Travelling On The Silicon Road

The company reported its best quarterly net profit and sales ever - net profit rose 54% year-on-year to US$1.52 billion.

Process Technologies as Percentage of TSMC’s Revenue in Q3 2010

150nm+ 28%
130nm/110nm 14%
90nm/80nm 12%
65nm/55nm 29%
40nm 0.33% 17%

In spite of the slow growth rate predicted of the global chip industry next year - CEO, Morris Chang forecasts a mere 5% revenue growth for the global chip industry in 2011, much less than his 30% forecast for this year - the foundry industry bellwether will up its capital spending in 2011 as compared to this year. New capacity for cutting edge 28-nanometer production technology is twice as expensive as 65nm technology; and TSMC will mass-produce chips using 28nm technology in the fourth quarter of this year

Broadcom has paid $86m net of cash for Israeli femtocell IC specialist Percello in a bid to lower the BOM, and accelerate time to market, for its femtocell chip offerings. This comes close on the heels of acquiring the WiMAX prpovder, Beceem Communications.

The big fabless company’s acquisition does signify an endorsing of a real demand for femtocells. It is also now well positioned to take advantage of the relationship Percello has already cultivated with Ubiquisys, probably the number one in femtocell access point vendors.

Linley Gwennap, founder and principal analyst at Linley Group had correctly predicted in a talk to EETimes earlier -“The incremental cost of the femto function would be around $10. This could ultimately require the femto processor to integrate Ethernet and Wi-Fi as well as DSL or cable-modem. Broadcom is the obvious company to develop such a chip.”

Interconnectivity is getting more and more interesting! And hey, this is Broadcom’s sixth acquisition in Israel – and it already has 3 development centres there.