Motorola To Spin Off Remaining Semiconductor Operations

Jim,

I wouldn't worry too much. Motorola is a client and what I've discovered over the years since ON Semiconductor started up, is that Motorola is merely separating out its various departments and giving each of them their own business name and hierarchial structure. What used to be Dept Heads, are now CEO's for their "little" company. One way or another, they all link back to Motorola.

While this HAS created documentation sourcing nightmares, its not impossible to get around. I recently ordered updates of every Motorola Data Book in existence (for semiconductors only) and received them a couple weeks ago. Interestingly enough, each book that covers parts covered by ON Semi is still marked as Motorola but with the added "ON Semiconductor" under the Motorola Logo. Those parts not covered by ON are included in the data set.

Their Documentation Dept now routes you to the appropriate ordering office for the various Motorola spin-offs and in some cases directs you to contact that division directly, but the documentation still comes from Motorolas main warehouse in Schaumburg. The real difference between ordering from Motorola and ordering from ON is who answers the phone and who pulls inventory to ship to you. These persons are still housed in the same buildings, same offices, except one person answers the Motorola number, and another answers the ON number. Same in the warehouse..... one worker gets paid by Motorola directly, the other by ON.

While ON is its own business, own company, with its own employees, managers, CEO, CFO, etc....it is still answerable to Motorola come tax season although officially from the PR standpoint, nobody will admit this. I only know about it because I've been speaking to Motorola and ON engineers on an almost daily basis for quite some time and subsequently have developed some friendships there that tell me things they probably shouldn't. In any event, the documentation request lines still work regardless of which company you contact as they all go through Motorola anyway. I rather suspect with the spin-off of their remaining component management that this will not change much except to put more personnel between us and the data we need.

Also be aware that the industry trend is moving towards requiring purchase of Data Sheets (and Books) which I feel is really stupid. If I can't shop your parts, how can I know if I want to use them?

I'll tell you what's the REAL bitch...... I know certain things that Motorola is planning months before its released and because I do contract design and manufacturing for them, I'm not permitted to buy their stock ..... it would be insider trading dammit and there's some really cool things going to happen in the next 6 months that I want in on.... stock-wise.

On Sun, 12 Oct 2003 11:28:48 -0700, the highly esteemed Jim Thompson enlightened us with these pearls of wisdom:

I remember when Mot told Apple that they would no longer be building PowerPC chips for them, and everyone figured Apple would end up building PCs which ran OSX. As it turns out, Apple simply went over to IBM, had them build a CPU using their POWER4 core, and ended up with the PowerPC G5. Its being made by IBM on their 130nm SOI process - looks like Apple didn't need Mot after all...

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Greg

  --The software said it requires Win2000 or better, so I installed Linux.

what good will the data books be if the parts disappear? of course, my MECL data, glue logic, and hipercomm books may come in handy, esp. the app notes in the case of the first and last. i wonder where the ECLinPS book is...

i'm glad i stopped looking to mot for parts. today i was going though and organizing a bunch of samples i got from them years ago. a lot of those chips (e.g., the mosaic line) are hard to find and i was told that on-semi denies they ever existed. NBFM chips... stuff like that.

brs, mike

I hope what you say is false....remember Martha Stewart's broker....

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

thanks for the insider info, i think. i mean i'd like to see some of their older parts stay around, like the MRFs and such. PLLs...

not any more ;-)

for real! pay me to send you a picture of the product.

hire a proxy - wrong word. ah! a cutout - and keep your mouth shut? how could you hide it? shades of martha stewart.

thanks 4 the tip. or is it?

brs, mike

>

Saw the notice in both the trade papers and in the local business section. Wonder what they will call the division then? I remember a few years back when Seimens split off the passives business. I had read what the new name was supposed to be. When I tried to order parts through a distributor, they didn't have a clue about the new name or part numbers. Good 'coordination'. Bob Oppenheimer

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And what will they do if/when IBM decices to get out of the semi biz (or the PowerPC biz)? Must be tough for Apple to have to go door-to-door to find people to make CPUs for them. The rumors persist that they have waiting in the wings current versions of their OS(es) that run on IA.

Richard -

For the semi business, that's a big "IF". Hell, for the PowerPC, that's a big "IF". Consider what runs the AS/400 family now ...

RwP

A lot of microcontroller products, very important for anyone that's built a product around them, they are mostly single sourced AFAIUI. Motorola MC68HC705/08, Dragonball, 68HC11, and so on, hopefully enough to form the core of a vital company that will concentrate on them and halt the decline, while Motorola chases cell phone profits in China and other emerging markets.

The other interesting "bombshell" last week was the initiative from Sony to reduce the number of components in their products from something like 800-900,000 *different* parts to more like 100,000 in some defined time frame. Another indication of commoditization of the electronics industry, and another case of following the automotive industry.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

I remember working for a small electronics company many years ago whose purchasing department had made a great deal on 1k resistors, which at the time were the most common component in the company's products. Company management issued a directive to the engineering managers to use 1k resistors wherever possible.

My division's chief engineer made the announcement at an n+1 pizza lunch (n+1 means that we ordered 1 more pitcher of beer than there were attendees).

I learned this from Karl Chang at Verifone.

Used appropriately, it's a good idea. His version was that most circuits can be satisfied with the 1.0, 2.2, and 4.7 values, and we should stick to those, whenever possible.

Also, try to re-use the same ICs where possible in different designs.

This is a sword with both edges on the same side. Not only do your quantities go up, but you don't expose yourself to "features" in new devices so often.

Like all rules of thumb, use only with common sense enabled.

Partly here is the recognition that the circuit inside doesn't have to be absolutely optimal. It isn't the last 0.1 cents of theoretical cost reduction or some infinitesmal increase in performance from using a 3K9 resistor instead of a 4K7 resistor, but the styling of the casing and the cost savings at the beginning and end of ever-shorter product lifetimes that they want to focus on.

The other side of that sword, and one I've struggled with, is when you have multiple products with decent combined volume you have to project sales of the products and purchase combined volumes of components that make sense. It's dead easy to say you're going to buy parts for

1,000 of something. When you have 500 of this, 400 of that, maybe 300 (if that nice order comes in) of something else, a new product that will need 100 (failure) to 1000 (success) of the same part.. and then you want to combine parts that can be ordered from the same vendor- sometimes quite dissimilar parts- ceramic resonators and chip capacitors- both to get quantity discounts, but also to reduce shipping costs, which can be significant if not watched. This is manufacturing, not design, and probably considered "boring" by most design engineers, but to the extent that the designs affect manufacturing it ought to be considered. It gets more interesting if you have a stake in the dollars involved.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany