In an interview (probably $) with the Wall Street Journal, Eric Schmidt, the chairman (and ex-CEO) of Google, said:“The adult way to run a business is to run it more like a country. They have disputes, yet they’ve actually been able to have huge trade with each other. They’re not sending bombs at each other. … It’s extremely curious… Read More
Anyone Can Build a Phone
Today’s Dilbert cartoon is about how anybody can build a smart phone. As if it was a technical problem these days. But back in the mid-90s it really was. All the contract manufacturers like Solectron and others figured that since they could build a PC they could build a phone. It turned out that building radios was really hard.… Read More
Dear Santa, please bring technology that brings us together
Dear Santa,
It has been many years since I have written you. I was taught never to ask anyone for anything for myself, that it is a presumptuous and selfish thing to do, so this is not for me. I know you are busy filling the wish lists of children everywhere, but wanted to take a moment to ask for your help for everyone.… Read More
Introduction to FinFET Technology Part III
The preceding two Semiwiki articles in this thread provided an overview to the FinFET structure and fabrication. The next three articles will discuss some of the unique modeling requirements and design constraints that FinFET’s introduce, compared to planar FET technology.
Due to the complexity of FinFET modeling – … Read More
Why are AMS designers turned off by Behavioral Modeling?
Analog Mixed-Signal (AMS) behavioral models have not caught on with the AMS designer community. Why? I suspect a significant reason (but certainly not the only one) is the way they are presented.
First, what is AMS behavioral modeling?
I define it as “a set of user-defined equations that decribe the terminal behavior of a component”.… Read More
Smartphone Market Share
The numbers for smartphone sales in Q3 are starting to roll in. These are in units and not yet revenue (let alone profit) numbers although everyone down to Sony is for sure profitable. Samsung is running away with the volume, selling more than Apple, Huawei and Sony put together. One name that is missing is Motorola (Google) which … Read More
Apple and Samsung Take All the Profit
I’ve talked before about how Apple and Samsung make most of the money in the handset business (and also about how Nokia…er…doesn’t). Now there is a report from Canaccord Genuity makes it clear just how much of the profit they make: 106%. And that is down from second quarter when they made 108%.
How can they… Read More
Apple v. Samsung: Mixed Phone Marriages End in Divorce?
A funny thing happened at dinner the other night. The SemiWiki blog “8 Things I Hate about My iPhone5” caused quite a discussion. Half the table had Samsung phones and the other half iPhones. It really was more of a religious or political debate versus a rational consumer electronic discussion. An interesting side note, it seems … Read More
Google Datacenter
In my blog about Intel’s latest results I linked to an interesting article in Wired about Google’s datacenters.
I happened to be browsing some websites in the Netherlands (actually I don’t speak a word of Dutch, a Dutch friend pointed it out to me) and there is an article showing how the pictures that accompany… Read More
Why Blog on SemiWiki.com?
The Semiconductor Wiki Project, the premier semiconductor collaboration site, is a growing online community of professionals involved with the semiconductor design and manufacturing ecosystem. Since going online January 1st, 2011 more than 400,000 unique visitors have landed at www.SemiWiki.com viewing more than 3M pages… Read More
More Headwinds – CHIPS Act Chop? – Chip Equip Re-Shore? Orders Canceled & Fab Delay