Electronic Business articles from April 2004

Electronic Business archives from April 2004

We don't need no stinkin' cooperation; we do, however, hope you'll tell your side of the story.(Editor's Note)(Editorial)
April 1, 2004... It wasn't too long after ELECTRONIC BUSINESS published its 2003 listing of the top contract manufacturers that the e-mails started rolling in. The general tenor of the messages was, "How could you rank CMs without listing Foxconn?" But there...

What were you thinking?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2004... I just read Jerry Mahoney's extensive article on Infineon ("Infineon Redux," March 2004, page 58). How could you possibly have written such a thorough article without even touching on the risks to Infineon as a result of the ongoing litigation...

The Death of ESL.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2004... Geoffrey James' article ("The Death of ESL?" February 2004, page 34) is an invitation to dissent. It is an article about large-scale IC design, not systems-level design. The article's hardware-centric view does not reflect the state of...

Clarification.(Letters)(Correction Notice)
April 1, 2004... Due to an editing error, Pascal Levensohn's Venture Pulse column in the March 2004 issue incorrectly described an example of excessive influence by strategic investors by implying that customers had been given seats on a startup's board. The...

Intel spills the beans; the Xeon wins 64-bit extensions but may lose the war.(Chip Advisor)(Xeon server processors)
April 1, 2004... In February Intel surprised many of us by announcing its official support for 64-bit extensions in forthcoming Xeon server processors. In fact, Intel adopted AMD's 64-bit extensions almost verbatim, with a few additions specific to Intel's...

Scalability like never before.(Analog Devices Inc.'s Blackfin[R] Processor )(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... World-Leading Performance: 750 MHz, 3 GMACS, Unmatched Power Efficiency, and 5 Dimensions of Scalability The Blackfin[R] Processor is a high performance, cost-effective embedded processing solution that scales in five critical areas--speed,...

Sizing up the LCD shortage.(Display Technology)(Liquid crystal displays)
April 1, 2004... The future of LCDs looks bright. LCD manufacturers such as Samsung, L.G. Philips and Sharp are pouring some $10 billion this year into expanding capacity, much of it devoted to new fabs that can build the larger LCDs required by TVs. But...

Memec eyes public spotlight: specialist mulls the industry's first distribution IPO in 10 years.(Profile)(Initial Public Offer(ing) (new stocks) )(Company Profile)
April 1, 2004... Talk about a long dry spell. The electronics distribution industry has not seen an IPO since 1993. But Memec, a $1.6 billion specialty house, may break that streak sometime this year. It's small wonder that no distributor has gone public in...

Currency crisis: yuan or yawn? The cost of doing business in China would rise with any revaluation.(Finance)
April 1, 2004... China's government is under growing international pressure to revalue its currency, called the remnimbi or yuan, and there have been several hints that it will. In fact, by the time you read this, it may have already raised the value of the...

Does it matter who wins the election? Sure it does it always has.(Economic Outlook)(effcet of elections on the economy and jobs opportunities)
April 1, 2004... If you've ever wondered whether elections really do affect the electronics industry, the answer is yes--but never as much as our worst fears or highest hopes might lead us to imagine. That is partly because the market is largely self-regulated....

It takes two to tango; large or small, a tech company needs a tandem at the top.(Management)(of Catalytic Inc.)
April 1, 2004... Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. What a pair. He had sophistication; she had sex appeal. How about Abbott and Costello? On stage and off, straight man Bud was a steadying force to manic comic Lou. Then there's Randy and Andy. Randy has technical...

Some stability, some volatility.(Business Barometer)(Illustration)
April 1, 2004... This month's polling of purchasing managers shows that most companies believe business has stabilized. Roughly a third state that overall business conditions will improve and most say that business conditions will remain the same. Order volumes...

Structured ASICs gaining momentum: combining the performance of an ASIC and the programmability of an FPGA.(Semiconductors)
April 1, 2004... Until recently, only a few companies claimed to offer structured ASIC products, chips that provide the performance, efficient power use and low unit price of ASICs along with the programmability, low nonrecurring expense (NRE), and faster...

Market anomaly: will a dominant EDA vendor ever emerge?(Electronic Design Automation)
April 1, 2004... Historically, most software applications have tended to create a dominant vendor that owns most of the market share. Microsoft is the most prominent example, but SAP's domination of ERP, Siebel's domination of CRM and Intuit's domination of...

Distributors profit in China; margins are tight, but so are cost controls.(Supply Chain Management)
April 1, 2004... Even though China continues to be a challenge for distributors, several of them have developed profitable business models in that market The trick, executives from these companies say, is keeping internal costs low while providing the services...

One step at a time.(Supply Chain Management)(and Outsourcing)
April 1, 2004... WHEN MOTOROLA publicly unveiled its price masking policy late last year, many in the industry viewed it as a defining moment in the ongoing struggle for control of the electronics supply chain. "Motorola's move is an inflection point," says...

In search of synergy: will the merger of Credence and NPTest change the ATE landscape?(Capital Equipment)(Automated Test Equipment)
April 1, 2004... The world of automated test equipment (ATE) got a little smaller at the end of February, as Credence Systems and NPTest announced a long-suspected $660 million merger. But this pairing represents more than just the culmination of rumors and the...

Why is Hon Hai so shy? One stealthy Taiwanese company is quietly sprinting to the top of the EMS sector.(Profile)(Hon Hai Precision Industrial Company Ltd. tops Electronic Manufacturing Solutions sector )(Company Profile)
April 1, 2004... IF YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF Hon Hai Precision Industry, well, that's just fine with the company. Founder and Chairman Terry Gou doesn't do industry conference keynotes and rarely talks to the press. Hon Hai has a corporate Web site, but the latest...

Kester--changing to meet the future of electronics.(Advertisement)
April 1, 2004... For over a century, Kester, a Chicago solder company has been delivering superior products and technology to customers worldwide. Before the latest 90 nm wafer technology hit, before the electronics boom, before the industrial age, there was...

Demanding compensation: suppliers improve rewards for distributors' design work.(Editorial)
April 1, 2004... AFTER YEARS OF COMPLAINING that they are not being adequately compensated for design work, distributors are finally being heard. "Suppliers have absolutely recognized that their manufacturer's reps and distributors have to be compensated for...

Launching offshore: why--and how--early-stage startups are doing more R&D work in India.(Small Companies)(Sonim Technologies)
April 1, 2004... When Sonim Technologies was founded in 2000, the wireless technology company hired most of its engineers in Bangalore, India, and limited its San Mateo staff to managers and a few senior engineers. Three years later, when it had 40 engineers in...

Global industry, global approach: component suppliers must adjust to multinational customers.
April 1, 2004... The mass exodus of production to China and the consolidation of component purchasing to a group of global megabuyers has completely reshaped the global electronics supply chain over the past three years. Thus, it's no surprise that many...