Month: August 2022

Thalia brings AMALIA IP reuse platform to Israel

by PRPress Release

Cologne, Germany, 17 August 2022 – Thalia, provider of analog and mixed-signal circuit IP reuse platform, today announced its expansion into the Israel market and the appointment of Motty Houli, from TechLink Global Ltd., to represent Thalia and its AMALIA IP reuse platform in the country.  

Since Intel established a key design centre in Israel in the 1970s, the country has been renowned as having one of the semiconductor industry’s most active start-up sectors. A Semico Research report in 2020 showed that Israel was second only to the US in terms of semiconductor start-up activity. The country now has over 150 native fabless semiconductor design companies, plus dozens of the world’s leading semiconductor companies operating strategically important design centres. 

Motty Houli brings more than 25 years of local market expertise and contacts throughout the industry, both at the semiconductor and system level. Having started his career as a chip designer, Motty Houli is well positioned to understand the needs of Thalia’s customers and the potential for Thalia’s IP reuse platform. 

Thalia’s AMALIA IP reuse platform is employed by companies around the world to maximise their investments in development efforts, as well as ensuring companies have a cost and time-efficient solution to migrate their existing product lines onto new wafer fabs and process nodes. AMALIA has delivered over 40 analog and mixed signal Ips, many in silicon and in commercial use, ranging in applications from, Wifi, BLE IP, image sensors, ADCs, PLL and Power Management IPs. 

The benefits of Thalia’s AMALIA platform are increasingly important to designers during the current period of tight capacity in the semiconductor industry. 

Sowmyan Rajagopalan, Thalia CEO, commented, “Israel is a market that’s been of interest for a long time. A lot of companies we engage with have design operations and decision makers in the country. We are pleased to have Motty as a sales rep in the region. The crunch in the semiconductor capacity is highlighting the importance of strategic, planned analog IP reuse as part of a company’s roadmap. This is driving our need to expand globally to serve this growing and increasingly urgent requirement.” 

Chip shortages, chip surpluses, or is it just a question of strategic choices…?

by Sowmyan RajagopalanBlog

It’s been three months since our last blog on chip shortages, and a lot has changed in that time, so it’s worth an update and sharing some thoughts on what are the ramifications that may or may not be affecting our industry’s ability to plan in the mid- to long-term. 

Peter Clarke, a long-standing well-informed observer of semiconductor industry trends, reported earlier this month on eeNewsEurope that industry growth is slowing https://www.eenewsanalog.com/en/fall-in-global-chip-market-growth-accelerates/ – we’re still talking about 13 percent growth – it’s just less growth. 

Some volatility clearly remains in the market, but the companies with the ‘right’ focus on emerging and fast growth markets are benefiting. The latest set of results from mixed-signal IC leader OnSemi were particularly healthy. It will always be the case that changing market conditions and industry shifts in terms of technologies and applications, benefit those companies that can adapt and evolve and those that simply back the right horse. 

It is also worth mentioning, as we tackled this in the previous post, the world was facing a huge supply issue post-covid and entering periods of significant demand hikes from the automotive and consumer electronics industries, in particular.  

The response to this supply issue was for the well-funded chip manufacturing giants to ramp up and speed up their development plans – and at the same time to further their globalisation plans, thus addressing geopolitical question marks. TSMC’s fabs in the US, Intel investing in Germany – are some of the moves we have seen so far. Europe’s own appetite for a bigger piece of the semiconductor pie has only been fuelled by the slowdown and capacity crunch. 

Gartner also announced recently it is expecting a small drop in chip sales in 2023, following a slowing in mobile phone sales (such a forecasted drop of around 150million, can easily create waves in the semiconductor supply chain in its own right). This is made worse by a predicted 9% drop in personal computer sales by the end of 2022. 

Given the mobile handset’s significant size and global scale, a drop in sales is likely to contribute to an easing of the chip shortage issue – probably later this year or early in 2023 – but, combined with the industry’s drive to increase its manufacturing output, could it create oversupply issues?  

Well, questions are being asked if the US Chips Act is poorly timed, when the industry is potentially facing a slowdown and oversupply issues. But a committed, long-term investment to attract or retain chip manufacturing is unlikely to be a poor strategic choice, in my opinion. 

Time will tell, but as demonstrated by OnSemi, a bit of longer-term planning and strategic marketing in terms of the growth markets, can go a long way to alleviate temporary blips in shortages and oversupply.  

If your strategy includes IP-reuse, to maximise Return on Investment, then talk to our team at Thalia. Or read more about the AMALIA IP reuse platform.