Actel set the FGPA market ablaze with its new SmartFusion device, which combines programmable analog with a complete microcontroller subsystem and an integrated programming environment, including tools. This is an interesting move, and it will be equally interesting to see how long it takes Actel’s top rivals to respond. Actel insiders, most of whom came from Xilinx and Altera, say the catch up period may be quite lengthy. They may have a bone to pick, but the low-power angle is definitely interesting. This also should grab some attention from the companies that have been developing multichip solutions because they don’t want to deal with integrating analog and digital.

Mentor Graphics announced its fiscal Q4 financials for the full year ending Jan. 31. Revenue was $802.7 million, up 2% from fiscal 2009. Non-GAAP earnings per share more than doubled to $0.47 per share, while the GAAP loss was $0.23 per share. That’s a lot better than a loss of $0.99 per share. For the fiscal Q4 Mentor revenues of $237.1 million, non-GAAP earnings per share of $.30, and GAAP earnings per share of $.39. As Mentor chairman and CEO Wally Rhines pointed out, “the electronics industry recovery seems to be well underway.” Break out the champagne—but don’t spend more than $8 a bottle or the corporate accounting department won’t approve it.

Synopsys bolstered the capabilities of its System Studio C/C++ analysis and simulation environment. The product now includes support for matrix and vector data types, which the company says significantly reduces coding and debugging efforts.

The Taiwanese earthquake earlier this week registered 6.4 and cost about 1.5 days in wafer movement from TSMC’s fabs in Tainan. This was a big earthquake, but the impact was slightly less near the Tainan fabs.

You have to wonder about Wall Street. Marvell beats estimates by $500,000 and the stock tumbles. According to analysts, the company didn’t beat estimates by enough. Isn’t the whole point to meet estimates?

Intel added the Atom processor to the networked small office/home office storage market. What’s interesting about this announcement isn’t Intel’s push into this market. It’s that there is now a dual-core version of Atom available. This should make for a nifty ultra-low power solution.

Tags: Actel, Altera, Intel, Mentor Graphics, Synopsys, TSMC, Xilinx

This entry was posted on Friday, March 5th, 2010 at 12:01 am and is filed under News Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.