Electronic Business articles from August 2003

Electronic Business archives from August 2003

Prescience versus optimism: while editors try to divine the future, business forges on. (Editor's Note).
August 1, 2003... Along time ago, in a century far, far away, I asked EB Contributing Editor Bill Roberts to profile Agile Systems, a developer of product lifecycle management software, for the magazine I was editing at the time (deja vu all over again: Adrian...

Environmental impact. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2003... Tam Harbert's May 15 editorial on the health threat posed by semiconductor chemicals is properly critical of the industry for the absence of ongoing rigorous study of all related matters. Let's hope your voice and that of responsive readers may...

Taking no stock in our opinion. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2003... I am disturbed by your implication that it's a foregone conclusion that stock options are dead ["Kissing Options Goodbye," June 15, 2003, page 22]. What makes you believe that most companies will change their compensation package at all? I...

The right call. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2003... Bill Roberts did a good job on his profile of Qualcomm ["Riding the Wireless Wave," July 1, 2003, page 54]. It's a tough company to write a story on, and his is one of the better stories I have seen on it. Louis Gerhardy Morgan...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
August 1, 2003... In the March 1 issue of Electronic Business ["Hedging Your Bets," page 58], we misspelled the name of J.D. Edwards' treasurer. The correct spelling of his name is Schoonbrood. We regret the error.

Letters to the editor.(Brief Article)
August 1, 2003... EB welcomes comments from readers. We reserve the right to edit all correspondence and to use it in all electronic and print editions. E-mail your thoughts to amello@reedbusiness.com. Reach us on the Web at feedback@eb.reedbusiness.com.

Blurring the lines: boundaries between processors are fading quickly. (Chip Advisor).
August 1, 2003... While the semiconductor market was shrinking, the number of different microprocessors on the market was growing. With more chips to choose from, it's easier to meet the exact performance, power and cost needs of a new application. It's also...

Selling the components of a patented invention: would you be wrong or right to sell just a piece of an invention? (On The Law).
August 1, 2003... Is a manufacturer legally liable for selling a component, such as software or an IC, that a customer combines with other components to take advantage of a patented invention? What if the customer purchased one of the other components from the...

Outsourcing complicates Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. (Management).
August 1, 2003... The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) may have extended the deadline for compliance with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act--the one that requires confirmation of management oversight of financial documents---but that doesn't mean...

National's restructuring appears to be working: cost-cutting measures save $20 million per quarter. (Finance).
August 1, 2003... Analysts and stockholders are encouraged by the progress National Semiconductor Corp., Santa Clara, CA, has made toward renewed financial health. "We believe that National's long-term future appears to be solid and that its recently...

China becomes top importer to United States: largest U.S. high-tech imports by country, in billions of $. (Trade).(Brief Article)
August 1, 2003... Lest anyone doubt that the Asian giant is awakening, China has for the first time displaced both Japan and Mexico as the top supplier of high-tech goods to the United States. Imports from China increased 32%, from $26 billion in 2000 to $35...

Reconfigurable chips make a comeback: rewire it again, Sam. (Technology).
August 1, 2003... Reconfigurable computing has had a long incubation. The idea of creating chips that can change their functions dynamically, or on the fly as they are operating, has been around for decades. Bur the laws of silicon haven't really cooperated,...

Too little too late? (Business Barometer).
August 1, 2003... This month's polling of purchasing managers shows some enthusiasm for the electronics industry for the next 30 days. With many electronics companies announcing acceptable earnings, thoughts that the worst may be behind us have businesses...

ASSP ASAP: maturing technologies drive growing ASSP sales. (Semiconductors).
August 1, 2003... Sales of application-specific standard product (ASSP) devices are projected to climb briskly over the next few years, according to a newly published research report, but at least some of that growth will be drawn from the application-specific...

Real design automation? SystemC may reduce or eliminate expensive postdesign tweaks. (Electronic Design Automation).
August 1, 2003... Electronic design automation has always been something of a misnomer. Although EDA helps engineers design complex chips, the process has never been all that automated. At least three generations of EDA tools have evolved since the 1970s, but...

Chip makers turn to electronic strategic sourcing to cut procurement costs: is that your best offer? (Supply Chain Management).
August 1, 2003... Alex Brown, vice president of corporate supply management at Sunnyvale, CA-based Advanced Micro Devices Inc., is looking to cut the best-possible deal on the materials his company uses to create semiconductors. Six months ago, he turned to an...

Independent resellers band together. (Distributors).
August 1, 2003... THEY'VE BEEN CALLED brokers; the gray market; a necessary evil; and much, much worse. But now you can call them IDEA. The formation of the Independent Distributors of Electronics Association (IDEA), Princeton Junction, NJ, is the...

300-mm fabs: who needs them? Analyst claims that small chip companies may be left out in the cold. (Capital Equipment).
August 1, 2003... In August 2001, the research firm IC Knowledge, Georgetown, MA, tallied more than forty 300-millimeter wafer fabs that were expected to be in production, under construction or announced by 2004. The number would balloon to nearly 70, the firm...

300 IBM's foundry challenge: big customer wins seem to validate IBM's foundry strategy, but how viable is this approach over the long haul? (Electronic Business).
August 1, 2003... THE NUMBERS ARE IN, and it's official: IBM now has the worlds third-largest semiconductor foundry business. According to semiconductor research firm iSuppli, of Santa Clara, CA, IBM snagged roughly $730 million in foundry revenue in 2002, up...

Electronic business 300.(Directory)
August 1, 2003... ELECTRONIC BUSINESS THE RANKING CALENDAR YEAR 2002 Electronics revenuest Total Rank ...

Alphabetical listing. (Electronic Business 300).(Directory)
August 1, 2003... Company Rank 3Com 232 ABB 133 Acer 118 ADC Telecommunications 280...

Managing products from cradle to grave: companies adopt processes and tools for handling product data and collaboration from design to obsolescence. (Software).
August 1, 2003... HARDWARE DESIGN DETAILS were kept in a hodgepodge of CAD, Word, Excel and Adobe Acrobat files during the first 20 months at Megisto Systems Inc., a start-up in Germantown, MD. No single software tool had all the data associated with the design...