Reply by jtd December 19, 20082008-12-19
On Thursday 18 December 2008 18:02, HM2 wrote:
> >> Interestingly Signetics, like NXP, was also founded by Philips.
> >
> > They were actually taken over by Philips.
>
> Founded is an interesting choice of words. LBO (Leveraged Buy Out)
> is the correct term. Philips Semi as in the case of HP Semi was
> bought out by a debt deal arranged by KKR (Kohlberg Kravis
> Roberts). The former renamed to NXP and the later renamed to
> Avago. KKR is the same group that bought Safeway, RJR Nabisco,
> etc. HBO made a great moive years ago called "Barbarians at the
> Gate" about the RJR buyout and KKR. You should rent it. These are
> the same guys who are running NXP and Avago now, and tried to buy
> Motorola Semi (Freescale) as well.
-snip-
Very interesting.

> None of this helps all of us have
> confidence that the parts we design in now will still be around in
> years to come.

Makes a strong case for opencores and fpgas i suppose
--
Rgds
JTD

An Engineer's Guide to the LPC2100 Series

Reply by "M. Manca" December 18, 20082008-12-18
HM2 ha scritto:
>
>>> Interestingly Signetics, like NXP, was also founded by Philips.
>> They were actually taken over by Philips.
>
> Founded is an interesting choice of words. LBO (Leveraged Buy Out) is
> the correct term. Philips Semi as in the case of HP Semi was bought
> out by a debt deal arranged by KKR (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts). The
> former renamed to NXP and the later renamed to Avago. KKR is the same
> group that bought Safeway, RJR Nabisco, etc. HBO made a great moive
> years ago called "Barbarians at the Gate" about the RJR buyout and
> KKR. You should rent it. These are the same guys who are running NXP
> and Avago now, and tried to buy Motorola Semi (Freescale) as well.
>
> Since the companies are now "private", they won't show you the books.
> But given the fact that NXP is now closing 4 fabs and cutting 5,000
> people; well... suffice to say they are in major cost cutting mode.
>
> You might be interested to know who puts money into these KKR deals
> to fund these buyouts. Well, turns out the PERS (Public Employee
> Retirement System) can't make enough returns on Stock Equities, so in
> my state they pumped a bunch of money into KKR deals. They now own a
> chunk of NXP. According to my sources their investments are down
> about 50%. (But that's not for public discussion.)
>
> KKR is the equivalent of a corporate house flipper. Buy a company,
> cut expenses, raise profits, than flip the company by selling it to
> someone else (or taking it public again). Of course the idea is to
> sell it for more than they paid for it,at least that is the sales
> pitch thrown at investors. Mind you, KKR puts very little of their
> own money into the deals. But they of course collect their "1%
> customary fee for services". So on a $10B deal, they walk away with
> $100M whether the company files bankruptcy the next year. Very much
> like mortgage brokers that get their points on making the deal, but
> really don't care if the mortgage goes into default later.
>
> So... NXP, Avago, Freescale, etc. are now all highly leveraged
> companies. They carry high debt loads. They must make profit in order
> to keep up the payments on the buyout debt, or they get into
> financial trouble very quickly. None of this helps all of us have
> confidence that the parts we design in now will still be around in
> years to come.
Sure, but seems that this is the situation for a lot of semiconductor
companies that are working at 50% of their production possibilities....
>
> Chris.
>
>
>
> -------------------------
> 19.21
>


Reply by alexbrincko December 18, 20082008-12-18
Hi all,

I never saw the movie, but I did read the book, "Barbarians at the
Gate," from which the movie draws its material. The book contains
much fine detail, and is recommended reading. It does not paint a
pretty picture, I can assure you.

--- In l..., "HM2" wrote:
>
> >> Interestingly Signetics, like NXP, was also founded by Philips.
> > They were actually taken over by Philips.
>
> Founded is an interesting choice of words. LBO (Leveraged Buy Out)
is the correct term. Philips Semi as in the case of HP Semi was
bought out by a debt deal arranged by KKR (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts).
The former renamed to NXP and the later renamed to Avago. KKR is the
same group that bought Safeway, RJR Nabisco, etc. HBO made a great
moive years ago called "Barbarians at the Gate" about the RJR buyout
and KKR. You should rent it. These are the same guys who are running
NXP and Avago now, and tried to buy Motorola Semi (Freescale) as well.

Reply by "c.barbaro" December 18, 20082008-12-18
Just to add my bit of info: we continue to support a product based on
the glorious Z80.
It is not the Zilog original DIP40 but a QFP100 Toshiba clone,
integrating the Z80-CPU,CTC,SIO and PIO.
Every year we receive a communication of probable "End-of-Life" from
distributors, but the chip is still in production.
The last one is of some month ago...

Should be noted that in the old good days the chips produced were
almost perfect.
Today we have to wait for revision D to get something that works as
expected.
Yes, true, chips today are much more complicate, but..

Carlo

Reply by HM2 December 18, 20082008-12-18
>> Interestingly Signetics, like NXP, was also founded by Philips.
> They were actually taken over by Philips.

Founded is an interesting choice of words. LBO (Leveraged Buy Out) is the correct term. Philips Semi as in the case of HP Semi was bought out by a debt deal arranged by KKR (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts). The former renamed to NXP and the later renamed to Avago. KKR is the same group that bought Safeway, RJR Nabisco, etc. HBO made a great moive years ago called "Barbarians at the Gate" about the RJR buyout and KKR. You should rent it. These are the same guys who are running NXP and Avago now, and tried to buy Motorola Semi (Freescale) as well.

Since the companies are now "private", they won't show you the books. But given the fact that NXP is now closing 4 fabs and cutting 5,000 people; well... suffice to say they are in major cost cutting mode.

You might be interested to know who puts money into these KKR deals to fund these buyouts. Well, turns out the PERS (Public Employee Retirement System) can't make enough returns on Stock Equities, so in my state they pumped a bunch of money into KKR deals. They now own a chunk of NXP. According to my sources their investments are down about 50%. (But that's not for public discussion.)

KKR is the equivalent of a corporate house flipper. Buy a company, cut expenses, raise profits, than flip the company by selling it to someone else (or taking it public again). Of course the idea is to sell it for more than they paid for it,at least that is the sales pitch thrown at investors. Mind you, KKR puts very little of their own money into the deals. But they of course collect their "1% customary fee for services". So on a $10B deal, they walk away with $100M whether the company files bankruptcy the next year. Very much like mortgage brokers that get their points on making the deal, but really don't care if the mortgage goes into default later.

So... NXP, Avago, Freescale, etc. are now all highly leveraged companies. They carry high debt loads. They must make profit in order to keep up the payments on the buyout debt, or they get into financial trouble very quickly. None of this helps all of us have confidence that the parts we design in now will still be around in years to come.

Chris.

Reply by cfbsoftware1 December 18, 20082008-12-18
--- In l..., "leon Heller" wrote:
>
> > From: "cfbsoftware1" >
> > Interestingly Signetics, like NXP, was also founded by Philips.
>
> They were actually taken over by Philips.
>

Thanks for the info, Leon. I hadn't knowingly used any of their
components until the late 1970's at which time they were already part
of Philips. I was unaware of their earlier history until today. The
saying 'You learn a new thing every day' is so true ;-)

Cheers,
Chris

Reply by leon Heller December 18, 20082008-12-18
----- Original Message -----
From: "cfbsoftware1"
To:
Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2008 4:36 AM
Subject: [lpc2000] Re: LPC2138
> --- In l..., "HM2" wrote:
>>
>> Really the last thing I worry about is the MCUs. There will always
>> be MCUs around one can work with. It's everything else in the
>> product that worrys me: DACs, ADCs, FPGAs, etc. All of those single
>> source chips that cannot so easily be replaced.
>
> Good point. I recently built a microcomputer from a design published
> 30 years ago. The only chip that I was unable to obtain was the
> PipBug monitor ROM. Fortunately I had the source code so it was not a
> showstopper. Despite the fact that the CPU (Signetics 2650) is
> relatively obscure I was still able to obtain a few of them from more
> than one source - probably for relatively less than I paid for the
> original back in 1979 ;-)
>
> Interestingly Signetics, like NXP, was also founded by Philips.

They were actually taken over by Philips.

Leon
Reply by Xiaofan Chen December 18, 20082008-12-18
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 12:07 PM, HM2 wrote:
> Hey Paul:
>
> Your posts always crack me up. Such wit.
>
>>> I agree. But the 8051 is the cockroach of the semiconductor industry.
>
> Really the last thing I worry about is the MCUs. There will always be
> MCUs around one can work with.

It depends on the product and the product life cycle. MCU/MPU
can be a headache if the product life cycle is long. I work in the
field of industrial automation market and it happens to have very
long product life cycle (typically 10 to 20 years).

We have "continuation engineering" across the business units
dealing with component obsolescence issues. MCU is a big
part of it (processors as old as 80186, 80196, 68000). The new
generation of MCU can be worse. For example, Marvell normally
only support their chips (Xscale) for 5-7 years and that is
way too low for their chips to be used. Last time they belonged
to Intel and we have the product designed in. So they are
in the pipeline of being redesigned.

> It's everything else in the product that
> worrys me: DACs, ADCs, FPGAs, etc. All of those single source chips
> that cannot so easily be replaced. But if you need cutting edge performance,
> there is no choice.

Yes high performance ADC/DACs are often single sourced. For example,
I have not found anything which can replace AD7731 yet for its performance
(24 bit Sigma-Delta) but luckily this part is available since 1997 and will
hopefully exist for another 10 years.

> One ends up with single source chips in far too many
> places to sleep well at night. On my current product I have that situation
> everywhere, and my solution was to modularize it so I have smaller boards to
> redesign and less of the overall system affected when a chip goes away.
> We currently have products that have been in production for over 15 years,
> and I've had obsolete part revs on it several times just to keep it going.
> Not fun. I expect these obsolete situations will get much worse in the
> near future.

Not fun at all if I look at the job of our continuation engineers. Nevertheless
they are important part of the engineering department.

Xiaofan

Reply by cfbsoftware1 December 18, 20082008-12-18
--- In l..., "HM2" wrote:
>
> Really the last thing I worry about is the MCUs. There will always
> be MCUs around one can work with. It's everything else in the
> product that worrys me: DACs, ADCs, FPGAs, etc. All of those single
> source chips that cannot so easily be replaced.

Good point. I recently built a microcomputer from a design published
30 years ago. The only chip that I was unable to obtain was the
PipBug monitor ROM. Fortunately I had the source code so it was not a
showstopper. Despite the fact that the CPU (Signetics 2650) is
relatively obscure I was still able to obtain a few of them from more
than one source - probably for relatively less than I paid for the
original back in 1979 ;-)

Interestingly Signetics, like NXP, was also founded by Philips.

--
Chris Burrows
Armaide: ARM Oberon-07 Development System for Windows
http://www.armaide.com

Reply by HM2 December 18, 20082008-12-18
Hey Paul:

Your posts always crack me up. Such wit.

>> I agree. But the 8051 is the cockroach of the semiconductor industry.

Really the last thing I worry about is the MCUs. There will always be MCUs around one can work with. It's everything else in the product that worrys me: DACs, ADCs, FPGAs, etc. All of those single source chips that cannot so easily be replaced. But if you need cutting edge performance, there is no choice. One ends up with single source chips in far too many places to sleep well at night. On my current product I have that situation everywhere, and my solution was to modularize it so I have smaller boards to redesign and less of the overall system affected when a chip goes away. We currently have products that have been in production for over 15 years, and I've had obsolete part revs on it several times just to keep it going. Not fun. I expect these obsolete situations will get much worse in the near future.

Chris.