The Week In Review: IoT


Deals Rambus completed its $32 million acquisition of the Snowbush IP assets from Semtech. Through the end of 2022, Rambus may make additional payments on the transaction, depending upon new product sales. The Snowbush IP assets became part of the Memory and Interfaces Division at Rambus, complementing the company’s offerings in IP and serializer/deserializer blocks. Samsung Electronics A... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Samsung Electronics announced that it has begun producing the industry’s first 4-gigabyte DRAM package based on the second-generation High Bandwidth Memory (HBM2) interface. The 4GB HBM2 package is created by stacking a buffer die at the bottom and four 8-gigabit core dies on top. These are then vertically interconnected by TSV holes and microbumps. A single 8Gb HBM2 die contains over 5,000 T... » read more

Consolidation’s Aftermath


The recent spate of industry consolidation continues to have repercussions across the semiconductor industry. Some of those effects will subside once the deals are either approved or nixed by regulatory agencies. Others will raise questions for months or years to come. Consolidation is not a new trend in the semiconductor industry, but the pace and size of the acquisitions in the past year a... » read more

The Week In Review: Design/IoT


M&A Dialog will acquire Atmel in a cash and stock transaction for total consideration of approximately $4.6 billion. Dialog anticipates achieving projected annual cost savings of $150 million within two years. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of calendar 2016. IP Synopsys announced a portfolio of IP optimized for the IoT, which includes power- and area-effi... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Christopher Rolland, an analyst at FBR, made a startling statement in a recent report. “At the pace of consolidation set thus far this year, 32% of all U.S. publicly traded semiconductor companies would be acquired in 2015! While this run-rate is not likely sustainable and should slow as the year progresses, we still expect ~15% consolidation rates for the remainder of this cycle (above low-t... » read more

The Week In Review: Design/IoT


Mergers & Acqusitions Mentor Graphics acquired Tanner EDA, bolstering their position in tools for analog, mixed-signal and MEMs. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. NXP joins forces with Freescale. The merger carries a $16.7 billion price tag and potentially creates a new leader in the automotive and MCU markets. Standards Accellera sent UVM 1.2 off to the IEEE P1800.2 working... » read more

Blog Review: Oct. 22


What is UX? The User Experience, of course. Rambus' Aharon Etengoff notes that the IoT UX is now the subject of a Harvard Business Review article. A long list of hurdles are expected at the 10nm process node, including multiple levels of local interconnects, more complex layout rules, timing problems, and a slew of others. Cadence's Richard Goering puts it all in perspective. Mentor's R... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


IP ARM introduced a new software platform and a free operating system aimed at IoT development. The OS incorporates security, communication and device management features for improved energy efficiency. The device server simplifies the connection and management of devices, incorporating security and improving efficiency. Cadence rolled out a broad IP portfolio for TSMC's 16nm platform, and ... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


Tools CEVA integrated Bluetooth processing into its DSP cores. In addition to audio and video and always-on capabilities, the company is pitching the combination as an all-in-one, ultra-low-power solution for the wearable electronics market. So how big is this market opportunity? IDC predicts the wearable computing market will grow from 19.2 million units this year to 112 million units in 2... » read more

The New Face Of MCUs


For years, the humble microcontroller was known as the workhorse of white goods and other embedded applications that required some amount of processing, but not as much as a microprocessor would provide. Much has changed since then. Today’s MCUs are the star components in fast-growing and increasingly sophisticated application areas such as automotive, smartphones and the Internet of Thing... » read more

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