This week in gEEk: Manufacturing drama; solar shines; SOI sluggish

Welcome to This week in gEEk, EDN’s short review of the week’s happenings.

Oh, the soap opera that is manufacturing. If it isn’t a question of whether AMD will sell its fabs or layoffs like those that could soon come to Atmel on the high cost of manufacturing, it’s a matter of the top foundries feeling a pinch as Q3 progresses. TSMC and UMC this week said they expect slower sales than usual in the quarter.

Also feeling a bit sluggish is the SOI market, which, following the general trend of the semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem, saw sales slow in 2007 to a 6% year-over-year revenue increase at $654 million. The single-digit growth pales in comparison to the 46% and greater growth in each of the three previous years, according to VLSI Research. VLSI further reports that 2008 SOI sales are expected to be slightly down from 2007 and that the following years will see double-digit growths stimulated by the 45-nm transition.

On the flip side, solar needs no stimulus. With Intel this week making its third solar move since the beginning of the year, a $12.5 million investment in semiconductor and thin film materials supplier Voltaix, and MIT researchers introducing a way to store solar energy for use when the sun doesn’t shine, a discovery that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, the solar tech market’s outlook is sunnier than a San Diego morning.

Broadcom, near to San Diego in Irvine, Calif, felt  the glow of a sunny analyst comment this week when American Technology Research’s Doug Freedman suggested that AMD may sell the company its ATI consumer TV chip unit and that Broadcom could grow the unit faster than AMD has based on its consumer-focused direct field sales network. 

Also feeling some warmth this week was Microsoft, when EDN’s Brian Dipert came to the defense of Vista. After an evaluation on his own hardware, Brian says in this blog post that he doesn’t get all the negativity surrounding the OS, except that maybe it’s just the latest example of “the seeming always-trendy Microsoft-bashing phenomenon.” 

True, Microsoft, behemoth that it is, always attracts attention. According to a recent EDN cover story, magnetic measurement tools are also attracting attention nowadays. Explains Technical Editor Paul Rako, measuring magnetic fields requires specialized sensors and knowledge of physics and electronics. One can use a variety of instruments, including gaussmeters, teslameters, fluxmeters, and magnetometers, to measure magnetism, and prices for these units range from pennies to hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the end, it’s a matter of finding the right fit for your application.

EDN’s Margery Conner followed that “find-the-right-fit” logic in a PowerSource blog post this week where she looked at two uses of one common energy storage device and discusses why a warm-and-fuzzy coffee thermos and a nasty, violent hand grenade can both be accurate models of a laptop battery. "We’re entering a time when there is no one-size-fits-all energy storage, and we will have to tailor our energy sources—and their storage—very carefully to their application in order to wring out the maximum efficiency in a cost-effective way," she writes in the blog entry. 

Finally, the ink has dried on the NXP and STMicroelectronics deal that sees the two electronics industry giants bring together their wireless operations to form joint venture ST-NXP Wireless. With its completely uncreative name, the venture will launch tomorrow and is expected to enter the market in number three position, based on the combined 2007 revenue from the parent companies.

Have something to say on the above noted happenings? Share your comments on this week’s news and analysis below.

–Suzanne Deffree, Managing Editor, News