CDNS, Like a Rock

The Market has really hammered some tech stocks (SPWR and VMW come to mind) this year, and today is Cadence's turn. Shares are down 32% today, after last evening's earnings announcement.

It's the "usual" story of decent historical financial results (Earnings meeting expectations, Sales a bit short), but the dreaded "weak guidance" for the future.

I'll be looking for the conference call transcript to see if the poor outlook is blamed on a weak overall economy or semiconductor industry, or if it seems to be particular to Cadence or certain product lines.

Update: Management's Earnings Conference Call Remarks are here. There's no specific information about company or product weakness. Rather, it says

As a result of our discussions with customers in Q4, and our assessment of an increasingly aggressive pricing environment that we have not seen during the past few years, we believe it is prudent to plan our 2008 business conservatively.
...
The current environment is more uncertain and the value discussions are longer and are harder than in the past several years. However, our strategy is intact, our technology has never been stronger, and we are dedicated to preserve the value of the solutions we are providing to customers.

Sounds like it's those darn stingy customers causing the problem. :-)

All-time Most Influential Technologists

Intel ... assembled a panel of experts including academics, journalists and independent third parties to vote on technology's 45 most influential people: HEXUS.net - Headline :: Intel lists its 45 most influential technologists : Page - 1/1

This is really an esteemed list. Tim Berners-Lee deserves a Nobel prize for the impact that the Web has had, and will have, on the world. I wouldn't put the founders of Google so high, though. Isn't Google just the search engine du jour? If this list was made a few years ago, would the founders of Yahoo or even (shudder) Netscape or AOL have been listed?

Who else doesn't belong? Who else is missing?

Check out the comments below the article for Wikipedia links to biographies.

Best Technology Business Blogs

Recommended Blogroll: Good Technology Business Blogs - Sramana Mitra on Strategy

This is Sramana's list of favorite blogs in this field with her descriptions. Worth a look, especially given that she is a published Forbes magazine author!

2008 Technology Winners and Losers

No, I am not talking about tech stocks! Please, let's not talk stocks so far in 2008. :-(

Instead, I refer you to IEEE Spectrum magazine's list of "winning" and "losing" technologies.

For chip geeks, a particularly good one is The Ultimate Dielectric Is...Nothing, highlighting IBM's research to create a vaccuum between chip interconnect. Not only is the technology very cool, but I'm really impressed by the writing in this article. The author is able to explain things like photolithography and crosstalk in layman's terms. Take a look; it's a nice piece of work.

I am so impressed by the cutting edge semiconductor R&D done at IBM and Intel. They are constantly pushing the envelope and competing very ably with giant foundries like TSMC. It's surprising that these tech heavyweights don't do more COT (foundry) business. I wonder if it's a lack of ability to set up the business and customer service, or a lack of desire, i.e., that they have more profitable things to do with their fabs.

An Industry Giant Departs

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is happening this week, with lots of big announcements for all us tech developers and consumers.

On the personal side, this is the last CES where Bill Gates, Microsoft founder and CEO, gave the Keynote address. Here's a video about his last working day at Microsoft.
Bill Gates Last Day CES Clip

Semiconductor Co. Gets R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Shoot To Kill - Forbes.com is the cover story on Forbes magaznie's Company of the Year. The honor goes to the graphics chip leader NVIDIA (aka Graphzilla).

The article itself is good. It does a nice job of explaining GPUs and CPUs in laymen's terms. There were only a couple spots where I thought "what on earth are they talking about?" And, their highlights of the company's history and CEO are well done.

Check it out. It's nice to see one of our companies lauded in the mainstream media!