently acquired by Apple.
  
  
• DAC: IC design bound for cloud computing (Thursday Jun. 17, 2010)
  Cloud computing for EDA work may still be in the clouds but in three to five years it will occupy up to 20 percent of design transactions between major EDA vendors and their customers.
  
  
• Analysis: Acquisitions reflect broadening view of EDA (Friday Jun. 11, 2010)
  Recent acquisition activity by large EDA vendors represents the most recent and perhaps boldest evidence of a broadening focus that steps away from a "myopic view of what EDA is that was killing the industry," according to a prominent EDA analyst.
  
  
• ARM shares spike again (Thursday Jun. 10, 2010)
  Shares in processor intellectual property licensor ARM Holdings plc spiked on Thursday taking the stock up above 300 pence a share from an opening price of 273.4 pence.
  
  
• Report: China group mulls stake in MIPS (Wednesday Jun. 09, 2010)
  The Institute of Computing Technology of Chinese Academy of Sciences is mulling plans to take a 20 percent stake in MIPS Technologies Inc., according to reports.
  
  
• Gartner Says Worldwide Semiconductor Revenue to Grow 27 Percent in 2010 (Thursday Jun. 03, 2010)
  Worldwide semiconductor revenue in 2010 is forecast to reach $290 billion in 2010, a 27.1 percent increase from 2009 revenue of $228 billion, according to the latest outlook by Gartner, Inc.
  
  
• Analysis: Big spenders reinforce boom-bust cycle (Tuesday Jun. 01, 2010)
  A surge in announcements of increased chip making capital expenditure is not going to make an impact any time soon. But when the spending does hit it will almost certainly produce an oversupply bust sometime as consolidation amongsts the pure-play IDMs exacerbates the boom-bust cycle.
  
  
• SMIC, TI still in talks about fab takeover (Wednesday May. 26, 2010)
  Silicon foundry vendor Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) is still in talks with Texas Instruments Inc. about taking over the operation of a 200-mm fab in Chengdu, China, according to sources.
  
  
• Analysts: 450-mm will happen, eventually (Wednesday May. 26, 2010)
  The probability that the semiconductor industry will one day use 450-mm silicon wafers in manufacturing has increased significantly, though the chance of achieving volume production by the original target date of 2012 is remote, according to a new report by analysts at Semico Research.
  
  
• Clients to become more like servers, says ARM's CTO (Monday May. 24, 2010)
  Processors for mobile clients are going to have to take on many of the functions associated with networking infrastructure, according to Mike Muller, chief technology officer of ARM. This will be part of an explosion of processing requirements for wirelessly-connected devices that will require multiple application-specific processors to keep power consumption down, he added.
  
  
• Analysis: What's next for UMC? (Monday May. 24, 2010)
  At a low-key event in Taiwan this week, silicon foundry vendor United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) celebrated its accomplishments during its 30th anniversary.
  
  
• CEO spotlights on IP biz as Synopsys tops estimates (Thursday May. 20, 2010)
  EDA and IP vendor Synopsys reported revenue gains on a sequential and year-over-year basis for the three months ended April 30, as the company beat consensus analyst expectations for revenue and profit for the period.
  
  
• Analyst: Xilinx at risk of double ordering (Wednesday May. 19, 2010)
  Programmable logic vendor Xilinx continues to face the risk of double ordering by customers due to growing lead times for some of its parts, according to a Wall Street analyst.
  
  
• Dell, IBM give thumbs up to ARM servers (Tuesday May. 18, 2010)
  Dell Inc. will test this summer multicore ARM processors from Marvell for possible use in low-power servers for large data centers, a trend for which an IBM executive also expressed support in more general terms.
  
  
• Report: Infineon talks to Intel over sale of wireless unit (Monday May. 17, 2010)
  Infineon is in talks with Intel over the possible sale of its wireless chip business, according to the Financial Times Deutschland, which cites unnamed sources at Infineon.
  
  
• Intel CEO says the ARM way is no way to make money (Wednesday May. 12, 2010)
  Intel Corp. sees no threat to its business from ARM Holdings plc (Cambridge, England) and has no intention in participating in any alternative processor architectures to its own, according to CEO Paul Otellini.
  
  
• Analysis gives first look inside Apple's A4 processor (Friday May. 07, 2010)
  An analysis by UBM TechInsights shows the Apple A4 processor in the iPad is a single-core ARM Cortex A8 made by Samsung.
  
  
• Who is MIPS' mystery licensee? (Thursday May. 06, 2010)
  IP house MIPS Technologies Inc. recently revealed that it had landed a major cellular baseband/application processor licensee based in Asia.
  
  
• Analyst: UMC seeks R&D partnership (Thursday May. 06, 2010)
  Taiwan's United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) is planning a private placement of no more than 10 percent of its total shares or about $400 million.
  
  
• Chipset Integration Needed Before SuperSpeed USB Takes Off, Says In-Stat (Tuesday May. 04, 2010)
  SuperSpeed USB, which offers a tenfold bandwidth improvement over high-speed USB, will grow to just under 30 percent of the USB interface technology market by 2014, according to In-Stat forecasts. The success of SuperSpeed USB will be limited initially, however.
  
  
• Boosted by Asian licensee, MIPS elbows ARM (Monday May. 03, 2010)
  MIPS Technologies Inc.'s quest for a stake in the ARM-dominated mobile handset market seemed, just a little more than six months ago, to be the proverbial impossible dream -- at least in the eyes of most industry analysts.
  
  
• Semiconductor Industry Association Reports March Chip Sales Grew by 4.6 Percent Month-on-Month (Monday May. 03, 2010)
  SIA today reported that worldwide semiconductor sales in March were $23.1 billion, an increase of 4.6 percent from February when sales were $22.0 billion. Sales increased by 58.3 percent from March 2009, when sales were $14.6 billion. The first quarter of 2009 marked the low point in semiconductor sales during the global economic recession.
  
  
• The servers are coming, says ARM's CEO (Thursday Apr. 29, 2010)
  Servers based on ARM multicore processors should arrive in the next 12 months, according to Warren East, chief executive officer of processor intellectual property licensor ARM Holdings plc (Cambridge, England).
  
  
• NEWS ANALYSIS - Xilinx puts ARM core into its FPGAs (Thursday Apr. 29, 2010)
  New embedded systems architecture employs ARM core in processor-centric FPGAs. My first reaction was, "It's about time." My second reaction was, "I hope they did it right." Let me explain. Xilinx, considered by many to be the market leader for FPGAs, had a hole in its lineup, at least in my eyes. For at least a couple of years, I asked the folks at Xilinx why they weren't making a serious run at ARM-based FPGAs.
  
  
• ARM stock rises on Apple takeover talk (Thursday Apr. 22, 2010)
  London's financial district was full of rumors on Wednesday (April 21) that Apple is considering a takeover of processor intellectual property licensor ARM Holdings plc (Cambridge, England), according to the London Evening Standard newspaper.
  
  
• Reports: Google buys chip design firm Agnilux (Wednesday Apr. 21, 2010)
  Google Inc. is following Apple into the IC design business by buying a chip design team company, according to reports. Google has bought Agnilux Inc. (San Jose, Calif.), which was formed by former design engineers who had been brought into Apple and then quit to form their own company.
  
  
• Microsoft job ad hints at ARM-based servers (Tuesday Apr. 20, 2010)
  Microsoft is looking for senior software development engineer to help with its Bing data centers, potentially running them on ARM hardware.
  
  
• Samsung's ARM roadmap leads to quad-core 'Aquila' (Monday Apr. 19, 2010)
  A roadmap document labeled as from Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. shows the company working on a series of ARM-based processors designed to power future netbook computers.