What’s Driving This New Wave of Semiconductor Merger Mania?

What’s Driving This New Wave of Semiconductor Merger Mania?
by Wally Rhines on 11-04-2020 at 10:00 am

Predicting Semiconductor Business Trends SemiWiki

Nvidia/ARM $40B. AMD/Xilinx $35B. Marvell/Inphi $10B. Despite the disruption of COVID, a wave of high value semiconductor acquisitions is sweeping the industry. Why? Did something happen that stimulated this consolidation? Until 2015, the industry was experiencing continuous “de-consolidation” that started in 1965. … Read More


Chapter Twelve – The Future

Chapter Twelve – The Future
by Wally Rhines on 09-27-2019 at 6:00 am

Content of this book has focused upon predictability of trends in the semiconductor industry based upon past trends, experience and ratios.  What about newly emerging applications of semiconductors?  After all, the entire history of the semiconductor industry is driven by emergence of new applications.

Artificial IntelligenceRead More


Chapter Eleven – International Semiconductor Competition

Chapter Eleven – International Semiconductor Competition
by Wally Rhines on 09-20-2019 at 6:00 am

Semiconductor industry evolution was largely a U.S. phenomenon.  While there were important contributions made by persons all over the world, the basic technology grew from the invention of the transistor at Bell Labs which was licensed broadly in the U.S.  That created a level playing field for all who wanted to become producers. … Read More


Chapter Ten – Design Automation for Systems

Chapter Ten – Design Automation for Systems
by Wally Rhines on 09-13-2019 at 6:00 am

Electronic design automation has evolved to an extent that the complex chips with tens of billions of transistors frequently produce first pass functional prototypes from the manufacturer.  What makes this so incredible is that such a small portion of the possible states of electronic operation are actually tested in the simulation… Read More


Chapter Nine – Specialization Inhibits System Level Optimization

Chapter Nine – Specialization Inhibits System Level Optimization
by Wally Rhines on 09-06-2019 at 6:00 am

Solving critical customer problems sometimes isn’t enough.  One of my most interesting experiences came during the development and rollout of a product that was designed to optimize integration of hardware and embedded software.  In this case, the product performed exactly as planned but the plan ignored the organizational… Read More


Chapter 8 – Value Through Differentiation in Semiconductor Businesses

Chapter 8 – Value Through Differentiation in Semiconductor Businesses
by Wally Rhines on 08-30-2019 at 6:00 am

Gross Profit Margin Percent Provides a Measure of Product Value

The difference between what customers will pay for a physical product and what it costs to make or acquire it is a good measure of differentiation. This difference divided by the revenue is the gross profit margin percent or GPM%. Once a product has an established market… Read More


Chapter 7 – Competitive Dynamics in the Electronic Design Automation Industry

Chapter 7 – Competitive Dynamics in the Electronic Design Automation Industry
by Wally Rhines on 08-23-2019 at 6:00 am

Electronic design automation, or EDA, became the  term used for computer software and hardware developed to aid in the design and verification of electronics, from integrated circuits to printed circuit boards to the integrated electronics of large systems like planes, trains and cars. As the EDA industry evolved, certain … Read More


Chapter 6 – Specialization in the Semiconductor Industry

Chapter 6 – Specialization in the Semiconductor Industry
by Wally Rhines on 08-16-2019 at 6:00 am

Recently, the combined market share of the top ten and top twenty semiconductor companies has been increasing, contrary to the trend of the last fifty years.  Given the acceleration in mergers and acquisitions that began in 2015, one might assume that, as the semiconductor industry approaches maturity, companies are consolidating… Read More


Chapter 5 – Consolidation of the Semiconductor Industry

Chapter 5 – Consolidation of the Semiconductor Industry
by Wally Rhines on 08-09-2019 at 6:00 am

For the last decade, semiconductor industry analysts have been writing articles and giving presentations that predict the increasing consolidation of the industry to the point where a few large companies dominate worldwide sales of semiconductor components.  In recent years there has been some justification for this view… Read More


Chapter 4 – Gompertz Predicts the Future

Chapter 4 – Gompertz Predicts the Future
by Wally Rhines on 08-02-2019 at 6:00 am

In 1825, Benjamin Gompertz proposed a mathematical model for time series that looks like an “S-curve”.1  Mathematically it is a double exponential (Figure 1) where y=a(exp(b(exp(-ct)))) where t is time and a, b and c are adjustable coefficients that modulate the steepness of the S-Curve.  The Gompertz Curve has been used for a … Read More