Electronic Business articles from February 2004

Electronic Business archives from February 2004

Relief and disbelief: the upturn has finally arrived.(Editor's Note)
February 1, 2004... The new year begins on an optimistic note for the electronics industry. Analysts speaking at the Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) annual Industry Strategy Symposium in early January were unanimous in providing strong...

Gray no more.(Letters)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2004... That was a very nice article Barbara Jorgensen wrote on the issues of counterfeiting in our industry ("Don't Get Burned by Bogus Parts," January 2004, page 41). As one of the founding members of the Independent Distributors of Electronics...

Whatever happened to ...(Letters)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2004... The article "The Price Is Right" (December 2003, page 58) includes a listing of closed foundries. Although I'm not sure that TwinStar, in Richardson, Texas, fits the definition of a foundry, it did close in June 1998. It was a joint...

Corrections.(correction notice)(Correction Notice)
February 1, 2004... The quote on page 62 of the December issue incorrectly names the source of the quote. The director of strategy for Motorola's Technology and Manufacturing Organization is Rick (not Mike) McFarland. EB regrets the error.

Twenty years of Macintosh: learning from Apple's mistakes--and triumphs.(Chip Advisor)
February 1, 2004... I've been an Apple Macintosh fan since I saw the famous 1984 commercial that launched the platform (to watch the commercial, see www.uriah.com/apple-qt/1984.html). I wasn't as impressed by the machine itself; Apple's Lisa was the one I really...

Confronting the electronics migration: Europe must play to its strengths in design.(Commentary)
February 1, 2004... European governments are justifiably concerned about the exodus of the electronics industry from their countries to lower-cost regions. However, by focusing narrowly on the number of domestic electronic manufacturing jobs lost due to the...

Desktop wars, the sequel.(Operating SystemS)
February 1, 2004... Even when the Linux operating system began to capture significant market share on corporate servers--just under 25 percent and growing--conventional wisdom said that it would never challenge Microsoft Windows on the desktop. Recent developments...

Leopard's sweet spot: targeting the gap between FPGAs and ASICs, Leopard Logic has a lot of competition.(Profile)
February 1, 2004... One of the electronics industry's biggest conundrums right now is the widening price/performance gap between FPGAs and ASICs. Although FPGAs are relatively inexpensive to develop, they don't have the speed of ASICs. And although ASICs run well...

In search of the triple threat: as hiring inches ahead, companies are looking for the multitalented.(Management)
February 1, 2004... In a nutshell, you want to be Thomas Edison or Deion Sanders--or at least the person who hires them. As the economy expands, electronics firms are gingerly thinking about increasing head count accordingly. They have a spectrum of strategies,...

Blade servers pierce the market: 2004 seen as a breakout year for new computing form factor.(Systems)
February 1, 2004... Despite the beginnings of an economic turnaround, corporate IT spending in 2003 did not pick up as fast as the electronics industry would have liked. One bright spot, however, was the rate at which blade server sales accelerated, setting the...

The key to 2004 growth: productivity increases will sustain the upturn.(Economic Outlook)
February 1, 2004... The strong growth outlook for the electronics market in 2004-05 continues to inch higher with each report of stronger-than-expected spending in key markets and countries. However, in the first month of the year, there is an unusually wide range...

Hopes and expectations run high.(Business Barometer)(Illustration)
February 1, 2004... This month's polling of purchasing managers shows improvement for Q1 for the electronics marketplace. Over a third expect an improvement in business conditions in the next 30 days. This marks the third straight month of high expectations for...

Intel moves into consumer electronics: can a PC-centric company stretch to meet the requirements of this new market?(Semiconductors)
February 1, 2004... Even if you are an 800-pound gorilla, you might still stumble from time to time. And when you do, it sure is loud. That was clear in December when the world's largest semiconductor company, Intel, announced that it would take a $600...

The death of ESL? Sub-90-nm may force digital designers to emulate analog designers.(Electronic Design Automation)(Electronic System Level )
February 1, 2004... For the past decade, a major thrust of the EDA industry has been creating tools, such as SystemC, for electronic systems-level (ESL) design. The assumption has been that chip designers will be more productive once they can address designs at a...

Whither RosettaNet? While some wait for a standard, standardization efforts lag.(Supply Chain Management)
February 1, 2004... It is, says one industry watcher, the industry's equivalent of the classic chicken-and-egg conundrum. How can RosettaNet become a business-to-business communication standard until it's used across the supply chain? "If OEMs are not...

Next year finally gets here: but rising orders and capacity ramp-ups bring their own worries.(Capital Equipment)
February 1, 2004... It looks like we can stop worrying about when the upturn will arrive; now it's time to start worrying about when it will be over. Here at the dawn of 2004, the mood is positively bullish in the chip equipment industry, as the upturn in...

Dealing during the downturn: while tech mergers slowed to a trickle in recent years, a few brave companies transformed themselves with savvy acquisitions.(Mergers & Acquisitions)
February 1, 2004... IN 2000 ARMANDO GEDAY needed acquisitions in order to move his company, Globespan Semiconductor, beyond its niche market of digital subscriber line (DSL) chips. So he went shopping, acquiring five smaller companies during that boom year. Even...

Top 50 electronics mergers & acquisitions.(Illustration)
February 1, 2004... TOP 50 ELECTRONICS MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS Announced 11/15/02-2/1/03 Rank Target name Target business description 1 PeopleSoft Inc. Database...

Going with the flow: after shifting to survival strategies, those network processor vendors that remain are poised for a comeback.(Network Processors)
February 1, 2004... IT'S BEEN A LONG TIME COMING, but a turnaround in the network processor market may finally be here. After three years of cancellations, postponements and chip supplier bankruptcies, battle-weary executives are predicting an upturn in the...

Hit or myth? Some popular chip wisdom may actually be misconceptions.(Semiconductors)
February 1, 2004... Greece and Rome took centuries to develop their elaborate mythologies of gods, goddesses and legends, whereas the semiconductor industry has been operating for only 50 years or so. Still, that's long enough for a certain number of "chip myths"...

Mixed-signal semiconductors: black art, high value: can China demystify analog design?(Venture Pulse)
February 1, 2004... It has become a matter of almost religious faith that the prices of semiconductor components decrease as much as 15 percent per quarter. The infamous Moore's Law, which stipulates that semiconductor processing power will double every 18 months,...