On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 9:44 AM, John Day <john.day@siliconrailway.com> wrote:
> At 07:38 PM 10/2/2008, Xiaofan Chen wrote:
>>On the other hand, Microchip would dispose Atmel's ASIC
>>business which is actually very good in terms of business
>>sense. Atmel's problem is that they have too broad product
>>lines but their profit (they were actually losing money)
>>can not support the growth of the broad product lines.
>
> Proportionately Atmel is now more profitable than Microchip! Mind
> you, a couple of years ago Microchiop weren't doing too well either!

Hmm, Atmel has more employees than Microchip.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=ATML (7400 employees)
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=mchp (4811 employees)

Microchip is also more profitable than Atmel.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=atml
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=mchp

> Atmel, like many other major semiconductor firms, are pursuing a
> fab-lite strategy. Sell off fabs and then contract your work to who
> ever has the processes you need. That way you don't need to
> continually develop your own processes - concentrate on what you do
> best - design the controllers and processors.

Take note FabLite is not FabLess. Fabless model may not work
for Microchip. They do not want to obsolete product like Atmel.
Even Atmel has learned the lessons and does not obsolete product
that fast as before (remeber many of the first generation of AVRs AT90S
were obsolete within 5 years of their introduction).

> In a way you should say that Microchip has in fact a much wider
> spread of product than Atmel. At least Atmel doesn't have to worry
> about an entire range of analog and conversion products. Atmel under
> the current management has gone back to what they know - memory,
> digital parts and crypto parts. The rest, as you say, can be easily sold off.

Analog is another thing. Microchip's analog line is now pretty big
as well (US$100 million). Their technology (using the same
CMOS technology of the MCU lines) dictates that they would
not match ADI/Maxim/Linear/TI/etc. But they can still produce
many good and low cost parts where you do not need that high
performance.

Even Atmel and Silabs are entering the power controller business.

> The upside for Microchip would be to get a range of solid ARM designs
> with both ARM7 and ARM9 technology. They get the new capacitive sense
> range, a memory range that nicely complements the uChip range and
> extends it well.

Yes Atmel is quite good in terms of technical capability. Another
companies Microchip may be able to buy and achieve something
is Cypress (the PSOC line and touch sensing line and USB line).


Xiaofan
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