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Commentary / Analysis

• Gartner Says Worldwide Traditional PC, Tablet, Ultramobile and Mobile Phone Shipments On Pace to Grow 7.6 Percent in 2014 (Tuesday Jan. 07, 2014)
  
  
  
• The 8051 MCU: ARM's nemesis on the Internet of Things? (Tuesday Jan. 07, 2014)
  8- and 16-bit microcontrollers presently dominate the market for connectivity to wirelessly untethered embedded devices and sensors (i.e., the Internet of Things), and I am not convinced that 32-bit MCUs, no matter how cheap they become, will ever match the ubiquity of their smaller brethren in such designs.
  
  
• GlobalFoundries' NY chip plant to get up to $10B boost (Monday Jan. 06, 2014)
  Don Reisinger, CNET January 3, 2014 6:44 AM PST
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Continue to Climb in November (Monday Jan. 06, 2014)
  The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), representing U.S. leadership in semiconductor manufacturing and design, today announced that worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $27.24 billion for the month of November 2013, an increase of 6.8 percent over November 2012 when sales were $25.51 billion and an uptick of 0.6 percent over the previous month’s total.
  
  
• Semiconductor Sales Recover in 2013 (Friday Jan. 03, 2014)
  Following a 2.5 percent decline in 2012, the global semiconductor market has regained its footing in 2013 with revenue set to expand by nearly 5 percent because of the strong performance of the memory sector.
  
  
• Imagination Will Benefit From Intel, Broadcom Share Gains (Tuesday Dec. 31, 2013)
  It is my belief that shares of Imagination Technologies (OTCPK:IGNMF) are meaningfully undervalued. While the shares are down on near-term weakness (in particular, the slowing growth in high end handsets and share-loss at the lower end of the GPU IP market), it is my belief that the shares are at or close to a bottom and will trade meaningfully higher over the next 6-12 months.
  
  
• EDA tools and IP are still design differentiators, says Synopsys (Monday Dec. 30, 2013)
  The European macro environment has been showing signs of uncertainty, and the continued pressure of this economic squeeze is challenging. Simultaneously, our customers continue to have a high degree of focus on aggressive design activity, writes Gabriel Lezmi, vice president of Synopsys sales in Europe.
  
  
• Could Calxeda reboot after closure? (Monday Dec. 30, 2013)
  Executives at shuttered chipmaker Calxeda Inc. say they plan to consider restructuring the Austin company and relaunching another version.
  
  
• Altera CEO Upbeat After Tough 2013 (Tuesday Dec. 24, 2013)
  
  
  
• When Is Verification Done? (Monday Dec. 23, 2013)
  Verification is becoming much more difficult at 16nm/14nm, driven by the sheer complexity of SoCs, the fact that there is much more to verify, and the impact of physical effects, which now affect what used to be exclusively the realm of functional verification.
  
  
• Intel Seeks Big Slice of Microservers (Monday Dec. 23, 2013)
  Chipmaker Intel is looking to become the market leader in the burgeoning microserver segment that has become very prominent thanks to cloud computing and Internet services. However, as the company pushes its Xeon and Atom based offerings, analysts see chinks in its armor that a handful of ARM-based SOCs will look to exploit in 2014.
  
  
• Micron Q3 Revenue Soars After Elpida Deal Officially Closes (Monday Dec. 23, 2013)
  Micron Technology surged 130 percent in revenue during the third quarter as it finally closed its acquisition of bankrupt Elpida Memory of Japan, a vigorous ascent that also propelled the total market for dynamic random access memory (DRAM) to its best performance yet in 11 quarters, according to a new DRAM Dynamics brief from IHS Inc.
  
  
• Smartphone Apps Processor Market Grew 31 Percent in Q3 2013 (Friday Dec. 20, 2013)
  The global smartphone applications processor market registered 31 percent year-on-year growth to reach $4.9 billion in Q3 2013, according to the Strategy Analytics Handset Component Technologies (HCT) service report
  
  
• Semiconductor equipment back on track (Friday Dec. 20, 2013)
  Global semiconductor manufacturing equipment sales have increased each of the last three quarters after dropping significantly in the second half of 2012, based on data from Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) and Semiconductor Equipment Association of Japan (SEAJ).
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts November 2013 Book-to-Bill Ratio of 1.11 (Friday Dec. 20, 2013)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.24 billion in orders worldwide in November 2013 (three-month average basis) and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.11. A book-to-bill of 1.11 means that $111 worth of orders were received for every $100 of product billed for the month.
  
  
• Server Market Gets a Boost From New Microserver Segment (Thursday Dec. 19, 2013)
  Computer servers have been the workhorses of the Internet and data networks for two decades, responding to requests for services and files from a growing range of end-user systems that demand quick access to data, video, audio, web pages, and search engines. Price erosion and the weak global economy have lowered server sales volumes in the past two years, but this computer market is expected to see a modest rebound in 2014 with worldwide revenues rising about 3% to $54.6 billion, followed by stronger growth in 2015 and 2016.
  
  
• Mindspeed Boosts Intel Baseband Play (Tuesday Dec. 17, 2013)
  Intel has acquired Mindspeed's wireless division, which designs chips for cellular basestations including an emerging class of small-cell basestations.
  
  
• Avago/LSI Points to Maturing Industry (Tuesday Dec. 17, 2013)
  In a sign of the maturing semiconductor industry, Avago Technologies Ltd. announced plans to acquire LSI Corp. for $6.6 billion in cash and loans. The deal creates a bigger, broader communications chip designer that expects slower revenue growth but higher profits.
  
  
• Google: Street Debates Possible ARM Push, Threat to Intel (Monday Dec. 16, 2013)
  The Street today was contemplating speculation yesterday that Google (GOOG) is going to become a licensee of ARM Holdings (ARMH) chip technology in order to develop its own microprocessors for its data center equipment, something that numerous parties, such as Apple (AAPL), Samsung Electronics (005930KS), and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) already do, following an article to that effect yesterday by Bloomberg‘s Tim Culpan, Ian King, and Brian Womack.
  
  
• Is Micron a Ripe Acquisition Target? (Monday Dec. 16, 2013)
  It's no secret that consolidation in the memory business, coupled with a tragic fire at one of Hynix's (a leading vendor of DRAM) plants that dramatically reduced supply, has led to substantial gains for the remaining DRAM players.
  
  
• Yield And Reliability Issues With Integrating IP (Thursday Dec. 12, 2013)
  First of three parts: Why IP doesn’t always work as planned; the most common causes of re-spins; factors that can affect IP integration and why some tests don’t always reveal problems.
  
  
• Can Intel Dethrone The Foundry Giants? (Thursday Dec. 12, 2013)
  For some customers, Intel may be an interesting partner. For others, foundries still have some distinct advantages. The leading-edge foundry business isn’t for the faint of heart. It
  
  
• Gartner Says the Internet of Things Installed Base Will Grow to 26 Billion Units By 2020 (Thursday Dec. 12, 2013)
  The Internet of Things (IoT), which excludes PCs, tablets and smartphones, will grow to 26 billion units installed in 2020 representing an almost 30-fold increase from 0.9 billion in 2009, according to Gartner, Inc.
  
  
• High-Speed Wireless Devices to Surge in Shipments, Thanks to Multistream Wi-Fi, WiGig and Other Similar Technologies (Thursday Dec. 12, 2013)
  The global market for high-speed wireless-enabled devices is set for explosive growth within the next five years as more consumer electronics products take advantage of rapid wireless transfer capabilities, according to a new report from IHS Inc.
  
  
• Europe is giving up on leading edge digital chip design (Wednesday Dec. 11, 2013)
  Europe has all but abandonded leading edge digital chip design, says the European head of technology solutions at design tool vendor Cadence Design Systems and is focussed on mixed signal and analogue designs.
  
  
• SEMI Reports Third Quarter 2013 Worldwide Semiconductor Equipment Figures; Billings $7.65 Billion (Tuesday Dec. 10, 2013)
  SEMI today reported that worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment billings reached US$ 7.65 billion in the third quarter of 2013.
  
  
• 2014 Will Be The Year That ARM Breaks The x86 Monoculture (Friday Dec. 06, 2013)
  If you’d asked anyone from the last four decades with even a modicum of tech knowledge to describe a server, they’d have given you the same basic response. They would have described a box containing discrete components, including a processor module, memory, various controllers, and the buses that connect them. That’s been the model on which servers have been built for decades and its a model that has shaped the way data centers are built.
  
  
• Heterogeneous computing also includes DSP (Thursday Dec. 05, 2013)
  Digital signal processing is the key technology that enables connection from humans (and machines) to the Internet, whether by wire or wireless. Furthermore, there is no digital multimedia without DSP technology. The technology has become pervasive in virtually all modern communications and entertainment devices.
  
  
• Cellphones Pass PCs as Biggest Systems Market and IC User (Thursday Dec. 05, 2013)
  Total worldwide production value of electronic systems is projected to increase 4% in 2013 to $1.41 trillion and climb to about $1.74 trillion in 2017, which represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.0% from $1.36 billion in 2012, according to IC Insights’ new 2014 edition of IC Market Drivers.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Increase in October; Industry on Track for Highest-Ever Annual Sales in 2013 (Thursday Dec. 05, 2013)
  Worldwide sales increase for eighth straight month and top $27 billion for first time ever in October; WSTS forecast projects growth of 4.4 percent in 2013 and 4.1 percent in 2014