Embedded Technology Journal Update

a techfocus media publication :: September 4, 2007 :: volume VIII, no. 10

FROM THE EDITOR

This week, we look at the implications of MIPS acquisition of analog IP supplier Chipidea. The company figures that we’ll be wanting all sorts of nice analog blocks like power management modules, analog to digital converters, and high-speed interface circuitry to go along with our processor cores, and they’d like to be the ones to sell them to us. Our latest feature article has the details.

Thanks for reading! If there's anything we can do to make our publications more useful to you, please let us know at: comments@embeddedtechjournal.com. If you'd rather sound off in public, please post your comments or questions in our new Journal Forums.

Kevin Morris – Editor
Embedded Technology Journal

EVENTS

Unlock the potential of Unified design at the US / Canada Altium Designer Roadshow!
Held in 16 cities across US/Canada between Oct – Nov 2007, experience how the powerful new features of Altium Designer combine with the unique benefits of Altium’s NanoBoard reprogrammable development platform, to give you the electronics product design tools of the future, today. See how you can directly influence the hardware your software runs on without having to become a hardware engineer!
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Strengthen your skills and speed your time to market
at the ARM Developers’ Conference!
100 track sessions on embedded applications from hardware and software partners and ARM Licensees. Design centers and exhibitions on the show floor, forums and special analyst presentations, and the largest exhibition of ARM technologies in the world:
October 2-4, 2007, Santa Clara Convention Center
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ANNOUNCEMENTS

Understand the video market.
Choose the right processor and Ecosystem for your application or video end equipment with Texas Instruments.
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CURRENT FEATURE ARTICLES

Expanding IP Horizons
MIPS Acquires Chipidea
Mediocre Embedded Systems?
by Dick Selwood, Embedded Technology Journal
Modelling From the Belly of the Whale
by Dick Selwood, Embedded Technology Journal
Lessons from LinuxWorld
It’s Not Just for Servers Anymore
Nailing Jell-O to a Wall
Saving Software from the Slippery Slope
Imagine Cup 2007
Embedded Challenge Heats Up
Where am I?
GPS in Embedded Devices
IMEC
Research for the Real World

JOURNAL WEBCASTS

NEW!! Video Processing: Making the Picture Clear
(Texas Instruments)

Tips to Avoid Simultaneous Switching Output (SSO) Noise Problems (Lattice)

Leverage the best performance and debug features with the latest release of ModelSim (Mentor Graphics)

LatticeXP2 FPGAs: SRAM + Embedded Flash = No Compromise, Full-Featured Non-Volatile FPGA Design Solutions (Lattice)

Learn to Design with Stratix III FPGAs’ Programmable Power Technology & Selectable Core Voltage (Altera)

Using Processors in FPGAs? The industry's only soft IP ARM7 core for Flash FPGAs (Actel)

Expanding IP Horizons
MIPS Acquires Chipidea

Bricks and Mortar acquisitions are simple to conceptualize. When Ford buys a smaller car company, we assume that the other company will carry on producing basically the same products they’ve been making for years, only under the new banner. In many cases, the product line is not even re-branded, and many customers will not even be aware of the change. Administrative responsibilities are re-shuffled, corporate accounting reports look different, and, beyond that, everything appears to be business as usual from the outside.

Technology acquisitions, however, particularly those involving products like software or hardware IP, can give us that ice cream headache if we think about them too hard. Many times, the motivation for the acquisition is what throws us off the track. Some acquisitions are made simply to eliminate a competitor from the market. In other cases, the active customers are the valued commodity. Other times, the talent of specific groups of employees may be the golden goose. Or, the object may be a patent portfolio that conflicts with a strategic technology direction. It is rare to see a software or hardware IP company acquire another for the old-fashioned reason – just to make more money.

However, MIPS’s recent acquisition of analog IP supplier Chipidea seems to be just that, and the customers will probably come out ahead as a bonus. MIPS has long been a leading supplier of IP for system-on-chip (SoC) designers. According to the company, prior to this acquisition, MIPS was the third largest design IP supplier, behind ARM and Synopsys. The acquisition of Chipidea, the company says, puts them now at number two. Chipidea had claimed the number eight in that overall design IP market and the number one slot for analog IP. Why would we design engineers care about all this ranking and rating? Are we having an office pool for something more technical than sports? Probably it just gives us something to pressure the salesmen with when they come to call. “Well, I realize that you’re number four, but the number three company was just here yesterday, and they said…” [more]