Automotive Foundries


The race to win a piece of the automotive electronics business has now reached the foundry level, and right now it's not clear exactly how this is going to work. This is uncharted territory for everyone. The build-out of electronics for assisted and autonomous driving is brand new. For existing cars, most of the chips being used are off-the-shelf microcontrollers, commodity MEMS sensors, and... » read more

China’s Ambitious Automotive Plans


China has big plans for cars—and other related markets. After years of trailing behind Japanese, European and U.S.-based carmakers in automotive technology, reliability, status, and even market share within its own political borders, the country is making a concerted push into internally developed and manufactured assisted- and self-driving vehicles. The strategy plays out well for China o... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


M&A Imagination will sell its MIPS business to Tallwood, a California-based venture capital firm, for $65m in cash. The sale is expected to close in October. The rest of Imagination is slated to be sold to Canyon Bridge for £550 million in cash (~$740 million), a deal dependent on the MIPS sale. The Chinese-backed investment firm has featured recently in the news for its attempted purchas... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


M&A Synopsys acquired materials modeling company QuantumWise. QuantumWise tools focus on atomic-scale modeling of nanostructures using quantum-mechanical computational methods, classical potentials, and electrostatic models. Based in Denmark, the company was started in 2008 when it acquired the assets of Atomistix. The technology will be integrated with Synopsys' Sentaurus TCAD. Terms of t... » read more

Executive Insight: Wally Rhines


Wally Rhines, president and CEO of [getentity id="22017" e_name="Mentor, a Siemens Business"], sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about industry consolidation, a shift in emphasis from chips to systems, and what the recent acquisition by Siemens will mean for Mentor. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: A year ago it looked as if the entire industry was going to b... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


M&A Mentor acquired Valydate, provider of the VERA schematic integrity analysis tool. Founded in 2010, the Canadian company also offered signal and power integrity and static timing analysis services. Valydate's technology will be integrated with Mentor's Xpedition PCB design flow, though former Valydate CEO Michael Alam says it will continue to serve all EDA environments. Tools Aldec ... » read more

Filtering Out Fab Problems


Bertrand Loy, president and CEO of Entegris, sat down to discuss the semiconductor industry, process challenges and filter technology with Semiconductor Engineering. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: What is the outlook for the IC industry? Loy: A lot of positive things are happening. Eighty percent of what we do are consumables, which would be chemistries and filters. ... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


Numbers EDA industry revenue increased 10.5% in Q1 2017 to $2.168 billion, the highest Q1 growth level since 2011, according to EDAC. The four quarters moving average increased by 10.6%. CAE, the biggest category, grew 14%, while IP—primarily macro cells and memory—grew 15%. The Americas and Asia-Pacific both reported double digit growth. The industry is hiring, too: tracked companies incr... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


M&A Silvaco will acquire SoC Solutions, adding more IP experience to the company's portfolio. SoC Solutions, based in Atlanta, GA, focuses on pre-configured IP subsystems and IP targeting low power IoT and machine-to-machine communication. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the acquisition is expected to close soon. Imagination is putting the rest of the company up for sale after... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


M&A Verific acquired Invionics' entire INVIO technology portfolio, adding a high-level scripting interface with 100 high-level APIs to its Parser Platform of approximately 2,000 low-level SystemVerilog and VHDL APIs. An R&D group from the company will also join Verific. Portable Stimulus An Early Adopter release of the Portable Stimulus specification has been made publicly availabl... » read more

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