Archives

July 15th, 2010 | Tags: Business, FPGA, startup | Category: Business, FPGA

RIP Tier Logic

It’s official: Tier Logic will cease to be in business on Friday July 16, 2010. The company has been trying to close its second round of funding, but it became clear last week that no short-term funding from a new VC would come, despite some due diligence by two lead investors. [...]

Continue reading RIP Tier Logic

June 3rd, 2010 | Tags: Business, FPGA | Category: Business

RIP Abound Logic

Another FPGA startup met the fate of so many others: Abound Logic is reported to have shut down this week, Wednesday June 2nd, 2010.

Abound logic, previously known as M2000, was founded by three EDA veterans who had previously started Meta Systems. Meta Systems developed the industry’s first emulation system based on custom FPGAs, which [...]

Continue reading RIP Abound Logic

November 1st, 2009 | Tags: Business, Google, Microsoft, search, startup, Twitter | Category: Business

What is Twitter’s next step?

Lots has been written and hyped about Twitter since its creation three years ago. Twitter has been touted as the fastest growing social network (19% of U.S. Internet users tweet), and a communication medium with still unforeseen capabilities. The company [...]

Continue reading Continue reading What is Twitter’s next step?

October 30th, 2009 | Tags: Altera, Business, FPGA, India, outsourcing, software, Xilinx | Category: Business

How can Xilinx improve its bottom line

Last week I wrote a post discussing Xilinx and Altera Q3’09 results, and I mentioned Xilinx’ operation margin consistently trailing Altera’s by 3-4%. I had a few emails regarding that gap, and why that gap would be closed eventually. Let me address this topic with this post.

Comparing the yearly fiscal exercises directly would be biased [...]

Continue reading How can Xilinx improve its bottom line

October 20th, 2009 | Tags: Business, show, startup, Twitter | Category: Business, Tech

What was hot at the TechCrunch Munich event?

I was today in Sun Microsystems offices, which co-hosted the TechCrunch Munich event. Mike Butcher, editor TechCrunch Europe, was here to take about 150 attendants through a few presentations and 12 startup pitches. I promised I would write about what I liked, so here it goes.

The breakroom had a tweeter wall with live reaction of [...]

Continue reading What was hot at the TechCrunch Munich event?

October 18th, 2009 | Tags: Business, show, startup | Category: Business, Tech

What to see at the TechCrunch Munich event?

After the giant TechCrunch 50 last September in San Francisco, TechCrunch continues to host smaller events in several cities. Next in line is TechCrunch Munich, which will be held on Tuesday Oct. 20th at the Sun Microsystems offices in Munich.

The gathering is an opportunity for local entrepreneurs and techies to network, as well [...]

Continue reading What to see at the TechCrunch Munich event?

October 15th, 2009 | Tags: Altera, Business, FPGA, Xilinx | Category: Business

What to read in Xilinx’ and Altera’s third quarter results

This week Xilinx and Altera released their September results (Q2FY10 and Q3FY09 respectively). The bottom line is shown below (all numbers in $M).

Source: Xilinx and Altera financial reports, and Yahoo! Finance

Xilinx’ quarterly income of $64M (0.23$/share) beats Wall Street’s expectation of 0.19$/share. Altera’s quarterly income of $56.7M (0.19$/share) meets Wall [...]

Continue reading What to read in Xilinx’ and Altera’s third quarter results

September 15th, 2009 | Tags: Business, EDA, FPGA, startup | Category: Business, Tech

Why FPGA startups keep failing

The FPGA market has been entrenched in a duopoly for a number of years now.  In 2008, according to Gartner Inc., Xilinx Inc. and Altera Corp. hold together 87% of the market of programmable logic (51.2% and 35.5% respectively).  The rest of the market is covered mostly by Actel Corp. and Lattice Semiconductor Corp., about 6% [...]

Continue reading Why FPGA startups keep failing