French industrial giant Alcatel Alsthom SA has formed a new division Alcatel Microelectronics to market its semiconductor Intellectual property and system on a chip products, and telecoms application specific integrated circuits. Alcatel Telecom claims to be at the forefront of designing and manufacturing custom ASICs in its semiconductor arm Alcatel Mietec, which also moves into the microelectronics division. The company is going to partner up with design outfit Synopsys Inc to attempt to shorten design cycle time, and will also be licensing third parties intellectual property such as Advanced RISC Machines Ltd’s ARM microprocessors. The major chips that will be licensed to start with are chips for telephone, ISDN, ADSL, GSM and DECT systems.
