Business Insider does it again, I just love their charts and with this one I agree with the logic 100%. To me this is more about Samsung the company than Samsung products, Samsung really needs to grow up. The negative marketing, the intellectual property thefts, bribery scandals, product dumping, presidential pardons……. Is that… Read More
Hogan’s Labor Day Luau
Jim Hogan is having his annual Heart of Technology charity barbecue at his home in Santa Cruz. This year it is on Saturday August 31st and it’s a luau. It is from 2pm to 8pm at 2171 Sunny Acres Drive, Santa Cruz. Each adult requires a tax-deductible donation of $50 to FleaHab of Santa Cruz County (kids are free).
In addition to Hawaiian… Read More
Wanna Buy A Blackberry?
So Blackberry (formerly known as Research In Motion or RIM) is up for sale. Basically, apart from some cash in the bank, its main value now seems to be patents and, perhaps, some security technology. The murderers are in Cupertino and Mountain View, Apple’s iPhone (and iPad) and Google’s Android along with its licensees,… Read More
How many consortia does POWER need to succeed?
Sometimes press releases just make me scratch my head. Today’s example comes from IBM: after tying PowerPC and Power.org in knots for almost 20 years with rules and restrictive licensing, IBM breaks ranks and sets up ANOTHER consortium with different players.… Read More
The Funnest Bug
We all have a funnest bug we’ve been involved with. I don’t think ‘funnest’ is actually a word but when my kids used to use the word ‘funner’ I didn’t have a good argument as to why it wasn’t a word, it just seemed a word I’d never heard. In fact I have no idea what the rules are… Read More
New Media and the Semiconductor Ecosystem!
Gary Smith did a nice write-up on the current state of electronics media. It’s posted on his Gary Smith EDAwebsite. Traditional media certainly is in transition and there is more change to come, definitely. Gary lists me as one of the heroes carrying the flag which is very nice of him to say. In reality though, he missed Paul … Read More
Schematic Capture and SPICE in the Cloud
A SemiWiki member mentioned CircuitLaba few months back so I took a look at it today and share my first impressions.… Read More
Lynn Conway’s Story
If you are my age, you know that the most influential book in that era on VLSI design was Carver Mead and Lynn Conway’s textbook, blah VLSI blah. Nobody can remember exactly what its title was, it was just referred to as Mead and Conway. In my opinion it was the most influential book on semiconductor design ever. It opened up VLSI… Read More
Novati Covers the Periodic Table
Novati is a semiconductor company that you probably haven’t heard of. It has its roots in Sematech back when Sematech was mainly in Austin rather than New York where it is today. The Sematech fab first became an independent company and then acquired by SVTC and operated under that name for 4 years. Finally, last the investors… Read More
Apple iOS7 Will Drive The Next Semiconductor Cycle
We have entered the Summer lull, the quiet period before what is likely to be Apple’s largest volume launch of smartphones ever. While the launches are coming in like clockwork, it is the magnitude of the ramp that is likely to surprise many and it will be due not just to the features of iOS7, but also to the adoption of a well-worn Microsoft… Read More


RISC-V and AI: The Architecture Shift Is Now