What Does Semiconductor Industry Consolidation Mean for Embedded Systems Designers?

By _Inside DSP

July 2, 2015

The semiconductor industry has been on a head-spinning merger binge lately. NXP is acquiring Freescale. Avago is acquiring Broadcom. Intel is acquiring Altera.

Much has been written about the motivations for these mergers, and about the implications for investors in the merged firms. But so far, little has been said publicly about the consequences for customers. For designers of embedded systems, the most obvious result of these mergers is fewer suppliers to choose from. In itself, fewer suppliers is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if it means that the remaining suppliers are healthy. But for most system designers, this industry consolidation also means fewer processors to choose from.

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