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Commentary / Analysis

• Indian design firms see uptick when recession ends (Thursday Jul. 02, 2009)
  The current global recession is driving development costs down, prompting many Indian chip and embedded design service providers to predict an uptick once the downturn ends.
  
  
• Licensable IP houses leapfrogging DSP incumbents (Friday Jun. 26, 2009)
  Tensilica and ARC have recently launched radically new DSP-specific architectures, so Forward Concepts' Will Strauss began to wonder if the traditional DSP chip suppliers, Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, Freescale, LSI and NEC, are falling behind in their offerings.
  
  
• Memory interface IP sector heats up (Wednesday Jun. 24, 2009)
  The current and ongoing downturn has taken a major toll on the semiconductor industry. But one of the few exceptions to the rule is the semiconductor intellectual-property (IP) business--at least on some fronts. The memory interface IP sector, especially for DRAM, is heating up.
  
  
• Silicon startups get the squeeze (Tuesday Jun. 23, 2009)
  Top venture capitalists say opportunities are changing and narrowing for semiconductor startups because the costs of bringing a new processor or system-on-chip to market are becoming prohibitive and raising new funds to invest in high tech companies of any kind is getting increasingly difficult.
  
  
• Foundry rankings change as shortages near (Thursday Jun. 11, 2009)
  Business is expected to improve in the foundry arena, as there are whispers about possible allocations and price hike scenarios in the sector.
  
  
• CEO Interview: Cadence's Tan plans to build on analog strength (Monday Jun. 08, 2009)
  Christoph Hammerschmidt caught up with Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of EDA company, Cadence Design Systems Inc., at the recent CDN Live company event held in Munich, Germany.
  
  
• Analysis: CEVA's reversal of fortune (Monday Jun. 08, 2009)
  CEVA, a DSP core IP supplier, is emerging as one of the big beneficiaries of the rapidly changing mobile handset IC market, in which Nokia recently changed its strategy to multiple sourcing on the open market, and Texas Instruments is exiting from the merchant baseband processor market.
  
  
• Analysis: Intel eyes embedded apps with Wind River deal (Friday Jun. 05, 2009)
  There will undoubtedly be fallout from Intel Corp.'s move into the embedded software market, a market well beyond its traditional PC and server segments.
  
  
• Synopsys CEO: Crisis will change the way chips are designed (Thursday Jun. 04, 2009)
  As if the current downturn weren't challenging enough, the semiconductor industry is also headed for increasing challenges from higher design costs and production at smaller geometries, according to Aart de Geus, chairman and CEO of Synopsys Inc.
  
  
• Feedback: 6 critical keys to IP licensing success (Wednesday May. 27, 2009)
  The IP licensing market is complicated and in this response to a previous EE Times article on the history of Chipidea and MIPS, a reader lists six factors he believes are critical for success in the market segment.
  
  
• Analysis: Dissecting the MIPS-Chipidea breakup (Tuesday May. 19, 2009)
  MIPS executives have blamed its short marriage with Chipidea on a weak economy. But ex-Chipidea employees insist integration of the two companies was botched by MIPS.
  
  
• Video: Intel upbeat on SoCs, recovery (Wednesday May. 13, 2009)
  Intel Corp. plans to offer 3G cellular silicon as part of its move into Atom-based systems-on-chip for networked devices, said chief executive of Paul Otellini.
  
  
• Analog/digital marriage ends; MIPS/Chipidea not a good idea (Monday May. 11, 2009)
  MIPS Technologies Inc., which in August 2007 bought Chipidea, a Portuguese analog and mixed-signal IP company, announced Friday (May 8) that it has now divested its analog business group to Synopsys Inc. in an all-cash transaction for $22 million, effective immediately.
  
  
• Market Changes in DSP Silicon Warrants New Analysis According To Study (Monday May. 11, 2009)
  Forward Concepts has published a new market study guiding clients through the market changes that have recently occurred, providing guidance as to where the worldwide market for DSP-centric silicon is the fastest growing.
  
  
• Another ARC makeover begins as Schlachte departs (Friday May. 08, 2009)
  The stock of ARC International shot up by 42 percent to 14.20p on the London Stock Exchange Thursday (May 7th), the day after the company announced the resignation of its former CEO Carl Schlachte.
  
  
• Apple seen beefing up its chip design efforts (Monday May. 04, 2009)
  The confirmation earlier this week that Apple has hired two former ATI/AMD chip designers has rekindled suggestions that the company is handpicking a team of engineers and semiconductor specialists as it seeks to create its own semiconductor design business.
  
  
• Is Windows 7 launch set to reveal ARM processor support? (Monday May. 04, 2009)
  There have been rumors for a while now that Microsoft engineers in Redmond, Washington, have been demonstrating the Windows XP operating system running on chips with ARM processing cores inside.
  
  
• ARM Forecast To Become The Leading 32-bit Microcontroller Architecture In 2011 (Thursday Apr. 30, 2009)
  Findings from the Semicast study on the global market for 32/64-bit microcontrollers (MCUs) and embedded microprocessors (eMPUs) show that automotive and industrial (including medical) applications are forecast to be the two key growth sectors, with total revenues for ARM-based MCUs/eMPUs set to increase at a CAGR of 21% over the period 2007-2013. Revenue growth for ARM-based MCUs is forecast to be driven in particular by the introduction of low cost parts based on the ARM Cortex M3 and M0 cores.
  
  
• Where are they now? M2000 (Wednesday Apr. 15, 2009)
  In 2007, M2000, a programmable logic startup founded in France in 1996, moved its headquarters to Silicon Valley and said it was on the verge of launching what it described as "breakthrough" technology that would provide higher logic density, functionality and speed at less cost than competing solutions.
  
  
• ARM netbooks struggle with video, apps (Monday Apr. 13, 2009)
  Engineers designing a new generation of ARM/Linux-based netbooks are struggling with two issues crucial to the success of the systems--the platform's poor support for Web video and its fragmented software base.
  
  
• EDA Consortium Reports Industry Revenue Down in Fourth Quarter 2008 (Tuesday Apr. 07, 2009)
  EDA Market Statistics Service today announced that the EDA industry revenue for Q4 2008 declined 17.7 percent to $1318.7 million, compared to $1602.7 million in Q4 2007.
  
  
• Video: Where hardware and software collide (Monday Apr. 06, 2009)
  Chipmakers are taking on responsibility for the development of more embedded software, resulting in a clash of cultures between hardware designers and software developers and necessitating a more system-level approach to design, according to executives on a panel discussion at ESC Silicon Valley this week.
  
  
• PLDesignLigne Guest blog: Mike Santarini -- EDA: Get serious about FPGA... your survival may depend on it (Thursday Apr. 02, 2009)
  It's truly remarkable how the EDA business has changed over the last few years and especially over the last year. As I look at the stock prices of the EDA companies today, it's really quite remarkable how things have changed in just one year's time.
  
  
• Analysis: Dual Cortex-A9 cores figure drive OMAP 4 (Thursday Apr. 02, 2009)
  Texas Instruments recently announced its next-generation application processor family, OMAP 4. The OMAP 4 chip family targets smart phones and mobile internet devices (MIDs) and incorporates a number of distinct processing engines.
  
  
• Gartner: ASIC design starts to fall by 22% in '09 (Monday Mar. 30, 2009)
  FPGAs are displacing ASICs—a trend that in 2009 will be exacerbated by the global financial crisis—and now have a 30-to-one edge in design starts, according to market research firm Gartner Inc.
  
  
• Chip industry outlook improving, says TSMC's Chang (Friday Mar. 27, 2009)
  The prospects for the semiconductor industry are better than they were a month ago, according to a Reuters report that quotes Morris Chang, chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) as its source.
  
  
• Offshoring backlash rises as layoffs mount (Monday Mar. 23, 2009)
  The worst economic downturn since the Great Depression is raising the volume on the offshoring debate. Labor groups are slamming companies for shipping jobs overseas at a time of spiraling U.S. high-tech unemployment, and critics have characterized the Obama administration's early efforts to reach out to high-tech executives as tacit complicity.
  
  
• Multicore CPUs face slow road in comms (Monday Mar. 23, 2009)
  The transition to multicore processors in communications and networking systems is expected to be a slow one due to complex and fragmented nature of the underlying technology, predicted a technology analyst.
  
  
• Xilinx CEO: Venture capital won't return to semis (Thursday Mar. 12, 2009)
  Venture capital funding is in short supply and won't return to the semiconductor industry even after the current recession, according to Moshe Gavrielov, president and CEO of programmable logic supplier Xilinx Inc.
  
  
• Analyst sees ARM CPUs in most netbooks by 2012 (Tuesday Mar. 10, 2009)
  ARM-based processors will take market share from Intel Corp.'s Atom in the netbook segment and hold 55 percent of the netbook market by 2012, according to Robert Castellano, president of The Information Network.