Whenever there is good momentum in a particular technology, IEEEtakes major initiative to standardize the procedures, formats, methods, measurements etc. involved in the technology to proliferate it for the advantage of wider community. And that becomes successful by active participation and collaboration of both producers… Read More
Did Google make a huge mistake with Motorola?
The news wires are alive today with the story that Google sold their Motorola mobility division to Chinese tech giant Lenovo for $2.9 billion. Google bought Motorola in 2011 for $12.5 billion. Did Larry Page make a $9.6 billion mistake? Probably not.
Although Motorola came with $3 billion in cash, and Google already sold the Motorola… Read More
The Biggest Supplier in the Biggest Mobile Market is a Company You Have Never Heard Of
If you live in the bay area it is easy to come to the conclusion that Apple has huge market share and is in a very strong position in the mobile market. Everyone has an iPhone.
But the truth is less flattering. Yes, Apple continues to make large profits and it made record iPhone shipments. However, only 51M and Wall Street expected nearly… Read More
A Brief History of the Apple iPod
In January 2001 we had a new American president, George W. Bush, I was working at Mentor Graphics, and Apple introduced an MP3 player called the iPod with a hard drive capable of holding 1,000 songs. In the previous decades we enjoyed portable music from tape-based, CD, or mini-CD devices like the Sony Walkman. The first several generations… Read More
The Semiconductor Landscape – III
In continuation to my earlier observations and anticipations (landscape1, landscape2) which came up to my expectations, I was further inspired to ponder over the macros of our ever growing semiconductor industry. We may argue the business is stagnating, we may argue that the pace of scaling is slowing, but when I look back at the… Read More
India Spearheading into Space Technology
Success follows failures, if your perseverance in high enough to achieve any kind of arduous goal. This adage was witnessed by Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) successfully launching India’s first rocket, Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle GSLV D5 which carried GSAT 14 advanced communications satellite and… Read More
Innovations that will change our lives in the next five years
The theme of our book “Fabless: The Transformation of the Semiconductor Industry” comes from the Steve Jobs quote,“You can’t really understand now if you don’t know what came before.” After chronicling the rise of the semiconductor industry and transformation to the fabless business model we ask in the final chapter, … Read More
Somebody at the NSA has a sense of humor
We have to go way back in the annals of entertainment history to find the origin of the word “Jeep”, not just a term of endearment hung on a WWII utility vehicle. Pictured is Eugene the Jeep, a mystical creature belonging to the 4th Dimension, who first appeared to torment Popeye the Sailor in 1936.… Read More
SemiWiki 2013 in Review!
This certainly was an interesting year. The fabless semiconductor ecosystem definitely got stronger and I see nothing but clear skies in 2014. Judging by the SemiWiki 2013 analytics and key search terms we all have an interesting year ahead of us with even more opportunities to grow and innovate. 2013 was also a year of growth and… Read More
Will You Take the Password Pill?
As smartphone and tablet makers desperately search for points of differentiation they will try to push the limits of performance on several fronts to extremes. The password pill and the display-cover display are two of the stranger extreme features on the way.
Extreme inter-connectivity is one of the more useful features that… Read More
Solving the EDA tool fragmentation crisis