As Apple begins to flood the market with a full line of mobile devices sporting 4G LTE communications capability, starting with the iPAD and soon to follow with Ivy Bridge based MAC Book Pros and then in the Fall with iPhone 5s, one has to ask will the carriers be able to keep pace in order for customers to have a satisfied user experience.… Read More
No, gosh darn it, I said the NFC is near!
Getting a feature to take off in today’s smartphone market is tricky. It requires a combination of hardware support, OS support, app integration, and maybe most importantly carrier adoption. Ideas that seem ready technologically, like NFC, get stopped in their tracks by silly things like the William J. LePetomaine Thruway… Read More
Apple’s Leveling of the Semiconductor Industry
Holman Jenkins, the distinguished writer of business trends for the Wall St. Journal, recently penned an article entitled “The End of Apple’s Roach Motel?” (Personally, I think that since Apple is in California, he should have used Hotel California in his title), questioning the iPhone and iPAD maker of its ability to continue… Read More
Book Review – iWoz
I bought my first personal computer in 1979, it was a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I with just 16KB of RAM, a BW monitor and casette tape for storage. The reason that I chose the Radio Shack over the Apple II was that it cost less, so I was always interested in Apple products and the engineers behind them since the early days. It was pure delight… Read More
Elpida and Japan Inc
Last week, the Japanese memory company Elpida filed for bankruptcy. There is worldwide overcapacity in DRAM and somebody had to go. Its strength and the weakness was that it was much more outward facing than most of the Japanese semiconductor and electronic industry. So it had to compete globally and wasn’t up to the task.… Read More
Will HP Seek to Merge with Dell?
It has come to that point in time when former great computer companies in the twilight of their years should consider a marriage of convenience that ends … Read More
Computer Architecture and the Wall
There is a new edition of Hennessy and Patterson’s book Computer Architecture: A Quantative Approach out. The 5th edition.
There is lots of fascinating stuff in it but what is especially interesting to those of us who are not actually computer architects, is the big picture stuff about what they choose to cover. Previous … Read More
Will the last 8051 please turn out the lights?
The words no engineer or supply chain professional wants to hear: end-of-life. It’s a reality of the semiconductor business, however – even the cheapest parts reach the point, eventually, where producing and selling them becomes inefficient. Is it reasonable that a microcontroller architecture outlive the people… Read More
DARPA looking for new base stations in new BYOD game
BYOD – bring your own device – has swept enterprises like a firestorm as CEOs wonder why they can’t use their shiny new iPad on the corporate network, and send their IT guys and gals off to make it happen. Under the right conditions and informed use, BYOD can be a productivity boom and not mess security and privacy up too badly for many … Read More
AMD Financials are Puzzling!?!?!?!
As I mentioned in my previous blog, AMD and GlobalFoundries,it is rather difficult to interpret AMD’s financial results. At the end of the quarterly earnings conference calls analysts get to ask questions. It is the comedy relief portion of the call usually, so I blog this today to better prepare these so called analysts … Read More


RISC-V and AI: The Architecture Shift Is Now