D&R Headline News | Most Popular | SoC News Alerts | |

Commentary / Analysis

• 3-D integration takes spotlight at ISPD (Wednesday Mar. 27, 2013)
  Three-dimensional integration was the focus on the kickoff day for the annual International Symposium on Physical Systems (ISPD), where semiconductor designers worldwide show-off their next-generation aspirations for the physical design of future chips.
  
  
• Global Consumer Electronics Industry Revenue Fell by 2 percent in 2012 (Wednesday Mar. 27, 2013)
  Revenue of the global Consumer Electronics (CE) device industry fell by 2 percent in 2012 to US$729 billion, as the strength in smartphones and tablets were not able to offset broad-based softness in consumer demand for other device segments, according to the latest report from Strategy Analytics.
  
  
• Synopsys bullish despite rising chip complexity (Wednesday Mar. 27, 2013)
  Rick Merritt, EETimes 3/26/2013 1:01 PM EDT SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Transistors may or may not keep getting cheaper, but in either case, the semiconductor industry still has plenty of headroom for growth, said Aart de Geus. The co-chief executive officer of Synopsys is bullish on the industry’s abilities to master FinFETs and double patterning, but cold on 3-D chip stacking. In a keynote and press roundtable at an annual users group meeting here de Geus also vowed to make the Verdi debugger recently acquired with Springsoft the centerpiece of an updated verification offering and to migrate the Eve verification system to run on graphics processors. “Moore’s Law has become irrelevant compared to the impact of new applications,” de Geus told several hundred engineers here. “Even if transistors do not become that much cheaper the demand for more capabilities will continue at breakneck speed and the economics will be there."
  
  
• Intel and Samsung Forecast to Represent 42% of Semiconductor Capital Spending in 2013 (Wednesday Mar. 27, 2013)
  For 2013, the top-10 capital spenders are forecast to increase their spending by 5% as compared to 2012, which would be 13 points better than the results expected from the non-top-10 companies (-8%).
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts February 2013 Book-to-Bill Ratio of 1.10 (Friday Mar. 22, 2013)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.07 billion in orders worldwide in February 2013 (three-month average basis) and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.10, according to the February Book-to-Bill Report published today by SEMI.
  
  
• SMIC's CEO makes utilization first focus (Friday Mar. 22, 2013)
  Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), for the first time in a long time, has a good story to tell.
  
  
• How ST and Renesas blew it on mobile (Thursday Mar. 21, 2013)
  Let’s face it. All along, we knew how this movie would end. The game is over for Western chip companies--except for a sole survivor and the mobile chip industry leader, Qualcomm.
  
  
• China, India outspending U.S. in semiconductors (Wednesday Mar. 20, 2013)
  The governments of China and India will each announce plans to pump billions of dollars into their semiconductor industries this year, said Lip-Bu Tan, the chief executive of Cadence Design Systems Inc. and a veteran investor, bemoaning the decline of U.S. venture capital funding for chips.
  
  
• Nvidia's road map drives graphics, ARM into enterprise (Wednesday Mar. 20, 2013)
  Nvidia showed a glimpse of its road map for taking on Intel and AMD as well as its smartphone competitors at its annual GPU Technology Conference (GTC) here. It also showed its graphics chips are breaking out of the mold of media and technical processing to take on business apps.
  
  
• ARM's Segars is safe CEO choice (Wednesday Mar. 20, 2013)
  On the issue of CEO succession – as in many things – ARM has acted in stark contrast to rival semiconductor company Intel.
  
  
• Imagination preps cores for vision processor market (Thursday Mar. 14, 2013)
  Imagination Technologies Group plc has said it is "well advanced" in developing camera-related IP cores that can address growing markets in vision processing.
  
  
• Intel Leads Unexpectedly Large Decline in Semiconductor Market Inventory in Q4 (Thursday Mar. 14, 2013)
  After reaching a worrisome high in the third quarter of 2012, global semiconductor inventories held by chip suppliers fell at a surprisingly fast rate in the fourth quarter, led by dramatic reductions for market leader Intel Corp.
  
  
• PowerVR confirmed in Samung's 'Octa' (Wednesday Mar. 13, 2013)
  Imagination Technologies has confirmed that its PowerVR SGX544MP graphics processing core has the design win inside Samsung's Exynos 5410 "Octa" chip.
  
  
• A look inside Cadence's IP core strategy (Wednesday Mar. 13, 2013)
  Analysts are giving Cadence's bid for Tensilica a cautious thumbs up as it moves into what it claims is a future of more integrated IP and tools for EDA.
  
  
• SEMI Reports 2012 Global Semiconductor Equipment Sales of $36.9 Billion (Wednesday Mar. 13, 2013)
  SEMI today reported that worldwide sales of semiconductor manufacturing equipment totaled $36.93 billion in 2012, representing a year-over-year decrease of 15 percent.
  
  
• Cadence guns for Synopsys with Tensilica buy (Tuesday Mar. 12, 2013)
  Cadence Design Systems Inc. Monday (March 11) agreed to acquire dataplane processing IP specialist Tensilica Inc. for about $380 million in cash in a deal that would significantly expand Cadence's IP offerings and put the firm in position to compete head on with archrival Synopsys Inc. in the silicon IP business.
  
  
• January DRAM, NAND Flash Sales Point to Promising Year (Thursday Mar. 07, 2013)
  Industry consolidation to just three big DRAM suppliers and a reduction in capital expenditures among these manufacturers helped propel DRAM average selling prices (ASPs) up 13% year over year in January, which contributed to a 19.9% jump in the total memory market and a 6.2% increase for the total IC market in January 2013.
  
  
• How Conexant ended up filing for Chapter 11 (Wednesday Mar. 06, 2013)
  Both Broadcom Corp. and Conexant Systems Inc. deployed aggressive acquisition strategies in similar market segments starting in the late 1990’s—each company betting the farm on the burgeoning broadband market. In the end, they achieved spectacularly different results.
  
  
• Fab Equipment Spending: Flat in 2013; Up 24% in 2014 (Wednesday Mar. 06, 2013)
  Fab equipment spending for Front End facilities is expected to be flat in 2013, remaining around US$ 31.7 billion, increasing to $39.3 billion in 2014 - a 24 percent increase.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Increase in January Year-over-Year (Monday Mar. 04, 2013)
  SIA today announced that worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $24.05 billion for the month of January 2013, an increase of 3.8 percent from January 2012 when sales were $23.16 billion.
  
  
• Freescale eyes ARM server play (Thursday Feb. 28, 2013)
  Freescale Semiconductor Inc. could use its recently announced Cortex-A50 series processor license from ARM to extend its digital networking activity into server computing, CEO Gregg Lowe told EE Times at the Embedded World exhibition here.
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts January 2013 Book-to-Bill Ratio of 1.14 (Friday Feb. 22, 2013)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.09 billion in orders worldwide in January 2013 (three-month average basis) and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.14, according to the January Book-to-Bill Report published today by SEMI.
  
  
• LTE, quad-core apps processor wars begin (Thursday Feb. 21, 2013)
  As the Mobile World Congress raises its curtain next week in Barcelona, practically every mobile chip company is rushing to announce new smartphone ICs with the mobile industry’s two new “must-have" features--quad-core and LTE modem.
  
  
• Qualcomm and Samsung Dominate the LTE cellphone Modem Market but Tiny GCT Semiconductor, Renesas Mobile and Nvidia are New Players (Thursday Feb. 21, 2013)
  With 86% of the 47 million FDD-LTE cellphone modems shipped last year, Qualcomm will certainly continue its domination in 2013. Samsung followed with 9% of the shipments, while tiny GCT Semiconductor managed to grab 3% of the market, primarily through LG handsets. Renesas Mobile (mostly in Fujitsu handsets) and Nvidia-Icera each garnered 1% market shares.
  
  
• Baidu taps Marvell for ARM storage server SoC (Thursday Feb. 21, 2013)
  Baidu has become the first big data center to adopt an ARM server. China’s Internet search giant will use a custom storage server powered by the 32-bit Armada XP from Marvell.
  
  
• Five IC Suppliers to Hold One-Third of 300mm Wafer Capacity in 2013 (Wednesday Feb. 20, 2013)
  It is a fact that semiconductor industry capital spending is becoming more concentrated with a greater percentage of spending coming from a shrinking number of companies. As a result, IC industry capacity is also becoming more concentrated and this trend is especially prevalent in 300mm wafer technology.
  
  
• Wireless Leads of Growth for OEM Semiconductor Spending in 2013 (Thursday Feb. 14, 2013)
  Wireless is set to be the leading growth segment for semiconductor spending among original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in 2013, with expenditures rising by a double-digit margin to support the burgeoning markets for smartphones, media tablets and mobile infrastructure gear.
  
  
• 10 IC Product Segments to Exceed Total IC Market Growth in 2013 (Thursday Feb. 14, 2013)
  IC Insights’ 2013 McClean Report identifies and segments the total IC market into 34 major IC product categories. Ten product categories, led by Tablet MPUs and Cellphone Application MPUs, are forecast to exceed the 6% growth rate forecast for the total IC market this year.
  
  
• Yoshida in Japan: Renesas' cuts are GloFo's gain (Thursday Feb. 14, 2013)
  Word of layoffs is depressing and heart-wrenching, especially so when it takes place on the massive scale that hit workers at Renesas Electronics.
  
  
• Gartner Says Worldwide Mobile Phone Sales Declined 1.7 Percent in 2012 (Thursday Feb. 14, 2013)
  Worldwide mobile phone sales to end users totaled 1.75 billion units in 2012, a 1.7 percent decline from 2011 sales, according to Gartner, Inc. Smartphones continued to drive overall mobile phone sales, and the fourth quarter of 2012 saw record smartphone sales of 207.7 million units, up 38.3 percent from the same period last year.