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monsch
Freescale may have been late to market with multicore CPUs, but I would not ...
Kiran_NSN
This is a clear evidence of the convergence of all backhaul of the mobile ...
Freescale losing share to Cavium, NetLogic
9/3/2010 10:38 PM EDT
SAN JOSE, Calif. - Freescale Semiconductor Inc. is still the leader in the high-end,, 32-bit embedded communications processor space, but the company is losing share to Cavium, NetLogic and others, according to an analyst.
''Freescale is the 800-lb. gorilla in the embedded communications processor space with roughly half of the global market share by our estimation, but with troubles associated with its missed multi-core processor offerings several years back,''said Hans Mosesmann,an analyst with Raymond James & Associates, in a report.
''Freescale is certainly trying to make a comeback in 2010 with an 8-core multi-core offering; however, Cavium has not seen any impact to its design win momentum, perhaps due to Freescale’s offering being more consistent with Cavium’s first generation Octeon,'' he said.
''In our view, Freescale is likely to be successful in keeping some of its historical designs from going to Cavium or others; however, we
suspect that Freescale is set to continue to lose share in the coming years,'' he said.
Cavium is taking share away from Freescale. NetLogic, which recently bought, RMI, is also a contender. AMCC, Renesas, and, to some degree, TI, compete in the space.
''RMI, which also uses MIPs processor core IP like Cavium, has, in our view, good prospects over time and is an important growth vector for NetLogic into the 'control plane' of network/telecom equipment; however, at the moment, Cavium rarely competes with RMI,'' he said.
''We suspect that this will change now that RMI is part of NetLogic and believe that both Cavium and RMI (with MIPs-based offerings) will gain share verses Freescale,'' he said. ''It is perhaps too early to make the case on how good RMI’s new 40nm-based multi-core processors will be verses Octeon II. However, we are fairly confident that Octeon II at 65-nm is an extremely efficient design (very small relative silicon die size), and thus the company does not even see the need to move to 40nm but rather will go to 28-nm in the next couple of years.''
''Freescale is the 800-lb. gorilla in the embedded communications processor space with roughly half of the global market share by our estimation, but with troubles associated with its missed multi-core processor offerings several years back,''said Hans Mosesmann,an analyst with Raymond James & Associates, in a report.
''Freescale is certainly trying to make a comeback in 2010 with an 8-core multi-core offering; however, Cavium has not seen any impact to its design win momentum, perhaps due to Freescale’s offering being more consistent with Cavium’s first generation Octeon,'' he said.
''In our view, Freescale is likely to be successful in keeping some of its historical designs from going to Cavium or others; however, we
suspect that Freescale is set to continue to lose share in the coming years,'' he said.
Cavium is taking share away from Freescale. NetLogic, which recently bought, RMI, is also a contender. AMCC, Renesas, and, to some degree, TI, compete in the space.
''RMI, which also uses MIPs processor core IP like Cavium, has, in our view, good prospects over time and is an important growth vector for NetLogic into the 'control plane' of network/telecom equipment; however, at the moment, Cavium rarely competes with RMI,'' he said.
''We suspect that this will change now that RMI is part of NetLogic and believe that both Cavium and RMI (with MIPs-based offerings) will gain share verses Freescale,'' he said. ''It is perhaps too early to make the case on how good RMI’s new 40nm-based multi-core processors will be verses Octeon II. However, we are fairly confident that Octeon II at 65-nm is an extremely efficient design (very small relative silicon die size), and thus the company does not even see the need to move to 40nm but rather will go to 28-nm in the next couple of years.''
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Yuri Panchul
9/4/2010 1:40 PM EDT
Excellent article, but please correct the misspelling - Cavium and RMI/NetLogic use MIPS cores, not "MIPs" cores.
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Yuri Panchul
9/4/2010 1:49 PM EDT
Excellent article, but please correct the misspelling - Cavium and RMI/NetLogic use MIPS-based cores, not "MIPs"-based cores.
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Silicon_Smith
9/4/2010 1:49 PM EDT
Do we sense an acquistion happening with Renesas or TI increasing the stakes?
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daleste
9/4/2010 9:13 PM EDT
It could make sense for one of the cash rich competitors to pick up Cavium. It would depend on how much they are interested in this market space.
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Kiran_NSN
9/5/2010 10:30 AM EDT
This is a clear evidence of the convergence of all backhaul of the mobile infrastructure networks to be IP is already started and the impact is visible. Even though Freescale was a leader in the area of communications with their powerpc technology and have half of the global market share, they failed to think ahead and provide an all IP based communication processors. But Cavium and Netlogic were just started to build such kind of processors and they were successful in getting their pie in the market.
Cavium with their multi core processor already have many design wins in this particular area and Freescale is yet to make such powerful processors based on all IP. Just waiting to see for some announcement by freescale ….
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monsch
9/13/2011 10:26 AM EDT
Freescale may have been late to market with multicore CPUs, but I would not count them out. Their multicore CPUs in 45nm are higher performance than Cavium's and they already announced their nextgen 28nm product.
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