Tuesday, May 22, 2007

TSMC makes IP but denies it is in IP business

Call it as seismic changes or consolidation, the chip manufacturing world is going through some upheaval. While on one end, quite a few IDMs are transitioning to a fab lite strategy (albeit in different flavours) - especially with the high costs & risks involved in sub 65nm, on the other end heavyweights like TSMC are spreading their reach into the IP arena too.

As I noted in an earlier post, TSMC is leveraging on its resources and market reach.It may start off as “strengthening the design collaboration for critical sub circuits” (who doesn’t want FTSS??) but the intensity of the move has been enough to spread ripples in the till now independent IP biz world. By doing so, TSMC may well be doing its share in mitigating some of the risks involved in DSM design and thus catalyzing more of these design starts; and subsequently fill up its high-end fabs.

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