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Commentary / Analysis

• ARM's Q2 continues climb in sales and profits (Wednesday Jul. 25, 2012)
  Processor IP licensor ARM Holdings plc (Cambridge, England) has posted yet another quarter with increased sales and profits.
  
  
• Broadcom not threatened by Samsung's CSR buy (Wednesday Jul. 25, 2012)
  Broadcom Corp. President and CEO Scott McGregor Tuesday (July 24) downplayed speculation that Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.'s acquisition of CSR plc's mobile business posed a threat to the company's business following Broadcom's better-than-expected second quarter financial report.
  
  
• Driving ST's auto IC strategy: Manufacturing line can't stop (Tuesday Jul. 24, 2012)
  
  
  
• Intel vindicated by TSMC/ARM announcement (Tuesday Jul. 24, 2012)
  ARM and TSMC are teaming up to optimize next-generation 64-bit ARM cores for FinFET process technology. And that must be leaving Intel feeling rather smug.
  
  
• TSMC's Chang cuts forecast, sees stall coming (Friday Jul. 20, 2012)
  Morris Chang, chairman and CEO of leading foundry chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd., has warned that a slowdown is coming to the chip market and has cut his forecast for the total semiconductor market's annual growth, according to reports.
  
  
• TSMC profit soars despite 28-nm supply shortage (Thursday Jul. 19, 2012)
  A shortage of wafers for customers at the 28-nm process node has been no barrier to sharply increased profits at leading foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan). TSMC said it plans to double shipments of 28-nm in the next quarter. The company expects to expand sales revenue by about 7 percent sequentially in 3Q12.
  
  
• Qualcomm sees 28-nm capacity crunch through 2012 (Thursday Jul. 19, 2012)
  Qualcomm Inc. said Wednesday (July 18) it expects supply of 28-nm chips to remain constrained until the end of the calendar year, despite acknowledging that the firm is now engaged with four foundries at that node.
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts June 2012 Book-to-Bill Ratio of 0.94 (Thursday Jul. 19, 2012)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.46 billion in orders worldwide in June 2012 (three-month average basis) and a book-to-bill ratio of 0.94, according to the June Book-to-Bill Report published today by SEMI.
  
  
• Does RedMere + Fresco = Spectra7? (Wednesday Jul. 18, 2012)
  By marrying two startups – each solid but neither quite ready for its IPO – to form “a new superset company,” Tony Stelliga believes he can ensure that the two, RedMere and Fresco Microchip, will live happily ever after.
  
  
• Semiconductor Capital Spending Trend Update (Wednesday Jul. 18, 2012)
  IC Insights’ latest survey and ranking of the major semiconductor capital spenders shows that only six of the 35 major semiconductor suppliers—Intel, Samsung, Hynix, TSMC, UMC, and Rohm—with significant capital expenditure budgets are expected to spend more in 2012 than they did in 2011.
  
  
• Will GlobalFoundries buy IBM's chip business (Friday Jul. 13, 2012)
  Will GlobalFoundries Inc. or some other manifestation of the oil-rich state of Abu Dhabi, be buying the chip R&D and business interests of IBM any time soon? And what would be the price?
  
  
• Xilinx CTO: Focus on what matters to customers (Friday Jul. 13, 2012)
  The value of Moore's Law—the doubling of the number of transistors in a chip every 18 months—is not just in the cost reduction it offers but more importantly in the added value that chip makers can create for customers, according to Ivo Bolsens, senior vice president and chief technology officer at programmable logic vendor Xilinx Inc.
  
  
• Ecosystem emerges around new mobile chip tech (Thursday Jul. 12, 2012)
  A consortium touting fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FDSOI) technology for mobile computing applications presented a united front this week in promoting the process technology as a viable alternative to Intel’s FinFET manufacturing approach.
  
  
• Whatever happened to evolvable hardware? (Wednesday Jul. 11, 2012)
  The free market and many other natural systems are supposedly about the survival of the fittest. The survival of the best companies, the success of the best products, the best processors and ICs, and so on.
  
  
• EDA Consortium Reports Revenue Increase for Q1 2012 (Wednesday Jul. 11, 2012)
  The EDA Consortium (EDAC) Market Statistics Service (MSS) today announced that the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry revenue increased 6.3 percent for Q1 2012 to $1536.9 million, compared to $1446.4 million in Q1 2011. Sequential EDA revenue for Q1 2012 decreased 9.6 percent compared to Q4 2011, while the four-quarters moving average, which compares the most recent four quarters to the prior four quarters, increased by 13.4 percent.
  
  
• ARM won the processor wars? Hardly! (Thursday Jul. 05, 2012)
  What with AMD, Apple, Dell, Dialog, Freescale, Fujitsu, HP, LSI, Microsoft, Motorola, MStar, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Samsung, STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments all licensing ARM cores for everything from smartphones to tablets to basestations to servers, one might be led to believe the boast of ARM CEO Warren East that designers are choosing ARM because it is a no brainer
  
  
• Report: TSMC's Chang says no to buying Renesas fab (Wednesday Jul. 04, 2012)
  Morris Chang, chairman of foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd., has said his company has no intention of acquiring a wafer fab from struggling Japanese chipmaker Renesas Electronics Corp., according to a Focus Taiwan news report.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Increase in May, Remain on Track for Modest Growth in 2012 (Wednesday Jul. 04, 2012)
  SIA today announced that worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $24.4 billion for the month of May 2012, a 1.4 percent increase over the prior month when sales were $24.1 billion.
  
  
• Broadcom extends MIPS deal but does not buy firm (Wednesday Jul. 04, 2012)
  MIPS Technologies Inc., a licensor of processor intellectual property that has been reportedly up for sale, has provided long-time customer Broadcom with a multi-faceted, multi-year patent and technology license in return for $26.5 million.
  
  
• Qualcomm signs UMC, Samsung for 28-nm chips, says report (Wednesday Jul. 04, 2012)
  Mobile processor supplier Qualcomm Inc. has signed up foundry United Microelectronics Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. as suppliers of 28-nm chips, according to a Taiwan Economic News report.
  
  
• Analyst lowers chip market forecast for 2012 (Wednesday Jul. 04, 2012)
  Actual global chip sales for May 2012 are likely to be reported at about 3 percent lower than the same month in 2011, according to Bruce Diesen, an analyst at Carnegie Group (Oslo, Norway).
  
  
• Marvell aims to be China chip leader (Friday Jun. 29, 2012)
  No, Marvell Technology is not moving to China. However, the U.S. fabless chip company based in Santa Clara, Calif., has a goal to become “the largest semiconductor company in China,” according to a Marvell executive here.
  
  
• Report: Qualcomm wafer fab not ruled out (Thursday Jun. 28, 2012)
  Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm Inc. (San Dieo, Calif.), the world's largest fabless chip company, has not ruled out owning a wafer fab or putting large amounts of cash down to ensure the firm's supply of semiconductor chips, according to a Bloomberg report.
  
  
• Gartner Says Worldwide Wafer Fab Equipment Spending to Decline 8.9 Percent in 2012 (Monday Jun. 25, 2012)
  Worldwide wafer fab equipment (WFE) spending is on pace to total $33 billion in 2012, a decline of 8.9 percent from 2011 spending of $36.2 billion, according to Gartner, Inc.
  
  
• Intel may see $2B non-x86 growth in 2013 (Monday Jun. 25, 2012)
  Next year, Intel is poised to generate $2 billion in revenues—half its expected revenue growth—from chips outside its traditional x86 processors, according to a financial analyst who tracks the company.
  
  
• Patent snafus could delay new video codec (Monday Jun. 25, 2012)
  The H.265 High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard is about to be ratified, promising a new generation of higher resolution and more compact digital video products. The bad news is chip makers are afraid to design products using it.
  
  
• GSA Reports An Increase in Funding Activity (Thursday Jun. 21, 2012)
  GSA Releases May 2012 Statistics from its Global Semiconductor Funding, IPO and M&A Update. In May 2012, venture investment dollars received by semiconductor companies (i.e., fabless companies, integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) and semiconductor suppliers) was $134.5 million, a 42.5% decrease from April 2012 and a 122.7% increase from May 2011.
  
  
• Is China's fabless model sustainable? (Thursday Jun. 21, 2012)
  Let’s face it. China’s IC industry still lacks its own superstars – equivalent to Intel, Qualcomm or Broadcom in the West – in terms of the scale, reach and quality these brands possess on the global market.
  
  
• Panel: ARM to dominate consumer apps (Wednesday Jun. 20, 2012)
  Vendors defended the mass migration to ARM cores for their low-power, broad spectrum of performance levels and more economical software here at the Freescale Technology Forum (FTF) Tuesday (June 19).
  
  
• Microsoft picks both ARM and Intel for tablet (Tuesday Jun. 19, 2012)
  Microsoft has unveiled a 10.6-inch tablet in a 16:9 aspect ratio, dubbed the Surface, to be available in two options, one powered by Intel's 22-nm Ivy Bridge processor running Windows 8, and another Surface powered by an ARM chipset and Windows RT.