The Semiconductor Landscape - II

By SemiWiki

December 31, 2012

It has been a year since my article Semiconductor Landscape in Jan 2012 I wanted to look back into the major events over the year and then anticipate what’s in store going forward. What has happened over the year is much more than what I could foresee. Major consolidation in EDA space – Synopsys acquired Magma, SpringSoft, Ciranova, Eve; consolidation in semiconductor space – IBM acquired Texas Memory System, GlobalFoundries became independent of AMD, Micron is set to acquire Elpida and there were others. The point is that these consolidations are along the expected lines. One thing we have not seen yet is any indication of Qualcomm or Apple having their own foundries, although they could afford one profitably, if not for others’ designs, at least for their own needs. We may need to wait more to hear on that.
 
My tacit understanding in that article and still is that more consolidation will happen in coming years. Main reasons of consolidations are macroeconomic situation, business leadership, technology leadership and IP leadership. Let’s examine the scenarios from each of these perspectives and decipher from there what’s expected to happen –

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