Electronic Business articles from March 2004

Electronic Business archives from March 2004

Games versus reality: quick: defend offshoring in 30 words or less.(Editor's Note)(Editorial)
March 1, 2004... Some 80 executives recently gathered in Florida to play a novel Prosperity Game that tried to predict where R&D offshoring might lead. Sponsored by the Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA), the game assigned attendees to one of nine teams....

Is IP in China safe?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... With regard to your article "Will China Enforce Your Intellectual Property Rights?" (January 2004, page 14), I do not disagree; however, there area few points I would like to add. If China is going to continue to grow and industrialize, it will...

Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... As Geoffrey James indicates in his article "The Death of ESL?" (February 2004, page 34), sub-90-nanometer processes create untold challenges. However, to conclude that this will drive a change to bottom-up methodologies is to ignore the true...

Corrections.(Letters)(Correction Notice)
March 1, 2004... In "Will the Industry Lose the Pace Race?" (January 2004, page 46), author Geoffrey James correctly noted that Moore's Law will be celebrating its 40th anniversary next year (Gordon Moore first postulated his theory in a paper written in 1965...

Pondering process progress: how are CPU vendors using the new 90-nm process technology?(Chip Advisor)
March 1, 2004... We're starting to see the first microprocessors coming out of new 90-nanometer semiconductor fabs, and the results are definitely mixed. So far, Intel's new 90-nm Pentium 4, code-named Prescott, is showing no end-user benefits from the new...

The wrong way to innovate: sparking innovation and competitiveness isn't solely the government's responsibility.(Commentary)
March 1, 2004... In the midst of the ongoing hue and cry earlier this year about the impact of outsourcing and offshoring on America's ability to innovate, the Computer Systems Policy Project released a position paper entitled "Choose to Compete," outlining...

Dialing it up a notch at Motorola: new CEO Ed Zander brings marketing and operational prowess.(Management)(Motorola Inc. appoints Ed Zander as chairman)
March 1, 2004... Ed Zander, a former Sun Microsystems COO and venture capitalist, may be just the tonic Motorola needs. Observers say the new chairman and CEO has the people skills, marketing experience, operational background and leadership ability to engineer...

Group proposes guidelines for startup valuations: limited partners are looking for more-consistent disclosure.(Finance)
March 1, 2004... As venture capital investment rises, VC firms are grappling with a set of proposed guidelines that would give their limited partners more-consistent valuations of the startups in their portfolios. VCs invested $4.5 billion in 496 financing...

Intel inside? HP mum on entertainment hub technology.(Consumer Electronics)
March 1, 2004... Intel and HP are both planning home entertainment management platforms, but whether the companies are moving hand in hand--or head to head--into the family room is in question. HP is keeping tight-lipped about the technology inside its...

Judge scuttles patent attacks: Cognex suit sends lawsuit-happy Lemelson's submarine patents to Davy Jones' locker.(Litigation)
March 1, 2004... The world of intellectual property is safer from submarine patents-so-called because its developers keep the application secretly submerged while the technology advances--thanks to tiny Cognex Corp. It waged a five-year, multimillion-dollar...

The China migration slows: hard to believe, but its cost advantage is already decreasing.(Economic Outlook)(trends in Electronic components industry)
March 1, 2004... The recent surge in the migration of electronic component production and system assembly facilities to China will be slowing, starting this year and continuing through 2006. Even so, the net outflow from North America, Europe and Japan will...

For mature audiences only: IC Insights' Bill McClean discusses how the industry's maturation changes the rules.(Semiconductors)(interview )(Interview)
March 1, 2004... IC Insights President Bill McClean has been tracking the semiconductor industry ever since Jimmy Carter was president, and this year's McClean Report reveals the seeming inexorability of the semiconductor industry's growth. In spite of the...

Did someone utter the 'A' word? Expect spot shortages through the first half of the year--after that, it's anyone's guess.(Supply Chain Management)(forecasts on Semiconductor industry)
March 1, 2004... Insufficient capacity. Longer lead times. Spot shortages. Double bookings. Haven't we heard all of this before? No, this is not a flashback to 1999. It is 2004, the semiconductor business is roaring back and the bad news about that good news is...

Independent distributors look east.(Supply Chain Management)
March 1, 2004... OEMs ACCUSTOMED to relieving I their inventory bloat through nonfranchised distribution channels will not have an easy time duplicating that strategy in China, analysts say. Independent, or nonfranchised, distributors specialize in buying...

Mixing and matching lithography: alternative technologies may yet have their day.(Capital Equipment)
March 1, 2004... While immersion lithography grabs headlines and extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) R&D continues apace for insertion at the 32-nanometer node, there are still several alternative technologies that may yet come to the fore of semiconductor...

The perfect storm brews offshore: moving R&D outside the U.S. creates opportunity, outcry--and risk.(Offshoring)(Cover Story)
March 1, 2004... BACK IN 1987, Cadence Design Systems became the first electronic design automation (EDA) vendor to open an R&D center in India, where it now has 300 developers. Since 2000 it has opened two R&D in China and one in Russia, employing a total of...

Kester--changing to meet the future of electronics.(Kester Solder Div)(Company Profile)(Advertisement)
March 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...

Infineon redux: with a new, leaner structure, the German giant says it's ready to do some heavy lifting.(Profile)(Infineon Technologies AG)(Company Profile)
March 1, 2004... VISITING CHINA LAST FALL with a group of fellow German CEOs, Infineon Technologies' chief executive, Ulrich Schumacher, complimented his hosts for their aggressive plans to ramp up their nascent semiconductor industry. To make his point, he...

Broadband wireless take 2: can wide-area wireless find the right economic model?(Wireless)
March 1, 2004... Time has stopped for the Broadband Wireless Internet Forum Web site (www.bwif.org). Its last press release was posted on October 18, 2001. Subscribing to its mailing list yields a "Page not found" error. A phone call to the number listed is...

Avoiding strategic investment pitfalls: don't give away the store when you sell products.(Venture Pulse)
March 1, 2004... All semiconductor entrepreneurs dream of future global design wins that will allow their fledgling company to ramp up production volume to millions of units with brand-name customers. In this quest to satisfy customers, however, semiconductor...