December 2009 Archives

On November 15th 1971 the world's first commercially available microprocessor, Intel's 4bit 4004, was advertised in Electronics News as a 'micro-programmable computer on a chip'.

A 19.7% rise in September semiconductor shipments means that 2009 will see only a 10 per cent decline overall, Q409 sales will see a 6.4% rise, and next year will see a minimum of 22% growth, according to Europe's leading semiconductor analysts Future Horizons.

Many years ago a British computer company decided it needed controlled access to a proprietary source of chips. In 1966, it set up a facility in Scotland to make RTL and DTL ICs. Later it moved into MOS and made an 8-bit computer using MOS technology.

The New Year is upon us, so what is the semiconductor industry hoping will happen in 2010? Here's a top ten wish-list:

Although Intel and AMD have 32nm processors which deliver 50% more integration than 45nm processes, the power requirement stays the same across the two generations.

The microprocessor is perhaps the most important development the electronics industry has seen for at least the last decade. It was introduced to meet the need for a universal large-scale integrated circuit brought about by the fairly high cost and narrow application of most LSI circuits.

So starts a story in Electronics Weekly's edition on Novemberb1975 in a section called 'Understanding Microprocessors' written four years after Intel introduced the first commercial microprocessor, the 4004.

Ed the Serial CEO  has had a pretty awful Christmas as his rellies quiz him on what he will do with the money he will make when his company IPOs, as planned, in 2010.

"When I joined Intel it only had a hundred people", recalls Federico Faggin, who designed the 4004, 8008 and 8080 and, after founding Zilog, the Z80, "Intel wasn't making any money. It was struggling to become a viable company. The semiconductor memory business which Intel pioneered wasn't coming on as fast as expected. Times were not good and that opened the door to Busicom."

In technology, everything takes longer than you expect. Next year will be:

There was once a chip company which invented a brand new product type and waxed fat on the proceeds.

Here they are: The Ten Worst Techie Christmas Presents:

Energy harvesting, micro-fuel-cells and electronic stability in cars are under development at the world's MEMS makers.

'Once every few years, when a new technology emerges, a section of our industry is placed in a state of transition, and the survival of companies in the affected segment may depend on how quickly they can learn about, and adopt, the new technology.'

So wrote Jim Knott, a director of distributors Rapid Recall, in the December 3^rd 1975 edition of Electronics Weekly.

Ed the Serial CEO has run into a spot of bother. After Ed sacked the CTO, the analogue IC design team resigned in protest, and Ed has to replace them, or see the company's new product programme compromised twelve months before the company's expected IPO.

For only the third time ever, the sales of electronic systems declined in 2009, according to US analysts IC Insights. The only two previous years of  declining sales were in 2001 and 2002.

Frans van Houten, who led the spin-out of NXP from Philips and negotiated the sale of 80% of NXP to private equity company Kohlberg Kravis and Roberts, has been appointed by Dutch financial services group ING to lead a project aimed at separating the insurance and banking activities of ING.

Inventing the IC in 1959 wasn't such a big deal, at the time, for Fairchild, though it became a big deal later on when Fairchild and Texas Instruments wrangled over which company deserved the patent on the device.

Intel reacted to Wednesday's FTC anti-tust lawsuit in much the same was as it reacted to the EU's anti-trust lawsuit - going for an all-out assault on the plaintiff.

There was once a chip company which got started with the not insignificant capital sum of $1.6 billion.

When Intel paid AMD $1.25 billion to buy off the civil anti-trust case which AMD had brought against Intel, it was thought that, with AMD as chief complainant now out of the way, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) might drop its criminal investigation into Intel's alleged anti-competitive behaviour.

At long last Moore's Law is beginning to apply to laptops. Last week it was the $80 Menq. This week, under the beguiling strap-line: 'Small, Slow, Sufficient', it's the $99 CherryPal.

Compiled by our sister paper, Computer Weekly, here are the top ten smartphones for business:

Intel has introduced a ready-to-assemble, programmed, microcomputer system kit. The new kit provides a complete system based on Intel's new 8080A CPU group and programmable LSI input-output blocks, which allow the system to control and communicate with numerous classes of peripheral equipment.

So starts a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of December 3^rd 1975.

(N.B. This microcomputer of Intel's pre-dates the Apple II - launched in 1977 - and the IBM PC - launched in 1981).

'Oh dear', writes Ed in the diary entry immediately after his sacking of the CTO, 'today the analogue design team resigned.' 

Gordon Moore, who made the semiconductor industry's most famous prediction in Moore's Law, was singularly delinquent in other predictions.

The Koreans aren't called 'The Italians of Asia' for nothing. If anyone was going to get over-excited by shortages in semiconductor supply, it was likely to be the Koreans. Right on cue, Hynix said yesterday it would increase capex 130% next year - a rise from $1 billion to $2.3 billion.

Once upon a time, a Merseyside glass manufacturer decided to go in for microelectronics. The company invented a fine-grained FPGA technology and had some success in licensing it.

Texas Instruments acknowledged earlier this week that it is having supply problems. TI, remember, is the company which lost more employees this year than any company in the industry cutting 3,200 jobs at the beginning of the year.

A paper from SEMI, the trade body for the semiconductor equipment industry, asks: Are we doing enough to meet future demand?

The most insane semiconductor business sector is, of course, the DRAM sector. DRAM capex in relation to DRAM revenues has always been crazy, but the ten years in which the relationship between capex and revenue was at its most unbalanced were the last ten years:

It's a pity that the first announcement from ST-Ericsson under its new CEO Gilles Delfassy is an announcement of job cuts.

Siemens says it has not talked to GEC about buying GEC-Plessey Semiconductors (GPS) and is not interested in taking it over. However there is interest from Korea.

So starts a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of  July 30^th 1997

Ed is under pressure. The venture capitalist backers of his company, who put him in the CEO's chair, are demanding cuts in the R&D budget. The VCs are after maximising profitability before the IPO in about a year's time. However, the company's founders, who are on the board, are strongly against this.

Allocation, lengthening lead-time and rising prices - the harbingers of a significantly more profitable, higher value and faster growing IC industry - are all happening, according to mid-November Arrow projections for semiconductor supply.

Bob Widlar, the greatest-ever analogue IC designer, joined Fairchild in 1963. In his magnificent 'History of Semiconductor Engineering', Bo Lojek tells the story of how Widlar's first chip design was revealed to Fairchild management.

The thing about the financial community is that they all think alike. What did Jerome Ramel, head of the semiconductor analyst team at the French bank BNP Paribas, tell the recent European Nanoelectronics Forum 2009 in Amsterdam?

The strangest semiconductor company ever to emerge in the industry took the view that the future of the industry lay in making semiconductors in the form of round silicon balls.

 In the late 1990s, a group out of TI started a company which raised $52 million to make chips on balls instead of flat die.

Will Strauss, the leading American telecoms analyst, reckons MediaTek is climbing the wireless chip-set food chain on the way to becoming the third largest supplier of ICs to the wireless hand-set market.

Although semiconductor inventories are falling, sales are going up. This is the anomalous position the semiconductor industry finds itself in as demand soars but capacity is full. 

What's going on over in the West Country? First we have Nigel Toon, one of Icera's co-founders, leaving Icera.

What next from Sinclair? To follow the recently launched 'Black Watch' , Sinclair has another remarkable product up its sleeve. Planned to appear in the second half of 1976 is the Sinclair two-inch television.

So starts a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of November 19^th 1975.