Author Topic: Cypress merges with SPansion in 5 Bn$ deal  (Read 20954 times)

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Offline free_electronTopic starter

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Cypress merges with SPansion in 5 Bn$ deal
« on: March 16, 2015, 05:59:17 pm »
another one bites the dust...

So far :
-IBM sold off all their waferfabs ( well, they gave their fabs + 1.5 Billion $ to take them ... , not exactly a sale) to GLobal Foundries
- NXP and Freescale merge

and now

Cypres and Spansion in 5 Bn$ deal

i predict two more mergers in the coming weeks/months
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Offline Mechanical Menace

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Re: Cypress merges with SPansion in 5 Bn$ deal
« Reply #1 on: March 16, 2015, 06:07:17 pm »
Oh don't tease with the predictions  :P

But Samsung buying somebody?
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Offline miguelvp

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Re: Cypress merges with SPansion in 5 Bn$ deal
« Reply #2 on: March 16, 2015, 06:11:37 pm »
« Last Edit: March 16, 2015, 07:12:14 pm by miguelvp »
 

Offline free_electronTopic starter

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Offline calexanian

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Re: Cypress merges with SPansion in 5 Bn$ deal
« Reply #4 on: March 16, 2015, 07:06:11 pm »
Another step towards more expensive chips.
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Offline nctnico

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Re: Cypress merges with SPansion in 5 Bn$ deal
« Reply #5 on: March 16, 2015, 07:18:54 pm »
Semiconductors firms are like a lava lamp. They split and absorb activities all the time.
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Online mikeselectricstuff

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Re: Cypress merges with SPansion in 5 Bn$ deal
« Reply #6 on: March 16, 2015, 07:44:56 pm »
Another step towards more expensive chips.
Spansion's SPI flash is insanely cheap - hope this doesn't change  >:(
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Offline Stonent

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Re: Cypress merges with SPansion in 5 Bn$ deal
« Reply #7 on: March 17, 2015, 04:17:39 am »
another one bites the dust...

So far :
-IBM sold off all their waferfabs ( well, they gave their fabs + 1.5 Billion $ to take them ... , not exactly a sale) to GLobal Foundries
- NXP and Freescale merge

and now

Cypres and Spansion in 5 Bn$ deal

i predict two more mergers in the coming weeks/months

I'll just randomly pick one off the top of my head

TI/Maxim
Or how about
TI/Linear?
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Offline free_electronTopic starter

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Re: Cypress merges with SPansion in 5 Bn$ deal
« Reply #8 on: March 17, 2015, 04:43:55 am »

TI/Maxim
Or how about
TI/Linear?
maxim-linear ...

linear-analog ...
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Offline daqq

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Re: Cypress merges with SPansion in 5 Bn$ deal
« Reply #9 on: March 17, 2015, 07:21:45 am »
Damn, can't say I like this trend... Seems we might end up with very few giant "western" friendly (english datasheet, tools and documentation, western-ish corporate culture, etc.) semiconductors.
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Offline Balaur

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Re: Cypress merges with SPansion in 5 Bn$ deal
« Reply #10 on: March 17, 2015, 08:15:09 am »
Damn, can't say I like this trend... Seems we might end up with very few giant "western" friendly (english datasheet, tools and documentation, western-ish corporate culture, etc.) semiconductors.

Even worse when some activities gets "optimized" during the merge and your pool of customers gets smaller every year. Even if the total business volume may stay the same (not guaranteed though), bigger customers for small businesses is rarely a good news.
 

Online Psi

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Re: Cypress merges with SPansion in 5 Bn$ deal
« Reply #11 on: March 18, 2015, 06:35:34 am »
Microchip-Atmel


*Psi ducks
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Offline Wilksey

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Re: Cypress merges with SPansion in 5 Bn$ deal
« Reply #12 on: March 18, 2015, 11:53:18 am »
Microchip-Atmel


*Psi ducks
:-DD

Let the controversy begin...
 

Offline dannyf

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Re: Cypress merges with SPansion in 5 Bn$ deal
« Reply #13 on: March 18, 2015, 01:24:16 pm »
Quote
Microchip-Atmel

Microchip is done - or has been done for quite some time now.

Atmel has a chance of making it.
================================
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Offline calexanian

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Re: Cypress merges with SPansion in 5 Bn$ deal
« Reply #14 on: March 18, 2015, 05:56:20 pm »
Microchip-Atmel


*Psi ducks
:-DD

Let the controversy begin...

Plugging ears and not listening anymore!!  :scared:
Charles Alexanian
Alex-Tronix Control Systems
 

Offline photon

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Re: Cypress merges with SPansion in 5 Bn$ deal
« Reply #15 on: March 19, 2015, 07:51:18 pm »
And the winner is: Microsemi - Vitesse

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1326074
 

Offline mrflibble

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Re: Cypress merges with SPansion in 5 Bn$ deal
« Reply #16 on: March 20, 2015, 12:14:11 pm »
Mmmh, this trend sure will mess up the availability of some nice parts.

Besides the drawbacks can anyone think of advantages? Only a few large foundries on the planet with advanced processes that a smaller company would not be able to afford to maintain ==> better processes ==> awesome parts?

For the digital side I'd consider it a case of "who cares?", but for niche analog not so sure...

 

Offline Mechanical Menace

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Re: Cypress merges with SPansion in 5 Bn$ deal
« Reply #17 on: March 20, 2015, 12:26:45 pm »
For the digital side I'd consider it a case of "who cares?", but for niche analog not so sure...

Is there any benefit to using those advanced processes for analogue applications?
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Offline mrflibble

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Re: Cypress merges with SPansion in 5 Bn$ deal
« Reply #18 on: March 20, 2015, 12:37:59 pm »
Is there any benefit to using those advanced processes for analogue applications?
Wouldn't know. But that question touches on what I'm getting at. If there is a big consolidation and you end up with a couple of large foundries, then you don't have the small specialty foundries anymore. If those few large foundries mostly spend their money on processes that are optimized for digital, then you don't have foundries that can do niche analog. Probably not as black and white as all that, but looks like the result just might be less variety of useful analog parts.

But besides the drawback I was trying to think of any positive aspects, and specifically for endangered analog parts species. ;)
 

Offline free_electronTopic starter

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Re: Cypress merges with SPansion in 5 Bn$ deal
« Reply #19 on: March 20, 2015, 03:01:07 pm »
For the digital side I'd consider it a case of "who cares?", but for niche analog not so sure...

Is there any benefit to using those advanced processes for analogue applications?
nope. no advantage. in fact the digital processes are so 'leaky' it is bloody hard to do analog.
you may shrink a digital transistor down to 18 nanometer but once you need to drive 10 milliampere on an I/o you still need a big whopping transistor to do that
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Offline T3sl4co1l

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Re: Cypress merges with SPansion in 5 Bn$ deal
« Reply #20 on: March 20, 2015, 03:13:40 pm »
Not sure... logic fabs range from boring 3.3/5V HC CMOS range stuff (I think 200nm up to, yes, 2um fabs are still hacking away at silicon as far as I know) down to 50-200nm LVCMOS (3.3V max or thereabouts) and further (with the ~1V stuff being 20-100nm GHz stuff, and occasionally odd fancy things like Intel's FinGate stuff).  These are all capable of analog circuits of modest to high speed, with the main downside that offset voltages (in diffamps and such) aren't generally all that well controlled, and references are hard to make (usually, a substrate-grounded BJT structure has to be half-assed into existence from N-wells and such, so a ratio of emitter areas and current densities can be used for a bandgap reference).  On the upside, tall stacks of metal and SiO2 layers allow transmission lines and inductors of modest Q to be built (typically a Q peak of 10-20 in the 2-20GHz range), which makes power amplifiers and filters for low-GHz band circuitry feasible.

It would seem to me, as time goes on, the biggest fabs will also have to invest in the most diverse -- as well as the largest, most productive machinery and techniques -- to maintain their market share.  Maybe they don't, and it's more than possible to thrive making only CMOS.  But some examples of diversity (that I recall reading about, but don't really know how common they are in practice) include copper metallization, HfO2 gate oxide, ferroelectric gate oxide (i.e., turning DRAM into FeRAM), various coatings, passivations (Si3N4, etc.), platings (Au, Ni, ??) and various optimizations (supposedly, DRAM is hard to make in a general CMOS process, so MCUs rarely have it onboard, using SRAM even though it's expensive).  Not to mention all the things needed to do MEMS, IR to UV optics, thermal and more.  It's starting to look less like computers and more like "Periodic Table Smorgasbord-on-a-chip".  Which is pretty amazing...

Apparently, fancy stuff like SiGe:C is even being used for boring parts like op-amps.  When you rub together a few hundred 60GHz+ fT HBTs, you can get curiously low noise levels, while still achieving average or above-average GBW.

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Offline T3sl4co1l

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Re: Cypress merges with SPansion in 5 Bn$ deal
« Reply #21 on: March 20, 2015, 03:15:50 pm »
For the digital side I'd consider it a case of "who cares?", but for niche analog not so sure...

Is there any benefit to using those advanced processes for analogue applications?
nope. no advantage. in fact the digital processes are so 'leaky' it is bloody hard to do analog.
you may shrink a digital transistor down to 18 nanometer but once you need to drive 10 milliampere on an I/o you still need a big whopping transistor to do that

I've always wonder what they settle for on FPGAs.  The pin drivers are apparently capable (i.e., they meet the specs for whatever they're configured as, whether LVDS or 20mA LVCMOS), but the datasheet goes to lengths to describe the limitations and vulnerabilities of them (transient peak voltages, DC loads).

And that's on the 3.3V (or whatever) capable IO blocks, which are (one would hope?) a different process to the 1.2V core section, and so on.

TIm
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Offline wolfield

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Re: Cypress merges with SPansion in 5 Bn$ deal
« Reply #22 on: April 02, 2015, 02:58:59 pm »
Not so long ago Infineon acquired International Rectifier:
http://www.infineon.com/cms/en/about-infineon/international-rectifier/
Both companies have extensive portfolios full of innovations in power electronics, so I want to believe that this move may be beneficial for both. On the other hand Infineon's price policy never was the best.
« Last Edit: April 02, 2015, 03:05:21 pm by wolfield »
 

Offline Scrts

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Re: Cypress merges with SPansion in 5 Bn$ deal
« Reply #23 on: April 02, 2015, 03:05:30 pm »
The next one is Intel merging with Altera. Alteras' shares have been frozen. The price has been fixed.
 

Offline nuno

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Re: Cypress merges with SPansion in 5 Bn$ deal
« Reply #24 on: April 02, 2015, 03:28:58 pm »
Microchip-Atmel

*Psi ducks

Was attempted circa 2009, actually Microchip placed a bid for ATMEL, but ended up not happening.

Here's one, but just google for "microchip to buy atmel"

http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/02/10/us-atmel-takeover-microchip-idUSTRE5197X120090210
 


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