AccessMyLibrary provides FREE access to over 30 million articles from top publications available through your library.
Create a link to this page
Copy and paste this link tag into your Web page or blog:
Byline: PETER BENESH
Big things come in small packages: digital cameras, handheld computers, iPods and cell phones that double as cameras and Game Boys.
Inside these gadgets, widgets and thingamajigs are microchips, crowded together and asked to do more processing. Think, "Honey, I shrunk the chips."
Given how much money has been invested developing smaller, more powerful chips, it's not surprising that a premium is put on protecting microchip circuitry.
That's where Tessera Technologies comes in. It designs the outer shells, or packaging, that surrounds microchip circuitry. Like the tips on shoelaces, nobody thinks much about microchip packaging -- except every chip and device maker in the world.
Tessera owns and licenses the technology that packages chips for just about all the world's cell phones, says analyst Raj Seth of SG Cowen Securities. For each of those phones, the company gets anywhere from a nickel to 8 cents.
"Their business has been driven by the portable wireless markets," Seth said.