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Commentary / Analysis

• ARM reveals realtime roadmap: Now, with applications! (Wednesday Oct. 23, 2013)
  ARM's current processor portfolio consists of three profiles: M (Microcontroller), R (Realtime), and A (Application). In fact, complex SoCs sometimes contain multiple ARM cores, possibly from the different profiles, sometimes from the same.
  
  
• ARM Snags New Customers in Record Quarter (Wednesday Oct. 23, 2013)
  ARM Holdings PLC reported a record quarter based on closing 48 new licensing deals, 11 with new customers. The deals drove revenue up 26 percent year-on-year to $286.7 million and pre-tax profits up to about $150 million.
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts September 2013 Book-to-Bill Ratio of 0.97 (Tuesday Oct. 22, 2013)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $975.3 million in orders worldwide in September 2013 (three-month average basis) and a book-to-bill ratio of 0.97, according to the September EMDS Book-to-Bill Report published today by SEMI.
  
  
• Approaching IP Quality From Many Angles (Monday Oct. 21, 2013)
  As SoC design complexity has increased, semiconductor design IP and the industry around it has grown in its level of sophistication. This is great news for the users of that IP whose demands for quality, reliability and other deliverables have also been on the rise.
  
  
• TSMC Sees Fast Ramp for 20-nm (Monday Oct. 21, 2013)
  TSMC will start making 20-nm CMOS in volume production in the first quarter of 2014 and the process will ramp faster than 28-nm node did in 2012, according to Morris Chang, chairman and CEO of TSMC.
  
  
• Chang to Remain 'Ultimate Authority' at TSMC (Monday Oct. 21, 2013)
  Morris Chang, chairman and CEO of foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC), said Thursday (Oct. 17) that he would step down as CEO by June 2014, but made it clear he would still be calling the shots as chairman.
  
  
• Gartner Says Worldwide PC, Tablet and Mobile Phone Shipments to Grow 4.5 Percent in 2013 as Lower-Priced Devices Drive Growth (Monday Oct. 21, 2013)
  Worldwide combined shipments of devices (PCs, tablets and mobile phones) are projected to reach 2.32 billion units in 2013, a 4.5 percent increase from 2012, according to Gartner, Inc. The market is being driven by a shift to lower-priced devices in nearly all device categories.
  
  
• Margins on the Upswing, DRAM Profitability Hits New Heights (Monday Oct. 21, 2013)
  The global market for dynamic random access memory (DRAM) continued its winning streak in the second quarter as manufacturers reported improved operating margins because of higher average selling prices (ASP), according to a new DRAM Dynamics brief from IHS Inc.
  
  
• EDA Consortium Reports Revenue Increase for Q2 2013 (Friday Oct. 18, 2013)
  EDA Consortium today announced that the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry revenue increased 3.8 percent for Q2 2013 to $1653.4 million, compared to $1593.0 million in Q2 2012.
  
  
• Smartphone Apps Processor Revenue Jumped an Impressive 44 Percent in Q2 2013 (Thursday Oct. 17, 2013)
  The global smartphone applications processor market continued to show strength and grew 44 percent year-on-year to reach $4.4 billion in Q2 2013, according to the Strategy Analytics Handset Component Technologies service report
  
  
• MediaTek, Marvell and Qualcomm Made Progress in Tablet Apps Processors in Q2 2013 (Thursday Oct. 17, 2013)
  The global tablet processor market registered an impressive 46 percent year-on-year growth to reach $759 million in Q2 2013, according to the Strategy Analytics Handset Component Technologies (HCT) service report
  
  
• Imagination Takes On ARM's big.LITTLE With Its Warrior Core (Wednesday Oct. 16, 2013)
  One of the fascinating things about yesterday's launch of the newest MIPS core is not the core itself. What is very interesting is the support block that actually makes it usable in an SoC device, and this has obviously had a lot of attention paid to it.
  
  
• Should Microsoft Be Broken Up? (Tuesday Oct. 15, 2013)
  Although there is a considerable amount of speculation, and even betting, on who will be the next Microsoft CEO, the job may be an unenviable one for anyone considering the position.
  
  
• Global Silicon Demand to Slow Down as Year Finishes (Tuesday Oct. 15, 2013)
  Semiconductor manufacturers confronting slowing orders will see demand for silicon taper off as the year comes to a close, according to a new Global Silicon report from IHS Inc.
  
  
• LTE and TD-SCDMA Drive Cellular Baseband Growth in Q2 2013 (Monday Oct. 14, 2013)
  By Strategy Analytics estimates, Qualcomm captured a record 63 percent revenue share in the cellular baseband market in Q2 2013, followed by MediaTek with 13 percent revenue share and Intel with 7 percent revenue share.
  
  
• Mobile IC Vendors to Alter Automotive SoC Market (Friday Oct. 11, 2013)
  Many automotive IC companies -- from newcomers Broadcom, Qualcomm, and Nvidia, to incumbents like Renesas, STMicroelectronics, Infineon, and Freescale -- are racing to dominate the fast-growing segment of in-vehicle infotainment SoCs.
  
  
• Changing SoC Landscape Goes Further up the Supply Chain (Friday Oct. 11, 2013)
  The coming 20 nm and 16 nm FINFET will shake up the whole SoC and IP supply chain, says Tony King-Smith, executive vice president of marketing at Imagination Technologies at the International Electronics Forum in Dublin.
  
  
• Intel Tackles SoC With Quark (Monday Oct. 07, 2013)
  Quark, Intel's new Pentium-based architecture, is aimed head on at ARM in applications such as the Internet of the Things (IoT). But the fact that it uses ARM's AMBA bus interconnect underscores the vital importance of the ecosystem.
  
  
• Standards-Essential Patents Under Fire (Monday Oct. 07, 2013)
  Recent cases such as Motorola vs. Apple could alter the way companies approach standardizing and patenting technology advances.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Increase for Sixth Straight Month in August (Friday Oct. 04, 2013)
  SIA today announced that worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $25.87 billion for the month of August 2013, an increase of 6.4 percent compared to August 2012, marking the industry’s largest year-over-year growth since March 2011.
  
  
• Analog Drives Processor Architecture (Friday Oct. 04, 2013)
  The recent port of a number of mixed signal interface IP blocks to 20nm by Synopsys Inc raises some fascinating questions on the microprocessor ecosystem. In days gone by, analog was well behind the curve. Now, USB, DDR, PCI Express, and MIPI PHY interfaces are available at what is pretty much the leading edge.
  
  
• Pure-Play Foundries Spending Big on Capital Equipment (Thursday Oct. 03, 2013)
  Semiconductor capital spending has increased significantly among pure-play foundries as more IDMs shift to a fabless/fab-lite business model and as new foundry participants intensify competition among the old guard.
  
  
• SEMI Announces Silicon Wafer Shipment Forecast (Thursday Oct. 03, 2013)
  SEMI recently completed its annual silicon shipment forecast for the semiconductor industry. This forecast provides an outlook for the demand in silicon units for the period 2013–2015. The results show polished and epitaxial silicon shipments totaling 8,876 million square inches in 2013; 9,230 million square inches in 2014; and 9,684 million square inches in 2015.
  
  
• TSMC Shows Path to 16nm, Beyond (Wednesday Oct. 02, 2013)
  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is making steady progress on its next two nodes, bringing advances in performance and low power. The bad news is it's widely expected the latest nodes add less transistor density and more cost than in the past.
  
  
• 3rd Party Semiconductor IP CAGR to Exceed 19% from 2013 to 2017 (Wednesday Oct. 02, 2013)
  The 3rd Party Semiconductor Intellectual Property (SIP) market has seen great innovation in the products it offers to System-on-a-Chip (SoC) designers over the last ten years. If any market segment in the semiconductor industry typifies the intense evolutionary pressures that the entire electronics market has undergone, it is the 3rd Party SIP market.
  
  
• ARM Servers Aim Higher Despite Currrent Miniscule Market (Tuesday Oct. 01, 2013)
  Servers equipped with ARM processors will gradually emerge in the marketplace from a near-nonexistent base, in the process furnishing stepped-up competition to reigning kingpin Intel in the server semiconductor market
  
  
• Another negative year for Semiconductor CapEx (Monday Sep. 30, 2013)
  Global semiconductor capital spending is headed for another decline in 2013, following a 12% decline in 2012. Gartner's September forecast called for a 7% decline in 2013. Most of the major spenders expect flat to declining expenditures in 2013.
  
  
• Americas Region Remains Largest Market for Pure-Play Foundry Sales (Thursday Sep. 26, 2013)
  Customers in the Americas region (primarily the U.S.) are expected to account for nearly two-thirds of pure-play foundry sales in 2013, a slight increase from 2012.
  
  
• Groundbreaking iPhone 5s Carries $199 BOM and Manufacturing Cost, IHS Teardown Reveals (Wednesday Sep. 25, 2013)
  The low-end version of the iPhone 5s with 16 gigabytes (GB) of NAND flash memory has a bill of materials (BOM) of $191, according to the preliminary results of a physical dissection of the device conducted by the Teardown Analysis Service at IHS Inc.
  
  
• Apple Continues Familiar Design and Pricing Strategy with iPhone 5c, IHS Teardown Reveals (Wednesday Sep. 25, 2013)
  Far from the major departure that many had expected, the iPhone 5c turned out to follow Apple Inc.’s familiar formula, combining premium pricing with a hardware design almost completely identical to the original iPhone 5.