This week in gEEk: Say goodbye to Barrett, nearly 7000 more jobs, and catheters (yes, catheters)

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

The United States got its new leader this week, just as a semiconductor industry leader decided to step down.

Obama became president of the USA Tuesday, briefly acknowledging technology’s role in America’s future prosperity in his inauguration speech.  And Craig Barrett announced plans to retire from Intel in May. Intel did not state specifically why the 35-year company veteran was making his exit, but odds are he’s just ready to retire from his posts. After all, Barrett, age 69, has spent half his life at the MPU leader.

Barrett’s retirement announcement was the second piece of news from Intel this week. The company stated on Thursday that it would close or halt production at five of its plants and to lay off up to 6000 employees as it aligns its manufacturing capacity to current weak demand and market conditions. The company maintained that its actions will not impact deployment of new 45-nm and 32-nm manufacturing capacity.

Intel rival AMD also maintained that its 45-nm and 32-nm chip plans and manufacturing asset spin off were on track when reporting its Q4 results this week. Those statements were muddled, however, by December quarter numbers recording a revenue decline and a narrowed loss. 

Just prior to its earnings announcement, AMD announced it has sold certain handset and multimedia assets to Qualcomm for $65 million, providing it with some much needed cash and assisting in its efforts to reduce staff.

Meanwhile, 900 more jobs will be cut at Rohm and Haas. The actions follow on a 925 employee layoff the company announced in June 2008.

On the "bright" side, iSuppli this week reported that LED market revenue is expected to "outshine" the overall semiconductor market this year with 2.9% revenue growth estimated. "LEDs are forecast for growth this year—a highly unusual item in our semiconductor forecast, given that almost all other components will suffer revenue contractions in 2009," said iSuppli’s Dale Ford.

ISuppli also reported this week that China’s semiconductor market revenue is expected to fall 5.8% in 2009, marking perhaps the first sales decline in the history of the nation’s chip business.

That’s a big change from just a few years ago when China seemed to offer this endless sea of growth, swimming with opportunity. Speaking of swimming, EDN’s Margery Conner this week discussed micro robots that can swim up arteries, offering advantages over a catheter. Creative as she always is, Margery manages to tie the technology to a popular Uncle Kracker song. Read on to see how. 

Finally, the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) is reportedly reviewing Apple’s disclosures about the CEO’s health problems to make certain that investors were not misled and that the company’s stock was not falsely impacted.

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