By Ian Sherr

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 4 (Reuters) – Graphics microchip maker Nvidia Corp is a company in transition.

The Santa Clara-based company halted development for one of its largest units in October, raising questions about whether the unit’s product sales would slowly tail off or sales would drop off a cliff.

And, if they did, could the company’s products in new market segments gain enough traction to make up the difference?

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MILPITAS, Calif. (Reuters) – The rapid proliferation of multimedia and Web-ready consumer devices such as smartphones is underpinning a gradual uptick in corporate spending and spurring growth for specialty chipmakers, the top executive at industry player LSI Corp said.

The company, which competes with the likes of Marvell Technology Group Ltd to make chips for computer servers and storage devices, wants to continue to hitch a ride on that wave of consumer devices by providing chips for network and data infrastructure, said Chief Executive Abhi Talwalkar.

“There’s richer content flowing through networks,” he said in an interview at LSI’s offices in Silicon Valley.

“Just the push of richer PDAs (handheld devices), and the growing mix of PDAs as a percentage of overall mobile subscribers — that in itself is driving tremendous requirements,” he added, referring to both network infrastructure and data storage for Internet-centric devices.

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