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Commentary / Analysis

• ARM Preps Near-Threshold Processor for IoT (Thursday Aug. 15, 2013)
  ARM Holdings plc is working on a processor core optimized for operation close to the threshold voltage of CMOS transistors and at clock frequencies of the order of tens of kilohertz.
  
  
• Apple's Shift in Chip Manufacturing Strategy Boosts Semiconductor Foundry Business in 2013 (Wednesday Aug. 14, 2013)
  In an illustration of the massive power it wields in the electronics supply chain, Apple Inc.’s migration of the production of key semiconductors from Samsung to pure-play foundries will single-handedly boost the growth of the chip contract manufacturing market this year.
  
  
• Intel Acquires Fujitsu Wireless (Wednesday Aug. 14, 2013)
  Intel Corp. confirmed that it acquired last month Fujitsu Semiconductor Wireless Products Inc. (FSWP), the Tempe, Ariz.-based subsidiary of Fujitsu that developed an advanced multimode LTE RF transceiver.
  
  
• Micron Tells Story of Building DRAM Cube (Wednesday Aug. 14, 2013)
  Engineers tell the story of the 4 Gbyte, 160 Gbyte/second Hybrid Memory Cube, a device sampling now that almost didn't see the light of day.
  
  
• Ceva-ZTE Deal Hints Home-Grown ASIC Is Back (Wednesday Aug. 14, 2013)
  ZTE's chip division will be using Ceva's DSP to design LTE TDD/FDD multi-mode SoCs to power its upcoming base stations for the global market.
  
  
• Tablet and Cellphone Processors Offset PC MPU Weakness (Tuesday Aug. 13, 2013)
  Worldwide microprocessor sales are on pace to reach a record-high $61.0 billion in 2013 mostly due to strong demand for tablet computers and cellphones that connect to the Internet, but the ongoing slump in standard personal computers-including notebook PCs-is once again dragging down overall MPU growth this year.
  
  
• Rambus Focuses on Products, Not Patents (Tuesday Aug. 13, 2013)
  Ron Black was appointed CEO of Rambus in June 2012. More than a year later, there are signs that he intends to refocus the company on bringing technology, products, and services to market, rather than simply licensing patents.
  
  
• How ARM licenses it's IP for production (Monday Aug. 12, 2013)
  The up front licensing costs are actually the simplest part of the story, from here it gets a little tricky. Given the 6-24 months ARM says it typically takes to negotiate a licensing deal you can probably guess that they are pretty comprehensive. Picking which type of license you want to buy is the work of an afternoon, once you get the lawyers involved things slow down. A lot. The complexities start out with the royalties, and this area is where ARM makes most of its income.
  
  
• A long look at how ARM licenses chips (Monday Aug. 12, 2013)
  People routinely ask SemiAccurate about ARM CPUs which is an odd question because ARM makes absolutely no silicon. That said they do design cores, GPUs, interconnects, and lots and lots of related IP but they manufacture absolutely none of it.
  
  
• EDA Consortium Reports Revenue Increase for Q1 2013 (Thursday Aug. 08, 2013)
  The EDA Consortium (EDAC) Market Statistics Service (MSS) today announced that the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry revenue increased 8.1 percent for Q1 2013 to $1668.5 million, compared to $1544.2 million in Q1 2012.
  
  
• After 43 Years, DRAM Market Finally Reaches Maturity (Wednesday Aug. 07, 2013)
  Forty-three years after Intel introduced the first DRAM device in 1970, the DRAM market has finally matured to the point where there are only three major suppliers remaining—Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, which recently closed on its acquisition of Elpida.
  
  
• Increase in Second Quarter 2013 Silicon Wafer Shipments (Wednesday Aug. 07, 2013)
  Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments increased during the second quarter 2013 when compared to first quarter 2013 area shipments according to the SEMI Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG) in its quarterly analysis of the silicon wafer industry.
  
  
• ARM Benchmarks Flavors of Big-Little Multiprocessing (Wednesday Aug. 07, 2013)
  There seems to be a certain amount of excitement brewing around Samsung's Exynos Octa versus Qualcomm's quad-core Snapdragons and MediaTek's forthcoming True Octa-ness. I thought I would share some of the "big-little" thinking of ARM that I received on a recent trip to Cambridge, Mass.
  
  
• Custom Hardware Design Is Dead (Wednesday Aug. 07, 2013)
  I'm on the scene at NI Week in Austin, Texas, and the event kicked off with an energetic and entertaining keynote that showcased some new products and creative applications.
  
  
• Quarterly Semiconductor Sales Increase 6 Percent, Outperform Industry Forecast (Monday Aug. 05, 2013)
  Worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $74.65 billion during the second quarter of 2013, an increase of 6 percent from the first quarter when sales were $70.45 billion.
  
  
• IC Insights Reveals Big Changes to 1H13 Top 20 Semiconductor Supplier Ranking (Friday Aug. 02, 2013)
  The top 20 worldwide semiconductor (IC and O S D—optoelectronic, discrete, and sensor) sales leaders for 1H13 include eight suppliers headquartered in the U.S., four in Japan, three in Europe, three in Taiwan, and two in South Korea.
  
  
• Exar CEO Talks Analog, China, IoT (Friday Aug. 02, 2013)
  In a wide-ranging interview, the incoming chief executive of Exar Corp. told us that real analog men don't need fabs, fear of counterfeiting has stymied China's chip foundries, and the Internet of Things is one of his new growth engines.
  
  
• Splitting Sony Won't Restore Its Future (Friday Aug. 02, 2013)
  Sony posted net income of 3.5 billion yen (US$35 million) in the quarter that ended June 30, after a loss of 24.6 billion yen in the quarter a year earlier
  
  
• Lawsuits Drive Patent Market (Friday Aug. 02, 2013)
  A market for buying and selling patents is emerging as companies file more patents and get hit with more infringement suits, said a panel of experts at a lunch event sponsored by the Silicon Valley Chapter of the Licensing Executives Society.
  
  
• OEM Chip Spending to Climb 4 Percent This Year after Flat 2012 (Thursday Aug. 01, 2013)
  The world’s top electronic brands are set to expend $265.2 billion this year on a wide range of semiconductors for devices like smartphones and tablets, with increasingly contentious rivals Samsung Electronics and Apple Inc. again in a tussle to claim the title of biggest spender
  
  
• What if Samsung Exynos Goes ARM Architectural? (Wednesday Jul. 31, 2013)
  It seems that Cortex-A series processor cores, even when harnessed up in a big-little configuration, are no longer good enough to form the heart of application processors in mobile equipment. Effectively, Apple and Qualcomm have raised the stakes by going ARM architectural, and it seems others must follow suit or potentially face a power-performance penalty.
  
  
• Is Moore's Law Dead? Does It Matter? (Wednesday Jul. 31, 2013)
  Most of the time when I hear an end-of-the-world story, I just roll my eyes and move on. However, I heard a message at DAC this year that still has me thinking.
  
  
• IDC Forecasts Worldwide Semiconductor Revenue Will Grow 6.9% and Reach $320 Billion in 2013 (Tuesday Jul. 30, 2013)
  Semiconductor revenue worldwide will see improved growth this year of 6.9% and reaching $320 billion according to the mid-year 2013 update of the Semiconductor Applications Forecaster (SAF) from International Data Corporation (IDC).
  
  
• The Love Triangle: Do EDA Services, Tools & IP Mix? (Monday Jul. 29, 2013)
  It has been tried before: An EDA company, which usually licenses software as a design tool, believes it can create a circuit design in its services group for one company and then repackage and sell it as IP.
  
  
• Fab lite, Design lite (Wednesday Jul. 24, 2013)
  Is there a major business model change about to hit the semiconductor industry? Maybe we should start talking about design-lite companies...
  
  
• Foreign IC Companies to Represent 70% of China's IC Production in 2017, Up From 58% in 2012 (Wednesday Jul. 24, 2013)
  Although China has been the largest individual market for ICs since 2005, it does not necessarily mean that large increases in IC production within China would immediately follow, or ever follow.
  
  
• Intel Tips Custom and 14nm Server Chips (Tuesday Jul. 23, 2013)
  Intel's server group has started developing custom CPUs and will roll out as early as next year its first system-on-chip using its Core processor, a 14nm chip.
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts June 2013 Book-to-Bill Ratio of 1.10 (Monday Jul. 22, 2013)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.33 billion in orders worldwide in June 2013 (three-month average basis) and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.10.
  
  
• IP Software Integration Left Out in the Cold (Monday Jul. 22, 2013)
  One thing that has been happening in the IP market is that the average block size has been getting larger. In the early days of reuse, blocks were fairly small, but today many IP blocks are complete subsystems carrying an extensive amount of software. I asked about the ease with which that software can be integrated. Below are the answers I received
  
  
• How ARM's Cortex-A7 Beats the A15 (Friday Jul. 19, 2013)
  ARM's Cortex-A series of processors has now divided into three tiers associated with low, medium, and high performance. The high tier is optimized for performance, and the low tier is optimized for stripped-down power efficiency at lower absolute performance levels, all in support of the big-little and heterogeneous multicore processing.