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More on the Practical Uses of Automation

More on the Practical Uses of Automation
by Bernard Murphy on 04-18-2016 at 12:00 pm

There’s a good article in the March issue of the Communications of the ACM which follows a theme I commented in my “One, Two Many” post. But the CACM article has a better title: “Automation should be like Iron Man, not Ultron”.

For anyone who hasn’t seen the movies, Iron Man is a man (Tony Stark)… Read More


Singularity, Semiconductors and Software

Singularity, Semiconductors and Software
by Daniel Payne on 04-15-2016 at 12:00 pm

One of my all-time favorite movies is 2001 A Space Odyssey where one of the leading roles is an AI-based system aboard a spacecraft named Hal that is designed to be a perfect machine yet makes a mistake and then cascades into assaulting and eliminating the human crew members. The future time when semiconductors and software combine… Read More


Silicon Valley Myth Keeps Growing

Silicon Valley Myth Keeps Growing
by Daniel Isenberg on 04-06-2016 at 7:00 am

I thought my ears were deceiving me when a commentator (I believe it was David Brooks) gushed with admiration on NPR a few years ago that it was great that Jeff Bezos of Amazon was injecting Silicon Valley thinking into the Washington Post. What?!?!?! Unless my Google got jammed, Amazon is in Seattle. But Silicon Valley got the tagline.… Read More


Google v. IBM v. Microsoft Artificial Intelligence Strategy Insights from Patents

Google v. IBM v. Microsoft Artificial Intelligence Strategy Insights from Patents
by Alex G. Lee on 04-01-2016 at 7:00 am

Patents can provide insights regarding the state of the art of artificial Intelligence (AI) technology innovation, and thus, a strategic move of a company for the AI innovation leadership. To compare the technology innovation strategy of the three leading companies in the AI business, Google, IBM and Microsoft, patent information… Read More


Yelling fire in a crowded chip factory

Yelling fire in a crowded chip factory
by Don Dingee on 03-28-2016 at 4:00 pm

Semiconductor market forecasts for 2016 are all over the place. Jim Handy and Tom Starnes floated a report in January looking for 10% growth. Jim Feldhan at Semico turned outright negative at -0.3% just a couple weeks ago. Tossing out the high and low scores, analysts tracked by GSA range from 0.3% to 7.0% in March updates. What’s … Read More


One, Two, Many – Why You May Not Be Replaced By A Robot

One, Two, Many – Why You May Not Be Replaced By A Robot
by Bernard Murphy on 03-20-2016 at 4:00 pm

Some aboriginal tribes in Australia see little value in counting and are believed to discriminate only between “one”, “two” and “many”. This is not through lack of intelligence; beyond two they simply lose interest in the details. We can smile and feel superior but I suspect we are not much better when it comes to predicting our technology… Read More


Five Reasons to be More Bullish on a 2016 Commercial PC Refresh

Five Reasons to be More Bullish on a 2016 Commercial PC Refresh
by Patrick Moorhead on 03-01-2016 at 10:00 pm

Last week’s IDC and Gartner Q4-2015 report on PC sales sent a shock-wave through the industry. The stock market responded with a sell-off of major PC-related names like Advanced Micro Devices, HP Inc. (fka Hewlett-Packard), Intel, Lenovo, and NVIDIA. While I was disappointed in the Q4 numbers, I also have a good grasp of what was… Read More


Life, the Universe and Everything

Life, the Universe and Everything
by Bernard Murphy on 02-28-2016 at 12:00 pm

In Douglas Adams’ iconic series A hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxya super-intelligent species created a super-powerful computer called Deep Thought to answer the ultimate question – what is the meaning of life (and the universe and everything)? Life imitates art so it should come as no surprise that a team in London founded a venture… Read More


A Little More Quantum Computing

A Little More Quantum Computing
by Bernard Murphy on 02-25-2016 at 7:00 am

There’s another domain in Quantum Computing (QC) which periodically attracts headlines – Quantum Key Distribution (QKD). I thought this worth covering because it does not depend on the ability to do parallel computation on superposition states, so may not be as much at the mercy of limited coherence times. And ultimately… Read More


Quantum Computing – A Quick Review

Quantum Computing – A Quick Review
by Bernard Murphy on 02-09-2016 at 4:00 pm

This topic comes up periodically but for me had always been one of those things I’d get around to understanding better someday. A recent blog in SemiWiki got me looking a little harder and determined to write a blog to get this out of my system, if for no other reason than getting rid of excess tabs on my browser. So here’s my quick review.… Read More