The Week In Review: April 24
It was a good week for team approaches and an overall brighter outlook for the industry.
Synopsys teamed up with ARM to boost efficiency for ARM’s AMBA 3 interconnect, configuring the interconnect to eliminate unnecessary logic. That ripples down into better performance, lower power and less routing on an SoC. So now what do you do with all that space you’ve just opened up? See below.
Speaking of team approaches, TSMC and Cadence teamed up to provide a 65nm mixed signal/RF reference design kit focusing on behavioral models and a reference flow. Included in the release is a phase-locked loop noise-sensitive reference design. This is the most recent in what is expected to be a flood of tools aimed at the analog and mixed signal market, something that will become critical in SoCs that incorporate more and more functions to soak up all that extra space each process node provides. While the digital engineers will likely use whatever comes their way, the analog engineers are a lot pickier about these things. A big plus is that the reference design kit will help with mixed signal verification, which is where the real time savings are needed.
The auto industry may be down, but that doesn’t mean you don’t make tools to improve its efficiency. Mentor Graphics rolled out an integrated design environment for the Automotive Open System Architecture (AUTOSAR) system that uses standard interfaces and components dictated by AUTOSAR. Anything that helps Detroit regain its footing is good for the entire industry, given the number of electronics components that are finding their way into cars these days.
ARM unveiled physical IP for TSMC’s 40nm G process, balancing performance with lower power. The target markets are consumer devices like set-top boxes, disk drives, mobile computing devices, HDTV and graphics processors. Included is a power management kit and ECO kit library extensions for addressing current leakage by replacing or complementing the HVt, RVt or LVt implant layers with long channel-length devices.
Handset sales are stabilizing. TriQuint Semiconductor posted 7% gains in total revenues in the first quarter of 2009 compared to the same period in 2008, including a 24% growth in handsets. Given the fact that no one likes to be locked into a contract for more than two years, and the ongoing recession has been under way for 16 months, it’s getting to be that time for many people.
Computer sales revived in the past quarter. Intel posted Q1 revenue of $7.1 billion, along with a statement from CEO Paul Otellini that the industry is “returning to normal seasonal patterns.” There’s only so long you can keep an old laptop computer or server blade going before it starts costing you big bucks in productivity loss. The big question is whether the replacement is a new computer or a netbook or smart phone—or whether it’s some combination of those.
AMD reported revenue of $1.8 billion during Q1, which was flat compared to the fourth quarter of 2008. While it was down 21 percent from Q1 of 2008, it’s not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison because AMD no longer has an in-house fab. Still, it was better than anyone expected, even with an operating loss of $308 million.
And finally, the whole market continued its drive upward. Both the Dow and the Nasdaq have been posting gains for weeks. While it’s too early to tell if this upward trend will stick, the market usually runs 6 to 12 months ahead of the overall economy, depending upon who you listen to. At the very least, it’s a signal for the foundries to begin starting up their machinery again and for companies to begin developing products for next holiday season.
–Ed Sperling
Tags: AMD, analog, ARM, Cadence, Intel, Mentor Graphics, Mixed Signal, Synopsys, TriQuint, TSMC