Electronic Business articles from May 2003

Electronic Business archives from May 2003

A dying shame: the electronics industry isn't exactly searching for the truth about toxic chemicals. (Editor's Note).
May 1, 2003... Every few years, ELECTRONIC BUSINESS does a story on chemicals used in fabs. And every time, we report ongoing charges that the chemicals--mainly those used years ago--have caused cancer in fab workers and birth defects in their children. ...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2003... FAULTY MEMORY? Arensman's article ["Memory Enhancement," April 1, 2003, page 56] caught my eye for a number of reasons. While it profiled the attributes of existing and proposed non-volatile memory technology reasonably well, I feel it...

Clarification.(Correction Notice)
May 1, 2003... In "Bootstrapping is Back" (April 1, 2003, page 44), the quote accompanying the photograph of Bill Neifert, CTO of Carbon Design Systems, should have been attributed to CEO Kevin Hotaling.

Moto gets its mojo back: profitable again, Motorola dreams of the future. (Chip Advisor).
May 1, 2003... Police officers have a saying that explains why the drivers of even the fastest sports cars can't escape speeding tickets: "Nobody outruns the law." For a long time, across many markets, this saying has applied equally well to Motorola itself....

Protecting aftermarket components: a new court decision affects what intellectual property companies can protect. (On the Law).
May 1, 2003... Copyright law is supposed to protect the particular form in which a concept is expressed, but never the concept itself. For example, copyright law might prohibit a block of code from being copied but not protect the algorithm it implements. The...

Flash decision: will cell phone makers choose NAND or NOR flash memory? (Business Trends).
May 1, 2003... Cell phone makers are facing a critical choice as they ponder which type of nonvolatile flash memory to use in future products: Will it be NAND or NOR? The choice between the two flash varieties--generally identified only by their...

Wi-Fi hot spots heat up: Intel and pals kick off a major marketing push. Who stands to gain? (Mobile Technology).(Industry Overview)
May 1, 2003... If the average American doesn't know by now what a Wi-Fi hot spot is, it's not for lack of effort on the part of the electronics industry. Powerhouse players in the nascent but promising market for 802.11b (Wi-Fi) wireless equipment and...

NEMI road map forecasts stronger links: challenges lie ahead for supply and design chains. (Manufacturing).(National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative )(Industry Overview)
May 1, 2003... During last month's APEX exhibition in Anaheim, CA, the National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (NEMI) released its 2002 biennial road map for the industry. Although some of the findings were nor surprising--wireless as an economic bright...

Covering a gap: revenue drops 50%, but Network Appliance lives to tell the tale. (Profile).
May 1, 2003... It's a story we know all too well by now: Company flies high in the late 1990s, with compounded revenue growth percentages in the 80s, 27 straight quarters of making or beating its numbers and salespeople who act more like order takers. Then...

Eyeing the buyout money: LBO firms can offer advantages as buyers or investors. (Finance).(Industry Overview)
May 1, 2003... Venture capitalists are scared, the IPO market has dried up and acquisitive corporations no longer have inflated stock to use as currency. But deals are still being made. Electronics companies looking for cash are increasingly turning to an...

Where sun shines bright: the future is cloudy, but Sun Microsystems's inventory controls are a silver lining. (Supply Chain).
May 1, 2003... Deep inside Sun Microsystems Inc.'s financial statement is an unheralded figure not found in any headlines: $90 million, the amount of excess inventory the Santa Clara, CA-based computer maker wrote off in the downturn. Now, $90 million is...

Intel, 11g fuel WLAN boom: consumers are snapping up faster 11g chips as Intel shakes up the market. (Semiconductors).
May 1, 2003... Sales of wireless LAN (WLAN) chips, one of the semiconductor industry's fastest-growing categories, are getting an extra boost this year from the rapid takeoff of a new, higher-speed version of the networking technology, called 802.11g. Santa...

The war's economic effects. (Economy).(Brief Article)(Industry Overview)
May 1, 2003... ALTHOUGH IT IS STILL too early to see the full economic ramifications of the conflict in Iraq, it became immediately apparent that war would not be a short-term boon to the electronics market. Already companies warn of decreased revenues and...

Chip competition in china. (Production).(Brief Article)(Industry Overview)
May 1, 2003... SEMICONDUCTORS BUILT in China for domestic production may have seemed like a pipe dream two years ago, but not anymore. Executives doing business in China say that currently only about 12% of the IC content that finds its way into products...

Black magic explained: analog EDA may be on the verge of a breakthrough. (Electronic Design Automation).
May 1, 2003... Although EDA for digital chips has been one of the great success stories of modern electronics, EDA for analog circuitry has remained a dream deferred. The reason is simple. Analog chip designers must juggle dozens of variables and parameters,...

Getting paid for what you do: supply chain tackles compensation issues. (Supply Chain Management).(Industry Overview)
May 1, 2003... Workers in most industries will complain that they aren't paid enough for what they do. In the electronics industry, some actually aren't. The global expansion of the supply chain, coupled with the outsourcing boom, has made it tough to...

Gone but not forgotten. (Inventory).(Industry Overview)
May 1, 2003... IT TOOK TWO YEARS AND $13 billion in writedowns to get there, but at least one industry analyst says excess inventory finally has been flushed out of the channel. Inventory levels for the quarter ended December 2002 declined for the eighth...

Drawing a finer line: intel positions itself to start 65-nanometer manufacturing in late 2005. (Capital Equipment).
May 1, 2003... The race is on to build 65-nanometer (0.065-micron) chips, but spectators are wondering how long this race will take to run and where it will eventually end. The renovation and expansion of the Fab 12 chip production facility of Santa...

Going for the wireless gold: intel takes on TI in cellular chips, but the real challenge may be user apathy. (Communications Processors).(Industry Overview)
May 1, 2003... Just as the one-eyed man is king in the land of the blind, the slow-growing handheld wireless market looks like a mountain of gold in a tech landscape that's mainly flat. Adding to the luster are some big numbers: a 2002 world market for...

Sticker shock for photomasks: soaring prices worry some chip makers and spur entrepreneurial answers. (Economics).(Industry Overview)
May 1, 2003... When Austin-based Silicon Laboratories Inc. was ready to put its first chips on the market in 1997, the fabless company decided to work with a pure-play foundry that would help it manage the rising costs for photomasks. A mask set, required to...

Clean equal$ green: chip makers find that using fewer chemicals is good for their pocketbooks. (Environment).(Industry Overview)
May 1, 2003... One of the semiconductor industry's admirable goals in recent years has been to reduce the use of toxic chemicals, which endanger humans and contribute to worldwide pollution. It's good for the environment and for public relations. But the chip...

Forecasts can be your friend. (Commentary).(Industry Overview)(Column)
May 1, 2003... Forecasts are the bane of the industry's existence. You can't live with 'em, and you can't really do business without 'em. As the economic downturn has shown us, something went drastically wrong with the forecasting system. Advances in...

Plays well with others. (Defense).(Itronix's GoBook MAX )(Hardware Review)(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
May 1, 2003... Before the Hummer was the must-have SUV for the rich and trendy, it was sold exclusively to the U.S. military. So what's the next cool thing with ties to the Department of Defense that everyone will want this year? Try the GoBook MAX laptop by...

The Era of low risk, fast time-to-market, high-performance custom silicon is here.(LSI Logic's RapidChip)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Introducing 7 IP-Rich Foundation Slices LSI Logic's platform-based RapidChip[TM] fills the gap between FPGAs and ASICs--ata tenth the cost of corn plex FPGAs. And half the time-to-market of ASICs. This unique design platform now hosts seven...

The business of the world: there's no view like a global view, especially in the search for new markets. (Editor's Note).(Editorial)
May 15, 2003... IN A SPEECH TO THE Society of Newspaper Editors on January 17, 1925, U.S. president Calvin Coolidge made one of the terse statements for which he is typically remembered today: "The business of America is business." As so frequently happens,...

Say farewell to the lone-wolf engineer: it's time for this anachronism to become an endangered species. (Commentary).
May 15, 2003... Just as wild, open land is being developed into towns and suburbs across America, leaving little natural environment for the lone wolf, times are also changing quickly for the "lone wolf" engineer in today's electronic design world. Our...

Tightening up on standards: court decision highlights need for organizations to spell out their rules. (Business Trends).(Rambus fraud case overturned by Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington D.C.)
May 15, 2003... A recent ruling by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, sounds a clear warning that standards-setting organizations throughout the electronics industry should tighten up their rules. Earlier this year, the circuit court...

Lightspeed targets the middle ground: fabless ASIC maker says that it will turn a profit 'in the very near future'. (Profile).
May 15, 2003... Lightspeed Semiconductor Inc.'s chief executive thinks an initial public offering "is a great idea." But don't look for it anytime soon. First, Dave Holt, who joined the Sunnyvale, CA, fabless ASIC maker in August 2000, must solidify the...

Mind the (pension) gap: companies have to deal with underfunded pension plans. (Finance).(Industry Overview)
May 15, 2003... As if industry executives don't have enough to worry about, add pension problems to their woes. Many electronics companies face funding shortfalls in their defined-benefit pensions, due to three years of declining stock markets and weak bond...

Start-up Centillium cracks Japan: the right contacts--and technology--lead to DSL business success. (Management).
May 15, 2003... When Centillium Communications Inc. was launched six years ago its executives targeted Japan as a major market for its digital subscriber line (DSL) chip sets. Today, Fremont, CA-based Centillium owns about 70% of the Japanese DSL market, which...

The next display dimension: group aims to tailor 3-D for mainstream applications. (Interfaces).
May 15, 2003... Would you pay an extra $50 for a cell phone with a three-dimensional screen? Not so sure? You're not alone. Consumers just may not he ready to fuel a mainstream market for 3-D products. Earlier this year, a group of Japanese electronics...

At last, some cautious optimism. (Business Barometer).(Illustration)(Industry Overview)
May 15, 2003... Call it cautious optimism about the war and/or the economy, but this month's polling of purchasing managers is showing positive signs for the electronics industry. One-third of respondents believe overall business conditions will improve in the...

Consumer market entices chip makers: once dominated by captive suppliers, independent chip companies are finding opportunities in the burgeoning market for consumer electronics. (Top Semiconductor Companies).
May 15, 2003... The PlayStation 3 is a mammoth project. Consumer electronics giant Sony Corp., Tokyo, has teamed with IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, and Toshiba Corp., Tokyo, to design a new chip architecture, including the best chip manufacturing technology IBM can...

Delayed expectations for 3-D: despite heavyweight investors, Matrix has been slow to bring its novel chip technology to market. (Semiconductors).
May 15, 2003... These days, whenever a start-up raises $147 million, it's a good sign and a bad sign. Matrix Semiconductor Inc., a Santa Clara, CA, maker of three-dimensional memory chips, stands out from the pack, because it has been able to raise that much...

Short on talent: engineering schools aren't training enough analog IC designers. (Electronic Design Automation).
May 15, 2003... In hard economic times, engineers are supposed to be a dime a dozen. Although it's true that plenty of out-of-work programmers are still bulk-mailing their resumes, IC design engineers are, by contrast, sitting pretty. "Layoffs for IC designers...

Making the connection to partners: application interoperability solutions aim to fix supply chain links. (Supply Chain Management).
May 15, 2003... For components distributor Arrow Electronics Inc., having the ability to link directly to its suppliers' automated supply chain systems isn't simply useful; it's a top priority. "Real-time machine-to-machine communication is designed to improve...

Battle of the oscilloscope bandwidth: giant Agilent targets entrenched competitors in this high-end market. (Capital Equipment).
May 15, 2003... Agilent Technologies Inc., Palo Alto, CA, lost more than $1 billion last year, as the IT slowdown cut across its major product lines. But apparently its ambition is still intact. The test-and-measurement (T&M) giant says that it wants to be No....

Trickle down trouble in the venture world: a backlash by frustrated limited partners could keep VC funding conservative for years to come. (Finance).
May 15, 2003... IN SEARCH OF FUNDS for his electronic design automation (FDA) start-up, Jackson Kreiter made his pitch to roughly 30 venture capital firms. Most of the VCs listened attentively, but none invested. One large East Coast venture firm's total lack...

No secure way to homeland security: getting a piece of the billions of dollars of federal spending isn't easy. (Government Market).
May 15, 2003... When the Department of Homeland Security was officially established on January 24, many companies expected a boom in business from a mammoth government organization hungering for technologies to enhance the security of this country. ...

Extending legendary success: Chinese PC maker aims to counter competition by broadening its reach to new products and services. (Profile).
May 15, 2003... WHEN IT COMES TO THE PC MARKET IN CHINA, Legend Group Ltd. is living up to its name. The Beijing-based company has maintained at least a 26.5% share of the Chinese PC market since 2000. Its closest rival, Beijing Peking University Founder Group...

Storage security jitters create new market: performance and compatibility become key issues. (Venture Pulse).
May 15, 2003... Even in a flagging high-tech economy, market forces can converge in powerful ways. Take storage and security. The cost of storing mushrooming volumes of information and fears about the vulnerability of that data combine in a growing market...