Electronic Business articles from September 2004

Electronic Business archives from September 2004

The category trap: when industry boundaries get cloudy.(Editorial)
September 1, 2004... It's human nature to categorize. Putting things into categories permits us to organize our experiences and make sense of what's going on. If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it must be a duck. In the electronics industry,...

Hype vs. reality.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2004... Geoffrey James' recent EDA column ("Structural Fault," August 2004, page 30) attempted to challenge the reduced engineering cost and fast-time-to-revenue value proposition of platform ASICs but instead ended up trying to defy reality. The...

Myth vs. reality.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2004... I was blown away by the lack of research in Tam Harbert's article "Where Have All the EE's Gone?" (August 2004, page 13). I find it unbelievable that anyone could publish a piece ruing the lack of electrical engineers in this country without...

Correction.(Letters)(Correction Notice)
September 1, 2004... Due to a production error in "The EB 300" (August 2004, page 44), the following information was omitted: Konica and Minolta launched Konica Minolta Holdings, a newly integrated holding company, in August 2003, and calendar-year figures for the...

An analyst returns to the industry: looking forward to the future of the microprocessor.(Chip Advisor)
September 1, 2004... In April 1996, I joined MicroDesign Resources, the publisher of Microprocessor Report. Suddenly I was an analyst rather than an engineer. Instead of making my own design decisions, I was studying and writing about the work of others. In 2002 I...

Presidential campaign offers no high-tech favorite: industry executives split between Bush and Kerry.(Election)
September 1, 2004... In the 2000 presidential election, we had a candidate who clearly reveled in his understanding of technology. Al Gore, who sported both a cell phone and a Palm Pilot on his belt, proudly wore the mantle of the high-tech candidate and sometimes...

Rambus' trials continue: IP company brings another lawsuit, and fresh evidence, against DRAM makers.(Profile)(Intellectual Property, Dynamic Random Access Memory)
September 1, 2004... Sometimes it seems that Rambus will never get out of court. In a move that seems designed to pressure DRAM makers to settle ongoing litigation with the company, Rambus filed an antitrust lawsuit in May against Hynix Semiconductor, Micron...

Cisco and Huawei settle IP infringement case.(Update)(Intellectual Property)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... In the first major intellectual property lawsuit since China began to flex its electronics industry muscle, networking giant Cisco Systems has agreed to settle its lawsuit against China's Huawei Technologies, which Cisco had accused of both...

Stock options saga approaches its climax: expensing likely to have an impact on earnings and compensation practices.(Finance)
September 1, 2004... The drama over me expensing of stock options will reach its climax by the end of the year, when accounting overseers issue a final accounting rule. Now is a good time to review the various plot twists and consider the impact that options...

The trade-off in tech spending: rising hardware sales for businesses of all sizes offset consumer spending decrease.(Economic Outlook)
September 1, 2004... Although the enterprise IT market is no longer the dominant electronics end market, this huge cyclical market will have the most impact on the success of electronics suppliers in the next 18 months of the business cycle. Consumer electronics...

Candidates' positions on high-tech issues.(Business Trends)
September 1, 2004... REPUBLICAN: George W. Bush BROADBAND: Wants to make broadband access available nationwide by 2007. EDUCATION: Running on passage of 2002 No Child Left: Behind legislation. OUTSOURCING: Sees outsourcing as a manifestation of the...

Shaky but stable.(Business Barometer; electronics industry)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... This month's polling of purchasing managers shows that while the economy remains on shaky ground, optimism in the electronics industry is stable. Companies are reporting strong orders and over a third expect overall business conditions to...

Standards take a detour: today's intense focus on return on investment and quick product cycles has forced companies to look for shortcuts in the standards process.(Semiconductors)
September 1, 2004... Pressure from the last recession and accelerating product cycles have altered the technology standards process. In past years, a lengthy timeframe for creating a new standard was a necessary evil, and executives were more willing to commit...

Programmable logic spans the globe: growth of digital TV industry contributes to a bright outlook for PLDs.(Consumer Electronics)(Programmable Logic Devices)
September 1, 2004... The next time you see the TV trucks outside the football stadium--or courthouse--think programmable logic devices (PLDs). The equipment in the truck, on the field and in the home is undergoing the transformation from analog to digital. To...

Package deal: why are EDA tools so clunky?(Electronic Design Automation)
September 1, 2004... The three largest EDA vendors cumulatively spend almost a billion dollars a year in research and development. Quite naturally, much of that money is expended in simply trying to keep up with Moore's Law. But you'd think, with all that cash...

When outsourcing isn't the answer: networking company CNT gets results by bringing production back in-house.(Supply Chain Management)
September 1, 2004... When Computer Network Technology (CNT) had to increase the output of its flagship storage networking product, in 2000, the company turned to outsourcing. Not only could CNT more quickly respond to changes in demand, its executives thought, but...

Headaches = market opportunities: new technologies tackle the bottlenecks in transistors and the interconnect process.(Capital Equipment)
September 1, 2004... Just a few short years ago, what with the conversion to copper from aluminum and the problematic integration of low k dielectric films, interconnect technology was the big bottleneck in capital equipment, consuming R&D dollars and dictating...

These slim margins are not by design: Taiwan's original design manufacturers face intensifying competition in their high-growth market.(Contract Manufacturing)(Cover Story)
September 1, 2004... In the beginning, electronics companies made the products they sold. After some time, companies with famous brand names found it more efficient to concentrate on design and marketing, so they turned manufacturing over to specialists known as...

Specialty switch market in the crosshairs: Texas Instruments targets a new switch market with an array of products.(Advertisement)
September 1, 2004... Having conquered the digital switch market and invaded the analog switch market, Texas Instruments has now set its sights on the specialty switch market. With about one-third of the specially switch market now, TI plans to be the marker...

Top 100 contract manufacturers.(Electronic Business)(Illustration)
September 1, 2004... TOP 100 CONTRACT MANUFACTURERS Total revenue Public = P, Rank Company 2003 ($mil.) * private = PR 1 FLEXTRONICS (SINGAPORE) 13,821.8 P ...

Compound complexity--and how to manage it: SoCs force executives to rethink markets, staffing and IP strategies.(Chip Integration)(system on a chip, Internet Protocol)
September 1, 2004... In 2004 Moore's Law means more gates, more functions, more IP, more integration, more software, more engineers, more partners, more costs, more risks. Or, more simply put: more complexity. Moore's Law, first enunciated by Intel cofounder...

Where did all the little thingies go? The active effort to get rid of passives.(Venture Pulse)
September 1, 2004... In the ongoing drive to decrease silicon process geometries, we often lose sight of some dramatic changes happening in the area of passive component integration. The main reason to move to lower-geometry CMOS is cost, but doing so means...