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A Call for the Investors' Eye as the Semiconductor Industry Awaits

Ram Reddy, CEO & Chairman, Moschip
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Ram Reddy, CEO & Chairman, Moschip
Moschip (MOSCHIP.BO), a semiconductor design services company that incorporates the latest cutting edge technologies specializing in System onChip, ASIC, PCB, design and synthesis. Based in Milpitas, CA, the firm has a market cap of $171.44 million.

Since the evolution of Mobile, data analytics, Social Media and Cloud, the situation has become real dry when it comes to funding in the semi-conductor industry. What attract the investors are huge and quick returns for their investment. The instances of the social media giant Facebook buying whatsapp, and investors only narrowing their investments towards cloud, mobile and social which have been the gold digger's paradise, this is suddenly becoming a norm and is hampering the confidence of people who are constantly trying to innovate in the industry. It is also extremely confusing for the startups in this arena though they come up with fresh ideas to innovate, with robust manufacturing techniques, and setup platforms to facilitate for great innovations as the investors still continue to ignore the semiconductor industry in the long run. In India and China there are a number of design companies in mid scale who primarily offer coding and design services and have been ruling the rooster ahead of some of the large design firms by offering those at a lower cost. With such a scenario, big investors fail to come up with that investment in backing firms with the support they actually need to provide robust and more advanced solutions in view of taking the industry to the next level.

From Building Fabrication to Running SOC
With the advent of highly integrated circuit designs, the bar is raised for a higher demand to drive faster design convergence. The highly advanced 20nm and 28nm technologies facilitate for high operational speeds with being highly energy efficient. Also, recently with the 40nm in the foray, firms can now leverage Low Power, high performance platforms to meet various design application needs. But the expenditure involved to run a simple System on Chip (soc), with all the grades around the design ecosystem keeping in mind the fabrication has been highly expensive. This has been a situation for the semiconductor companies for quite some time; also the RTL codes are usually developed among dispersed design teams around the geography and this has not been of worth considering the future of the industry.

All's Well in the Technology
Industry wise there has not been much dearth for any technology. The continual advent of new designs and applications have only driven people to adopt a more aggressive approach in meeting or rather going past the industry expectations and requirements. Now for a higher transition, the industry is more focused to run large scale soc's. The investors have again failed to identify this industry though armed with all the sophistications that needs to drive a design cycle, right from the concept to silicon.


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