The development of IC design industry was mainly affected by two drive factors: end product and technology. These drive factors also has brought about market enlargement and integration. Enlargement and integration might also come after a new technology field. At the beginning period, pioneer arrives first, and others follow continually. Efficiency competition ranks company, company would be led to make strategic choice. Finally, company would be divided into 3 area will be se with 2 dumensions of ROA and Market Share: Main area, Potential area, and Sink area. The company of different area would have distinct strategy: Main area would choose major technology at the current market, while potential area would focus on advanced one. Sink area would want to survive so that he might ask for low end product or technology. As long as the major technology changes, the market might also changes. Due to technology goes rapidly, company will be much sensitive with the technology change. Internal research will be easily restricted by current value chain, so external organization will be better for the innovateion research. Last chapter, I compared with Taiwan and United States in strategic view and business model. Taiwan hasn¡¦t catch up with US¡¦s advanced technology and standard barrier, whilie United States has already follow Taiwan with low cost and speed. Taiwan did really face some problem. We recommend that companies in Main area and Potential area should cooperate with each other. Main area focus on continue Taiwan¡¦s advantages. Potental area try to make advanced one. With SIP licences, transactions and technology M&A, two area can easily grow and bloom.

A Study of Dynamic Resource on IC Design Industry

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Abstract This study is probing into the lasting competitive strategy of innovative IC design company. The greatest difference between innovative IC design company and imitating type IC design company is : The innovative IC design company creates profits with the means of innovating, compete in the new market with new thinking and with new products, take a broad view of the future. But the imitating type IC design company keep the profits of the currently product market by means of imitating, attempt to improve efficiency or price competition. The leading rival's advantage must be sustainable, and that the competitor can not make the same advantage by imitating in the near future. Therefore, how to set up lasting competition advantage by way of innovating (Sustainable Competitive Advantage, SCA), is the theme of this study. The company face the IC design industry which change with each passing day while beginning to pursue the lasting competition advantage. Whom want to take the lead , they have to know : How to make products positioning? When is the opportune moment to learn which kind of enterprise's ability? When is the opportune moment to get ready of enterprise resources? How to produce the biggest enterprise value by the least recource? IC design company, even have super strong research and development groups , the specification of the products is in the leading industry , but only depend on cutting down the cost and pursue profits or organization reform, it is unable to set up great enterprises; A century remarkable enterprises can often defend tenaciously of key value and can be long lasting . Facing changing fast IC design industry, which industry should be focus on? Consumer IC , LCD driver IC , network application IC or niche memory? Which way should involve? Is package , testing or end customers of systematic products? A Hedgehog insist on the doing simple things well, often surpassed a multi-purpose clever fox; Even in the times of science and technology with rapid change, follow the steps of scramble , walk and then run is still an effective way of a enterprise management strategy. This study refer to Michael E. Porter ¡¥s book (Competitive Strategy) , competitive strategy and key theme industry's analysis , rival's analysis and strategy positioning. To provide the analysis of the growth and decline of five major factor in general environment and industry's environment , competitor's analysis, competitive strategy positioning, and then make the best of the advantage and choose the excellent position. In studying through wheel of competitive strategy , IC company¡¦s main aspect clear showing, and analyse through the latest industry's information , show out the subject matter and choose in each main aspect of each competitive strategy, and then match out the best innovative competitive strategy in each aspect.

Abstract This study is dedicated to discussing Semiconductor Industrial Cluster competitive advantages on both shores of the Taiwan Straits, and finding out Taiwan IC design industries co-competition strategies with Main Land China. The theory base on the Industrial Cluster by Michael E. Porter. The analytical tool is Diamond Structure of The Competitive Advantage of nations by Michael E. Porter. There are four dimensions¡GFactor Endowments, Demand Conditions, Firm Strategy, Structure, and Rivalry, Related and Supporting Industries, and another two factors¡G Government and Chance. The conclusions of this study are presented as follows: 1. Taiwan IC design industries must make use of Main Land China IC design resource to increase Taiwan competitive advantages. 2. For increase IC design human resource supply purpose. The industrial policy made by Taiwan government must be changed to recruit Hi-Tec engineer from Main Land China. 3. Taiwan has on geography and culture market competitive advantage, IC design industries should participate in establishing China industrial standard. 4. Build up Taiwan's own brand. 5. Build up patent alliance to increase Taiwan IC design industrial competitive advantages. 6. Globalize the enterprise-integrated resource.

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Clock multipliers are among the most critical elements in high speed digital circuits. Power consumption, area, jitter and wide tuning range are key design metrics in these circuits. To provide a wide range of clock frequencies, Digitally Controlled Ring Oscillators (DCROs), whose frequencies are discretely tuned using a Frequency Code Word (FCW), have been investigated in recent studies. They have several advantages over LC-based Voltage Controlled Oscillators (VCO) including simplicity of design, small die area (i.e. no large inductors), better compatibility with deep submicron CMOS processes,ability to offer multiple output phases, and wider tuning range.A compact differential Injection Locked Clock Multiplier (ILCM) based on an injection locked DCRO is implemented in this thesis. As the transistor features continuously shrink and the supply voltage is reduced, ILCMs are becoming more prone to issues such as increased effect of random mismatch, increased device noise, susceptibility of the design to noise coupling and vulnerability to Process Voltage and Temperature (PVT) variations. Furthermore, ILCMs in recent System on a Chip (SoCs) have stringent design requirements including accurate frequency tuning, fine fractional resolution, high levels of integration and better amenability to technology scaling. In the proposed ILCM, multiple techniques were used to address deep submicron CMOS design challenges, as well as modern applications’ requirements. The design is fully digital, synthesizable and automatically placed and routed. All circuit blocks were implemented using digital design flow and designed using a Hardware Description Language (HDL). This allows the design to be more easily ported to deep submicron processes. Online or offline PVT calibration can be performed using a replica oscillator and high speed digital counters to track frequency drifts with PVT variations. A DCRO based on a matrix structure has been utilized to reduce period variations due to random mismatch. The DCRO is built up from pseudo differential delay cells to enhance design immunity to noise coupling. The key thesis contributions are implementing a new DCRO structure using fully syntheziable differential structure, utilizing a novel PVT calibrator that can compensate for frequency mismatch between the main DCRO and its replica, and using a low complexity fractional ILCM technique that achieves a fine fractional resolution with few number of ring oscillator stages.Designed in a TSMC 65 nm GP CMOS process with no analog or RF enhancements, the proposed ILCM frequency ranges from 1.0 to 1.8 GHz and occupies 124:5 m 170 m of chip area. The ILCM can operate in integer or fractional mode for multiplication ratios up to 9. At 1.7 GHz and 1.1 V, the measured integrated RMS jitter (1 kHz to 30 MHz) for the 3rd and 9th multiplication factors are 197 fs and 381 fs, respectively. The ILCM consumes 13.25 mW of power and has a fraction resolution of fref=32. Furthermore, it achieves a jitter-power FOM of −241 dB, when measured at room temperature and 1.1 V. When tested in the presence of switching noise, it provides up to 7 dB improvement in phase noise when compared to a single ended version of the ILCM. In the presence of voltage variations (from 0.9 V to 1.1 V) and temperature variations (from 30 C to 70 C), the maximum integrated RMS jitter variation observed was 50 fs.

The Strategies of the firms in Patent are not only about the future, but also forming the barrier for competitor. For the sake, we should develop the patent strategies and technological position.This study goes to the discussion of technological position by the patent multivariate analysis, and suggest the patent strategy by the difference within and between the groups which were clustered from IC design companies. This study selects twenty gobal IC design companies,which are always on the top25 of the industry.In case1 ,we wonder figure out the technological postion and the path of technology shift.In case2,we can recognize the technological position as industrial position. In case 1, we got four clusters by cluster analysis.Cluster 1 is called SpecialistII,and cluster2 is called Strong Generalist, and cluster 3 is called Specialist I,and cluster 4 is called Weak Generalist. For further observation, the firms with technology shift will shift from cluster 1 to cluster 2 in the same direction.Others still maintain the same strategies in their clusters. In case 2 , we also got four clusters by the analysis. Cluster 1 is called Weak Generalist ,and cluster 2 is called Strong Generalist, and cluster 3 is called Specialist I,and cluster 4 is called Specialist III.As financial results , we got homogeneity within a cluster except cluster 4. Performance between clusters, we made and observed the line chart of trend in the selected financial ratio and we used the median of samples within a cluster. In case 2,it seems heterogeneous in ROA and Price-to-book ratio in the chart.In case1,it is also heterogeneous in ROA and price-to-book ratio.It¡¦s significant and positively correlated in R&D productivity(GrossMargin-to-R&D ratio) between others by the correlation coefficient matrix.It seems to be the proxy to the other financial ratio.

Recently, the government makes good an environment and fully support to semiconductor industries from top to bottom covering the wafer foundry, IC design and equipment testing in Taiwan. Therefore, most of semiconductor brands which are very famous in the international. In early stages, Taiwanese electronic makers which were from OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturing, OEM) model to get resources, technologies and market information. They were became designers and have own R & D via the cooperation of international companies. And also got business form ODM (Original Design Manufacturing, ODM) to its own brand (Own Brand Manufacturing, OBM) direct management about the smile curve at both ends of the market to earn profits. In this study, Taiwan's IC design industry point of view of IC critical success factors of its own brand. In addition, to gathering in DC-FAN motor driving circuits in Taiwan. There are two related information of major leading brands for study. Through "qualitative research" in depth interviews of experts within the industry leader for the interview study, to find out its own brand of IC critical success factors. This research through the collation of expert interviews found that the market should impetus to fully service, increase innovative business models and strengthen integrated development of the semiconductor supply chains to get high techniques for next generation of products. And, to make good relationship with high position of customers that is critical success factors in its own brand. Moreover, it is a base of planning new products for the further. Hope, these findings could offer and give suggestion to industries as a reference. There is a model for reference when some one faces to similar situation.

Starting 80¡¦s, Taiwan¡¦s IC design industry has made brilliant achievements so far, ranked as No. 2 in the world , just second only to U.S.A. However in recent years, as competition being fierce day by day, entry barriers such like capital and technology are getting higher and higher which make it more and more difficult to have new star company in the industry. Especially under the major trend of SoC (system on chip), what it will be of the competitiveness of Taiwan¡¦s IC design industry? How the industry should react to the SoC trend? This is what this thesis intend to find out. Moreover, we take F company which is a new IC design company in Taiwan as an example to enrich the study and make it more practical. Through the study of this thesis, we find the SoC trend has impacted Taiwan¡¦s IC design industry definitely. The impacts including not only the higher entry barrier of the industry but also the cooperation structure between system makers and IC design company. In addition, the IC design industry environment has huge change which including medium and small size company will getting harder to survive, the company who focus on technology development only will be less competitive, and participation of China as both of market provider and industry competitor. The impact of the participation of China will expand rapidly, and the one who react with it earlier will get better chance to survive.