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Commentary / Analysis

• TSMC's Chang: Industry needs to collaborate (Thursday Apr. 15, 2010)
  The near-term business outlook for ICs is strong, but the industry faces several challenges, according to Morris Chang, chairman and chief executive of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC).
  
  
• Virage Logics's new IP venture: It's the subsystems, stupid! (Wednesday Apr. 14, 2010)
  Virage Logic no longer sees itself as just a provider of a collection of semiconductor IP cores. Instead, it's betting on a future of becoming a supplier of "subsystems" that can be quickly, painlessly and deeply embedded in SoCs for its licensees.
  
  
• Is EDA innovating enough? (Friday Apr. 09, 2010)
  Much has been written and said about the travails of the EDA industry. Some industry leaders are shrinking in size and losing money. The industry as a whole is not growing and prospects are not promising. Part of the problem can be explained by the fact that we are just coming out of one of the worst recessions in history that has impacted most industries. Yet, most observers agree that the industry's struggles can't be explained by the economy alone.
  
  
• When will Virage become profitable? (Wednesday Apr. 07, 2010)
  Virage (Fremont, Calif.) has recently made two major acquisitions. And not long ago, the company was a mere memory and physical semiconductor IP house. Now, it has expanded into other new and growing fronts. But the real question is clear: When will the IP house become profitable again? The company has posted a net loss for seven consecutive quarters. Its last profitable quarter was the second fiscal quarter of 2008.
  
  
• Viewpoint: Is semiconductor industry consolidation inevitable? (Monday Apr. 05, 2010)
  The inevitability of semiconductor industry consolidation seems to be widely accepted, but data shows that the semiconductor industry has been slowly "deconsolidating" since the 1960s.
  
  
• Rumor mill: Apple to buy Intrinsity? (Monday Apr. 05, 2010)
  There are reports that Apple Inc. has acquired another IC design house: Intrinsity Inc.
  
  
• Inside the iPad: Samsung, Broadcom snag multiple wins (Monday Apr. 05, 2010)
  Samsung and Broadcom are among the major silicon suppliers for the Apple iPad which sports an unusually high processor-to-memory channel, an abundance of touch-screen silicon, a novel case design, according to a teardown performed by UBM TechInsights, a sister division of EE Times.
  
  
• Still Rambus, but less rambunctious (Thursday Apr. 01, 2010)
  Rambus is seeking to cast a kinder and gentler light on the company's feisty reputation. Heretofore, Rambus has been largely known as a litigious memory technology company. Rambus now wants to be viewed as more conciliatory, as it diversifies its IP portfolio far beyond memories.
  
  
• EDA Consortium Reports Decrease for 2009 but Sequential Fourth Quarter Gains (Thursday Apr. 01, 2010)
  The EDA Consortium (EDAC) Market Statistics Service (MSS) today announced that the EDA industry revenue for Q4 2009 was $1262.7 million, an 8.1 percent sequential increase from Q3. On a Q4/Q4 basis, EDA industry revenue declined 4.2 percent, compared to $1318.7 million in Q4 2008.
  
  
• Worldwide Semiconductor Revenue Fell by More Than 10 Percent in 2009, According to Final Results by Gartner (Monday Mar. 29, 2010)
  Total worldwide semiconductor revenue reached $228.4 billion in 2009, down $26.8 billion, or 10.5 percent, from 2008, according to Gartner Inc. Gartner said that this is the first time the industry has seen two consecutive years of revenue declines. However, the industry performed much better than expected in the second half, setting the stage for strong 2010 growth against weak comparables
  
  
• 4G/LTE chips coming . . . but first, a little chaos (Monday Mar. 22, 2010)
  As the wireless industry transitions to WiMax/LTE, gone are the days when baseband chip vendors could continuously hold onto their existing 3G/2G solutions. On the horizon is the industry's growing appetite for DSPs -- specifically designed to run Software Defined Radio (SDR), according to CEVA.
  
  
• Chip market to slow in second half, says TSMC's Chang (Friday Mar. 19, 2010)
  TSMC Chairman Morris Chang has said he expects chip market growth to slow in the second half of 2010, before picking up again in 2011, according to a Taiwan Economic News report.
  
  
• Updated: Sequans' WiMax chip drives Sprint Nextel's first 4G phone (Thursday Mar. 18, 2010)
  It turns out that it's Sequans Communications, not Beceem, whose WiMax chip was designed into Sprint Nextel's first WiMax (4G) phone, scheduled to be unveiled next week during the CTIA wireless show.
  
  
• Lessons for IP reuse (Thursday Mar. 18, 2010)
  In the ten years or so that it has taken for design reuse, or design with IP, to go from a niche interest to mainstream chip implementation, teams have developed an understanding of what it can do for them, and how to budget accordingly. However, there are still surprises to be negotiated, as some aspects of design reuse are counter-intuitive, especially when it comes to reusing some piece of IP developed in-house in another chip. Designers
  
  
• Who is largest buyer of chips? (Thursday Mar. 18, 2010)
  Who is the largest buyer of chips?
  
  
• Analyst: Tabula won't have immediate market impact (Thursday Mar. 18, 2010)
  Programmable logic startup Tabula turned some heads with the announcement earlier this month of its novel architecture and introduction of its first products this week. But the company poses no immediate threat to the dominance of market leaders Xilinx and Altera, according to a Wall Street analyst.
  
  
• Semiconductor Industry at Most Profitable Level in a Decade (Monday Mar. 15, 2010)
  The global semiconductor business now is more profitable than it has been at any time in the last decade, reflecting the industry’s increasingly aggressive management of costs, capacity and competitive positioning, according to iSuppli Corp.
  
  
• IC Insights Raises Worldwide 2010 IC Market Growth Forecast to +27% (Thursday Mar. 11, 2010)
  Worldwide IC market is now expected to jump 27% in 2010 to $253 billion and another 15% in 2011 to $290 billion. At $253 billion, the 2010 IC market would exceed by 8% the previous high of $234 billion reached in 2007.
  
  
• Altera: Industry faces 'platform collision' (Thursday Mar. 04, 2010)
  During a presentation at the Semico Outlook Conference here, an executive for programmable logic vendor Altera Inc. outlined the current and future challenges for the semiconductor industry
  
  
• Mentor CEO: IC design costs to hit $100M (Wednesday Mar. 03, 2010)
  Chip design costs are expected to soar, but software--not hardware--is playing a much greater role in the problematic equation, according to the top executive of Mentor Graphics Corp.
  
  
• Six reasons why no one wants an Atom-based SoC (Friday Feb. 26, 2010)
  There are plenty of reasons why no one has stepped up yet to use an Intel Atom core in their SoC, but if Intel really wants to be in this business it should take off eventually.
  
  
• Intel-TSMC Atom partnership reportedly on hold (Thursday Feb. 25, 2010)
  A groundbreaking partnership between Intel Corp. and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) has been placed on hiatus due to lack of customer demand, according to a New York Times report.
  
  
• TSMC's R&D boss addresses 40-nm yields, high-k, litho (Thursday Feb. 25, 2010)
  At the TSMC Japan Executive Forum in Yokohama this week, Shang-Yi Chiang, senior vice president of R&D at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC), addressed several issues about the silicon foundry giant. Chiang discussed TSMC's 40-nm capacity, yield issues, high-k and lithography.
  
  
• Gartner Says Worldwide Semiconductor Revenue to Grow 20 Percent in 2010 (Thursday Feb. 25, 2010)
  Worldwide semiconductor revenue in 2010 is forecast to reach $276 billion in 2010, a 19.9 percent increase from 2009 revenue of $231 billion, according to the latest outlook by Gartner, Inc.
  
  
• Comment: ARM must beware of the 'tied-selling' trap (Wednesday Feb. 24, 2010)
  The success of ARM Holdings plc with its series of low-power processing cores, and its relatively small-scale success - so far - with its Mali graphics processing cores puts ARM in a potentially dangerous position.
  
  
• EDA chiefs hazard no guesses on 2010 market (Monday Feb. 22, 2010)
  At the annual EDAC CEO panel, the leaders of EDA's biggest firms discussed trends impacting EDA growth, but left forecasts for the year to the panel's moderator, analyst Jay Vleeschhouwer.
  
  
• A dissenting opinion on the 'programmable imperative' (Thursday Feb. 18, 2010)
  Jack Harding, CEO of ASIC design and services provider eSilicon, has a simple question for those who say FPGAs are displacing ASICs: Where is the money?
  
  
• Imagination unfazed by Samsung's Mali move (Tuesday Feb. 16, 2010)
  Graphics core licensor Imagination Technologies Group plc (Kings Langley, England) has stated that it expects to have continued success with Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., despite the latter's uptake of graphics from archrival ARM Holdings plc (Cambridge, England).
  
  
• Micron-Numonyx deal: What analysts are saying (Thursday Feb. 11, 2010)
  As expected, Micron Technology Inc. has agreed to acquire Numonyx Holdings B.V. in a stock transaction valued at $1.27 billion. There have been rumors circulating about this deal since late last year. The deal propels Micron (Boise, Ida.) into the NOR and phase-change memory (PCM) sectors. Micron also expands its thrust into NAND flash.
  
  
• ARM to detail power-efficient design technique (Wednesday Feb. 10, 2010)
  Researchers from ARM and the University of Michigan have demonstrated a 52 percent reduction in power on a 65-nm ARM processor running at more than 1 GHz, using a hybrid technique for dynamic detection and correction of timing errors, according to a paper scheduled to be presented at the International Solid State Circuits Conference.