Shakeup in the top 20 semiconductor suppliers continues in 2016

By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk

Apple's internal chip value puts it at #15

Sales at the top 20 semiconductor companies declined by 6% in the first quarter of this year as the impact of consolidation and the downturn starts to bite. 

The figures from IC Insights show that seven companies displayed a double-digit 1Q16/1Q15 decline and three that registered a dramatic 25% fall (with memory giants Micron and SK Hynix posting the worst results). Half of the top-20 companies had sales of at least $2.0 billion in 1Q16, so it takes $832 million in quarterly sales just to make it into the top 20 list.

Apple is an anomaly in the top-20 ranking with regards to major semiconductor suppliers. The company designs and uses its processors only in its own products—there are no sales of the company’s MPUs to other system makers. Apple’s custom ARM-based SoC processors had a “sales value” of $1,390 million in 1Q16, up 10% from $1,260 million in 1Q15. 

 Apple’s MPUs have been used in 13 iPhone handset designs since 2007 and a dozen iPad tablet models since 2010 as well as in iPod portable media players, smartwatches, and Apple TV units. Apple’s custom processors—such as the 64-bit A9 used in iPhone 6s and 6s Plus handsets introduced in September 2015 and the new iPhone 6SE launched in March 2016—are made by pure-play foundry TSMC and IDM foundry Samsung.

There were some surprises though - despite the doom and gloom around the prospects for growth at Intel, the company still saw significant growth against the declining backdrop. Growth star MediaTek continued to advance, but Infineon also saw healthy growth. In terms of rankings, the biggest moves in the ranking were made by the new Broadcom (Avago/Broadcom) and Nvidia, each of which jumped up three positions in 1Q16 as compared to 1Q15.

There was one new entrant into the top-20 ranking in the first quarter US fabless supplier AMD. AMD had a particularly rough 1Q16 and saw its sales drop 19% year-over-year to $832 million, which was about half the $1,589 million in sales the company logged just over two years ago in 4Q13. Although AMD did not have a good 1Q16, Japan-based Sharp, the only company that fell from the top-20 ranking, faired even worse with its 1Q16/1Q15 sales plunging by 30%

In order to allow for more useful year-over-year comparisons, IC Insights combined the acquired/merged semiconductor company sales results for both 1Q15 and 1Q16, regardless of when the acquisition or merger occurred. For example, although Intel’s acquisition of Altera did not close until late December of 2015, Altera’s 1Q15 sales ($435 million) were added to Intel’s 1Q15 sales ($11,632 million) to come up with the $12,067 million shown in the chart aboe. The same method was used to calculate the 1Q15 sales for Broadcom (Avago/Broadcom), NXP (NXP/Freescale), and GlobalFoundries (GlobalFoundries/IBM).

As would be expected, given the possible acquisitions and mergers over this years such as Microchip/Atmel and ON Semiconductor/Fairchild, as well as any new ones that may develop, the top-20 semiconductor ranking is likely to undergo a significant amount of upheaval over the next few years as the semiconductor industry continues along its path to maturity.

IC Insights will have another update on the market later in the month.

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Top ten semiconductor R&D companies

By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk

Semiconductor industry spending on research and development grew by just 0.5% in 2015 but was still a record amount of $56.4bn, according to the latest report from IC Insights in the US.

This was the smallest increase since the 2009 downturn year and significantly below the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.0% over the last 10 years, driven by growing concerns about the weak global economy, slumping sales in the second half of the year, and the unprecedented industry consolidation through a huge wave of merger and acquisition agreements.

  

Intel continues to lead all semiconductor companies in R&D spending in 2015, accounting for 22% of the industry’s total research and development expenditures. Following Intel in the 2015 R&D ranking are Qualcomm, Samsung, Broadcom (now being acquired by Avago), and the world’s largest wafer foundry, TSMC. The top five spenders were unchanged from 2014, but below that point, the rankings of most companies were shuffled. Micron Technology moved up to sixth in 2015, swapping positions with Toshiba, which fell to seventh in the new ranking. MediaTek went from ninth in 2014 to eighth place, while SK Hynix climbed from 12th to ninth in 2015. ST slid from eighth in 2014 to 10th in 2015, and Nvidia fell out of the top 10 to 11th place in 2015.

The top 10 in the R&D ranking collectively increased spending on research and development in 2015 by about 2% compared to the half-percent increase for total semiconductor R&D expenditures in the year. Combined R&D spending by the top 10 exceeded total expenditures by the rest of the semiconductor companies (about $30.8 billion versus $25.6 billion) in 2015—something that has continued to hold true since 2005.

Intel’s R&D expenditures grew 5% in 2015, which is significantly below its 13% average increase in spending per year since 2010 and slightly under its 8% annual growth rate since 2001, the new report says. Underscoring the growing cost of developing new IC technologies, Intel’s R&D-to-sales ratio has climbed significantly, from 9.3% in 1995 to 16.4% in 2010 and 24.0% in 2015.  .

With worldwide semiconductor sales falling nearly 1% in 2015 to $353.6 billion and R&D spending rising 0.5% to $56.4 billion, the industry’s R&D-to-sales ratio grew slightly to 16.0% from 15.8% in 2014. Since 2000, the semiconductor industry’s annual R&D-to-revenue ratio has average 16.0%. The new McClean Report forecasts semiconductor R&D spending to grow about 4% in 2016 to $58.9 billion and reach $76.3 billion in 2020, which would represent a CAGR of 6.7% from 2015. 

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Updated: Amazon pushes the trend for vertical integration

By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk

The launch of ARM-based embedded chips by a subsidiary of e-commerce giant Amazon has highlighted the growing trend back towards vertical integration: a year on from the first family of processors, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) offers a glimpse of how these devices are being used.

Amazon bought Annapurna Labs back in January 2015, and the Israel-based company has now launched the Alpine series of platform-on-chip and subsystems product line that enables original equipment manufacturers and service providers to deliver next-generation digital services for home gateways, WiFi routers and storage devices.

In  January 2016, Annapurna launched 32bit and 64bit chips with the ARMv7 and 64-bit ARMv8 architectures and a rich set of peripherals for high performance for UHD video streaming, secure storage, application virtualization, and cloud applications, all of which are provides by Amazon Web Services (AWS) for its own e-commerce and video-on-demand services. Amazon is now offering the chips to other OEMs and service providers, although the chances of selling them to large data centre operators such as Facebook or Microsoft is small.

This highlights the trend back to having control of the silicon as a key element of a global business plan. For many years electronics companies such as Sony, Hitachi and Panasonic have been reducing the amount of semiconductor activity within their vertically integrated organisations on the basis that it allows the systems divisions to buy the best-in-class devices rather than the ones from the vertical organisations.

That changed with fabless chip design becoming mainstream, allowing equipment companies to buy teams of designers, which on the whole are cheaper than having to build a chip making plant.  Apple buying PA Semiconductor (who were behind the original StrongArm high performance chips) to acquire the designers of its own ARM-based A-series chips was a very clear demonstration of this trend.

Software companies such as Facebook have moved into hardware with open source designs for data centre equipment, so expect more moves into the silicon side of the data centre, as Facebook has a vested interest in making sure that key components are not supplied by a key competitor.
Instead the Alpine chips will appeal to other embedded designers of Wi-Fi routers, NAS, and gateways for the connected home that enable them to support a wide range of devices and rapidly deliver innovative in-home services to consumers.
Today, in-home gateways and Wi-Fi routers are severely limited by the lack of network and compute resources, constraining what services can be offered on devices in the home and forcing consumers to acquire multiple devices for networking, storage, media management, backup, and internet connectivity. This is because the standard processor for an in-home networking or storage device has limited general-purpose compute capability and depends significantly on hardware acceleration and deep software optimizations to reach target performance. This architecture slows delivery of new services to consumers by requiring changes to hardware or months of software optimizations to accommodate new features.

Alpine helps to eliminate these challenges for service providers and OEMs by providing up to four cores of high performance general–purpose compute, advanced storage interfaces, PCIe Gen3, and multimode Ethernet connectivity of up to 10G to allow Alpine-based products to support many devices with services needed in the connected home including storage management, multimedia, IoT management, and cloud connectivity. With enterprise-class performance and features like DDR4 and 2MB of L2 cache, Alpine enables service providers and OEMs to rapidly roll out new consumer services, leverage open source or third-party applications, and meet performance demands without the need for hardware acceleration or custom software optimizations.

"In the fast-growing home application marketplace, new use cases and consumer needs are rapidly invented and adopted. To stay competitive, OEMs and service providers therefore need to quickly add support for the new features that give consumers the ability to enjoy the latest applications without changing hardware or waiting for months to get updated software," said Gary Szilagyi, Vice President of Annapurna Labs. "Our Alpine platform-on-chip and subsystems product line gives service providers and OEMs a high-performance platform on which they can design hardware that will support growing consumer demands for innovative services, fast connectivity, and many connected devices."

Annapurna maintains Alpine support in the Linux and FreeBSD open source projects. These standard open source operating systems allow third parties to easily run their applications and drivers on the Alpine platform and quickly qualify updated software on Alpine-based products. Multiple third party applications for the home segment run on the Alpine platform, including video streaming, security, and cloud connectivity. Drivers for components used in home devices have been ported and tested to run on Alpine including drivers for Wi-Fi chips, multimode Ethernet PHYs, and Ethernet switches.

The Alpine platform works with a variety of standard open source libraries and development models including Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK), OpenWRT, and open source hypervisor and container frameworks. Running DPDK on Alpine delivers 10G performance with low resource usage to enable high throughput on the network, while still running many services on the devices. Alpine platform’s support for common open-source hypervisor and container frameworks allows isolation of applications from critical networking and storage services enabling rapid application deployment and upgrades without impacting basic services.

Home gateway, Wi-Fi router, and NAS product designs based on Alpine are currently available from multiple original device manufacturers (ODMs) to give OEMs and service providers a choice of partners and to speed the development of new products and product refreshes. In addition, Annapurna offers a hardware development kit (HDK) for Alpine-based designs, which includes schematics files, layout files, thermal guidelines, and a bill of material (BoM). The HDK enables OEMs to leverage their own in-house resources, contract manufacturers, or other ODMs.

The Alpine platform is designed to bring enterprise-class reliability to the home by integrating thermal sensors, and parity/error correcting code (ECC) on internal buses, external buses, and memory. Further, Alpine provides power savings with configurable core power states, PCIe power states for on-chip components, and support for multiple wake up methods including Wake on LAN (WoL), wake on event, and wake on interrupt.

"There is significant growth in the home Wi-Fi segment with most of the demand occurring on high-performance routers. As a leading provider in this segment, we are committed to providing our customers with high performing solutions," said Tenlong Deng, Vice President of ASUS Networking & Wireless Devices Business Unit. "The increased demand for new applications and use models requires additional compute and more flexibility. We are collaborating with Annapurna on these technologies and believe that they have one of the most advanced and flexible silicon solutions in the marketplace."

"In the home network, consumers are asking for more services like media processing, HD video streaming, better security, and tighter integration of cloud services. Our router, gateway, and NAS product lines provide exceptional user experience and integrate many of the services needed by our customers," said Richard Jonker, General Manager & Vice President at NETGEAR. "Our recently announced ReadyNAS 214 is based on Annapurna's Alpine quad-core and packs in a rich set of services including PLEX media server with live transcoding capabilities, a private cloud for the home, 5 levels of security and a seamless backup solution for all connected devices. Using the Alpine quad core chip, we are able to run all of these services at very high performance. We like the Annapurna architecture and plan to collaborate with Annapurna on future projects."

"We offer rich functionality and applications in our NAS devices. With the powerful dual and quad-core Alpine processors product line, our customers can benefit from high-performance NAS products with cutting-edge solutions," said Meiji Chang, General Manager of QNAP Systems. "We have launched the dual-core 2-bay TS-231+ and 4-bay TS-431+, and the 5-bay quad-core TS-531P NAS products that support Docker and Linux container virtualization. Our NAS products also support PLEX media server for affordable optional multimedia applications. We are working closely with Annapurna Labs to further strengthen our product portfolio in 2016."

"We believe in building powerful, high-value storage solutions for homes and businesses that need to manage rapid data growth nowadays," said Jones Tsai, Hardware Design Director of Synology, an award winning NAS provider. "We have launched several products including the Synology DiskStation DS2015xs, DS1515, DS715, and DS416 using the Alpine chips. These enable our customers to enjoy features such as excellent encryption performance and built-in 10G support at a competitive price, making sure they are provided with a very effective approach to file management, sharing, and protection."

www.annapurnalabs.com.

Mergers shake up the semiconductor industry

Review of the year

By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk

This year has seen a staggering consolidation within the semiconductor industry. With deals ranging from the merger of NXP and Freescale through Broadcom and Avago to Qualcomm and CSR, Infineon and International Rectifier and Intel absorbing Altera (which completed today), the field of suppliers in the embedded industry will change significantly by the end of next year as a result.
Other deals are continuing, with Dialog Semiconductor's acquisition of Atmel still in play, and TDK taking over Micronas.
This is highlighted in the recent figures from market researcher IC Insight. Bill McClean sees the integrated device makers (IDM) overtaking the fabless chip makers briefly, partly as a result of the mergers and partly from currency fluctuations. But it does shake up the list of the top suppliers considerably.
As shown in Figure 1, only three of the top-10 IDM semiconductor suppliers are forecast to register growth in 2015 and, in total, the top-10 IDMs are expected to display flat growth this year. says McClean.  Intel remains the dominant player, and Altera's $460m fabless business will barely make a bump in the figures as the new Programmable Solutions division. The combined NXP/Freescale is now moving up to challenge Texas Instruments, although the majority of the NXP basis is moving to fabless rather than IDM.

Top 10 IDMs for 2015 post merger. Source: IC Insights

Although flat growth by the top-10 IDMs would typically be considered poor performance, it is still forecast to be a much better result than is expected from the top-10 fabless semiconductor suppliers (Figure 2).  In order to make direct comparisons for year-over-year growth, IC Insights combined the merged, or soon to be merged, companies’ 2014 and 2015 semiconductor sales regardless of when the merger occurred, providing a more accurate figure. However, how well the companies execute on the merger will impact on this potential growth.

Figure 2: Fabless semiconductor vendors are seeing the effects of consolidation more strongly than IDMs. Source: IC Insights 

As shown, the top-10 fabless semiconductor suppliers are forecast to register a 5% decline in sales this year, five points worse than the top-10 IDMs.  It should be noted that essentially all of the decline expected for the top-10 fabless suppliers in 2015 could be attributed to the forecasted decline in Qualcomm/CSR’s sales this year, which comes from Samsung’s increasing use of its internally developed Exynos application processor in its smartphones instead of the application processors it had previously sourced from Qualcomm.

Figure 3: Flat growth in 2015 shows the semiconductor market moving into its negative cycle, with consequences for the embedded market. Source: IC Insights

All this highlights the turn in the market in figure 3. From positive growth last year to flat sales this year, the market is heading into its downward trend. This will make life difficult for embedded developers as the top ten companies in both areas cut costs and product lines to compensate, and drive more consolidation through 2016.

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Cypress and Spansion in $4bn merger

By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk

Blimey! Cypress and Spansion are to merge in a $4bn deal that will change the landscape of the embedded market and potentially mark more consolidation. The key area for this deal is of course memory - Spansion was the spin off of AMD's flash memory business, while Cypress started out making SRAMs and has since moved into other controller-based devices. 
As a result the combined company will have annual turnover of $2bn and be the leader in SRAM and in NOR flash, and be a major player in microcontrollers - Cypress is well established in ARM-based microcontroller designs alongside its PSoC capacitative touch screen controller, while Spansion has recently been adding ARM cores to its memory devices. 
Although the deal is pitched as 50/50 - which is itself often a problem for deciding the direction going forward - it actually looks like a Cypress takeover.  Cypress founder and long term CEO TJ Rodgers will be CEO of the merged company while Ray Bingham of Spansion will be non-executive chairman and the company will be called - wait for it - Cypress Semiconductor. 
“This merger represents the combination of two smart, profitable, passionately entrepreneurial companies that are No. 1 in their respective memory markets and have successfully diversified into embedded processing,” said Rodgers, Cypress’s founding president and CEO. “Our combined company will be a leading provider of embedded MCUs and specialized memories. We will also have extraordinary opportunities for EPS accretion due to the synergy in virtually every area of our enterprises.”
The merger is expected to achieve more than $135 million in cost synergies on an annualized basis within three years and to be accretive to non-GAAP earnings within the first full year after the transaction closes. The combined company will continue to pay $0.11 per share in quarterly dividends to shareholders.
“Bringing together these high-performing organizations creates operating efficiencies and economies of scale, and will deliver maximum value for our shareholders, new opportunities for employees and an improved experience for our customers,” said John Kispert, CEO of Spansion. “With unparalleled expertise, global reach in markets like Japan and market-leading products for automotive, IoT, industrial and communications markets, the new company is well positioned to deliver best-of-breed solutions and execute on our long-term vision of adding value through embedded system-on-chip solutions.”
The closing of the transaction is subject to customary conditions, including approval by Cypress and Spansion stockholders and review by regulators in the U.S., Germany and China. The transaction has been unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both companies. Cypress and Spansion expect the deal to close in the first half of 2015. 
What other consolidation will happen remains to be seen but memory companies particularly will be vulnerable - the most notable recent deal was Global Foundries being paid to take on IBM's semiconductor business. I expect to see some other 'mergers' based around the Internet of Things as companies position themselves for growth i the next few years.

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Moving multicore to embedded is key to US competitiveness

By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk

The rapid advances in information technology that drive many sectors of the US economy could stall unless there is significant fundamental research and development of parallel computing, says a new report by the National Research Council -- which will drive the move to embedded multicore systems.

Better options for managing power consumption in computers will also be essential for continued improvements in IT performance.

Advances in single-processor, sequential computer microprocessors have enabled computing performance to increase dramatically -- on the order of 10,000 times in the last 20 years but power management and other technological limitations have made it impractical to continue improving computer performance in this way much longer. Parallel computing, therefore, is the only known alternative for improving computer performance without significantly increasing costs and energy usage, the report says.
"The societal and economic impact of computer technology is undeniable, increasing productivity and efficiency and fostering innovation in medicine, defense, entertainment, and communications," said Samuel Fuller, chief technology officer and vice president of research and development for Analog Devices and chair of the committee that wrote the report. "To ensure that computing systems continue to double in performance every few years, we need to make significant changes in computer software and hardware. Investing in research and development of parallel computing offers a clear path forward."
Despite some mainstream successes in parallel computing -- such as the MapReduce programming framework used by Google to process large data sets using thousands of computers -- most parallel computing in use now is limited to comparatively narrow scientific and engineering applications. To enable parallel computing for broader use, new algorithms, programming models, operating systems, and computer architectures will be required, the report says, and research and development in these areas should be pursued.
In particular, advances are necessary to develop new parallel programming methods and supporting computing systems. Although computing hardware such as semiconductor chips that contain eight or more microprocessors have already been developed, software that can keep that many or more processors busy in parallel is not available for most computing applications.
Research and development should also focus on making computer systems more energy efficient, the report says. Power constraints now affect systems ranging from handheld devices to the largest computing data centres. Most computer chips are designed with silicon-based complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. While the number of devices per CMOS chip continues to double every few years, the technology has essentially reached its limits with regard to power efficiency. Even as new parallel computing models and solutions are found, most future performance will ultimately be limited by energy constraints, the report notes.
It cautions that while parallel computing is the best alternative for improving future performance, there is no guarantee that it will bring rapid advances like those experienced in recent decades, and a number of uncertainties still need to be addressed. Therefore, research and development should also explore fundamentally different alternatives to today's CMOS technology.
The report also recommends developing open interface standards for parallel programming to promote cooperation and innovation in the industry, designing tools and methods for transferring today's sequential computing to parallel applications, and emphasizing parallel computing as part of computer science education.

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Shipments of Silicon to Jump 23.6 Percent in 2010

By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk

Global silicon shipments in terms of square inches will rise to record levels in 2010, according to semiconductor manufacturing market research firm iSuppli.

 

Shipments of silicon for semiconductor manufacturing in 2010 will grow by 23.6 percent year-over-year, reaching 8.9 billion total square inches, up from 7.2 billion square inches in 2009, iSuppli forecasts. By 2014, 12.4 billion total square inches of silicon will be shipped.

However, while this is good news for filling fabs, it doesn't necessarily follow through to the average selling price (ASP) and the health of the industry. There is a fine balance between demand for silicon and production - too much silicon, low prices; too much demand and not enough siliocn - high prices. 

“Following the recession of late 2008 and 2009, chip manufacturers spent the first half of 2010 striving to reverse the damage they had suffered,” said Len Jelinek, director and chief analyst for semiconductor manufacturing and supply at iSuppli. “Visibility in the second half of 2010 remains limited even as the all-important holiday season inches closer. The good news is that barring any new collapse, silicon suppliers will have sufficient orders on the books to carry them through the third and fourth quarters. And while growth in 2011 won’t match the high expansion rate seen in 2010, iSuppli anticipates that the semiconductor industry will require additional increases in silicon shipments of about 13 percent compared to 2010 shipment rates to meet the projected development.”

Outperforming the industry

The demand for silicon in 12-inch wafers continues to rise at a rate that will outperform the industry average for silicon through 2014. In order to maintain growth, however, silicon suppliers must continue to expand 12-inch wafer manufacturing.

Beyond 2010, iSuppli expects to see a greater emphasis on shifting to even more 12-inch wafer manufacturing. Specifically, mixed signal and other technologies will be moving to 12-inch wafers as a result of older 12-inch tools no longer being cost effective for the manufacturing of leading-edge technology products.

Over the next five years, the availability of additional mature manufacturing capacity and tools will accelerate the conversion to 12-inch wafer manufacturing for products such as analog and mixed signal devices.

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Power management chip shortage looms

Remarkable growth over Christmas drives up prices

By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk

Strong demand for power management semiconductors in the first half of 2010 has caught suppliers off-guard, spurring shortages and causing prices to rise in the near term, says market researcher iSuppli. This will impact on the design and supply and cost of portable euipment in particular this year.
Revenue for power management semiconductors reached $6.9 billion in the first quarter of 2010, up 2.9 percent from $6.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009. Sequential growth in the first quarter is remarkable given that it is weakest period of the year for sales of semiconductors. The growth of the first quarter reflects a continuation of the expansion that started during the last three months of 2009, after the market stalled briefly in the third quarter of last year.

Growth is expected to continue in the second quarter this year, when revenue is set to rise another 7.2 percent to hit $7.4 billion. And although a bigger upward movement occurred during the same time last year—when power management ascended 18.2 percent from $4.4 billion to $5.2 billion—the second quarter in 2010 will deliver the most robust growth for the industry this year.

“The expansion in the first quarter of 2010 took place because of the industry’s move to fulfill order backlogs and to satisfy limited demand, both of which shrank in the wake of the economic slowdown last year,” said Marijana Vukicevic, principal analyst for power management at iSuppli. “In contrast, growth in the second quarter will be fueled by increased activity in a number of areas utilizing power management semiconductors, including consumer electronics, wireless communications and data processing.”

Suppliers beset with shortages; prices to rise

Suppliers now are suffering from a shortage of power semiconductors, mainly because a recovery in demand—which started in the fourth of quarter of last year—has proven to be of a greater magnitude than current operational capacity can handle. Even with the rehiring of workers and the reopening of fab lines, suppliers have been caught off-guard by the resurgent demand and are unable to keep up, iSuppli’s findings show.
Furthermore, inventory levels at distributors decreased by 1.5 days in the fourth quarter of 2009 amid strong sales—a development that induced even more demand, especially for the analogue and discrete components of the market that already were in a state of shortage. The decline in inventory not only will contribute to big delays at the back end, particularly for analog suppliers, but also will serve to increase pricing, iSuppli believes.
And while prices are expected to stabilize in the second half of 2010, the shortage of commodity devices is likely to drive up Average Selling Prices (ASPs) in the first half, affecting buyers in the short term. Essentially, the price increases will persist until supply catches up with demand, iSuppli projections indicate.

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Broadcom combines three WiFi channels for wireless HD video

Intensi-fi 65nm single chip supports 450Mbit/s 3x3 802.11n WiFi
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk

In a bid to make wireless video work in the home, Broadcom has developed a single-chip 802.11n dual-band 3x3 wireless solution that achieves 450 Mbit/s data rates in client devices and over 600Mbit/s throughput (TCP/IP) in 3x3 AP/router configurations. By combining the MIMO wireless capacity with features to improve range, Broadcom's new Intensi-fi chip enables several wireless multimedia applications, including high-definition (HD) video streaming, back-up, storage, multiplayer gaming, audio streaming, wireless printing, and photo sharing.
The BCM4331 802.11n solution delivers full 3x3 performance with three transmitting and three receiving streams of data in either the 2.4GHz or 5GHz frequency bands. An increased number of data streams and antennas results in faster speeds, longer range, fewer dropped connections, and better overall wireless coverage. The BCM4331 is now sampling and is being demonstrated at this week's 30th annual COMPUTEX in Taipei, Taiwan.
A growing number of consumers want the ability to instantly access over-the-top (OTT) broadband video delivered through internet protocol (IP) directly to their TVs. ABI Research forecasts the connected TV market to exceed 117 million units by 2014.

"The expanding use of video over Wi-Fi in game consoles, Blu-ray players, and TVs will impose new requirements for Wi-Fi access points," said Phil Solis, practice director for Wireless Connectivity at ABI Research. "3x3 Wi-Fi solutions provide the bandwidth and quality of service necessary to stream HD video reliably throughout an entire home, share media content with wireless enabled consumer electronics devices, and utilize Internet-based applications. This is important as consumers migrate to services that require their entertainment devices to be connected and to support their lifestyles wirelessly."

With the Intensi-fi system-on-a-chip (SoC) solution HD video content can be downloaded to a notebook computer 50% percent faster than existing 802.11n 2x2 technologies.
The BCM4331 three-stream architecture employs range-extending features to deliver the highest bandwidths to all corners of the home.
The key features include:

• 3 antenna technology with Broadcom's advanced receiver architecture boosts range by up to 40 percent when compared to existing 802.11n devices
• A low density parity check (LDPC) code further improves the reliability of the wireless link, helping insure media gets properly distributed even in congested environments
• Single-chip dual-band (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) three stream radio, three antenna 3x3 architecture
• Data rates up to 450 Megabits per second (Mbps)
• Range extension features enabling the delivery of video, data, and media throughout the house
• LDPC code and space-time block coding (STBC) for improving overall range and coverage
• Advanced receiver architecture for industry leading throughput at range
• Best-in-Class Client STA solution
• Bluetooth combo-ready with InConcert Technology for Wireless Coexistence
• InConcert Maestro and Wi-Fi Direct for easy video streaming between PCs and TVs
• High performance integrated dual-band AP/router solutions
• Lowest cost two-chip simultaneous dual band 3x3 AP solution with the BCM4718 and BCM4331 for 11n 2.4GHz data and 5GHz HD video distribution applications
• Industry-leading simultaneous 3-stream throughput using the 600MHz, MIPS74k BCM4706 processor
• 65 nanometer CMOS PCIe design that promotes integration and low power consumption
• Broadcom's OneDriver software support and WHQL certified driver support for Windows 7, Vista, Windows XP and Linux

"We are driving the growth of the wireless market by introducing a solution that addresses the need for performance across multiple demanding applications," said Kevin Mukai, Senior Product Line Manager for Broadcom's WLAN line of business. "Broadcom's BCM4331 3x3 802.11n further enhances the overall user experience by providing substantially improved throughput and range. As a result, products using Broadcom's newest Intensi-fi solution will better address the growing consumer demand to share and distribute HD video content between multiple screens throughout the home, thereby improving the utility of every display device."

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ST moves to 32nm for networking chips

By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk

Industry’s first Serializer-Deserializer (SerDes) IP in 32nm demon to customers 

STMicroelectronics has launched a 32nm technology platform for the design and development of leading-edge application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for networking applications. Central to the new 32nm SoC design platform, which implements ST’s 32LPH (Low-Power High-performance) process technology, is the industry’s first Serializer-Deserializer (SerDes) IP available in 32nm ‘bulk’ silicon.
Enabling very large ASIC designs, greater than 200mm², ST’s new 32nm 32LPH ASIC design platform enables an unprecedented mix of high performance, high complexity, low power consumption and reduced silicon real estate per functional block. The platform is designed to accelerate the development of next-generation networking ASICs used in high-performance applications such as enterprise switches, routers and servers as well as optical cross-connect and wireless infrastructure applications.
“With the introduction of the 32LPH platform, ST is enabling the next generation of equipment for communication infrastructure applications, which requires highly integrated ASICs that can satisfy the increasing demand in performance, while also meeting extremely challenging power consumption and silicon integration goals,” said Riccardo Ferrari, Group Vice President and General Manager of ST’s Networking and Storage Division. “We are extremely encouraged by the strong interest that customers are demonstrating for this platform, which has already gained key design wins.”

ST’s SerDes IP, called S12, is a key piece of intellectual property that has already been successfully demonstrated in labs at selected key customers. The S12 IP is vital for the development of ASICs for networking applications and enables chip-to-chip, chip-to-module and backplane communications in networking equipment designs.
“ST is the first silicon supplier to bring a full design platform in a 32nm bulk-silicon process technology to the communication infrastructure market, including a next-generation predictive ASIC top-down design methodology, together with a full set of proven IP, such as a SerDes and embedded DRAM, successfully developed over many years by ST in previous technology nodes,” said Philippe Magarshack, Technology R&D Group Vice-President, Central CAD & Design Solutions GM, STMicroelectronics. “ST’s Technology R&D center in Crolles, France, has been instrumental in accelerating the completion of the 32LPH platform where low-power technology meets the high-performance requirements of networking applications, while still enjoying all the cost benefits of high-volume manufacturing. In addition, we have partnered with selected EDA vendors to offer networking customers the benefits of a predictable ASIC turnaround time, including fast virtual physical prototyping, and 32nm-class timing, signal and power integrity sign-off.”
The first ASIC prototypes implemented in ST’s 32LPH process technology are expected early in 2011 with production ramp-up in the second half of 2011.
Further Technical Information
ST’s 32LPH (Low-Power High-performance) design platform for networking applications supports up to 10 metallization layers to increase routing efficiency. The platform is based on the 32nm High-K Metal Gate process developed within the framework of the ISDA alliance, but also incorporates specific IP and devices from ST, such as embedded DRAM with 10-Mbit per square millimeter density and Ternary Content Address Memory (TCAM).
A SerDes (Serializer-Deserializer) is normally integrated multiple times (often up to 200) in a single ASIC chip. It enables serial communication between:

• ICs, or ASICs, on the same electronic printed-circuit board (Chip-to-Chip);
• ASICs and the Optical Module, which links to remote equipment (Chip-To-Module);
• ASICs and Physical Interface Module (Chip-To-Module); or
• ASICs and the system backplane - the backplane is the internal physical rack inside equipment in which all the system cards are mounted.

ST’s S12 IP macro, which is based on ST’s proven SerDes architecture, can be scaled up to eight 12.5-Gbit/s transmit/receive (Tx/Rx) channels per macro. The S12 has been designed with an optimal footprint for flip-chip BGA packages, and will soon be followed by ST’s S14 IP, which can reach up to 14-Gbit/s transmission speed.

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Foundry business picks up

Revenue to Grow Nearly 40 Percent This Year
After a year that was decidedly skewed by macroeconomic forces impacting the entire electronics value chain, pure-play foundry suppliers will see revenues in 2010 jump by 39.5 percent, according to iSuppli.
Total pure-play foundry revenue in 2010 will reach $24.8 billion, up from $17.8 billion in 2009. This year’s projected revenue also is up 24.6 percent from 2008 levels of $19.9 billion. By 2013, iSuppli forecasts foundry revenue will reach $35.9 billion with a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 12.5 percent.
“Lured by innovative new features and a renewed economy, worldwide consumers again are purchasing electronic products,” said Len Jelinek, director and chief analyst for semiconductor manufacturing at iSuppli. “Unless conditions deteriorate once more, previously pent-up need for new consumer products will fuel foundry demand, iSuppli believes.”
Leading foundry manufacturers are ready to meet this demand from the consumer and wireless markets, having developed process technology capable of supporting such growth. As a result, revenue expansion in the foundry business will outperform that of the semiconductor industry in 2010. Growth won’t be limited to the leading foundry vendors but will also extend to specialty foundries, which stand to reap benefits as their niche products that are associated with new designs position them for impressive growth.

Gains for Global GlobalFoundries in 2009 purchased Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, a move that will create a new No. 2 player in the pure-play foundry market by the end of 2010, iSuppli believes.
With the merger complete, GlobalFoundries will focus on providing technology to the market. Because of its association with Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), technology from GlobalFoundries can be found at some of the most advanced manufacturing nodes available in the foundry space. And as the company brings its technology to the clients of Chartered and the rest of the global fabless market, iSuppli predicts a significant gain in market share for GlobalFoundries in 2010.

New deals coming The acquisition of Chartered by GlobalFoundries marks just the beginning of the buying season among foundries. iSuppli sees a number of new deals occurring in 2010, some of which already have been announced—including the agreement between United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) and He Jian Technology. iSuppli also sees several Tier 2 foundries examining the need to expand capacity: with many Integrated Device Manufacturers (IDMs) looking to offload manufacturing facilities in order to cut costs, many buyers could end up waiting for product.

Such developments are sure to result in a dramatic reshaping of the foundry industry in 2010 and beyond.

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STMicro and Infineon launch breakthrough power package

Maximizes efficiency advantages of MOSFETs and is standardised with Infineon

It's not often you can get excited about power packaging, but the latest development by STMicroelectronics has increased the power density achievable, and so reduced the size of equipment, with a key new surface mount package for its latest generation MDmesh V power MOSFET technology.
The new 1mm-high surface-mount package houses the industry-standard TO-220 die size within a leadless outline measuring only 8x8mm and features an exposed metal drain pad for efficient removal of internally generated heat. Its low profile will enable designers to achieve slimmer power supply enclosures enabling compact and stylish new products for today’s markets.
This new standard is available from two companies: STMicroelectronics and Infineon Technologies will introduce MOSFETs using this innovative package, which is named PowerFLAT 8x8 HV by ST and ThinPAK 8x8 by Infineon, providing customers with a high-quality alternative source.
The new package’s compact form factor and high thermal performance, combined with the unequalled low RDS(ON) per die area of ST’s MDmesh V technology, maximize power density and reliability to save PCB space.
“Our fruitful co-operation with Infineon has produced a high-performance package allowing customers to benefit from cutting-edge design in a footprint supported by two major global power-semiconductor suppliers,” said Maurizio Giudice, Marketing Director, Power Transistor Division, STMicroelectronics. “Our new MOSFETs combining this package breakthrough with our unique MDmesh V process technology, which is the most advanced in the industry, will deliver the highest power density and efficiency among devices of comparable voltage rating.”

Major features of STL21N65M5:

• RDS(ON): 0.190 Ohms
• Maximum rated current (ID): 17A
• Junction-to-case thermal resistance (Rthj-c): 1.0 degrees C/W

Samples of the STL21N65M5 in the PowerFLAT 8x8 HV package are available now with full production scheduled for July 2010. Pricing is $8 in quantities of 10 pieces; further pricing options are available for larger quantities.

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SuperSpeed USB3.0 needs integration, says In-Stat

Will take 30% of the market by 2014

The debut of SuperSpeed USB devices in 2009 provided the seeds of dramatic change in the USB market,
reports In-Stat but needs more integration into the core chipset to make it really take off.
SuperSpeed USB, which offers a ten-fold bandwidth improvement over high-speed USB, will grow to just under 30 percent of the USB interface technology market by 2014, according to In-Stat forecasts. The success of SuperSpeed USB will be limited initially, however.
“It will take time for SuperSpeed USB to be integrated into the core  logic PC chipset,” says Brian O’Rourke, In-Stat analyst. “USB achieved its immense success primarily due to core logic integration, which
effectively allowed PC OEMs to offer it for free.  Integration is essential before a new USB standard becomes prominent in PCs.” This could be an issue as by far the biggest supplier, Intel, has yet to support the standard in its core chipsets.
Recent research by In-Stat found:

•   More than 3 billion USB-enabled devices shipped in 2009; over 4 billion will ship in 2012.
•   Nearly 160 million digital TVs will ship with USB in 2014.
•   SuperSpeed USB core logic chipsets will begin shipping in late  2011. Shipments of devices with USB SuperSpeed will rise more than four-fold from 2011 to 2012.
•   The USB Discrete Host Controller Average Selling Price will see a -21.6% Compound Annual Growth Rate from 2009 to 2013

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NetLogic Microsystems and TSMC Collaborate on 28nm Process Technology

Includes analogue capability for high speed interfaces 

Network processor developer NetLogic Microsystems  is working with leading foundry TSMC to extend their existing collaboration to include TSMC’s NEXSYS 28HP (28nm high performance) semiconductor process node. This will be used for NetLogic’s next-generation knowledge-based processors, multi-core processors and 10/40/100Gigabit PHY.
As an early development partner, NetLogic is using TSMC’s 28nm node to raise networking infrastructure performance and significantly differentiating its product line from the competition.In June 2009 Netlogic bought RMI (Raza Microsystems) to add a range of high performance multicore network processors to its range. 
NetLogic has launched advanced product development for multiple industry-leading product lines on the TSMC 28nm node. The 28HP process offers significant speed, and power efficiency advantages over previous process nodes. In addition, NetLogic Microsystems is developing a suite of custom high-performance circuits optimized around TSMC’s 28nm node, including high-speed serial interface technology, analogue and clocking circuitry, core processing elements and other standard cells, as well as refining the design and tape-out flow for this advanced node.
“By being a consistent early adopter across four generations of process technology, NetLogic Microsystems has consistently provided very high performance and low power products for mission-critical network infrastructure systems,” said Rick Cassidy, president of TSMC North America. “We welcome the extension of our close relationship to include NetLogic Microsystems’ role as an 28nm early technology adopter.”
“We are proud to have been one of the early partners for TSMC in 80nm, 55nm, 40nm and now 28nm for our best-in-class knowledge-based processors, multi-core processors and 10/40/100 Gigabit PHY product families,” said Ron Jankov, president and CEO at NetLogic Microsystems. “By combining the superior design and architecture of our products with TSMC’s proven leadership and track record in advanced manufacturing technologies, we are able to deliver highly innovative products with unprecedented performance, scalability and energy efficiency to our customers.”
NetLogic Microsystems offers high-performance multi-core, multi-threaded processors, knowledge-based processors, content processors, and high-speed 10/40/100 Gigabit Ethernet PHY solutions. These market-leading products are designed into high-performance systems such as switches, routers, wireless base stations, security appliances, networked storage appliances and service gateways to significantly enhance the performance and functionality of next-generation 3G/4G mobile wireless infrastructure, data center, enterprise, metro Ethernet, edge and core infrastructure networks.

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