Semiconductor companies in Canada

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Canada’s biggest semiconductor company will be created in May by the proposed merger of Gennum and Tundra, the Globalpress Summit Conference in San Francisco was told this morning.

“When the acquisition goes through on May 8th we’ll be the largest semiconductor company in Canada”, said Dr Martin Rofheart, vice president and general manager of Gennum. The acquisition will cost Gennum Can$86m (US$69.6m).

“Tundra is a leading supplier of VME solutions, Serial Rapid I/O. PCI XPress and legacy bridges, and Gennum offers strong refresh into those applications”, said Rofheart, “they are big in switched fabric technology which Gennum doesn’t have, it allows us to bring switches and bridges for low latency, high data-rate, high performance solutions.”

Gennum said it also increases the availability and affordability of differentiated IP such as PCIe Gen 2/3, USB 3.0, SRIO, SAS/SATA.

Gennum intends to use its high-speed interconnect IP, Gennum believes it can more quickly bring to market new products supporting PCI Express, Serial ATA/SAS, USB, DisplayPort, HDMI, 10Gbit Ethernet, Fibre Channel, SONET and RapidIO.

Asked by Electronics Weekly if the merger would result in lay-offs, Rofheart replied: “There will be synergies on both sides of the equation.’ Gennum is looking for $10m of rationalisation savings.

The merger extends the global reach of the combined entity. Gennum is strong in Japan where Tundra had no presence and Gennum is weak in China where Tundra has a presence.

Target markets are for Gennum/Tundra silicon are wireless, wireline infrastructure, industrial, medical, server and storage equipment.