This week in gEEk: Layoffs, layoffs, and more layoffs; stock roller coaster; speedier memory, logic

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

The unemployment line got a lot longer this week. Hewlett-Packard announced it would cut nearly 25,000 positions, about half of which will impact United States-based employees, as it looks to reorganize its workforce post its EDS buy. Lattice said it would reduce headcount by 14% or about 125 employees. LTX-Credence approved a plan to cut jobs and close some "redundant facilities" as the merger of the test and measurement war-horses continues to progress. And Nvidia said it would cut 360 jobs by the end of its October quarter, which sent its stock up this morning.

To be true, many stocks are up this morning, with Wall Street rallying on a government plans to rescue banks from billions of dollars in debt. As of 11am eastern, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose nearly 360 points, giving it a gain of more than 770 points in two days. That followed Bloody Sunday and Monday’s more than 500 point drop, leading many in our industry to wonder what was in store for tech companies. The topic also encourage to a lively discussion about outsourcing, wealth, and the government’s role in the tech sector in this blog post.

Also generating much discussion is SanDisk’s rejection of Samsung’s $5.85 billion takeover bid. SanDisk claimed Samsung was trying to take advantage of its weak stock price offering $26 a share for stock that closed near $15 on Tuesday. Analysts are divided as to whether SanDisk’s stock will climb over the next year toward its 52-week high of $55.98 or if the company’s shareholders should take the money and run.

If such an acquisition does go through, Samsung would control more than half of NAND shipments. It would also give Samsung better control over NAND ASPs (average selling prices), which are crippling revenue growth in the industry.

Overcapacity isn’t helping either. That will be eased somewhat when Hynix shutters its 200-mm fabs by end of year. In doing so, total Hynix production capacity will decrease 30% by the beginning of 2009 from the end of Q2 2008, which includes reducing DRAM outputs by 20% and NAND flash outputs by 40%.

In other manufacturing news, IBM this week laid out its approach to 22-nm scaling based on software, not EUV lithography. "At 22 nm, we expect to be using virtually the same machines we will use at 32," stated Kevin Warren, director of design technology integration at IBM Research. "In place of new hardware, we will rely on a concept we call Computational Scaling." This is an enormously broad program within IBM that includes in its compass of a new generation of resolution enhancement technology.

IBM also this week announced it has started joint development work with Taiwan-based Industrial Technology Research Institute to explore an approach to solid state memory called "racetrack memory." Big Blue believes such memory could lead to electronic devices capable of storing far more data in the same amount of space than is possible today, with extremely fast boot times, lower cost with stability and durability.

Speed has also been on engineers’ minds at Achronix Semiconductor. The company has taken the wraps off a full product line of field-programmable devices called Speedster chips, claiming moderate-density FPGAs clocking at 1.5 GHz. In densities from 24,576 to 163,840 look-up tables (LUTs) and with the familiar array of block and distributed RAM, 18-by-18 multipliers, fast SerDes, and PLLs, the chips are aimed at moderate-sized logic designs that simply need to go faster than is possible with Altera or Xilinx FPGAs. 

What should be on engineers’ minds, but doesn’t seem to be, is REACH. The EU regulation impacts the use of chemical substances in electronics design and the International Chemical Secretariat this week released its "Substitute It Now" list of 220 chemical substances considered to be possible Substances of Very High Concern under REACH. The EU also said it’s just about ready to go on the first 16 substances to be regulated under REACH.

What’s certainly not under the radar, at least not under the radar of EDN Senior Technical Editor Brian Dipert, are what he describes as "Apple’s accelerating stumbles." As a follow up to his recent iPod coverage and offering examples, Brian says "the mess in Cupertino has gotten even more … err … messy" over the last month. 

Not to be unfair, Brian also took a good hard look at Microsoft’s Zune. But unlike his sour views on Apple’s devices, he describes Zune 3.0 as "quite impressive, broadcast SSID gripes aside" in this blog post.

Could Microsoft’s Zune become more of a rival to the Apple iPod? That would take a lot of branding. Meanwhile, the Redmond giant is dumping Jerry Seinfeld from its marketing strategy. The funny, but somewhat pointless, commercials featuring Jerry and Bill Gates are as over as the "no soup for you!" line. The ads were part of a mega campaign to fight Apple’s "I’m a Mac" advertising and to reinvigorate the Microsoft brand. Now Microsoft has launched a $300 million campaign called "I’m a PC" that will cameo such celebs as Eva Longoria, Deepak Chopra, and Pharrell Williams.

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