Microchip has acquired Microsemi for $8.35 Billion dollars. Rumors of this acquisition were floating around earlier this week, but now the deal is done.
This acquisition is the latest in a years-long process of consolidation in the silicon industry. Previously, Broadcom attempted a hostile takeover of Qualcomm for One… Hundred… Billion dollars. Lattice would have been bought if the deal wasn’t shut down for national security concerns. Of course, Microchip bought Atmel in a deal likened to the fall of Constantinople, NXP and Freescale merged, Intel bought Altera, Linear and Analog are one, and On Semiconductor acquired Fairchild.
With the acquisition of Microsemi, Microchip will be looking to add a few interesting components and capabilities to their portfolio. In contrast to Microchip’s portfolio, you won’t find many Microsemi parts on a hacker’s workbench; they’re dealing with stuff like optical networking and avionics. Closer to home, they have a large line of FPGAs and some nice frequency synthesizers.
Of course, there are slightly cooler components in Microsemi’s portfolio. If you’ve ever wanted a rad-tolerant telemetry controller for reaction wheels and thruster assemblies, they’ve got your back. Just connect that to Microchip’s rad-hard Arduino and you have a complete satellite built from Microchip parts.
And AutoDesk totally owns Eagle now!
That counts right?
Well, I guess we know what will be on the Amp Hour next week…
Brian, you missed the coolest Microsemi part: their chip scale atomic clock! Which, for the very well-heeled maker, begs to be combined with Dalibor Farny nixie tubes…
https://www.microsemi.com/product-directory/clocks-frequency-references/3824-chip-scale-atomic-clock-csac
Unfortunately the CSAC is a complete failure..
How so? LOL, it’s been on my wish-list since it was anounced because of its low power consumption.
Great, Microchip is buying another company. Now they can ruin another one with Microchips crappy support and documentation.
Sort of like when Haynes bought Chilton…
Microchips website is an absolute disaster…
Their chips are fantastic. Their closed source compilers not so much.
The PIC line are a nice chips and were the first uC I learned to use but their IDE is just terrible.
PIC32 is GCC… and so is AVR.
The only closed ones are the older PIC chips.
And many are supported under SDCC.
We have had great support from Microchip. TI on the other hand is a swear word where I work.
Years ago, mchip support was wonderful – you could submit a technical question and get a PERSONAL answer by the next day.
“Too Big Too Fail”
Daaaaaamn…. I hope they don’t compromise my favorite lines of FPGA…
Interesting. Coincidentally, I purchased my first Microsemi FPGA board last week (https://www.microsemi.com/products/fpga-soc/design-resources/dev-kits/risc-v-creative-board) as I was liking their support of RISC-V soft cores (with toolchain and debugging). So far it seems reasonably “hacker friendly” (or at least as much as any of the other big FPGA vendors are).
Hmmm. All this consolidation doesn’t seem very good for competition/innovation in the industry. Is the ‘state-of-the-art’ in silicon just stagnating ? :/
R&D is getting expensive, Consolidation helps in managing costs at least that is what our VP(Microsemi) was telling us.
Consolidation reduces the pressure to head for the bottom, by fostering a SOL environment aka *olopoly.
Consolidation is also a way to synthetically create growth for shareholders. With software companies creating such profit for investors, hw companies are feeling the squeeze
That was one of the main points the VP was saying,satisfying the shareholders
Side note, is anyone else seeing serious disruptions in components? Like capacitors and various semiconductors? I’m talking loooong lead times up to a year!
Yes, I spent the last couple of days sorting out BOM problems because of problems getting passives.
Yes, we got a warning already at the start of the new year from our subcompany that runs our production line that some components are on extremely long lead times and that we could possibly run into problems on some products. From what i hear, especially passives qualified for automotive are a problem. And there is that rumour that some MLCC manufacturers are shifting production focus to the parts with better profit margin now, so with already scarce worldwide production capacity that can not meet current demands, it spirals out of control quickly.
Is it just me, or is it generally bad for everybody when companies buy other companies?
Competition goes down.
Redundant employees lose their jobs.
Choices in products are decreased.
Prices probably go up.
It just seems like a bad idea except for a tiny number of people at the very top who get to cash out…
Good thing there are anti-monopoly laws in place. They must be at least as effective as anti-drug laws and anti-murder laws, right?
Better than anti-comments laws. :-p
All this consolidation going on is getting out of hand it’s bad for consumers,people working in the field and the industry as a whole it’s time for some of these companies to face Sherman’s hammer.
There’s no “one CEO to rule them all”.
its bad for everyone but the ceo’s and their friends.
in current america, they are the ONLY things that matter. such poor dears, they need such TLC. that’s why we give them all our money, all the tax breaks, all the advantages, and when they do bad things, we look the other way.
making things better for the regular guy is a long-gone concept in the US. we’re activly seeking to compete in the next olympic ‘race to the bottom’ competition.
I was working at Atmel when they were acquired by Microchip (still there). Overall, the move has been an improvement. The biggest one is that training went from non-existent to plentiful.
One of the few down sides is that my team has to make the transition from the Cadence simulator over to Mentor one day. Getting our compute servers moved over to the “new system” is going to break almost all of our scripts too, but that is to be expected.
Hi I am working currently at Microsemi, so I wanted to ask was there were any changes in compensation and from your perspective what have been the good and bad things about change of management from Atmel to Microchip
Not a l ways. Intel + Altera is a great combo. Wait to see what comes next. Purc awsomenss .
Really? Only ones I see benefiting from this acquisition are Altera’s competitors due to a non-existent focus on anything except the Data Center and maybe Automotive.
we may make our own chips if this is the way its going
I thought microsemis switch mode RF parts were quite cool:
https://www.microsemi.com/document-portal/doc_view/124244-drf1400-13-56-mhz-class-d-half-bridge-rf-generator