Now Hear This!

What was the last major acquisition Samsung made? Scratching my head and Zibb searching EDN.com, I move to Google and am still not finding anything big that’s recent.

Rumor had it last year that Samsung was looking at buying Micron. Now rumor has it, the South Korean electronics giant wants to buy SanDisk. (See “Possible Samsung acquisition of SanDisk viewed as positive.”)

The reports come after the Milpitas, Calif-based memory maker suffered the type of June quarter companies like to forget. Oversupply forced flash prices down even further in Q2 and saw SanDisk report a loss, a slide in revenues, and production ramp and investment delays at two of its fabs.

SanDisk’s stock, SNDK, has also been hit. SNDK slid pretty steadil...Read More

Welcome to This week in gEEk, EDN's short review of the week's happenings.

Ever hear the phrase, “keep your words soft and sweet just in case you have to eat them"? It’s one MEMC is very familiar with. The company cautiously maintained its Q3 outlook this week, despite analysts cheering it on. You can’t blame CEO Nabeel Gareeb for warning of “the potential for unanticipated events.” So far this year MEMC saw polysilicon production disruptions at its Pasadena, Texas, plant when an accidental chemical leak occurred in August and when a tropical storm hit in April. MEMC also cited softness in demand from semiconductor applications customers.

That softness may indeed be true, but overall capacity utilization remains high at 89%, as ...Read More

It’s Q3 -- the tail end of the quarter, in fact -- and AMD has yet to make a firm statement on its manufacturing plans. While Hector Ruiz said he would be “the most disappointed man on Earth” if AMD hadn’t shared plans for its manufacturing strategy by the end of the year, many industry watchers and participants are expecting news on the chip maker’s plans by the end of this quarter and their wariness of the company is growing as each silent week passes.

Perhaps the headline on this blog post could have been: “AMD, speak now and be split into pieces.” More and more analysts are predicting the breakup of AMD into two entities, one design and one manufacturing, with the most recent including some sound processing benefits in his report (see, “...Read More

While many of us were slipping out last Friday to gain an early start on out three-day Labor Day weekends here in the United States, Illinois-based Motorola filed a form with the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) detailing a possible and generous compensation package for co-CEO Greg Brown if the company’s mobile devices business is taken public with a market capitalization above $2 billion.

Brown, who heads Moto’s broadband mobility solutions business and already is slated to rake in some $10 million in 2008 base salary/annual bonus/special bonus/long-term incentive plan pay, would be able to purchase shares of Motorola common stock of a value of...Read More

Welcome to This week in gEEk, EDN's short review of the week's happenings.

The industry heated up this week as we in the United States prepared to say goodbye to summer and usher in the Labor Day holiday weekend. Hot Chips, Hot Interconnects, and hotheads at Nvision made this last week in August a memorable one.

Outsourcing was one of the topics that steamed attendees at Hot Chips this week. As EDN’s Ron Wilson reported, as outsourcing matures, US job loses aren’t the only problems that have emerged. As Ron wrote in his blog, there are other problems emerging as well, that impact not just designers but the outcome of designs, and quite possib...Read More

Bloomberg newswire on Wednesday ran an obituary for Steve Jobs, prompting one EDN reader to leave a very loud voicemail demanding to know why we didn’t cover the death of “one of the greatest minds” in technology. Uh, well, because he’s not dead.

Doing some online tests, Bloomberg mistakenly ran the obit, which traces Jobs’ life in a somewhat accurate, but rather dry fashion, exhibiting the reporters’ ignorance of tech history.

The 17-page long obit, which gossip blog Gawker picked up before Bloomberg tore it down, was published along with reporters notes on who to call for comment, like Apple co-fou...Read More

Attendees to Nvidia’s Nvision event this week were greeted by some unexpected guests. Union activists from a group called Unite Here have been using such tactics as flyering, light projections, and the distribution of potato chip bags with creative stickers that read “Find the flawed chip …” (see pictures below) to draw attendees’ attentions to Nvidia’s recent product failures.

Nvidia in July announced a massive charge on failing products in some notebook configurations with GPUs and MCPs manufactured with a “certain die/packaging material set.” In full marketing defense mode, the company has ...Read More

If you’re looking for an example of smart M&A activity, particularly in this stifling economic environment, focus in on the Monday announced Broadcom acquisition of AMD’s digital TV unit.

Some key points:

AMD is drowning in losses and layoffs and needs to shed its excess if it wants to reach profitability by the end of Q3, as promised in December, and if it wants to stay in the game. This near $193 million deal gives it a cash infusion by the end of the year, slims its overly extended R&D expenses by dropping a fickle consumer unit, and sees AMD reduce its overall headcount by 530 employees without having to pay severan...Read More

Welcome to This week in gEEk, EDN's short review of the week's happenings.

Another August, another Intel Developer Forum. A flurry with introductions and details on products this week -- like its Larrabee, Canmore,  Nehalem, and Atom families – Intel also talked up its SLC and MLC SSDs, discussed “turbo charging” its Cores, and predicted that technology will bring ...Read More

When Sanjay Jah left Qualcomm to join Motorola as Co-CEO and CEO of its mobile devices business earlier this month, you knew more executive changes were coming. No one enters at that level without shaking things up, either intentionally or unintentionally.

Rob Shaddock, Moto’s senior VP responsible for consumer mobile products, has left after being promoted to the position just four months ago. Shaddock was formerly CTO of Moto’s mobile division. He is being replaced by John Cipolla, who has worked at Motorola for 30 years and who was also promoted in April as part of a mobile unit management overhaul at the company.

The latest in a long string of execs who have marched out of the Schaumburg, Ill-based company’s office si...Read More

Two seemingly unrelated events are making headlines this week and inspired a rare spark of optimism for this reporter that perhaps, just perhaps, our political leaders might actually see what’s been right in front of them for decades.

As NATO struggles with an angry bear of Russia and mulls over the country’s weight as a major oil supplier to several of its participating nations, Bill Clinton kicked off the National Clean Energy Summit with a 10 point list of what he believes the United States government should do to help solve our energy crisis.

We’ve all heard it before, mostly in respect to the Middle East: When dangerous countries control ...Read More

The United States was joined by Japan and Taiwan this week in asking the WTO (World Trade Organization) to step in and help the countries settle a dispute with the European Union over duty-free treatment on certain electronics devices.

In doing so, United States Trade Representative (USTR) Susan C Schwab on Monday requested the WTO establish a dispute settlement panel and review whether the EU has failed to accord duty-free treatment to certain products covered by the WTO’s Information Technology Agreement (ITA).  The 1996 agreement eliminates tariffs on electronic information products among the largest makers and consumers of those goods.

Schwab’s challenge involves three products introduced after 1996, namely cable boxes that can access the Internet, flat-panel computer monito...Read More

Welcome to This week in gEEk, EDN's short review of the week's happenings.

Unemployment lines got a little longer this week when both MIPS and Rambus announced layoffs. On MIPS’ side, the 75-plus job cuts will mostly impact analog positions and came as the company execs announced MIPS’ Chipidea merger isn’t going as smoothly as they had hoped, specifically on the sales end. Meanwhile, Rambus will cut 90 engineering and non-engineering jobs as it looks to recover from a $144.7 million Q2 loss. That whopper compares to a loss of $12.6 million in Q1 and a net loss of $2.7 million in Q2...Read More

Hewlett Packard Monday announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Colubris Networks, a privately-held provider of wireless networks for enterprises and service providers.

PCs have been lauded by both the SIA and Gartner in the last week as a key driver of semiconductor sales growth and as a surviving buffer against the economy’s lower consumer spending. But that, of course, won’t hold out forever and Gartner has suggested that the semiconductor industry needs to turn more to IT departments as drivers for business growth.

The move to bring more wireless capabilities and hardware into HP’s house signals a stronger push for the top PC OEM into office wireless, a growing market, and a move that will presumably make that market (as well as HP) less dependant on Wi-Fi chipmakers as HP merges the Massachusetts-based company’s ...Read More

Welcome to This week in gEEk, EDN's short review of the week's happenings.

There was more drama from the manufacturing world this week. IBM confirmed the end of its 20% premium pay  for some manufacturing workers at its Essex Junction, Vt, and East Fishkill manufacturing facilities, and this just after confirming a 180 employee lay off from the Vermont location in June. Honeywell also announced it will slash half of its workforce at imaging and mobility manufacturing facility in Skaneateles Falls, NY.

On a more positive manufacturing no...Read More