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Commentary / Analysis

• TSMC wants more of IC pie (Monday Apr. 28, 2008)
  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) has unveiled a new and possibly controversial strategy that involves more collaboration in the early stages of the IC design process.
  
  
• Keynote speakers differ on the health of the US patent system (Wednesday Apr. 16, 2008)
  Keynote addresses at the IP Symposium in San Jose.
  
  
• SoC cost, complexity driving IP collaboration (Wednesday Apr. 16, 2008)
  Growing complexity and the staggering costs associated with designing systems-on-chip are forcing companies to seek collaboration on a variety of intellectual property issues
  
  
• Accelerating development and lowering risk (Wednesday Apr. 16, 2008)
  The central message of this panel was that the industry must grow from being centered on IP blocks to offer and use IP subsystems
  
  
• China moves to bolster IP laws (Wednesday Apr. 16, 2008)
  China has moved to evolve and bolster its enforcement of intellectual-property (IP) laws.
  
  
• Analysis: Is the ST, NXP wireless JV the start of IDM break-up? (Friday Apr. 11, 2008)
  The move by STMicroelectronics NV and NXP BV, two of Europe's leading semiconductor companies, to merge their wireless businesses, giving ST an 80 percent ownership of the resulting JV while NXP, left with 20 percent stake, is enriched to the tune of $1.55 billion, is a radical step
  
  
• Analog design alive and growing in India (Wednesday Apr. 09, 2008)
  A decade ago, Anand Valavi had an idea for starting an analog design group at his company, Wipro Technologies, where he worked as an ASIC engineer. Analog, he thought, could be strategic for India as well as his company, which was trying to develop a portfolio of silicon blocks for licensing.
  
  
• Commentary: How to cash in on video IP (Wednesday Apr. 02, 2008)
  Digital video is almost everywhere. And where it isn't now, it soon will be. As a result, the market for digital video intellectual property components--hardware, software, you name it--is wide open, with lots of opportunities for profit.
  
  
• EVE in the Systems Prototyping Garden (Monday Mar. 31, 2008)
  EVE's point of view and more considerations on the acquisition of Synplicity by Synopsys.
  
  
• Analysis: On2 brings YouTube to cell phones (Thursday Mar. 27, 2008)
  A few months ago, video codec vendor On2 announced its acquisition of Hantro, a company that offers licensable video codec accelerators and software.
  
  
• FPGAs help drive automation (Monday Mar. 17, 2008)
  Aiming to help automotive designers reduce board complexity by taking on more functionality and system integration, FPGA vendors are tailoring parts that offer low-cost connectivity and DSP capabilities, as well as new power management and security features with tighter overall design integration.
  
  
• MIPS vs. Intel Atom (Monday Mar. 17, 2008)
  Following publication of my article on ARM vs. Intel's Atom, a reader asked me where MIPS fits in.
  
  
• IP Adventures in EDA (Thursday Mar. 13, 2008)
  By their own actions in the last few weeks, Mentor, Magma, and Cadence, have reopened the debate on whether or not IP belongs in EDA. Their answers respectively are: no, yes, and "on my own terms".
  
  
• MIPS in 'a bit of financial distress' says analyst (Wednesday Feb. 06, 2008)
  MIPS Technologies has fallen into "a bit of financial distress" since offering to buy Chipidea Microelectronica S.A. (Lisbon, Portugal) for $147 million in cash, according to Rob Sanders, an analyst with Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in London.
  
  
• ARM exec touts IP reuse at ISSCC (Wednesday Feb. 06, 2008)
  The chief technology officer of intellectual property behemoth ARM Ltd. tried to convince hardware circuit designers gathered here that they should take software IP more seriously as the chip industry matures.
  
  
• CNBC Interview: Warren East, Chief Executive Officer, ARM (Wednesday Feb. 06, 2008)
  In this interview with Geoff Cutmore, Warren East discusses full year earnings for 2007
  
  
• Analysis: VeriSilicon's HD audio IP solution (Wednesday Jan. 30, 2008)
  VeriSilicon has released a licenseable DSP core, the ZSP800, and an associated development platform, VZ.AudioHD, optimized for "HD" audio applications.
  
  
• Chip makers must shift from fabs to systems (Thursday Jan. 17, 2008)
  Semiconductor companies need to shift their focus from building fabs to building systems, and they must engage with customers at deep technical levels if they are to survive the current wave of consolidation. That's the view of Wolfgang Ziebart, chief executive of Infineon Technologies.
  
  
• Intel CTO outlines 2008 strategy (Wednesday Jan. 16, 2008)
  Intel Corp. researchers have identified five focus areas for 2008, including "platform-on-a-chip" development.
  
  
• ARM vs. Intel? It's ARM for now (Monday Jan. 07, 2008)
  Intel may be the king of PC multiprocessors, but ARM Holdings has become ubiquitous in mobile phones by not imposing itself too much
  
  
• Commentary: A few fabless fables (Thursday Dec. 27, 2007)
  The semiconductor industry is commoditizing with opportunities to differentiate being few and far between. As the fabless companies jostle and compete for market positioning and market share, they are subject to the larger trends that transact in the fabless supply-chain world.
  
  
• Shift in the integration equation (Monday Dec. 24, 2007)
  The trend of the semiconductor road map has always been to pack more functions on a single die through process shrinks and better processing, bolstered by a larger die itself.
  
  
• Under the Hood: Silicon TV tuners clearing hurdles (Monday Dec. 24, 2007)
  Although mobile phone and WLAN transceivers made the transition to silicon ICs years ago, solid-state TV tuners have been slower off the starting block. Recently, several companies have started to offer IC-based TV receivers that will replace the traditional "can tuner."
  
  
• Effort behind reusing IP blocks is underestimated (Monday Dec. 10, 2007)
  When intellectual property (IP) reuse entered the IC design paradigm more than ten years ago, the semiconductor industry expressed high expectations. IP reuse was indeed seen as a way to foster development productivity and output that would eventually offset the design productivity gap.
  
  
• Compute intensive apps to drive innovation in IP technology (Monday Dec. 10, 2007)
  ith consumer demand for low power, high performances and low prices, the design of mobile multimedia products moves towards system-level approaches. In a panel at the IP 07 Conference this week in Grenoble, France, Gagan Gupta, senior director of product marketing, ARC International plc (Elstree, England), looked to the next chapter in intellectual property (IP) and where IP suppliers will enable innovation.
  
  
• AMD, Intel at it again, as both take aim at SoC (Monday Dec. 10, 2007)
  Advanced Micro Devices and Intel are ramping up system- on-chip capabilities, creating new products and processes. Although both companies will continue to design high-end custom microprocessors, increasingly their competition will hinge on how well they assemble chips out of a stock of reusable cores.
  
  
• IP business model to continue to exist, says analyst (Friday Dec. 07, 2007)
  Semiconductor intellectual property (IP) as a real market emerged about ten years ago, and although detractors said there was no money to be made in IP, this sector has outgrown both the EDA and semiconductor markets.
  
  
• Safety-conscious automakers push IC system-level approach (Monday Nov. 26, 2007)
  The ability of microcontroller- and microprocessor-based systems to satisfy automobile customers' needs for comfort, safety, information and entertainment in the car is fueling an explosion of applications and of cooperation between automakers and chip companies.
  
  
• Nanoscale chip verification: a massively analog problem? (Monday Nov. 05, 2007)
  As semiconductor manufacturing technology deals increasingly with finer and finer measurements, verification of nanoscale components presents a problem of scale, requiring a scaling of verification technology commensurate with the shrinking of technologies like CMOS.
  
  
• Commentary: Get ready for 450-mm fabs (Monday Oct. 29, 2007)
  IC industry equipment and material suppliers have recently voiced concern regarding the potential move from 300mm wafers to 450mm wafers for the production of ICs.