Fujitsu Semiconductor and Panasonic, together with Development Bank of Japan Inc. (DBJ), marked a sea change in the Japanese electronics industry last week by signing a definitive agreement to establish a new fabless-type company to design and develop system LSI.
The move confirms the end of an era. For decades, Japanese electronics companies were obsessed with owning their own fabs. Japanese chip vendors had also regarded developing system LSIs as the key to their future, as they wanted to diversify products from their traditional one-trick memory business.
The semiconductor production business is no longer a sacred cow either. Fujitsu and Panasonic have jettisoned most of their own fabs over the last few years.
Further, both companies are willing to let go of their system LSI businesses, as they merge into one as a new company.
The announcement last week revealed a few details of the new fabless chip company -- including its CEO (Yasuo Nishiguchi), its ratio of voting rights (Fujitsu 40%, Panasonic 20%, DBJ 40%) and the number of employees (approximately 2,800 -- 700 of which are from Panasonic``s system LSI business). The new company is scheduled to start operating in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2014.

What``s left unsaid:
Left unanswered in the announcement is whether the new company``s foundries would include Intel, especially at its 14-nm process. There is no indication of how many automotive-related ICs the new company will develop, or whether Unifier -- Panasonic``s ARM-based SoC platform for digital consumer products -- will become a major part of the new company``s system LSI architecture.