Chipmaker Analog Devices To Buy Rival Maxim For About $21 Billion (reuters.com) 32
Hammeh writes: Semiconductor maker Analog Devices said on Monday it would buy rival Maxim Integrated Products for about $21 billion in the largest U.S. deal this year, aiming to boost its market share in automotive and 5G chipmaking. The deal, which is also Analog's biggest, will create a chipmaking force with a combined enterprise value of about $68 billion that will compete with larger rivals including Texas Instruments). Analog Devices Chief Executive Vincent Roche told Reuters in an interview that the combined engineering teams would help the resulting company design more specialized, higher-margin chips for customers such as automakers. "If you're doing commodities, you're at the mercy of the of the heavy hammer of the procurement folks," Roche said. "But our game is about getting there first, getting out on the edge and making a real impact at the application level for our customers." The companies said the deal added Maxim's strength in automotive and data center markets to ADI's broad industrial, communications and digital healthcare segments.
This is very bad for those who buy IC's (Score:5, Interesting)
Maxim IC and Linear provided a way to buy chips and offered a different price to quality range.
The problem with analog buying all the companies is less competition and analog will be sure to eliminate some product spaces.
TI, won't talk to a customer unless they are ordering 10k's of parts, they are low price and low quality.
Linear an analog were the high quality part of the market space, but also higher price.
Maxim IC was a kind of in between, mid quality and mid price.
By quality I mean not just the design of the IC's but customer service and the quality of other things customers use like datasheets.
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I had a problem with one of their chips, there was behavior that did not match the datasheet (an output shifted randomly over long periods of time). There is no way to complain, and even if you did, they wouldn't care (unless you have a direct salesperson, which I don't, I don't order in those quantities.
Re: This is very bad for those who buy IC's (Score:2)
What more generic news site are proper geeks using nowaday, by the way?
Please don't say Reddit. Reddit is cancer is cancer is Reddit.
Re: This is very bad for those who buy IC's (Score:2)
I think Intersil still sells some old Harris parts.
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Intersil is no longer an independent company, hasn't been for since 2017. It's a part of the Japanese company Renesas, formed from bits and pieces of NEC, Hitachi, and Mitsubishi.
Intersil was first formed on 1967, was bought by Harris in 1988, and was spun off again in 1999 with the assets of Radiation Incorporated, General Electric, and RCA, that Harris has acquired over the years.
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Re: This is very bad for those who buy IC's (Score:2)
But TI makes mostly digital chips. For analog devices these two are among the best. I am worried.
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No, you have to prove that the deal would enable monopolistic practices, or significantly change the pricing in the industry. It won't in the short term, but in the long term less players is not better.
Re:This is very bad for those who buy IC's (Score:4, Interesting)
I always find TI to be highly responsive. And they have a wide variety of offerings, some of their op-amps are extremely competitive with the best from Analog, and some of their regulators (like the LP5900) are exceptionally low noise.
I like this move. Maxim has always been difficult to work with - even though they had a few really nice devices - poor support. Analog is miles better beyond. And the Analog datasheets are a lot cleaner too (although I think the best out there are TI - the worst is AKM or Nordic, Microchip a close 3rd).
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I always find TI to be highly responsive.
I've submitted queries/bug reports on datasheets for both Linear and TI. With Linear, they responded, thanked me, and there was a small amount of back and forth with one of the engineers pretty quickly. TI never responded and quietly fixed the bug in the next revision of the datasheet.
Unfortunately I ended up going with TI because Linear don't specialise in the really low power amplifiers with higher noise like Texas does.
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some of their op-amps are extremely competitive with the best from Analog
I found the only TI opamps which are remotely competitive to the higher end from Analog have the label Burr-Brown on them, fortunately it seems TI largely retained some of the features of the distinctly higher quality competitor it bought out 20 years ago.
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TI on most parts does not have as wide operating temperature range and guarantee the specs of across the temperature range.
Proactively leveraging existing synergies (Score:2)
Sounds like they are Proactively leveraging existing synergies.
To actualize their end user requirements.
OMG I actually got that out with a straight face..........
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Ditto: "If you're doing commodities, you're at the mercy of the of the heavy hammer of the procurement folks," Roche said. "But our game is about getting there first, getting out on the edge and making a real impact at the application level for our customers."
Errrrmmm....got that? They are going to get there (where?) first, get out on the edge (where it is easier to fall off), and have a real impact at the application level (hell, you can do that just by screwing up).
I think the MBA school who issued his ce
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- Yo Grark
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That headline confused me (Score:1)
I was thinking, why on earth would a chip maker buy a mens magazine [maxim.com] - are they really that hard up for new potential sales channels?
I kind of wish that was the case rather than seeing IC makers consolidate...
It isn't really a rival, then. (Score:2)
I mean it's not like Maxim didn't have a choice ... Like they are an inanimate object on a supermarket shelf.
Not good (Score:3)
We have had the mega merger of TI + National Semi , Analog Devices + BurrBrown + Maxim (who also acquired Dallas semi a while ago), NXP + Freescale(aka Motorola), Microchip + Atmel and on and on it goes. I wonder if price rises will follow.
Maxim I loved and hated. They made such clever parts, like their one wire products (I know Dallas invented those) but man I was burned so many times by them not having stock that stopped using them.
Re:Not good (Score:4, Informative)
Burr Brown isn't owned by ADI, it's owned by TI.
Anyhow, I suspect this is really an acqui-hire type move. Analog ICs are an extreme specialty these days and talent is extremely expensive. Go into analog IC design and you can pretty much get 6 figures starting out.
At the same time, analog ICs are "lame" - they're not interesting parts at all - regulators both linear and switching, power control chips, ADCs and DACs (OK, the cutting edge is nice, but run of the mill style things like audio applications aren't interesting at all), amplifiers and other such chips. Not terribly intersting.
Yet they're also complex - op-amps are extremely popular, yet are not the easiest to design to get the specs you want in a repeatable fashion. No one cares how you got the latest improvement bandwidth, or how you made it more stable, or how you reduced the input capacitance thus making it more sensitive, other than your fellow designers. The users of your product care about the final specifications, and that's about it.
Your little op-amp can be used everywhere, yet you as the designer will be forgotten as it becomes a jellybean part. Whereas the latest and greatest digital chip is splashed everywhere - everyone in the industry knows the latest GPUs and CPUs and all the headlining specs. No one cares that your little switching power supply chip is what regulates and controls power to those hungry digital beasts.
It's unglamourous, it's essential, and it pays extremely well because few people want to enter into such a field. (It also isn't easy since you start having to analyze all the math and everything).
Oh yeah, I think Apple acquired Dialog, too, makers of power management ICs.
The only good thing is I think all these companies are still fully red blooded American, at least not counting a company like ST Micro which I think is European.
Re:Not good (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yeah, minor correction: Analog + Linear Tech is probably what you had in mind. But the point stands; there's been quite a bit of consolidation lately and it's worrysome.
I think splitting one of the bigger players is better solution to "more competition" than consolidating its competitors. (I'm reasonably happy with all of their products and support, though there was some pain inflicted by ADI clock parts a while back.)
Re:Not good (Score:4, Informative)
I just hope, (Score:3)
that Analog doesn't mess around with Maxim's switching regulator development. The MAX17222 is one of the best chips I've ever worked with - a boost regulator that's astoundingly efficient and well-behaved, and easy to design with. I've been impressed with other Maxim products over the years.
If Analog management is smart they'll let Maxim's engineers do their thing unhindered and reap the rewards - each company has its strengths, and it would be a mistake to look for 'synergies' that might dilute those strengths on both sides. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
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Bad news for the sector... (Score:2)