DigiTimes recently named two companies as International News Makers in 2005. One of those companies was Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

Actel tends to play in the mainstream, value-based end of the FPGA market. That strategy offers a unique value proposition based on Actel's commitment to the use of flash memory. With an Actel FPGA, it's flash that holds...

When wireless LAN (802.11) first began to see significant market take-up, any number of IC companies tried to compete, only to discover that it was tough going. Many of the original contenders in wireless LAN dropped out,...

Semiconductor design-service companies face any number of challenges as chip complexity rises in direct proportion to time-to-market pressure. Couple that with the industry’s move to deep submicron, and it soon becomes...

To the outside observer, improvements in PC architecture are evolutionary but logical. Processors advance inevitably in speed and performance, in happy accordance with Moore's Law. For Nebojsa Novakovic, a consultant in...

Embedded processors are now central to the converged environment that many in the IT and electronics industries are calling the digital home. Noam Shendar, director of Strategic Marketing for MIPS Technologies, argues that...

The decision as to whether to go with a custom-ASIC solution or whether to take the programmable-logic route is one that increasingly confronts the chip-design and electronics industries. Historically, there has been a...

Despite the attractions of the fabless-plus-foundry model, any foundry hoping to compete in an industry dominated by the likes of UMC and TSMC will need to think carefully about its strategy. In the case of Silterra, whose...

Today, your digital camera and your mobile phone are probably operated and controlled with the help of a real-time operating system or RTOS. The chances are the RTOS could be from Wind River. As device software systems...

AMD’s drive to 64-bit processors surprised everyone with its speed, even as detractors commented that there would be little or no performance gain on the desktop without a 64-bit OS and 64-bit applications. Whatever...

Aixtron, headquartered in Aachen, Germany, is a supplier of deposition equipment for the semiconductor industry, traditionally specializing in gas-phase deposition. VLSI Research estimates that Aixtron was the world's largest...

It’s normal in the EDA industry, these days, to say that growth is flat. That doesn’t apply to Magma Design Automation, which started out in the late 1990s, under the leadership of Rajeev Madhavan, with the...

While industry experts have always pointed out that the Intel-backed universal serial bus (USB) is less versatile than its I/O rival, IEEE1394, USB 2.0 is now delivering up to 480Mbps, and clearly it’s with us to...

Tower Semiconductor may be one of the smaller foundries, but it is now placing a fresh emphasis on flexibility in meeting the specialized needs of its customers. Over the past year, the company has re-organized to emphasize...

The downturn of late 2000 to 2002, coupled with high levels of capital investment, placed many PCB companies in a bind. Those that have survived have been the companies best able to move with the times and adopt a slew...

A recurring question in semiconductor company boardrooms is, “Are we keeping up with Moore’s Law?” At technical seminars, the question becomes, “Can Moore’s Law continue?” Whichever of...

Despite initial skepticism from some quarters, Bluetooth has established a growing market presence and continues to assert its viability. One interesting development is the proposed adoption, by the Bluetooth SIG, of Ultra...

The configurable IP core is a relatively new phenomenon, but ARC International has been in the business for some seven years now. ARC’s customer base is now at over 100 companies, and for Derek Meyer, SVP of Sales...

Lattice Semiconductor International is up against such well known names in field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) as Xilinx, Altera and Actel, but the company launched several new products in 2004 that define it as not...

As a “classical” IDM, with some 50,000 employees, STMicroelectronics is strongly positioned to be a major supplier of electronics for consumer multimedia and the digital home. That’s not to say that “ST”...

While market research indicates that rear-projection TVs are currently seeing a wave of renewed market enthusiasm, particularly in North America, models were not noticeably in evidence at Computex Taipei, in June. One interesting...

The world of embedded computing now sees a myriad devices coming into the market, often complex in their "converged" electronic design. Among the responses from the chip design industry has been the configurable...

During his recent visit to Taiwan, Philips Semiconductors CEO Frans van Houten stated that Philips’ foundry production is currently running at full capacity and the company will increase its outsourcing to fabs in...

The leading Taiwan-based LCD driver IC testing and packaging house, ChipMOS Technologies, is confident that the market’s bullish outlook will persist through the end of the year, with average selling prices (ASPs)...

The keenest competition in the global television market is the race for the next generation of flat-panel technology, and leading the charge is the UK-based Cambridge Display Technology (CDT), a pioneer of polymer-OLED...