(This is a roundup of last week’s semiconductor/EDA industry news by Abhijit Athavale founder/editor of PuneChips – Pune’s forum for the semiconductor industry. For more information about PuneChips see the PuneTech wiki profile of PuneChips)

This is my first attempt at sending out a digest of Semi/EDA news from last week. I am also peppering it with my own, slightly irreverent comments, so feedback from you is greatly appreciated. I will also try to put in at least one off topic item somewhere just to see if you are reading this! Whoever points out the OT item, will get a reward – your name will get a mention in next week’s news.

Markets

• Chip market to contract 21.3% in 2009: More gloom and doom. While everyone has their own prediction, real decline will only be apparent Q1 of 2010 as a hindsight; singularly unhelpful as a forecasting tool.
• Art De Geus (CEO, Synopsys) says that Companies need differentiators to sell products, not lower prices: Thank you Art, for stating the obvious. The problem has become so acute that all ASSPs targeting an application look pretty much the same (albeit with minor differences) and it is almost impossible to dislodge an establish vendor based on anything by TTM and Pricing. Art also says that verification is a top three item for designers so there should be plenty of opportunities here.
• Mayan Civilization fell due to local resource overuse: All Ye take heed. An analysis of wooden samples takes from six major temples showed worsening quality of construction and material, indicating widespread deforestation.
• Minorities unrepresented in Tech: This is a silly study with a silly result as anyone who has ever worked in Tech knows. Why do people waste money on generating such stuff is a big unknown!
• EE Times list of 10 Companies in Trouble: This is not entirely surprising, but in general you can say that DRAM business sucks and renaming your company a la NXP does not always work …

PC/Processor

• Intel buys Windriver for $884 million: Possible that Intel is now targeting embedded apps. I wonder if they will launch another crush operation against Motorola (Freescale now). This on the heels of the rumor that Nvidia is thinking about a new x86 based processor.
• Microsoft to exclude ARM based netbooks from Windows 7: Is that a surefire way of making sure that ARM based netbooks don’t get popular with the non-geeky crowd?
• Larry Ellison wants more Java on Netbooks and Phones: Here goes Larry again. Anyone remember his attempt at pushing a network PC a few years ago? A PC or a phone either has Java or not – how do you get more or less Java? And, I don’t think he intends to spill Coffee on the machines 🙂
• Intel launches the CULV Processor: What is a CULV – this is just as bad as BING. Wonder if Intel and MSFT used the same agency to come up with the respective names. China may be the main market for this, so they are probably betting on getting this pronounced as CURVE anyway.

Mobile

• Palm Pre getting rave reviews: While this may be so, LG’s iPhone clones have become very popular. Does LG have an app store as well?

Storage

• Tech firms predict 18% drop in Storage sales: Storage is getting commoditized like everything else – demand for storage is increasing while prices are falling.
• Broadcom extends deadline on Emulex offer: Broadcom claims it can save costs, but the real reason may be that Emulex/QLogic are threatening its Ethernet business line with their FCoE chips.

Technology

• Flexible Memory: The researchers at National Institute of Standards and Technology in the US claim that this technology can be used to print memory as easily as printing a slide. I can’t wait for the day when I add more memory to my machine by photocopying it at the neighborhood store …