I still think of Silicon Labs as go-to people for really well integrated very competitively low power SoC with wireless.
Is that true? Are they still very competitive for low power? I feel like STm has been raising the bar a lot, and I'm not sure if SiLabs has stayed competitive, and this was always 3rd hand here say anyways. What do folks think?
They have been doing pretty ok but recently seem to have stepped up their Zephyr game; very smart very well connected IoT software to focus on. The HAL has been around but they recently launched their own Zephyr sdk. I have mixed feelings about vendor dependency & that being a bad thing in some ways for users, but it seems like a popular route &b helpful for getting people going. https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/hal_silabshttps://www.silabs.com/blog/introducing-silicon-labs-simplic...
I'm still reeling at how very much chip consolidation the world's gone through. The 201X's were just such a constant stream of buy outs, of so many amazing companies getting bought & brought in to such huge giant chip companies. Silicon Labs has been a real one, amazingly early & strong at wireless. I salute ya'll. Thanks for the chips.
(Side note, I was very surprised to see Keith Packard's name on the top commit to the hal!! My confidence soars if they hired a (Uber) mensch such as Keith to improve their library offerings. Oh, wildcat fix, fixing some new gcc 14.3 complaining; what a good guy.)
> I'm still reeling at how very much chip consolidation the world's gone through.
All of it should get stomped flat, but since we don't actually believe in anti-trust enforcement in the US anymore ...
Rather than thinking about these transactions as buying chips or engineering, you need think of them as buying customers. It's simply cheaper and more reliable to buy the company who has an existing customer rather than pry them away through competition.
The question here is "Who does SiLabs have as a customer that TI was willing to cough up for?"
I was going to say cough up a premium, but that doesn't really seem to be the case. SiLabs has annual revenue of about $700 million, so $8 billion is just above the 10-year valuation that is pretty standard for valuing a business.
I don't trust anything from Texas Instruments because their CEO is a Zionist. They have a history of developing surveillance equipment for the geopolitical interests of the US governments. This acquisition of a company that manufacturers IoT technology is cause for concern. Especially since Silicon Labs also develops Amazon Sidewalk tech, there are some serious security risks.
I still think of Silicon Labs as go-to people for really well integrated very competitively low power SoC with wireless.
Is that true? Are they still very competitive for low power? I feel like STm has been raising the bar a lot, and I'm not sure if SiLabs has stayed competitive, and this was always 3rd hand here say anyways. What do folks think?
They have been doing pretty ok but recently seem to have stepped up their Zephyr game; very smart very well connected IoT software to focus on. The HAL has been around but they recently launched their own Zephyr sdk. I have mixed feelings about vendor dependency & that being a bad thing in some ways for users, but it seems like a popular route &b helpful for getting people going. https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/hal_silabs https://www.silabs.com/blog/introducing-silicon-labs-simplic...
I'm still reeling at how very much chip consolidation the world's gone through. The 201X's were just such a constant stream of buy outs, of so many amazing companies getting bought & brought in to such huge giant chip companies. Silicon Labs has been a real one, amazingly early & strong at wireless. I salute ya'll. Thanks for the chips.
(Side note, I was very surprised to see Keith Packard's name on the top commit to the hal!! My confidence soars if they hired a (Uber) mensch such as Keith to improve their library offerings. Oh, wildcat fix, fixing some new gcc 14.3 complaining; what a good guy.)
> Are [Silicon Labs] still very competitive for low power?
Nordic's nRF series is very popular for low-power applications. Apple uses nRF52832 in AirTags, for example.
I think you're confused between whats popular and what's competitive.
> I'm still reeling at how very much chip consolidation the world's gone through.
All of it should get stomped flat, but since we don't actually believe in anti-trust enforcement in the US anymore ...
Rather than thinking about these transactions as buying chips or engineering, you need think of them as buying customers. It's simply cheaper and more reliable to buy the company who has an existing customer rather than pry them away through competition.
The question here is "Who does SiLabs have as a customer that TI was willing to cough up for?"
I was going to say cough up a premium, but that doesn't really seem to be the case. SiLabs has annual revenue of about $700 million, so $8 billion is just above the 10-year valuation that is pretty standard for valuing a business.
Lot of Ultra low power options at Silicon Labs on BLE and Wi-Fi and add that with high market share on 15.4 (zigbee, thread) and Zwave.
Last acquisition TI did was NationalSemi in 2011, so this was a natural step for them to grow into MCUs, wireless, etc
I don't trust anything from Texas Instruments because their CEO is a Zionist. They have a history of developing surveillance equipment for the geopolitical interests of the US governments. This acquisition of a company that manufacturers IoT technology is cause for concern. Especially since Silicon Labs also develops Amazon Sidewalk tech, there are some serious security risks.
You are confusing "X develops <something>" and "X produces hardware which other companies use for <something>". They are not the same.
Yeah I'm sure the hardware they produce for Amazon is not specialized whatsoever. You are implying I'm confused.