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Lessons from the software space
Blogs On Semiconductor - Mon, 07/26/2010 - 10:31
Tim Bray, co-inventor of XML and now working on the Android team at Google, presented at OSCON recently in Oregon. There's a nice summary of his presentation on InfoWorld's website, and, I believe, a link to his presentation which I'll check out later. Here are some great quotes attributed to Tim's presentation from the article:
"Concurrency is hard. It involves a lot of problems that are very difficult to think about and reason about and understand," said Bray, who is developer advocate at Google. Bugs and performance bottlenecks are among the issues with concurrency, he said.and
Historically, it has been thought that the way to program for concurrency is through threading, Bray said. But programming with threads, which offer multiple access to shared, mutable data, is "something that is not understood by application programmers, cannot be understood by application programmers, will never be understood by application programmers," added Bray.
One of the themes I've talked about in the past (e.g. this piece on "The problem with threads") is how hard it is to design using threads. SystemC, of course, uses threads and events for concurrency.
One might notice how Tim is not advocating software development with C/C++ using threads. We hear from the EDA community that C/C++ using threads makes the most sense for hardware design because everyone knows C. "It's practical." If that's the case, then why doesn't the software community, those who know C the best, advocate for a similar solution?
Categories: Planet Semiconductor
Intel Close to Buying Infineon's Wireless Chip Biz
Blogs On Semiconductor - Mon, 07/26/2010 - 09:13
Intel (s INTC) has a contract to acquire the wireless division of German chip maker, Infineon, according to brokerage Rodman & Renshaw’s Ashok Kumar, who said so in a note to his clients today. Intel has been long rumored to be in talks with Infineon, and this is the first hint that the deal is progressing.
Intel has no option but to go after the smartphone business — widely recognized as the next major opportunity for the chip industry. The chipmaker, as I have said time and again, is a wireless laggard. With this rumored deal, it will only be trying to play catch-up with its rivals, especially Qualcomm (s QCOM), which many believe is one of the best-positioned mobile chip companies because it makes both the “brains” of smartphones and the radios. Right now, Intel only has the brains. In his note, Kumar sums it up well:
Qualcomm remains the best positioned company for the smartphone opportunity as it has requisite IP for all the major wireless interface standards in play. But there are several companies that are positioned poorly for the smartphone opportunity and are not likely to survive. Texas Instruments lacks baseband processors for future standards. Infineon is without application processors and Marvell has had only limited success to date. MediaTek remains strong at the low end.
Qualcomm has taken an early lead by becoming a major supplier to the Android ecosystem, especially to HTC. Qualcomm holds an equity stake in the fast-growing smartphone maker, and has become a major contributor (in terms of software) to the Android ecosystem. It has also been pushing the speed limits of its Snapdragon-based chipsets.
Kumar says that the company most likely to suffer is Broadcom (s BRCM), which he points out has been unable to develop compatible baseband modems and now has to fight off both Intel and Qualcomm. Broadcom, which wants to get 10 percent of the overall wireless chip business, “will continue to bleed money in the cell phone business and will likely exit after limited success,” Kumar notes. I am not sure I agree with him entirely.
In theory, Intel and Infineon together could challenge Qualcomm’s growing dominance. After all, Infineon has baseband chips (the radios) and the customer base, and Intel has the application processors. However, Intel has a history of botching up acquisitions and has proven time and again that it can’t look past its PC-centric DNA.
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):
As Devices Converge, Chip Vendors Girding for a Fight
For Phones, the Future Is Multiple Cores
Categories: Planet Semiconductor
Intel Close to Buying Infineon's Wireless Chip Biz
Blogs On Semiconductor - Mon, 07/26/2010 - 09:13
Intel (s INTC) has a contract to acquire the wireless division of German chip maker, Infineon, according to brokerage Rodman & Renshaw’s Ashok Kumar, who said so in a note to his clients today. Intel has been long rumored to be in talks with Infineon, and this is the first hint that the deal is progressing.
Intel has no option but to go after the smartphone business — widely recognized as the next major opportunity for the chip industry. The chipmaker, as I have said time and again, is a wireless laggard. With this rumored deal, it will only be trying to play catch-up with its rivals, especially Qualcomm (s QCOM), which many believe is one of the best-positioned mobile chip companies because it makes both the “brains” of smartphones and the radios. Right now, Intel only has the brains. In his note, Kumar sums it up well:
Qualcomm remains the best positioned company for the smartphone opportunity as it has requisite IP for all the major wireless interface standards in play. But there are several companies that are positioned poorly for the smartphone opportunity and are not likely to survive. Texas Instruments lacks baseband processors for future standards. Infineon is without application processors and Marvell has had only limited success to date. MediaTek remains strong at the low end.
Qualcomm has taken an early lead by becoming a major supplier to the Android ecosystem, especially to HTC. Qualcomm holds an equity stake in the fast-growing smartphone maker, and has become a major contributor (in terms of software) to the Android ecosystem. It has also been pushing the speed limits of its Snapdragon-based chipsets.
Kumar says that the company most likely to suffer is Broadcom (s BRCM), which he points out has been unable to develop compatible baseband modems and now has to fight off both Intel and Qualcomm. Broadcom, which wants to get 10 percent of the overall wireless chip business, “will continue to bleed money in the cell phone business and will likely exit after limited success,” Kumar notes. I am not sure I agree with him entirely.
In theory, Intel and Infineon together could challenge Qualcomm’s growing dominance. After all, Infineon has baseband chips (the radios) and the customer base, and Intel has the application processors. However, Intel has a history of botching up acquisitions and has proven time and again that it can’t look past its PC-centric DNA.
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):
As Devices Converge, Chip Vendors Girding for a Fight
For Phones, the Future Is Multiple Cores
Categories: Planet Semiconductor
And Now Playing, GPU Clouds
Blogs On Semiconductor - Mon, 07/26/2010 - 08:00
Hollywood has always been one of the biggest consumers of large-scale computing systems. Back in the day, it was Silicon Graphics’ Oxygen servers. And now, in keeping up with the times, it is cloud-based computing systems. And not just any cloud. Instead, PEER 1 Hosting has created a specialty cloud using graphics processing units (GPUs) from Nvidia (s nvda).
The new effort was announced at the 37th Annual Siggraph International Conference. The cloud, which is managed by PEER 1 Hosting, runs Nvidia’s RealityServer 3D web application service platform. It uses NVIDIA Tesla GPUs and 3D web services software developed by Mental Images, a division of the chip company. These include graphics rendering, complex quantitative processing, video compression, and large-model 3D web services for access by mobile clients.
While PEER1 and Nvidia talk about this offering a good way for web application developers to add interactivity and 3D capabilities to their services, the fact is that the big consumer of this cloud will be Hollywood. The timing of the cloud is certainly right. Hollywood, like many other industries, is grappling with two major trends — extreme digitization and increasing demand for content via wireless/edge devices. The on-demand nature of this GPU cloud helps Hollywood lower its cap-ex spending on hardware.
This is one of the many speciality clouds we expect are going to be coming to market. Stacey had previously reported about a gaming-oriented cloud developed by AMD (s AMD) and Otoy. AMD owns ATI Technologies, a graphics chips company that competes with Nvidia.
Related GigaOM Pro Content (sub req’d):
Categories: Planet Semiconductor
And Now Playing, GPU Clouds
Blogs On Semiconductor - Mon, 07/26/2010 - 08:00
Hollywood has always been one of the biggest consumers of large-scale computing systems. Back in the day, it was Silicon Graphics’ Oxygen servers. And now, in keeping up with the times, it is cloud-based computing systems. And not just any cloud. Instead, PEER 1 Hosting has created a specialty cloud using graphics processing units (GPUs) from Nvidia (s nvda).
The new effort was announced at the 37th Annual Siggraph International Conference. The cloud, which is managed by PEER 1 Hosting, runs Nvidia’s RealityServer 3D web application service platform. It uses NVIDIA Tesla GPUs and 3D web services software developed by Mental Images, a division of the chip company. These include graphics rendering, complex quantitative processing, video compression, and large-model 3D web services for access by mobile clients.
While PEER1 and Nvidia talk about this offering a good way for web application developers to add interactivity and 3D capabilities to their services, the fact is that the big consumer of this cloud will be Hollywood. The timing of the cloud is certainly right. Hollywood, like many other industries, is grappling with two major trends — extreme digitization and increasing demand for content via wireless/edge devices. The on-demand nature of this GPU cloud helps Hollywood lower its cap-ex spending on hardware.
This is one of the many speciality clouds we expect are going to be coming to market. Stacey had previously reported about a gaming-oriented cloud developed by AMD (s AMD) and Otoy. AMD owns ATI Technologies, a graphics chips company that competes with Nvidia.
Related GigaOM Pro Content (sub req’d):
Categories: Planet Semiconductor
Spartan MC - An 18 Bit Reconfigurable Microcontroller for FPGAs
Blogs On Semiconductor - Mon, 07/26/2010 - 07:20
The Spartan MC project is a project developed by the Chair for Embedded Systems of the Faculty of Informatics at the Technical University of Dresden. It is an interesting project that promises a totally reconfigurable micro-controller for Xilinx’s Spartan FPGAs that can integrate on-the-fly different peripherals, and still maintaining its cost-effectiveness. I had the chance to get to know a bit of the architecture and also played around by writing some simple programmes, and therefore decided to write about it to promote the project.
About the project
The project has the intent to provide a viable SoC (Sytem on Chip) solution to be used for different application domains. If compared to other SoC Kits with Processors of 8Bit that reach their limits very fast or of 32Bit that require very “big” FPGAs, Spartan MC is a very cost-effective choice. The choice of the 18 Bit architecture was to explore the maximum capacity of the FPGA’s Blockrams and multiplexers. There are also a large number of standard and special peripherals that can easily included as needed.
Features
- 18 Bit RISC Architecture.
- 3-Level Pipeline.
- No Cache required – since the fast BlockRAMs of the FPGA are used for the registers and main memory there is no need for caching
- Standard and Special Peripherals as (re)configurable modules available: UART, SPI, I2C, JTAG, USB, etc.
- Multiple instances of peripherals is also possible.
- It can be applied to different FPGAs of Xilinx’s Spartan family (Spartan 3E FPGAs start at 2$) – depending on the application requirements a chip with a higher or lower number of gates can be chosen.
- Easy to configure – a Java programme is provided to assist in the configuration so that it is not required for the programmer to now details about the hardware implementation.
- Simulator, also written in Java, allows the programmer to test and debug most functionalities on the host PC.
- Multicore systems are possible
Spartan MC Core and its peripherals
Soc Solutions vs. Traditional Micro-controllers
Disadvantages
- Small micro-controllers are still cheaper than $2
- Up to this moment, the power consumption of uCs are still lower than in FPGAs
- AD/DC-Converters in uCs are integrated on chip (although some new FPGAs provide these on chip as well)
Advantages
- Configurability – the configuration can be adapted according to application (or changed later if necessary)
- Different signal levels on the Interfaces are also configurable
- Scalability of Performance – if more processing capacity is required a more powerful FPGA can be chosen (of course there is a trade-off regarding the price)
- No need to integrate several uCs into your project, just include the modules you need via configuration tool and you are good to go
This was just a brief overview on the Spartan MC. For more information click here to visit the official project’s web site. However, the english version is unfortunately not as up-to-date as the german one.
This is my first official post. I hope to be writing more stuff very soon.
Fabio Mayoral
Categories: Planet Semiconductor
de/compositions
Blogs On Semiconductor - Mon, 07/26/2010 - 00:44
This is insanely gorgeous and beautiful. The sound – “solar natural radio (?)” – is controlled by digitally sampling the brightness/intensity of the image. I’d love to give this a go with MaxMSP, perhaps with the time lapse decomposition clips below? Brilliant Noise is by Semiconductor, aka Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt. Who “explore the material nature of our world and how we experience it, questioning our place in the physical universe”. Of the film (which was briefly also an installation), they say:
Brilliant Noise takes us into the data vaults of solar astronomy. These images have been kept in their most raw form, revealing the energetic particles and solar wind as a rain of white noise. This grainy black and white quality is routinely cleaned up by NASA, hiding the processes and mechanics in action behind the capturing procedure. Most of the imagery has been collected as single snapshots containing additional information, by satellites orbiting the Earth. They are then reorganised into their spectral groups to create time-lapse sequences.
The soundtrack highlights the hidden forces at play upon the solar surface, by directly translating areas of intensity within the image brightness into layers of audio manipulation and radio frequencies. The sound is derived from solar natural radio and controlled via digitally sampling the intensity of the brightness of the image. The sound is intrinsically born from the image, creating a symphony by the Sun.
Below, however is a clip I can’t stop watching (just like I can’t stop sleeping to Black to Comm even though it makes me faintly uneasy). I guess it’s fairly old but I only came across it today, and thought the gushy black liquid was oil, and/or the creeping grayness some kind of rubble or ash. This one’s especially beautiful because it looks like the fox is imploding/ collapsing in the space of a breath. The idea of spontaneous combustion’s still pretty seductive.
Below the fox however is a pig head, decomposing over 120 days – from (presumably) freshly dead through to the bone. There’s a surprising range of animal/natural processes — and carnivorous squirrels, who knew. I generally assumed they limited themselves to nuts, berries and the like. I made myself watcht he zoomed version too, which made me feel physically sick. Surprisingly there don’t seem to be human equivalents, save for those photo-every-day for ___[time] clips. I quite like this one 1998-2006 and still going – and seeing his hair grow as his hairline recedes.
Categories: Planet Semiconductor
Epic -- first ever web browser for India, from India!
Blogs On Semiconductor - Sat, 07/24/2010 - 15:07
Indians are highly skillful and innovative, and the recently released Epic web browser provides an e
Categories: Planet Semiconductor
4 Actions Microsoft Can Take With an ARM License
Blogs On Semiconductor - Fri, 07/23/2010 - 14:58
ARM (s armh) and Microsoft today announced a new licensing partnership that will give Microsoft (s msft) more research and development opportunities with chips that run many of today’s consumer electronics devices such as mobile phones. Prior to today’s agreement, the two companies had a more distant relationship: Microsoft-powered handheld devices such as Windows Mobile handsets and Zune media players run on chips built by other ARM licensees. In contrast, Windows software runs on chips from Intel and AMD (s amd) which are based on the x86 architecture.
To be sure, Microsoft is certainly familiar with ARM processors — it has made its smartphone software work with ARM chips for years — but the new licensing agreement provides far more access than a CPU spec sheet. As Kerry McGuire, director of strategic marketing for ARM, explained on a conference call with GigaOM today:
This is about getting a hands on feel for the ARM architecture, a richer dialogue around what the tech is capable of and a way to experience the limits and potential of what the tech can do in a way that is different than reading a high-level specification.
Indeed, even though Microsoft is a software company, the license it now has with ARM allows for custom chip design and creation, which offers a number of possible scenarios, both in terms of hardware and software.
Emulate Apple and design a chip
Microsoft may never actually take the step into chip design, but it has to realize that a major competitor has done just that: Apple (s aapl) licenses the ARM architecture to design the custom A4 chip that powers both its iPhone 4 and iPad. And with Apple selling almost as many ARM-based iPads (3.270 million) as x86-powered Mac computers (3.472 million) last quarter, Microsoft might view this as a huge paradigm shift in computing for which it currently has no answer. Creating a chip, and a new device around it that doesn’t compete with hardware from smartphone partners would allow Microsoft to face Apple head-on in the mobile computing space. Perhaps this is the missing ingredient to the Windows Tablet PC recipe that Microsoft has been simmering since 2004.
Windows “Lite” on Portables
If Microsoft would rather continue focusing solely on software, the new ARM license could accelerate porting part or all of Microsoft Windows to work on the ARM platform. This would open up an entirely new opportunity for Microsoft at a time when sales of ARM devices are quickly growing. Indeed, ABI Research suggests that ARM-based chips will power more ultra-mobile devices than x86 chips will by 2013. That’s advance warning to Microsoft that a whole class of Windowless devices is forecast, and a deeper understanding of ARM architecture could help offset such a situation.
Less Power-Hungry Servers
Perhaps Microsoft is prepping for a shift to ARM-based chips in servers and experimenting with ARM-powered servers for is online services like Sharepoint and Bing. It may also need to adapt its server software to the architecture as well. For as much progress that Intel (s intc) has made with power efficiency in its Atom line of CPUs, ARM chips are still process more data per watt of power — and the largest cost to any data center is the electricity needed to run the servers. Marvell, another ARM-licensee says an ARM chip can deliver 1 GHz of performance while consuming 700 milliwatts and up to 2 GHz while still consuming less than a watt. The x86 chips perform better, but require greater power consumption: they can deliver as much as 3.6 GHz while consuming up to 130 watts or as little as 1.8 GHz at 40 watts, according to Simon Milner, VP of Marvell’s enterprise group.
Handheld Gaming
Another possibility arose a few hours ago in our weekly live mobile technology podcast. Folks in the chat room suggested a viable option for portable gaming — Microsoft has a large Xbox Live community but hasn’t leveraged it in the mobile space. While the upcoming Microsoft Windows Phone 7 phones will have some type of Xbox Live integration, they won’t be poised as true handheld gaming machines. Even with the Xbox Live effort generating $1 billion a year, Microsoft currently has no portable gaming initiative to compete with Apple (s AAPL), Nintendo and Sony (a SNE).
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):
Infrastructure Overview: 2Q, 2010
Mobile Predictions for 2010: A Mobile Gaming Phone
Categories: Planet Semiconductor
4 Actions Microsoft Can Take With an ARM License
Blogs On Semiconductor - Fri, 07/23/2010 - 14:58
ARM (s armh) and Microsoft today announced a new licensing partnership that will give Microsoft (s msft) more research and development opportunities with chips that run many of today’s consumer electronics devices such as mobile phones. Prior to today’s agreement, the two companies had a more distant relationship: Microsoft-powered handheld devices such as Windows Mobile handsets and Zune media players run on chips built by other ARM licensees. In contrast, Windows software runs on chips from Intel and AMD (s amd) which are based on the x86 architecture.
To be sure, Microsoft is certainly familiar with ARM processors — it has made its smartphone software work with ARM chips for years — but the new licensing agreement provides far more access than a CPU spec sheet. As Kerry McGuire, director of strategic marketing for ARM, explained on a conference call with GigaOM today:
This is about getting a hands on feel for the ARM architecture, a richer dialogue around what the tech is capable of and a way to experience the limits and potential of what the tech can do in a way that is different than reading a high-level specification.
Indeed, even though Microsoft is a software company, the license it now has with ARM allows for custom chip design and creation, which offers a number of possible scenarios, both in terms of hardware and software.
Emulate Apple and design a chip
Microsoft may never actually take the step into chip design, but it has to realize that a major competitor has done just that: Apple (s aapl) licenses the ARM architecture to design the custom A4 chip that powers both its iPhone 4 and iPad. And with Apple selling almost as many ARM-based iPads (3.270 million) as x86-powered Mac computers (3.472 million) last quarter, Microsoft might view this as a huge paradigm shift in computing for which it currently has no answer. Creating a chip, and a new device around it that doesn’t compete with hardware from smartphone partners would allow Microsoft to face Apple head-on in the mobile computing space. Perhaps this is the missing ingredient to the Windows Tablet PC recipe that Microsoft has been simmering since 2004.
Windows “Lite” on Portables
If Microsoft would rather continue focusing solely on software, the new ARM license could accelerate porting part or all of Microsoft Windows to work on the ARM platform. This would open up an entirely new opportunity for Microsoft at a time when sales of ARM devices are quickly growing. Indeed, ABI Research suggests that ARM-based chips will power more ultra-mobile devices than x86 chips will by 2013. That’s advance warning to Microsoft that a whole class of Windowless devices is forecast, and a deeper understanding of ARM architecture could help offset such a situation.
Less Power-Hungry Servers
Perhaps Microsoft is prepping for a shift to ARM-based chips in servers and experimenting with ARM-powered servers for is online services like Sharepoint and Bing. It may also need to adapt its server software to the architecture as well. For as much progress that Intel (s intc) has made with power efficiency in its Atom line of CPUs, ARM chips are still process more data per watt of power — and the largest cost to any data center is the electricity needed to run the servers. Marvell, another ARM-licensee says an ARM chip can deliver 1 GHz of performance while consuming 700 milliwatts and up to 2 GHz while still consuming less than a watt. The x86 chips perform better, but require greater power consumption: they can deliver as much as 3.6 GHz while consuming up to 130 watts or as little as 1.8 GHz at 40 watts, according to Simon Milner, VP of Marvell’s enterprise group.
Handheld Gaming
Another possibility arose a few hours ago in our weekly live mobile technology podcast. Folks in the chat room suggested a viable option for portable gaming — Microsoft has a large Xbox Live community but hasn’t leveraged it in the mobile space. While the upcoming Microsoft Windows Phone 7 phones will have some type of Xbox Live integration, they won’t be poised as true handheld gaming machines. Even with the Xbox Live effort generating $1 billion a year, Microsoft currently has no portable gaming initiative to compete with Apple (s AAPL), Nintendo and Sony (a SNE).
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):
Infrastructure Overview: 2Q, 2010
Mobile Predictions for 2010: A Mobile Gaming Phone
Categories: Planet Semiconductor
NanoTime Static Timing in Custom Designer
Blogs On Semiconductor - Fri, 07/23/2010 - 11:46
NanoTime is our transistor-level static timing product for custom designs. Since Custom Designer is for custom design too it was natural that we’d integrate the two tools together. Released in June of 2010, the NanoTime integration into Custom Designer lets users do concurrent timing and SI analysis for designs of up to 6 million devices and see the whole timing picture in schematics and layout.
We are pretty excited about this new integration and held a webinar on the topic this week. If you missed, don’t worry, it is archived on our website and you can watch it here.
Fred
Categories: Planet Semiconductor
SanDisk Founder Departure Clouds Mixed Earnings (SNDK)
Blogs On Semiconductor - Thu, 07/22/2010 - 14:00
SanDisk Corp. (NASDAQ: SNDK) may have just ended its great winning streak in post-earnings reactions versus the great growth of flash memory. The independent flash memory leader said that second-quarter profit grew nearly five-fold to $257.9 million, or $1.08 EPS, versus $52.5 million or $0.23 EPS a year ago. This was also on huge revenue growth of $1.18 billion versus $730.6 million a year ago. Thomson Reuters had estimates of $0.90 EPS and $1.16 billion in revenue. That is a substantial bottom-line beat on the surface, but the top-line win is marginal, and to make matters worse it is losing its founding Chairman and CEO.
The flash memory leader also said that it saw 47% total gross margin, which was due to “cost reductions and a stable pricing environment.” AS much as the demand has been there for all those flash memory chips in all the consumer electronics, they should have had a stable pricing environment. Here is the issue though…. Average price per gigabyte sold declined 18% year-over-year and was down 8% from one sequential quarter ago.
SanDisk also ended with a record high in its cash balance of $3.7 billion, or $2.6 billion net of debt.
The company did not offer guidance, so this is considered unfinished business. Guidance usually comes in the conference call.
The big drop today may be initially more tied to the news that Dr. Eli Harari, its found, chairman, and chief executive officer, will retire from his current positions on December 31, 2010. This marks the 5th of 10 CEOs we selected as CEOs to depart for 2009.
The board of directors appointed Sanjay Mehrotra, SanDisk’s President and COO, as the new CEO effective January 1, 2011.
SanDisk closed up 2.3% at $43.10 in the regular trading hours, but the stock is down a sharp 7.6% at $39.80 in the after-hours session. The 52-week range is $16.21 to $50.55.
JON C. OGG
Categories: Planet Semiconductor
Best Companies To Work For
Blogs On Semiconductor - Thu, 07/22/2010 - 11:07
The 25 Best Tech Companies To Work For uses data from Glassdoor.com to aggregate the anonymous, inside scoop on what's good and what's not at employers.
Companies on the list relevant to EDA/ASIC engineers:
- #1 Google
- #4 Apple
- #7 Qualcomm
- #12 Juniper
- #14 MathWorks
- #15 Analog Devices
- #17 Intel
- #22 Synopsys "employees love their CEO"
- #24 Cisco Systems
- #25 Texas Instruments
Categories: Planet Semiconductor
Top Analyst Upgrades & Downgrades (CERN, CNQR, RDY, ETN, GCA, HGSI, LLTC, OI, POM, SWI, WFC, XLNX)
Blogs On Semiconductor - Thu, 07/22/2010 - 05:37
These are some of the top analyst upgrades and downgrades seen in Wall Street research calls this Thursday morning:
Cerner Corp. (NASDAQ: CERN) Raised to Buy at Jefferies.
Concur Technologies (NASDAQ: CNQR) Raised to Buy at Jefferies.
Dr Reddy’s (NYSE: RDY) Cut to Equal-weight at Morgan Stanley
Eaton Corp (NYSE: ETN) Raised to Outperform at Wells Fargo.
Global Cash Access Holdings (NYSE: GCA) Cut to Neutral at Sterne Agee.
Human Genome Sciences (NASDAQ: HGSI) Raised to Outperform at Baird.
Linear Technology Corp. (NASDAQ: LLTC) Reiterated Buy but Raised target to $40 at Gleacher.
Owens-Illinois (NYSE: OI) Cut to Neutral at Goldman Sachs.
Pepco Holdings (NYSE: POM) Raised to Neutral at JPMorgan.
SolarWinds (NYSE: SWI) Cut to Hold at Needham; Cut to Hold at Jefferies; Goldman Sachs cut to Neutral.
Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC) Raised to Outperform at FBR.
Xilinx (NASDAQ: XLNX) Reiterated Buy and Raised target to $33 at Gleacher.
JON C. OGG
Categories: Planet Semiconductor
ON Semi to buy Sanyo Electric chip subsidiary for $366M
Blogs On Semiconductor - Thu, 07/22/2010 - 05:36
Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd. has agreed to sell its loss-making semiconductor subsidiary to On Semiconductor Corp. for $366 million in a mix of stock and cash, which is more than had been previously predicted.
The move allows On Semi to increase its manufacturing scale, broaden its product portfolio and expand its presence in the Japanese market. It will give On Semi annual sales of about $3.5 billion.
The deal is subject to adjustment pursuant to the terms of the transaction and in the most recently completed quarter Sanyo Semiconductor’s annualized revenue was approximately $1.2 billion. The acquisition is expected to be completed before the end of 2010.
The acquisition will add microcontrollers and ASIC capabilities as well as power modules and motor control to On Semi’s portfolio. Sanyo supplies many consumer, automotive and industrial end-markets.
Categories: Planet Semiconductor
Qualcomm's Good Enough Earnings (QCOM)
Blogs On Semiconductor - Wed, 07/21/2010 - 13:17
Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM) has just beaten earnings expectations for its fiscal third quarter and raised guidance for the fourth quarter. The CDMA chipset leader reported adjusted earnings of $0.57 EPS on revenues of $2.71 billion, which compares to Thomson Reuters estimates of $0.54 EPS and $2.63 billion in revenues.
Qualcomm now sees its fourth quarter at $0.39 to $0.43 EPS, or $0.55 to $0.59 on an adjusted EPS basis, with revenues of $2.67 to $2.93 billion. The Thomson Reuters estimates are $0.57 EPS and $2.77 billion in revenues.
Qualcomm has raised its fiscal 2010 targets to a new range of $2.33 billion to $2.37 EPS and $10.7 to $11.0 billion in revenues. Thomson Reuters has estimates of $2.31 EPS and $10.72 billion in revenues.
Cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities were $17.6 billion at the end of the quarter. MSM Shipments rose 10% to 103 million units. Operating cash flow fell 13% at $951 million and operating income was down 11% at $792 million.
While there is not an earth-shattering beat nor an incredibly higher guidance, the price of Qualcomm stock must have already discounted the news. Shares closed down 1.6% at $36.16 versus a 52-week range of $31.63 to $49.80. They are trading up above $37.50 in the initial reaction in the after-hours session.
JON C. OGG
Categories: Planet Semiconductor
Study note of LabVIEW FPGA (1)
Blogs On Semiconductor - Tue, 07/20/2010 - 15:52
Currently I’m studying FPGA module of LabVIEW. It is quite a different task from my previous project. Before this, I was using M series DAQ card with DAQmx. I’m not even sure why I have to use FPGA of this project.
So now I *figure out* the reason might be:
The latency is known on FPGA; there is no OS on the H/W, which means a more robust system; there are more I/O ports for data acquisition; if we take use of the parallel algrithm properly, we might achieve a faster system; FPGA sounds cool.
As I said, the way of programming FPGA is different. It looks like you are using global variable through your target vi (code on the FPGA) and host vi (code on the computer). And you use sequence structure instead of data flow to force the execution order. Error cluster is not recommended, which costs *memory*. Some of my *good* programming habits have to be abandoned when I program on the target vi.
So, what I mastered so far is only to create a project generating digital output on lines or ports. I can either put the ‘calculation’ on the target or on the host. I think the questions need to thought of using FPGA are: Does it need UI? Does is cost lots of memory? Is there any calculation very complex that only can be implemented on the computer? If all the answers are NO, we can put it on the target, or else we have to use the host pc to do the calculation.
My next move is trying to generate a clock together the signal. The rising edge of the clock shold be within signal pulses. This is very useful when we drive the SLM in the future.
Categories: Planet Semiconductor
Xilinx Pwns Space
Blogs On Semiconductor - Tue, 07/20/2010 - 10:51
In space, no one can hear you reconfigure. Space has always had a love/hate relationship with FPGAs. On the one hand, FPGAs are the best technology ever for space use. They eliminate the huge NRE cost associated with extremely low-volume ASIC design, they provide the possibility of in-flight reconfiguration in a location where service calls would be... expensive, to say the least, and they help get that expensive bird in the air faster with their short, low-risk design cycles. On the other hand, SRAM FPGA technology has always been extremely uncomfortable with radiation, which, in space, is plentiful. Since the configuration logic and all of the sequential and memory elements rely on SRAM-like structures, a single wayward neutron can ruin your whole day - flipping a bit where you least expected it and causing strange things to happen very quickly. ....
Categories: Planet Semiconductor
