EDA, IP Up 7%


EDA and IP growth increased to $2.094 billion in Q3, a 7% gain over the $1.958 billion reported for the same period in 2015, according to just released data from the Electronic System Design Alliance Market Statistics Service. All geographic regions reported growth last quarter. So did computer-aided engineering, the largest single category, which grew 5.0% to $666.7 million in Q3, up from $... » read more

Foundries See Mixed Future


Amid a tumultuous business environment, the silicon foundry industry is projected to see steady growth in a number of process segments in 2017. As in past years, the foundry market is expected to grow faster than the overall IC industry in 2017. But at the same time, the IC industry—the foundry customer base—continues to witness a frenetic wave of merger and acquisition activity. Basical... » read more

IP Liability Changes Ahead?


Patent lawyers are keeping close tabs on a biotech patent infringement case that went before the Supreme Court this week because it could have a significant impact on IP content in other markets, including semiconductors. On Tuesday, attorneys for Life Technologies Corp. and Promega Corp., presented arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court involving an enzyme for amplifying DNA analysis. For ... » read more

Harder Than It Looks


First Apple scales back plans to develop its own vehicle. Then Intel creates its own automotive chip unit. This kind of two-step movement in the automotive electronics industry is becoming more common. NXP buys Freescale, then Qualcomm buys NXP. Harman buys Symphony Teleca and Red Bend Software, then Samsung buys Harman. All of these moves are proof points that innovation and fleet-foo... » read more

IoT, Architectures, And Security


Mike Muller, CTO of [getentity id="22186" comment="ARM"], sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about security, IoT market changes, and future technology requirements. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: Security is a growing problem. How do we deal with it? Muller: However fast the world is moving, if you look at fundamental hardware and system design, it’s ru... » read more

Where Is The New Competition?


Consolidation is a regular topic of discussion at semiconductor industry conferences and trade shows. Anyone who has been to these gatherings over the past couple decades can see there are fewer companies presenting and exhibiting, fewer startups taking the place of those that were bought, and a dramatic increase in one-day, one-vendor-sponsored events where top experts are gathered to talk abo... » read more

New Wave Of Consolidation


Consolidation is picking up again across the semiconductor industry, against a backdrop of looming interest rate hikes, geopolitical uncertainty, and the erosion of longstanding demarcations between markets. In the past couple of weeks, Siemens signed a deal to buy [getentity id="22017" e_name="Mentor Graphics"] for $4 billion, and [getentity id="22865" e_name="Samsung"] purchased Harman, a ... » read more

Politics And (Low) Power


This week the entire semiconductor market woke up with a severe political hangover. Aside from the initial shock of the election results themselves, the winning platform of "America First" could have far-reaching implications for an industry that has spent decades optimizing a global supply chain the way it has finely tuned other processes to reduce the cost per transistor. There are many un... » read more

Five Automotive Megatrends


We see the term 'new mobility' becoming a catch-all for everything happening in connected, autonomous, electric vehicle development. It’s too broad a term to describe the future, we need to drill down a level. We have to look beyond automotive today, see where industry technology convergence is taking us, and identify the megatrends. Here at Mentor Automotive, we have identified five: Connect... » read more

Will There Be Enough Silicon Wafers?


The silicon wafer industry, a critical part of the IC supply chain, is undergoing a new and perhaps alarming wave of merger and acquisition activity. While consolidation in this sector is not new, the pace of M&A activity is picking up and there are fewer companies left. Silicon wafer makers produce and sell raw silicon wafers to chipmakers, which process them into chips. But despite con... » read more

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