The early first generation analog standards all used a technique known as Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA). All this means is that each call was assigned its own frequency band in the radio spectrum. Since each band was only allocated to one phone, there was no interference between different calls. When a call finished… Read More
iPhone5 Versus Samsung S3: the Key Question
In all the discussion about iPhone versus Samsung, the profit leader and the volume leader in the handset business, there is way too much discussion about boring stuff like how many MIPS the A6 chips has and whether the maps are any good on iPhone (no) and is there enough 28nm capacity for Qualcomm. Boring.
The real question that everyone… Read More
A brief History of Mobile: Generations 1 and 2
Mobile is one of the biggest markets for semiconductor, especially if you count not just mobile handsets but also the base-station infrastructure. No technology has ever been adopted so fast and so completely. There are approximately the same number of mobile phone accounts as there are people in the world. A few people have more… Read More
Dear Meg, HP is Still a Goner
A year ago, Meg Whitman decided it was time to venture back into the business world by grabbing onto the HP CEO baton from a badly wounded Leo Apotheker. What for? My best guess is to enter the Pantheon of Great Turnaround CEOs of failing companies, best exemplified by the work of Lou Gerstner with IBM in the early 1990s. It comes too late… Read More
A Brief History of Moore’s Law
I recently read a news article where the author referred to Moore’s Law as a ‘Law of Science discovered by an Intel engineer’. Readers of SemiWiki would call that Dilbertesque. Gordon Moore was Director of R&D at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1965 when he published his now-famous paper on integrated electronic… Read More
How Big is Mobile? Twice as many people use mobile phones than use a toothbrush
How big is mobile? Well, sometime early next year (or maybe even in the Christmas surge) there will be more mobile phones than people. Technically that is subscribers, so some of those “phones” are actually spare SIM-cards in international travelers’ pockets. But even so that is an incredible statistic. Also,… Read More
Dilbert Does Social Media!
Dilbert has always been a favorite comic of mine because it is based on truth and there is no better humor than truth, especially at work. According to Wikipedia; Scott Adams and Dilbert came to national prominence through the downsizing period in 1990s America. A former worker in various roles at big businesses, he became a full-time… Read More
User Review: iOS 6 on iPad
Much has been written about the new iPhone 5 and iOS 6 in terms of the features, specifications, bill of materials, and chips used in the design. Today I’ll share my experiences of actually using the new iOS 6 on iPad as an EDA blogger.
Upgrading to iOS6
Clicking the On button and noticing that the App Store icon has something new,… Read More
The End of an Era
I drove down from San Francisco, where I live, to Silicon Valley this morning. Something odd was going on. As I approached San Francisco Airport there were a couple of buildings with lots of people standing on the roof. As I got further south, the bridges over the freeway all had lots of people just milling around. It was when I got to … Read More
Over-under: Apple, 52M iPhones in 4Q
I’m in a Twitter conversation with some friends, with the subject: how many phones can Apple ship in the 4th quarter?
A respected analyst said 52M is “an easy mark” for Apple; others are saying 58M is the target for just the iPhone 5 in 4Q. However, the start for the iPhone 5 has been anything but easy. Oh, the orders… Read More
More Headwinds – CHIPS Act Chop? – Chip Equip Re-Shore? Orders Canceled & Fab Delay