The Linley Group has recently learned that Marvell has begun shipping production quantities of its Kirkwood Duo processors, the 88F6321, '6322, and '6323. As the name suggests, these are dual-core versions of the company's Kirkwood processors. They fill a narrow gap between the single-core versions and the company's Discovery Innovation line. We estimate that they sell in 10K quantities for $18-$35.

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Continuing its transformation from a low-cost vendor to a high-performance supplier, Samsung has rolled out a pair of new application processors, each containing a 1GHz Cortex-A8 CPU. The S5PC110 targets smartphones, whereas the S5PV210 is designed for netbooks. The chips follow the 65nm S5PC100, a custom version of which powers the iPhone 3GS. The new 45nm processors are due to sample in December.

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At last week's Linley Tech Processor Conference, IBM announced the successor to its PowerPC 440/464 CPUs, the PowerPC 476FP. Able to issue up to five instructions at a time and process instructions out of order, the 476FP will likely achieve industry-leading single-thread throughput for a CPU core. Having a nine-stage pipeline and implemented as a hard core, the 476FP is conservatively rated at 1.6GHz in IBM's 45nm SOI process. In this configuration, the core measures 3.6mm2 and consumes 1.6W. Customers can begin designing ASICs using the CPU in October. IBM expects the first 476FP-based products to qualify for production in 2010. A synthesizable version will also be available.

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Pulling together the best technologies from merger partners ST and NXP, ST-Ericsson has announced two new mobile connectivity chips that together deliver a complete solution for handsets and smartphones. The CG2900 is a combo chip that includes Bluetooth 3.0, FM receive/transmit, and GPS, the three most popular technologies for feature phones. For smartphones and other devices that require Wi-Fi, the new CW1100 offers a single-chip 802.11b/g/n device that is designed to cooperate with the CG2900. Both products use leading-edge 45nm technology and are scheduled to sample in 4Q09.

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The consensus for the past few years has been that multicore microprocessors provide the path to higher performance. Still, it came as a surprise to me when putting together the program for the Linley Tech Processor Conference (http://bit.ly/RNCey) how many talks discuss multicore processing - about two-thirds of the 20+ presentations.

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Conventional wisdom states that about 1.2 billion cell phones shipped in 2008, with 80% of these units coming from the so-called Big Five handset makers: Nokia, Samsung, LG, Motorola, and Sony-Ericsson. According to The Linley Group research, however, 1.43 billion cellular baseband chips shipped in 2008, almost all into handsets. These numbers simply don't add up.

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On August 18, ARC International announced that it would be acquired by Virage Logic. Virage supplies a variety of IP, such as cell libraries, memory, and interfaces--comparatively low-level technology that complements the CPUs and audio software ARC has supplied.

Virage is paying ARC's shareholders $41 million, a 38% premium over ARC's market cap. Publicly traded since 2000, ARC has never posted a profit. 2009 has been particularly tough for ARC. 1H09 revenue was down 22% compared with 1H08 (in terms of pounds sterling; in dollar terms revenue was down 39%). US-based Virage saw 1H09 revenue decline 23% in dollar terms and has occasionally posted profit or positive cash flow from operations.

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Midyear earnings calls are mostly complete. 2Q09 was relatively strong across the board owing to inventory replenishment. Companies' outlooks for 3Q09 are generally positive but cautious.

We summed the quarterly revenue for 10 companies representative of the overall wired-communications semiconductor market. These companies include AppliedMicro (excluding storage), Cavium, Ikanos, PLX Technology, Freescale's networking and multimedia Groups, NetLogic, PMC-Sierra, Broadcom's Enterprise and Broadband groups, Infineon's wireline communications group, and LSI's communications semiconductor group. For the quarterly revenue trend, including an estimate for 3Q09, read the rest of our blog.

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Last Monday, Cavium announced its new line of Nitrox DPI accelerator chips. Although Cavium has included regular-expression engines in some of its Octeon processors, Nitrox DPI is the company's first standalone reg-ex accelerator. The chips are based on a hybrid NFA/DFA design that Cavium calls Hyper Finite Automata (HFA). Cavium is also integrating this HFA design into its forthcoming Octeon II processors. Whereas the first Octeon II chips are due to sample in Q4, Nitrox DPI chips are already sampling.

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Sales of Ethernet application-specific standard products (ASSPs) will grow at a 6.4% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2008 through 2013. A modest growth rate, it encompasses this year, when sales will be down 13%. On the other hand, it also encompasses 10 Gigabit Ethernet. Sales of 10 Gigabit ASSPs, excluding optical and backplane transceivers, will grow at a 57% CAGR over this period, eclipsing revenue from Fast Ethernet ASSPs in 2011.

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