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Commentary / Analysis

• TSMC's Chang: IC downturn will be 'tough' (Friday Nov. 21, 2008)
  At the Semiconductor Industry Association's forecast dinner this week, it was time to roll out the annual crystal ball. And the consensus: The IC industry is in for some tough sledding.
  
  
• Does the analog foundry model hold water? (Monday Nov. 17, 2008)
  In theory, digital chips can be moved around from one manufacturing facility to another. For example, a chipset can be built at IBM, TSMC or even SMIC.
  
  
• High-voltage hype charges up foundries (Monday Nov. 17, 2008)
  Industry pundits proclaimed 2008 the year of analog. With the growth of the analog chip market far outpacing that of digital, a slew of foundry vendors jumped into the arena.
  
  
• Odds for success in analog foundries (Monday Nov. 17, 2008)
  The silicon foundry business is a tough sector. It's not a "build a fab and they will come'' scenario. It requires a solid business plan and financing, as well as strong management, process technology and intellectual property.
  
  
• Viewpoint: Business as 'unusual' for chip makers (Monday Nov. 17, 2008)
  In a bad economy, semiconductor companies can no longer continue business as ususal. Instead, if they are to ride out -- or even prosper -- in the economic downturn, they need to adopt "business unusual" practices.
  
  
• An insider perspective on the semiconductor industry (Thursday Nov. 13, 2008)
  Here's an insider's view on how chips are made, why ASICs cost so much, and what drives the industry to smaller process nodes. Prepare to be surprised!
  
  
• Comment: EDA and the road ahead (Monday Nov. 10, 2008)
  The present economic situation is a powerful stimulus to motivate the EDA industry to seriously consider new markets for its expansion.
  
  
• Opinion: EDA is not well -- where is it heading? (Thursday Nov. 06, 2008)
  EDA is not well. While the largest company, Cadence, has its own problems, many of them self-inflicted, the entire ecosystem of EDA is sick.
  
  
• Will analog foundry model work? (Tuesday Nov. 04, 2008)
  In theory, digital chips can be moved around from one manufacturing facility to another. For example, a chipset can be built at IBM, TSMC or even SMIC.
  
  
• Drop in Semiconductor Investment Signals Soft Semiconductor Market (Tuesday Nov. 04, 2008)
  The report findings confirm the observation that venture capitalists are investing less in fabless and IDM companies because of higher design costs and consolidation, with the number and value of fabless and IDM funding deals decreasing for two consecutive quarters.
  
  
• Rumor mill: TSMC approached to buy Chartered (Wednesday Oct. 29, 2008)
  There are rumors that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) has been approached to acquire all or part of Singaporean foundry rival Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Pte. Ltd.
  
  
• Analysis: NXP's options limited as economy worsens (Thursday Oct. 23, 2008)
  NXP Semiconductors executives would be the first to admit that the automotive and multimarket IC vendor is in rather poor shape. They'd also be quick to add they have an aggressive plan to improve the company's fortunes.
  
  
• Cadence CTO blasts critics (Monday Oct. 20, 2008)
  Responding to harsh criticism touched off by the departure of senior executives, the chief technology officer of Cadence Design Systems Inc. dismissed calls to spin off parts of the EDA company.
  
  
• MEMS commercialization: What's taking so long? (Monday Oct. 20, 2008)
  Though MEMS and semiconductor ICs share processing similarities, their business issues vary because in the 50-plus years since their discoveries, the IC market has grown to more than $220 billion, whereas the MEMS market reportedly still totals less than $10 billion. Why the discrepancy?
  
  
• Are we moving to an all-ARM world? (Monday Oct. 20, 2008)
  ARM is already everywhere. Now, rather than go through the grueling months or even years of development, Microchip is trying to buy its way into the ARM camp.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Alliance Reports Fabless Revenue Totaled $27.3 Billion, 12 Percent Growth Year-Over-Year in 1H 2008 (Friday Oct. 10, 2008)
  Fabless revenue totaled $13.9 billion in CYQ2 2008, rising 4 percent quarter-over-quarter and 9 percent year-over-year. CYQ2 2008 fabless revenue equated to 21 percent of the Q2 2008 semiconductor sales total.
  
  
• EDA Consortium Reports Industry Revenue Down Slightly in Second Quarter 2008 (Friday Oct. 10, 2008)
  The EDA Consortium Market Statistics Service (MSS) today announced that the electronic design automation (EDA) industry revenue for Q2 2008 declined 3.7 percent to $1357.4 million, compared to $1408.8 million in Q2 2007.
  
  
• Video: ARM's chief on the economy and Atom (Thursday Oct. 09, 2008)
  The outlook is for stormy weather in the global cellular industry, but ARM Ltd. chief executive Warren East is hopeful his company is diversified enough to remain stable.
  
  
• ARMv8 instruction set will be application driven, says exec (Monday Oct. 06, 2008)
  ARM Holdings plc is working on a next-generation instruction set architecture to be the basis for a future set of processor cores. When introduced its capabilities and its extensions to the current architecture – ARMv7 – will be driven by applications and partners, according to a senior company executive.
  
  
• Comment: A skeptic's view of the Microchip/Atmel merger (Friday Oct. 03, 2008)
  With this history as a guide, if Microchip's acquisition of Atmel is successful, Microchip will have to make choices about which architectures to support fully and which to either let die for lack of support or sell off to interested buyers.
  
  
• Microchip's Sanghi: Why we want Atmel (Friday Oct. 03, 2008)
  Microchip Technology Inc. chairman, president and CEO talks with EETimes business editor Bolaji Ojo about why his company has teamed up with ON Semiconductor Corp. to pay $2.3 billion for mixed signal and microcontroller IC supplier Atmel Corp.
  
  
• No nanoelectronics technology can replace CMOS until 2030, says TI exec (Thursday Oct. 02, 2008)
  At the SAME Forum, in the Science Technological Park of Sophia Antipolis, South of France, Dennis Buss, chief scientist at TI, gave a retrospective look and a prospective analysis of the semiconductor industry as Moore's law is expected to stagnate toward the end of the next decade.
  
  
• Intel, Chartered slam semi IP industry (Friday Sep. 26, 2008)
  At the GSA IP conference here this week, two chip makers--Intel Corp. and Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Pte. Ltd.--took turns in separate presentations and landed some pot shots at the semiconductor IP industry for those and other reasons.
  
  
• Analysts question NXP's survival (Wednesday Sep. 24, 2008)
  A major restructuring plan announced by NXP has left analysts pondering the company's future and dusting off age-old European chip company merger ideas.
  
  
• Foundry wafer starts in 'free fall,' says analyst (Tuesday Sep. 23, 2008)
  Silicon foundries are experiencing a significant decline in wafer start activity that will likely lead to sub-75 percent capacity utilization rates in the fourth quarter, according to Steven Pelayo, an analyst with HSBC Global Technology Research in Hong Kong.
  
  
• iSuppli: Chip biz has lost 'money-making touch' (Thursday Sep. 18, 2008)
  The semiconductor industry now has a lower profit percentage than the historically low-margin PC business, something that occurred only once before—during a short period of the 2001 market downturn, according to iSuppli Corp.
  
  
• LinkedIn entry confirms Apple-ARM connection, says NY Times (Wednesday Sep. 17, 2008)
  An entry at the public social-networking site LinkedIn has added weight to what has previously been the subject of speculation; that Apple is developing its own line of system-chips for the iPhone and has taken an ARM architecture license to do so, according to a New York Times report.
  
  
• Fabless business model 'stressed out', says analyst (Friday Sep. 12, 2008)
  Nvidia is not getting the 55-nm capacity it needs from silicon foundry giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., a problem likely to worsen as the graphics chip maker moves to the 40-nm node, according to Doug Freedman, an analyst at American Technology Research.
  
  
• Venture capital is losing patience with the fabless (Wednesday Sep. 10, 2008)
  A turning away from fabless has been confirmed by one transatlantic venture capital firm that said it plans to invest most of its funds in Internet companies rather than fabless chip companies. This raises questions as to how the next set of chip company startups will be funded.
  
  
• Viewpoint: Engineers need to move up the design value chain (Wednesday Sep. 10, 2008)
  To support innovation and sustainable product differentiation into the future, traditional industry specializations must be replaced with more "value-added" design strategies.