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SigmaTel about to be sold?
Freescale to purchase for $108 million dollars
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Nordburgh 2008-02-05, 12:45 #1
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Subject: SigmaTel about to be sold?
http://www.dealipedia.com/deal_view_acquisition.php?r=9468

Wonder what this will mean for their chips?
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krazykit (Administrator) 2008-02-06, 11:16 #2
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Maybe it means we'll see a Rio successor with a good-sized hard drive.
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Peregrine 2008-02-06, 11:55 #3
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Just solidifies how far ahead of it's time that original Rio chipset was. ;)
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flattop100 2008-02-08, 07:35 #4
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Quote by From Freescale:
    *  The i.MX31 and i.MX21 applications processors are multimedia engines. Our growing portfolio of high-resolution video codecs, multimedia engineering expertise and low-power innovation enables OEMs to bring consumers an audio and visual experience—typically reserved for home entertainment systems—to mobile devices.
    * Our MC13783 power management and user interface IC/i.MX31 multimedia applications processor platform is a highly integrated all-in-one power management and audio solution, optimized for low power consumption and excellent multimedia performance in portable devices. Together, these components provide everything you need to create a portable multimedia player or audio device while providing all the interfaces for Wi-Fi®, Bluetooth® or other connectivity.
    * The ColdFire MCF5251 comes with a complete audio reference software package that supports standards including WMA, MP3, mp3PRO, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, SRS WOW®, JPEG, MPEG-4 decode, MP3 encode, adaptive differential pulse code modulation (ADPCM) voice record and Microsoft® PlaysForSure™. On request at no additional charge, Freescale provides schematics, layout files and component lists for a 1.8-inch, 20 GB HDD reference design that includes a color LCD and support for JPEG, MPEG-4 and USB 2.0 OTG
    * Freescale has developed a reference design, based on our DVB-H RF tuner and the i.MX31 high-speed applications processor, for a PMP that can broadcast, pause and record live television. This solution enables long battery life, crisp video resolution, advanced security, 3D gaming and navigation features.
    * The i.MX21 PMP reference design kit is based on Freescale's i.MX21 multimedia applications processor and the Microsoft® Windows® CE 5.0 operating system. This robust hardware and software development kit is designed to be compliant with Microsoft's Portable Media Center (PMC) standard while allowing user customization through broad I/O support.

I dunno, I think Freescale is buying out a competitor to squash the technology.

If not, Karma guts could end up inside cars (again). It would be kinda funny if things went full circle, having started with the Empeg.
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peter 2008-02-08, 08:38 #5
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I don't work for Sigmatel any more, so I know no more about it than can be gleaned from the press release, but it sounds to me as if Freescale are after Sigmatel's analogue chip design engineers. The analogue section of, say, a 3600 is unusually low-power and unusually high-quality (in terms of audio output) compared to the rest of the system-on-chip market; users of competing chips who care about audio quality often find that they need to use an off-chip DAC.

Freescale are paying $108M for a company with a cash liquidation value of $101M. Something tells me they won't be keeping very much of it. And if anyone were to venture the opinion that, once they closed the Cambridge office at the end of last year, the chip design (and validation) group was the only remaining bit of Sigmatel worth having, then I couldn't possibly comment.

Peter
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Peregrine 2008-02-13, 12:07 #6
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I really don't get where Sigmatel makes all their money. Selling the DAP chipset and the chipset for a few motherboard manufacturers for the onboard audio (like mine). What else do they do?
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peter 2008-02-13, 13:27 #7
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Quote by Peregrine:
Selling the DAP chipset and the chipset for a few motherboard manufacturers for the onboard audio (like mine). What else do they do?
They also make audio chips for televisions, and embedded CPUs for printers -- both markets where the end-user never actually sees the Sigmatel brand. And they in fact sold their PC audio chipset division to IDT some time ago.

Peter
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