Introduction: In recent years, with the upgrading and competition of the electronics industry, various management expenses and labor costs have increased. Various resource integration, mergers and acquisitions, and business supplementary mergers and acquisitions between enterprises have occurred frequently. Today we will take stock of them together. Let’s take a look at the well-known mergers and acquisitions that have occurred in the IC semiconductor industry in the second decade of the 21st century. We will also conduct an in-depth analysis of the reasons behind the mergers and acquisitions to understand the trends and industrial structure of the entire IC semiconductor industry.
January 19, 2016 Microchip acquires Atmel
According to the New York Times, American chip manufacturer Microchip Technology announced that it will acquire its counterpart Atmel for US$3.6 billion, setting off another wave of mergers and acquisitions in the semiconductor industry. Chipmakers have been joining forces to reduce costs and increase scale.
Previously, Microchip Technology acquired 37-year-old chip manufacturer Micrel for US$839 million in May 2015, Supertex for US$394 million in 2014, and privately held Brussels company EqcoLogic in 2013. Like Microchip Technology, other chip companies have also joined the wave of acquisitions, such as Avago's $37 billion acquisition of Broadcom, creating the largest merger in the semiconductor industry.
Microchip Technology President and CEO Steve Sanghi said: "As the semiconductor industry continues to consolidate, Microchip Technology has implemented a very successful integration strategy through a series of acquisitions. Compared with organic growth over the past few years, Microchip Technology Our revenue growth rate has doubled.” In order to merge with Microchip Technology, Atmel terminated the merger agreement with Dialog Semiconductor and paid a termination fee of US$137.3 million. Impact after the acquisition of
: Microchip’s acquisition of Atmel has reshuffled the rankings of the top three suppliers in the microcontroller (MCU) market in recent months.
This wave of unprecedented mergers and acquisitions (MA) over the past two years has dramatically rewritten the competitive landscape of the entire semiconductor industry. Perhaps the most drastic change is in the MCU field, because within the next few months, another acquisition will once again subvert the existing ranking of the top three suppliers in the market.
Just as NXP Semiconductors acquired Freescale Semiconductor and became the second largest supplier in the MCU market, in less than two months, Microchip will also acquire Atmel quickly climbed to the third position in the MCU market. "We see attractive financial and strategic advantages in acquiring Atmel," said Steve Sanghi, Microchip's president and CEO. "Combining the capabilities of Microchip and Atmel will create a heavyweight player in the MCU market and allow Microchip to move from The fourth position in the MCU market has advanced to third place (according to Gartner's latest market share data). "
In addition, according to market research company IHS Global. Inc. said that Microchip is currently the fifth largest supplier of in the MCU market. After the acquisition of Atmel, which is expected to be completed in the second quarter, it is expected to significantly surpass Infineon AG and STMicroelectronics (STMicroelectronics; ST) and quickly rise to the third place in the market, second only to the currently dominant players. Renesas Electronics and NXP in this market.
During this wave of consolidation, acquisitions by other MCU suppliers have also changed the supplier rankings, including Cypress Semiconductor's acquisition of Spansion last year. Tom Hackenberg, general analyst of embedded processors at
IHS, said that for Microchip, being among the top three MCU suppliers will be a big plus. "When customers start looking for potential solutions, they often first consider the top three suppliers of a certain product."
Hackenburg said that Microchip's acquisition of Atmel is of great significance. He pointed out that manufacturers in the MCU field are all very strong competitors, but each company also has its own differentiated technology.Atmel has touch sensor IP, MEMS sensor interfaces and security technology, which are products that Microchip lacks. "The product portfolio owned by Atmel will undoubtedly bring considerable value to Microchip."
But Hackenburg emphasized that this acquisition also brings considerable challenges, especially the support that the two companies will face after the merger. Problems with many different architectures. Atmel supports ARM architecture, while Microchip uses MIPS architecture. The two companies also have proprietary architectures, including Atmel's AVR and Microchip's PIC architecture.
"They currently have to support a very broad product portfolio with divergent architectures, and that's where I see the challenge," Hackenberg said, adding that a key step will be whether Microchip can provide customers with a clear roadmap that clearly states Which products will continue to be supported and which architectures will be integrated into new products in the future. "These are questions that Microchip must respond to customers after acquiring Atmel."
Microchip Chief Operating Officer Ganesh Moorthy said that the company plans to continue to support these proprietary architectures as well as MIPS and ARM. "I think the multiple architectures that we have are all in a significant position in the market. Each of these architectures has a number of customers using it, a set of tools that can support it, and a significant enough share to individually support sustaining their continued Assignments required for operation
December 14, 2015. Micron acquires Huayaco
American memory maker Micron announced on December 14 that it would acquire all of Huayaco, a joint venture with Formosa Plastics Group, at a price of 30 yuan per share, a premium of 30%, and a total amount of 130 billion yuan. This is the largest acquisition by a foreign investor in the history of Taiwan; at the same time, Nanya will also invest 31.5 billion yuan to acquire Micron’s private equity and become a shareholder of Micron. This is also a rare example of a Taiwanese company becoming a major shareholder of a major international company.
Micron Technology. Technology, Inc. was founded in 1978 and is headquartered in Boise, the capital of Idaho, USA. It has 30,400 full-time employees. It is the largest computer memory chip manufacturer in the United States. Micron Technology established its own wafer manufacturing plant in 1981. the world's largest memory storage and image sensor manufacturer . Through global operations, Micron Technology manufactures and markets DRAM, NAND flash memory, CMOS image sensors, other semiconductor components and memory modules for cutting-edge computing, consumer products, networking and mobile portable products
Huaya Technology. joint stock limited company (abbreviation : Huayake) , founded on January 23, 2003, was originally jointly established by Nanke (affiliated to Formosa Plastics Group) and Infineon. Through cooperation with Infineon, it directly prepared to build a 12-inch wafer fab. , and obtained the authorization from technology partner Qimonda to start DRAM production in October 2008. Guang acquired Qimonda's entire stake in Huayake for US$400 million. Huayake was changed to a joint venture between Nanke and DRAM giant Micron, which mainly provides standard DRAM wafer foundry services.
Impact after the acquisition: . US investment advisors Bernstein and Morgan Stanley (Monopoly) believes that it is common practice for Micron to launch mergers and acquisitions at cyclical downturns, and that the acquisition of Huayaco will be beneficial to Micron's future financial performance. The spin-off benefit will be to consolidate Micron's control over memory technology, and the same is true for Nanya. A big plus.
Bernstein Research report pointed out that Micron acquired Huayake at 30 yuan per share. Although the premium is more than 30%, it is still in line with the target price of Taiwan's memory industry. Micron is expected to have EPS for next fiscal year. It can increase by 12%, and more importantly, it will make it more difficult for China to enter the DRAM industry.
In addition, after acquiring Huayake, Micron will have greater flexibility in controlling and optimizing technology processes and production facilities, and will also have greater flexibility in controlling and optimizing technology processes and production facilities. Micron's free cash flow (FCF), earnings before tax, interest, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), and earnings per share (EPS) will all be positive.
Micron agreed to license Nanya’s 1x and 1ynm DRAM technology and also set out several conditions to ensure that intellectual property rights will not be leaked to China and to prevent over-construction.Morgan Stanley also believes that in addition to the sale proceeds, Nanya can obtain the right to use next-generation DRAM technology, which is beneficial to Nanya. Nanya invested 31.5 billion in Micron, accounting for 6-7% of Micron's current market value, becoming Micron's largest shareholder, but the final shareholding ratio still depends on Micron's stock price after the transaction is completed.
Bernstein believes that this acquisition will consolidate Micron’s camp and increase Micron’s control. In addition, Huayaco expressed confidence in the 20nm process and can increase the yield rate to 80% by the end of this year. Micron also said that it can convert the Huayaco factory to 20nm in the middle of next year, which will help reduce Micron’s manufacturing costs. Subco's production costs.
Morgan Stanley believes that this case is no different from Micron’s previous acquisitions at the trough of the industry cycle. Huayaco is still an asset of Micron in Taiwan. Micron will use Huayaco to issue a joint loan of NT$80 billion, becoming Micron’s acquisition of China. Micron's main source of funding is only NT$19.7 billion in cash.
November 18, 2015 ON Semiconductor acquires Fairchild Semiconductor
ON Semiconductor (ON Semiconductor) announced on Wednesday that it will acquire Fairchild Semiconductor International for US$2.4 billion in cash. This is the latest merger and acquisition deal in the rapidly consolidating semiconductor industry.
ON Semiconductor (ON Semiconductor) was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. It is engaged in the design, manufacture and sale of semiconductor parts for electronic systems and products. The company's operations are divided into three departments: application product department, standard product department and system solution department; the application department provides analog, mixed-signal and advanced logic application special circuits and application-specific standard product solutions, and provides voltage and current selection solutions. solution , as well as wafer and manufacturing services, including integrated passive component technology, IC design, packaging and silicon technology technology; the Standard Products segment provides discrete and integrated semiconductor products to perform application functions such as switching, signal conditioning, circuit protection, signal amplification and reference voltage, and develops low-capacitance protection and integrated signal conditioning products to support data transfer rates, micro Packaging and switching and rectification technologies; the System Solutions segment supplies analog and mixed-signal ICs, microcontrollers, and digital signal processors ( DSP), analog and digital tuners, smart power modules, and memory and discrete semiconductors.
company provides various applications for end customer markets, such as automotive, communications, computing, consumer electronics, multimedia, industry, smart grid and military/aerospace industry. includes automotive electronics, smart phones, multimedia tablets, wearables Electronics, computers, servers, industrial buildings and home automation systems, consumer white goods, LED lighting, power supplies, network and telecommunications equipment, medical diagnostics, imaging and healthy hearing, and sensor networks. The company also provides OEM, distribution and electronic manufacturing services .
Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation, a subsidiary of Fairchild Semiconductor, designs, manufactures and sells power analog, power discrete and non-power semiconductor solutions. The business operations are divided into three divisions: Switching Power Solutions (SPS), Analog Power and Signal Solutions (APSS) and Standard Products Group (SPG). The
SPS department provides analog and mixed-signal ICs, multi-chip smart power modules, and discrete power products, such as diodes and transistors, power MOSFETs, and STEALTH, which provides power conversion and regulation services. Brands include SupreMOS, SuperFET, PowerTrench, UniFET, SPM, PowerTrenchr and QFET. The
APSS division provides analog and mixed-signal ICs for controlling discrete semiconductors, including power switching, regulation, signal amplification, power distribution and power loss, and signal path products , such as analog and digital switches, USB switches, video filters, Audio amplifiers, DC-DC ICs, MOSFET and IGBT gate driver ICs, and power factor correction ICs are used in consumer products, computing, displays, TVs, lighting and industrial markets.
SPG division offers a wide range of semiconductor products such as MOSFETs, junction field effect transistors, high power bipolar, discrete small signal transistors, Zener diodes, rectifiers, bridge rectifiers, Schottky components and diodes, bipolar Type regulator , shunt regulator, low voltage linear regulator, standard operational amplifier/comparator, low voltage operational amplifier, infrared product and others. Products are used in mobile devices, industrial, home appliances, automotive, consumer electronics and computing markets. The company was founded in 1959 and is headquartered in San Jose, California. Impact after the acquisition of
: ON Semi said that based on the current combined annual revenue of the two companies of US$5 billion, the merged company will become the second largest supplier in the field of power semiconductor components, mainly focusing on automotive, industrial and smart devices. Application areas such as mid-range mobile phones. ON Semi President and CEO Keith Jackson said in a conference call announcing the transaction that the main purpose of the case is to enhance the company's technical capabilities in the mid-/high-power semiconductor field and expand its presence in the overall analog and power chip markets.
Jackson said: "The complementary product lines of the two companies allow us to further strengthen the value proposition to customers and channel partners by providing solutions across the entire power range."
"Competitive situation in the industry It's changing rapidly," Jackson said. " The consolidation will significantly change our competitive advantage; since there is a process and a company seems to be for sale, we believe that from the perspective of competitive situation, we should make a deal instead of just sitting back and watching ." He also predicted the future of the semiconductor industry. The trend of consolidation will continue to occur. As long as financial market interest rates remain at a relatively low level and the growth momentum of the overall semiconductor industry continues to be sluggish, more consolidation will occur.
On October 21, 2015, Lam Research acquired KLA-Tencor
According to foreign media reports, semiconductor equipment manufacturer Lam Research (Colin Research and Development) will acquire its competitor KLA-Tencor (Ke Lei) company for approximately US$10.6 billion. . KLA-Tencor's shares rose about 18.5% to $63.85 in pre-market trading on Wednesday, still lower than Lam Research's acquisition offer of $67.02 per share.
Lam Research Corporation is one of the major suppliers of wafer manufacturing equipment and services to the world's semiconductor industry. LAM Research ranked 20th in Fortune's 2008 ranking of highly profitable technology companies. As Internet equipment demands cheaper chips and new products, chipmakers increasingly need to consolidate their supply chains. This has led to record-breaking mergers and acquisitions in the chip manufacturing field this year.
KLA-Tencor Corporation is a provider of process control and yield management solutions engaged in the design, manufacturing and marketing of semiconductors and related nanoelectronics industries. Its products include chip manufacturing, wafer manufacturing, mask manufacturing, complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) and image sensor manufacturing, solar energy manufacturing, LED manufacturing, data storage media/read-write head manufacturing, microelectronic mechanical system manufacturing and general/laboratory applications, etc.
The company also offers refurbished KLA-Tencor tools, along with its KT certification program to customers building larger design rule sets and product support services. The company's products are used in many other industries, including LED, data storage and solar energy industries, as well as general materials research.
After the merger of the two companies, the CEO position will still be held by Martin Anstice, the current CEO of Lam Research. The combined company will have a 42% market share in the semiconductor manufacturing equipment market. Both Lam Research and KLA-Tencor are major equipment suppliers to Samsung and TSMC. Impact on after the acquisition of
: Lam Research and KLA-Tencor are both headquartered in the United States. Although they both provide manufacturing equipment for wafer fabs, the products of the two companies do not overlap, and the equipment functions also have their own characteristics. After the merger, the company's products The scope will be further expanded.
Colin R&D company is the third largest semiconductor equipment manufacturer in the world after Applied Materials and ASML. It was founded in Silicon Valley, California, in 1980. Its main business is semiconductor dry and wet etching machines. Sales, maintenance and service of machines and thin film deposition machines. The Taiwan subsidiary was established in 1994. Colin R&D will establish an Asia-Pacific operations center in Taiwan this year to engage in semiconductor equipment refurbishment and R&D centers.
Kelei's equipment is mainly used to improve semiconductor process yield and provide process control and measurement solutions , and has a training center in Taiwan. The Gartner report points out that the world's top five semiconductor equipment manufacturers account for nearly 60% of the market, showing a trend of ever-larger companies, which is detrimental to the competition of small manufacturers.
Currently, semiconductor manufacturers are actively deploying next-generation manufacturing processes. On logic chips, 16nm FinFET and 14nm processes are approaching maturity. However, starting from 2016, 10nm and even 7nm will be released one by one, and the progress of chip manufacturing equipment replacement will continue; In addition, in the field of storage, the development to 16nm has encountered a bottleneck, and manufacturing equipment is a hurdle that fabs must overcome. Faced with such technical challenges, it is not surprising that Lam Research and KLA-Tencor are working together to keep warm.
After the merger, the company will leverage its respective advantages to develop new equipment, and its size will surpass other competitors. According to analysis, Lam Research and KLA-Tencor will occupy half of the country, with a 42% share of the wafer manufacturing equipment market ; In addition, the new company's annual expenses will be reduced by US$250 million.
Colin CEO Martin Anstice said, "Kelin R&D and Kelei promise that based on the innovation, leading products, and operational experience of the two companies, the cooperation between the two parties can build strong customer trust and provide a higher level of difference on issues that are critical to customers." technology and the speed of solving problems,”
said further. , "I strongly believe that this transaction is a good outcome for Kelei shareholders. Since the product projects and technologies of both parties are complementary, and there is no product overlap problem, the combination of the two parties will be beneficial to our respective employees and professional development and growth." Greater opportunity to become an industry leader"
October 21, 2015. Western Digital acquires SanDisk
Hard disk manufacturer Western Digital (Western Digital) announced that it will acquire memory chip manufacturer SanDisk for approximately US$19 billion. SanDisk is one of the world's largest flash memory manufacturers. Many of the U disks and camera memory cards we usually use are produced by SanDisk. In recent years, Western Digital's hard drive main business has been continuously impacted by flash memory products. The acquisition of SanDisk helped Western Digital quickly occupy a place in the flash memory industry.
Western Digital Corporation (Western Digital, stock code: WDC.US) was founded in 1970 and is headquartered in Irvine, California. It mainly develops, manufactures and sells data storage solutions through its subsidiaries, allowing consumers, enterprises and governments to , and other institutions can be used to create, manage, and preserve digital data content. The company provides hard drives and solid-state drives for desktop computers and notebook computers, as well as Enterprise Performance and Enterprise Capacity enterprise-class hard drives. In addition, we also provide hard drives for consumer electronics, which can be used in surveillance cameras, game consoles, security monitoring systems, set-top boxes, multi-function printers, entertainment and car navigation systems, etc.
's hard drive brands include WD, HGST, and G-Technology, with product capacities ranging from 500GB to 24TB, and provide a variety of different transmission interfaces including USB 2.0, USB 3.0, external SATA, FireWire, Thunderbolt, Ethernet connections, etc. The company's products are sold to global computer manufacturers, distributors, retailers, etc., and are also provided to storage device subsystem suppliers, professional foundries, network and social media infrastructure providers, and PC and Mac foundries.
SanDisk is an American multinational company that designs and sells flash memory card products. It was founded in 1988 by Eli Harari and non-volatile memory technology expert Sanjay Mehrotra. It was listed on NASDAQ in November 1995. SanDisk makes many different types of flash memory, including a variety of memory cards and a range of USB flash drives. SanDisk sells both high-end and low-end flash memory.Impact after the acquisition of
: For people in the industry, it is not unusual for Western Digital to acquire SanDisk. It has been reported for a long time that WD, Seagate and Micron are all approaching SanDisk to negotiate acquisitions. In the end, Micron withdrew and Western Digital negotiated alone. Why did Western Digital acquire a Flash manufacturer?
1. Are you interested in SanDisk’s market layout?
What does SanDisk have? SanDisk has more than 5,000 flash memory intellectual property rights, a complete set of excellent consumer-grade flash memory business systems, camera memory card business, plus consumer and enterprise-grade SSD, PCIe flash memory, 3D chip development, Infiniflash array and other system components. It can be said that it is in the entire flash memory solution Taking both hard and soft into consideration.
SanDisk began to enter the enterprise market as early as 2011. The representative acquisition case is Pliant's SSD controller technology. Then it acquired FlashSoft in February 2012 to obtain its PCIe flash cache software solution. In July 2013, it acquired SMART Storage's SSD and flash DIMM business for US$307 million. Fusion-io was acquired in June 2014. Therefore, Western Digital can provide customers with flash memory solutions without any effort. Since the development of
SSD solid state drives, traditional mechanical hard drives are rarely seen. The main reason is the lack of Flash resources. This is why WD has not made any achievements here. Western Digital is acquiring SanDisk this time, and it also values SanDisk as the world's top three Flash suppliers to provide guarantee for future enterprise-level NAND chip storage.
2, Western Digital’s strategic layout
In March 2012, Western Digital acquired its competitor HGST for a total purchase price of US$4.8 billion, creating a tripartite alliance in the hard disk industry at that time. However, the acquisition was restricted by the Ministry of Commerce of China, with the condition that no business merger be carried out within 2 years and independent operations be maintained. Just before Ziguang took a stake in Western Digital and Western Digital prepared to acquire SanDisk, the Ministry of Commerce made concessions and allowed HGST to merge with Western Digital.
During the acquisition period, HGST continued to accumulate enterprise-level market capital. In June 2013, it acquired sTec enterprise SSD for US$340 million. In July of the same year, Velobit caching software was acquired. In September of the same year, it acquired PCIe flash memory card startup Virident for US$685 million. Acquired Skyera in December 2014. Now, these technologies, as well as HGST's own helium hard drive technology, will be shared with Western Digital to reduce its research and development costs and operating costs.
Western Digital currently has a complete product line, from mechanical hard drives to Flash products, and the advantages of HGST and SanDisk in storage software are self-evident. It can be said that Western Digital's territory has been established.
June 1, 2015 Intel acquired Altera
On June 1, 2015, Intel acquired Altera, which had annual revenue of less than US$2 billion, for US$16.7 billion. Altera is the world's second largest FPGA (programmable gate array) manufacturer, with revenue of approximately US$1.93 billion and profit of US$473 million in 2014.
According to the announcement, Intel will acquire Altera at a price of US$54 per share, and the transaction is expected to be completed within 6-9 months. If successful, this would be Intel's largest acquisition in history.
In 2014, Altera accounted for approximately 38% of the global FPGA market share, while industry leader Ceringx accounted for approximately 50%. However, it should be pointed out that the current global FPGA market size is about US$5 billion, which is less than 10% of Intel's revenue and is far from enough to attract Intel's interest.
In addition, Altera's main revenue comes from the telecommunications equipment market, which is not related to Intel. An Altera insider told reporters, "Altera's value to Intel only lies in the data center business." The person said, "According to emails exchanged between the CEOs, our two companies will only integrate the data center business, and other businesses will remain independent."
Post-acquisition impact: acquired Altera’s customizable chips for communications and industrial automation equipment, indicating that Intel CEO Krzanich (Brian Krzanich plans to leverage the company's vast manufacturing scale and industry-leading process technology to expand market share.
The acquisition also aims to strengthen Intel's position in the digital center market and the Internet of Things. The company is trying to wean itself off its PC business more quickly.
Brooks, who is responsible for mergers and acquisitions at Intel, predicted that small companies are facing increasing manufacturing challenges, which will trigger more industry consolidation and will also be beneficial to Intel's growth in entering new markets.
He told the Financial Times, "We are looking for companies in the same industry that can allow us to leverage our process advantages. As the first acquisition, Altera is very good."
Most of Altera's chips are produced by TSMC, although it has been Cooperating with Intel on its 14nm process technology. According to industry insiders, the transaction directly brought a customer to Intel's 14-nanometer process factory.
Intel also plans to integrate Altera's customizable chips with its own standardized semiconductors to create more efficient semiconductor products for tasks such as web search and machine learning.
The first results of the plan are expected to arrive in 2016, including semiconductors for data centers that incorporate chips from both companies. According to Brooks, although these products can bring about a 50% performance improvement, they will not achieve greater improvements until the two companies' technologies can be fully integrated on a single silicon chip, which will take several years. can be achieved.
At the same time, the acquisition means that Intel's ability to integrate large chip manufacturers will encounter a major test for the first time. Brooks said the deal is a model for future M&A moves as the company looks to reduce its reliance on in-house development.
The Intel executive said, "Compared with in the past, the way we do things is very different from ."
"In fact, the acquisition of Altera is inevitable." Vice President of Strategic Planning and Business Development of Jingwei Yage Company , China’s “Nuclear High-tech” National Major Science and Technology Project Wang Haili, the person in charge of FPGA-related projects, believes: "Intel must integrate Altera's FPGA technology in order to block ARM in the data center."
In the past two decades, Intel has conquered almost all PC, server, and storage markets and has become the leader in PC, The leader in the data center field. But now, ARM, with annual revenue of only US$560 million, less than 1% of Intel's revenue, is frequently attacking Intel in these two fields.
In the past two years, Intel has spent huge sums of money in continuous efforts to seek breakthroughs in the mobile market, but with little success. Instead, ARM began to use its partners to covet Intel's second largest business-the data center market. In 2014, Intel's data center business revenue was US$14.4 billion, a year-on-year increase of 18%. It is Intel's only business that has continued to grow in recent years.
In the past year, Qualcomm has repeatedly announced its entry into the server market and began to design server chips based on the ARM architecture. ARM also recently made a commitment at an investor conference that processors based on the ARM architecture will occupy 20% of the server market in 2020.
Of course, Intel has also paid attention to the data center market. "As early as the beginning of 2013, Intel had already conducted in-depth cooperation with Altera and opened up high-end chip manufacturing technology to Altera." Wang Haili introduced that at that time, Intel began to try to integrate FPGA with its Xeon (Xeon processor), hoping to The fusion of the two technologies significantly improves Xeon's performance and reduces energy consumption. The marriage of
and Intel will also benefit Altera a lot. In the past competition with Xilinx, Altera focused on the low-end route. This resulted in Altera's progress in high-end device products always lagging behind Xilinx, and the gap is still widening. The latest news shows that Xilinx has reached a cooperation with TSMC and will launch 7nm products in 2017. Wang Haili believes: "Altera can also use Intel's high-end manufacturing technology to narrow the gap with Xilinx ."
In addition, Intel's IoT chips may also need to rely on the flexible and programmable features of FPGA. In 2014, Intel's IoT chip revenue was US$2.1 billion, a year-on-year increase of 19%, making it Intel's fastest growing business.
" Internet of Things may also be an opportunity for Chinese FPGA manufacturers." In Wang Haili's view, "In the traditional FPGA field, we lag too far behind and cannot even account for 0.1% of the market share. But the new Internet of Things market, New technological forms are needed, and our gap is not as wide as in traditional fields.”
May 28, 2015 Avago acquires Broadcom
News on the evening of May 28th, Beijing time, Avago Tech and chip manufacturer Broadcom (Broadcom) jointly announced on Thursday that the two parties have reached a final agreement, and Avago will acquire Broadcom for a total of approximately US$37 billion in cash and stock. This is the largest merger in the history of the global chip industry.
Avago. The merger with Broadcom will make it the third-largest semiconductor manufacturer in the United States by revenue, behind Intel and Qualcomm
Avago Technologies. Ltd. Founded in 1961 and headquartered in Singapore, it designs, develops and provides a wide range of analog semiconductor devices for the III-V family. The company's business can be divided into four categories: wireless communications, enterprise and storage, limited infrastructure, industrial and others. part. The company's products include wireless communications, wired infrastructure, industrial and automotive electronics, and are widely used in smartphones, consumer electronics, data networks, electronic equipment, enterprise storage and servers, power generation devices, renewable energy systems, factory automation, Monitors, printers, etc. Broadcom was founded in 1991 and is headquartered in Irvine, California. It provides semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications. Its products provide voice, video, data and multimedia applications in homes, offices and mobile environments. The business is divided into two major business groups: broadband and connectivity, infrastructure and network. The broadband and connectivity business provides cable, satellite, IP, OTT and terrestrial set-top boxes; DSL and optical fiber broadband access services; femto cellular base stations. Improves cellular coverage and low-power wireless access from small cells nodes, as well as location-adaptive technology and touch panel controllers; integrated and discrete Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and near-field communications solutions for service providers, data centers, industry, enterprises, and small and medium-sized enterprises. Enterprise market offers ethernet switch products; Ethernet copper cable transceivers; automotive Ethernet network products; backplane and optical front-end physical layer devices. The division also provides multi-core communications processors, knowledge processors, microwave modems and RF, VoIP solutions, and digital Front-end processor, Ethernet Network controller, and ASIC series solutions. Sales scope includes Asia, Australia, Europe, South Africa, and South Korea. Impact of acquisition: This merger of is the most obvious evidence so far that the pressure on the technology industry has continued to grow at a rapid pace. Companies are forced to face the reality that the industry is maturing. The rise of groups such as Apple and Samsung has also squeezed many links in the high-tech supply chain, forcing component manufacturers to compete to expand in order to survive. Avago has become one of the most acquisition-minded companies in the industry, having made three deals in the past year alone. The company said it would pay $17 billion in cash and about $20 billion in stock to acquire California-based Broadcom, which specializes in making communications chips used in data centers and mobile devices made by companies such as Apple and Samsung. Independent chip analyst Patrick Moorhead explained that the wave of mergers in the chip industry is driven in part by technological advances that allow more computing and communication functions to be integrated into a " System on a Single Chip”. “The game has become either integrate or be integrated,” he added. Broadcom has experienced stagnant growth in recent years as customers in both the wireless and data center sectors have driven down prices and purchased more components from fewer, larger suppliers. Avago expects the acquisition to save the company $750 million annually. As a major supplier of mobile communications chips to Apple and Samsung, Broadcom will strengthen Avago's position in a market that already accounts for about 40% of its business. Broadcom President and CEO Scott McGregor also said that as IoT devices demand to be thinner, smaller, and more powerful, they must rely on more advanced nanometer processes, but they have discovered that investment in Moore's Law The rate of return gradually declined after the 28nm process.In the past, the cost per million gate transistors (transistors) of each node (Node) above 28 nanometers dropped from 6.4 cents to 2.7 cents; however, the cost of each node nanometer process below 28 nanometers dropped from 2.7 cents to 2.7 cents. cents climbed to 2.9 cents. In addition, the chip design cost of each node nanometer process below 28 nanometers is growing rapidly. It is expected that by 16 nanometers, the chip design cost will soar from nearly a hundred US dollars at 28 nanometers to close to 350 US dollars, an increase of 2.5 times. Therefore, McGregor believes that the reduction in Moore's Law return on investment and the increase in chip design costs will inevitably have an impact on the semiconductor industry. First of all, the selection of nano-process nodes and platform integration strategies will change with the return on investment of Moore's Law; secondly, future chip design cost reduction will come from design improvements rather than the selection of more advanced process technologies; And the silicon intellectual property (IP) portfolio needs to be broader to help provide customers with more complete solutions. However, to realize the above-mentioned adjustment of operating strategies, the funds and resources required are huge, which cannot be handled by small and medium-sized enterprises. In the future, the trend of the semiconductor industry towards the big player Evergrande will be more obvious. Therefore, enterprises must be consolidated. And gain greater leverage in negotiating prices with suppliers. At the same time, with the cost of chip manufacturing and design rising, if a small and medium-sized company has a revenue of only US$100 million, but has to bear a cost of US$50 million, the operating pressure will increase greatly, and it may be reduced to being consolidated. And or the fate of market elimination. Avago and Broadcom merged in response to changes in the industrial environment. The merger also brought about complementary competitive advantages. Looking at the product lines of Avago and Broadcom, Avago has power amplifiers (PA), front-end RF modules and optical communication solutions, combined with Broadcom's Ethernet switches, physical layer (PHY) Layer) and other back-end network protocols and terminal network ICs. After the merger, the new company will master the solutions of front-end and back-end chips for network architecture, and can provide Netcom customers with one-stop shopping and integration solution services. It will become MediaTek , Qualcomm (Qualcomm) ) will be a strong competitor in the network chip market in the future. In addition, industry insiders have analyzed that many of Avago’s amplifiers are currently being shipped with MediaTek’s Wi-Fi modules. After merging with Broadcom, the leader in Wi-Fi chips, Avago can provide customers with one-stop shopping for amplifiers. Wi-Fi module services can even help open up new markets for the Internet of Things. May 8, 2015 Microchip acquires Micrel Foreign media reported that Microchip and Micrel have reached a final agreement. Microchip will acquire Micrel Semiconductor by paying cash and stocks, with a total amount of approximately US$839 million. It is reported that Micrel’s valuation is US$774 million, and it also has approximately US$95 million in cash and securities investments on its books. The acquisition price is 3% higher than Micrel’s closing price on May 6. Microchip President and CEO Steve Sanghi said that Mircel’s linear and power management product lines, network solutions, and clock and communication product lines complement Microchip’s existing product lines. Microchip was founded in 1989, a U.S. listed company, and is a supplier of microcontrollers and analog semiconductors; Micrel was founded in 1978 and is headquartered in California, the United States. It is a global leader in integrated circuit solutions for the analog, Ethernet and high-bandwidth markets. manufacturer. Impact after the acquisition of : Microchip is a master of capital operations. Since it began to implement an expansionary acquisition strategy, it is not considered a small-scale technology acquisition. In recent years, it has successively acquired nine medium-sized semiconductor companies. These nine are SST , SMSC, ZeroG, Roving Networks, Ident, Hampshire Technology, RE Intenational, Supertex and ISSC, plus the just-announced $839 million acquisition of Micrel, make a total of ten companies. Let’s first take a look at the impact that Microchip’s acquisition of Micrel will have on Microchip. Microchip's total revenue in fiscal year 2014 was US$1.93 billion, of which MCU products accounted for about two-thirds of total revenue, analog, interface and mixed-signal product lines accounted for US$428 million, accounting for 22% of total revenue, and memory accounted for 7%. Micrel's total revenue in fiscal year 2014 was 248 million. Micrel's product lines are all analog and mixed-signal products.Therefore, the acquisition of Micrel will only have an impact on Microchip's analog, interface and mixed-signal product lines. First of all, the linear and power management product lines have a high degree of overlap with . After the two companies are integrated in the future, they may lose part of the market. Linear and power product lines account for more than 50% of Micrel's revenue and include DC-DC switching controllers and voltage regulators. Microchip's power management product line is richer. In addition to product lines that overlap with Micrel, there are also battery management and power system monitoring chips. Overall, the integration of this product line will be more painful. Secondly, Micrel’s network product line will strengthen Microchip’s disadvantage in network . Although Microchip also has Ethernet products, Micrel’s advantages in Ethernet are more obvious, and network products account for Micrel’s 50%. Accounting for 21% of revenue in 2014, its automotive Ethernet solution has passed AEC-Q100 certification, which will complement Microchip's MOST bus products and become one of the most complete bus manufacturers for automotive infotainment systems. Finally, the clock and communication product lines will complete Microchip's product line , especially in terms of clocks. Previously, Microchip only had real-time clock products, while Micrel can provide a complete clock product line, from crystal oscillator chips to frequency synthesizers, Clock drivers and MEMS clocks are both laid out and perform well. Clock and communication products have entered the supply chains of Huawei and ZTE
In addition, the two mergers will also have an impact on the agents of the two companies. According to an industry veteran, agents such as Fulang Electronics , which originally made products from both companies, will benefit, while agents of Micrel alone will benefit. Product agents will be affected.
I think that overall this is not a deal where one plus one is equal to two. The two parties have a high degree of overlap in linear and power products, and the revenue of the analog, interface and mixed-signal product lines is not equal to that of the two parties. Simple overlay. Of course, Microchip can benefit from other product lines and Micrel's existing product line combination solutions, such as its own MCU and Micrel's network chips and clock chips, and reducing one competitor is also a good thing in the long run. However, the difficulty with the snake-eating model is that as its size continues to increase, the scale effect brought by eating these small and medium-sized companies will diminish.
Micrel This was created by Raymond in 1978 The company founded by D. Zinn and other two people with $300,000 will eventually cease to exist. This choice may be painful for Zinn, or it may be a relief. Today, as semiconductor integration continues to accelerate, Micrel’s living space is indeed becoming more and more important. Xiao, as he said in an interview: "We believe that this acquisition will maximize the interests of Micrel shareholders and will also bring benefits beyond expectations to our employees and customers." But then he changed the subject, "Also It will give Microchip the opportunity to reach a higher level of revenue.” There is no need for Zinn to worry about whether the integration will be successful in the future.
Steve Sanghi, president and CEO of Microchip, may also not need to worry. This type of acquisition is already familiar to him. Micrel’s two product lines also form a good complement to Microchip’s existing product lines. Steve Sanghi said: “ we I believe that the merger of the two companies will bring about great economies of scale and will provide opportunities for cross-selling and combined quotations ”
March 2, 2015. NXP acquires Freescale
Two major semiconductor manufacturers, NXP of the Netherlands and Freescale of the United States, announced today (3/2) that the two parties have signed a final merger agreement and are expected to complete the merger in the second half of this year. After the merger, they will become a company with assets of 40 billion A semiconductor company with annual revenue exceeding US$10 billion, becoming a leader in automotive semiconductor solutions and general-purpose microcontroller products.
NXP, founded in the Netherlands in 1953, was originally a company specializing in semiconductors under Philips (Philips). It was renamed from Philips Semiconductors to NXP Semiconductors after it was sold to private equity funds in 2006. It mainly provides mixed signal and standard product solutions, and is mostly Used in smart cars, wireless architecture, lighting, industrial, mobile, consumer and computing products.
Freescale was originally owned by Motorola and was acquired by private equity funds in 2006. It is a semiconductor design, R&D and manufacturer that mainly develops and produces software/hardware for the automotive, Internet, industrial and consumer markets, such as microcontrollers. processors, microprocessors, digital signal processors, digital signal controllers, sensors, wireless radio frequency power chips and power management chips, etc. NXP and Freescale are both among the top 20 semiconductor manufacturers in the world, but NXP is slightly larger than Freescale in terms of manpower and revenue.
Post-acquisition impact: Market analysis points out that after the merger of NXP and Freescale, it will become the eighth largest semiconductor manufacturer in the world, and both parties are major suppliers of automotive chips. They are expected to benefit from the increasingly computational automotive market.
Steve Wainwright, vice president of marketing for Freescale Semiconductor's business and general manager of Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), said he was optimistic about the prospects after the merger of the two companies. In the future, NXP, combined with Freescale, will become the world's fourth largest non-memory semiconductor supplier, behind Intel, Texas Instruments (TI) and Broadcom; in addition, it will also be the world's largest automotive supplier. Use semiconductor provider .
Wainwright also believes that automotive and Internet of Things (IoT) applications will be the two most important markets after the merger of Freescale and NXP ; at this technical seminar, more than 80 related solutions were unveiled, and He also pointed out in his keynote speech: "Security is an issue that can derail the Internet of Things."
He quoted statistics as saying that in the United States, seven Many connected devices do not have password-protected connectivity, and Freescale is ready to help IoT startups with security: “We can provide a trustworthy architecture for end nodes, gateways and the cloud. Equipped with encrypted secure communication protocol "
Freescale has set up "Freescale Security Labs" in two locations in the United States, Romania and China in Europe. Security Labs), whose goal is to advance security standards and solve customers' security problems.
Wainwright said that until the merger of the two companies is completed, NXP and Freescale are not legally allowed to share each other's performance numbers or visit customers together: "But the good news is that we do have many common customers, and we There is very little overlap in business."
Most mergers usually involve one dominant company integrating with the smaller one, but Wainwright said the merger between NXP and Freescale is about equal status: "Our respective business specifications. The models are almost the same, with annual revenue of about US$5 billion;" and more importantly: "Both companies are in good financial condition, which is not common in mergers."
However, these two companies will still need Some time to get to know each other; Wainw on this Right's view is that there are certain factors that make each other compatible: "We both have strong engineering backgrounds, and we have both been acquired by private equity funds and have been through some difficult times." He believes that those experiences Let both parties get used to "self-motivation" and "acting proactively".
Wainwright said that the biggest difference between NXP and Freescale may be that the former was born in Royal Philips (Royal Philips). Philips), will be more focused on the consumer market, while the latter is better at operating the long-term industrial application market: "We can say that NXP is more "agile"."
Once the two companies complete the merger, Freescale's The brand name will disappear, but its component models will be maintained and will be produced at the original location; Wainwright explained: "This way there will not be any interruption in sales channels."And because the two companies have many development teams scattered throughout Europe, there may be some integration problems waiting for Wainwright to solve. In addition to the above mergers and acquisitions,
also has the following more merger and acquisition information and more electronic IC industry information sharing. Please pay attention to IC Electronics for subsequent information sharing.
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