Micromobility – characterized by shared bicycles, scooters and other wheeled devices – was all the rage in 2018 and that enthusiasm has carried over into 2019 – if McKinsey is to be believed. McKinsey published a white paper last week touting the glories of micromobility and a potential market of $300B-$500B by 2030.… Read More
How Apple Became a Force in the Semiconductor Industry
From our book “Mobile Unleashed”, this is the semiconductor history of Apple computer:
Observed in hindsight after the iPhone, the distant struggles of Apple in 1997 seem strange, almost hard to fathom. Had it not been for the shrewd investment in ARM, Apple may have lacked the cash needed to survive its crisis. However,… Read More
Accuracy of In-Chip Monitoring for Thermal Guard-banding
I remember working at Intel and viewing my first SPICE netlist for a DRAM chip, because there was this temperature statement with a number after it, so being a new college graduate I asked lots of questions, like, “What is that temperature value?”
My co-worker answered, “Oh, that’s the estimated junction… Read More
Webinar: Turnkey Bluetooth True Wireless Stereo Earbuds and Speakers
When we were first introduced to earbuds, in-ear speakers connected through thin wires to your phone (and earlier portable music devices), they seemed pretty convenient for private entertainment at work, while walking, exercising, doing almost anything. Until we started to realize those long dangly wires weren’t ideal. They’d… Read More
Eta Compute Receives Two Awards from ARM at TechCon
Many startups set out with the goal of accomplishing a technical feat that was previously considered impossible. Quite frankly most do not succeed. Yet, occasionally a company comes along that succeeds with a game changing breakthrough. ETA Compute has done just this. Yet, even more impressively, this 3-year-old company has… Read More
Why Apple failed in India and how it can recover
Apple iPhone sales in India are expected to have fallen dramatically this year to two million, from three million phones last year. Reuters reports that at the peak shopping season, in Diwali, Apple stores were deserted. This occurred in the world’s fastest-growing market, in which smartphone sales are increasing often by more… Read More
Wi-Fi Standards Simplified
In the world of communications, the industry fairly quickly got a handle on a naming convention for cellular technology generations that us non-communication geeks could understand – 2G, 3G, 4G and now 5G, (though some of us could never quite understand the difference between 4G and LTE, at least as those terms are widely and no … Read More
ARM Turns up the Heat in Infrastructure
I don’t know if it was just me but I left TechCon 2017 feeling, well, uninspired. Not that they didn’t put on a good show with lots of announcements, but it felt workman-like. From anyone else it would have been a great show, but this is TechCon. I expect to leave with my mind blown in some manner and it wasn’t. I wondered if the SoftBank … Read More
Synopsys Seeds Significant SIM Segue
It turns out that consumers are not alone in their love-hate relationship with SIM cards. SIM cards save us from increasingly widespread cellphone cloning. However, if your experience is anything like mine, it seemed that with every new phone, a new SIM card format was needed. Furthermore, people travelling overseas who wanted… Read More
Mesh Networks, Redux
It isn’t hard to understand the advantage of mesh networking (in wireless networks). Unlike star/tree configurations in which end-points connect to a nearby hub (such as phones connecting to a conventional wireless access point), in a mesh nodes can connect to nearest neighbors, which can connect to their nearest neighbors… Read More
Unlocking the cloud: A new era for post-tapeout flow for semiconductor manufacturing