Dave French, the well-regarded CEO of Cirrus Logic Corp. (Austin, Texas), has redirected Cirrus into its third life, and it isn't p roving easy. After Cirrus left PC graphics, it moved into hard-disk drive and optical-disk silicon. Along the way, it bought the Austin-based mixed-signal specialist Crystal Semiconductor, and even now the company's mixed-signal devices, largely Crystal d evices for the audio arena, account for 60 percent of Cirrus revenue.

French dumped the HDD silicon, took the optical and mixed-signal skills and positioned Cirrus as a player in digital consumer ICs. And he bought three smaller consumer chip compani es.

The strategy was applauded by Wall Street for a while, but Cirrus has seen declining revenue even as the DVD silicon market thrives.

What gives? After the three acquisitions, French was faced with building several design teams, each with different tools and methodologies. He put them into one group, managed by Craig Ensley, a long-time marketing executive who got the engineering management job because of his "team-building ability."

As Cirrus regrouped, the competition pounced.

In the low end of DVD players, MediaTek Inc., a spinout from UMC in Taiwan that has grown rapidly, succeeded in creating a two-chip solution: one big digital decode and control chip complemented by a high-performance analog device for servo RF. Cirrus' exist ing approach, to put the servo control electronics alongside the servo analog function, "hasn't been successful," French said.

"MediaTek is shipping in volumes and gained share. They understood a year ago where the market was going better than we did," French said.

MediaTek has been sued several times for allegedly ripping off its user interface from ESS Technology Inc. (Fremont, Calif.). Oak Technology Inc. and MediaTek have also tangled in the courts.

French said he has his own concerns about how to protect Cirrus' intellectual property. And he worries that MediaTek is getting preferential wafer pricing from foundry UMC, which owns a large chunk of MediaTek. Also, the engineers in Taiwan receive equity that is accounted for in ways that may tilt the playing field toward Taiwan-based competitors, he said.

But French doesn't flinch in the face of multiple challenges. "We will win because Cirrus has better video technology, better mixed-signal design skills and more cost-effective serv o silicon. Once we get our software proven, we will gain back share."

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