The Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA) announced its 2017 award recipients on December 7th after a late dinner in Santa Clara, California attended by over 1500 semiconductor industry executives. The GSA awards program has recognized the achievements of semiconductor companies in several categories ranging from outstanding leadership to financial accomplishments, as well as overall respect within the industry.
Opening remarks by GSA President Jodi Shelton were extremely upbeat about the semiconductor industry. That’s something this author strongly disagrees with as consolidation through mergers and acquisitions along with “open hardware” projects has greatly diminished the power of the industry.
The Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award was presented to Mr. Ray Stata, Co-founder and Chairman of Analog Devices, Inc. who made a brief speech that was followed by several video testimonials about his helping MIT – his alma mater.
Earlier this year, Analog Devices completed its acquisition of Silicon Valley success story Linear Technology Corp. which is based in Milpitas, CA. “The combination of Analog Devices and Linear Technology creates an analog industry powerhouse,” said Vincent Roche, ADI President and Chief Executive Officer. We certainly agree with that!
[In early 1974, this author worked closely with Linear Technology co-founder and CTO Robert Dobkin at National Semiconductor on design of a circuit board and firmware that demonstrated IMP16C microprocessor closed loop control of temperature and pressure transducers.]
GSA members identified the Most Respected Public and Private Semiconductor Company Award winners by casting ballots for the industry’s most respected companies judging by their products, vision and future opportunities.
2017 GSA Award Winners included:
- “Most Respected Emerging Public Semiconductor Company Achieving $100 Million to $500 Million in Annual Sales Award” presented to Monolithic Power Systems (MPS);
- “Most Respected Public Semiconductor Company Achieving $500 Million to $1 Billion in Annual Sales Award” awarded to Silicon Labs (The company says it “makes silicon, software and solutions for a more connected world.” Its corporate headquarters is in Austin, TX);
- “Most Respected Public Semiconductor Company Achieving $1 Billion to $5 Billion in Annual Sales Award” awarded to Analog Devices, Inc.;
- “Most Respected Public Semiconductor Company Achieving Greater than $5 Billion in Annual Sales Award” received by NVIDIA Corporation.
- “Most Respected Private Company Award” winner was Aquantia Corporation. The company was founded in 2004 and its corporate headquarters are in San Jose, CA. Aquatia says its “advanced silicon is driving the Multi-Gig upgrade in data center, enterprise infrastructure and access markets.” The company’s QuantumStream silicon delivers 100Gbit/s bandwidth all-electrical technology achieving low latency in high speed networking applications, e.g. intra data center connections. Their AQtion controllers and NICs target support 10G, 5G, 2.5G, and 1G Ethernet.
Other 2017 GSA award winners were:
“Best Financially Managed Company Achieving up to $1 Billion in Annual Sales Award” presented to Parade Technologies, Ltd. in San Jose, CA. The company says it provides “Innovative Silicon for Displays, Touch, and High-Speed Digital Interfaces.”
“Best Financially Managed Semiconductor Company Achieving Greater than $1 Billion in Annual Sales Award” earned by SK Hynix Inc. in South Korea.
Both companies were recognized based on their continued demonstration of the best overall financial performance according to specific financial metrics.
GSA’s Private Awards Committee, comprised of venture capitalists and select industry entrepreneurs, chose the “Start-Up to Watch Award” winner by identifying a company that has demonstrated the potential to positively change its market or the industry through the innovative use of semiconductor technology or a new application for semiconductor technology. This year’s winner is DecaWave Ltd. which makes a single chip ultra wideband (UWB) transceiver that may be used in indoor and outdoor positioning systems. The company’s DW1000 transceiver chip is also targeted at Internet of Things (IoT) applications with up to 6.8M bits/sec communications capability. That chip is based on the IEEE802.15.4-2011 standard, which defines the operation of low-rate wireless personal area networks (LR-WPANs) by specifying the Physical (PHY) layer and media access control (MAC) sublayer for LR-WPANs.
As a global organization, the GSA recognizes outstanding companies headquartered in the Europe/Middle East/Africa (EMEA) and Asia-Pacific regions. Chosen by the leadership council of each respective region, those award winners are semiconductor companies that demonstrate the most strength when measuring products, vision, leadership and success in the marketplace.
- The recipient of this year’s “Outstanding EMEA Semiconductor Company Award” is Infineon Technologies AG (spun off by Siemens AG on April 1, 1999 with headquarters in Neubiberg, Germany).
- The recipient of this year’s “Outstanding Asia-Pacific Semiconductor Company Award” is Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. based in South Korea.
The criteria used in selecting this year’s “Favorite Analyst Semiconductor Company Award” included historical, as well as projected data, such as stock price, earnings per share, revenue forecasts and product performance. Semiconductor financial analyst Rajvindra Gill from Needham & Company, LLC presented this year’s to NVIDIA Corporation.
NVIDIA has been the undisputed leader in “deep learning” neural network processors which were based on their very successful graphics processor chips. Investors/speculators have been richly rewarded with NVDA stock up 114% over the past year as of December 8, 2017 closing price of $191.50
Reference:
https://www.gsaglobal.org/2017/12/08/global-semiconductor-alliance-announces-2017-award-recipients/
About GSA:
The Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA) mission is to support the global semiconductor industry and its partners by offering a comprehensive view of the industry. This enables members to better anticipate market opportunities and industry trends, preparing them for technology and business shifts. It addresses the challenges within the supply chain including IP, EDA/design, wafer manufacturing, test and packaging to enable industry-wide solutions. Providing a platform for meaningful global collaboration through efficient power networking for global semiconductor leaders and their partners, the Alliance identifies and articulates market opportunities, encourages and supports entrepreneurship, and provides members with comprehensive and unique market intelligence. Members include companies throughout the supply chain representing 30 countries across the globe. www.gsaglobal.org
Leave a Reply