CES 2012 Forum Discussion Thread (iPad2 Giveaway)

[Daniel Nenni]

The Consumer Electronics Show is in Las Vegas this week. Please share your thoughts, interests, stories here even if you are not at the show. One of the posters will win an iPad2!
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[Daniel Nenni]

Trip to CES 2012:

Since consumer electronics drives the semiconductor industry, CES is an important show for us. Seeing innovation. Seeing what our semiconductors can actually do once they hit the consumer market. While I normally go it alone, Celine Dion tickets got my wife to go with me this year. We loaded up our gadget laden minivan, which is really a living room on wheels, and headed to Las Vegas. From Silicon Valley it took 8 hours. We left at 6:30am to see the sunrise which was amazing. Click on the first picture to see a slide show:

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We drove down I5 and made a left at Bakersfield. It was a long and straight road!

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My wife and I passed the time talking about how we met, fell in love, had four kids, and other adventures. It was a real pleasure.

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There was a little bit of excitement. Our youngest son is a Fireman so we took this one for him.

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Part of the drive was through the desert. My wife really likes the camera on her iPhone 4s.

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The front of the hotel was kept in its natural state (desert).

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A friend of mine hooked us up with a suite at the Hilton with a full kitchen, jacuzzi tub in the bedroom, life as it should be. My wife had emergency dental surgery right before we left and was not going to go. My argument was you might as well recover in comfort! She probably will not leave the room, except for the concert of course. She has refused pictures thus far but I will try and get one before we leave.

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We arrived in Las Vegas Sunday afternoon in plenty of time for the Celine Dion concert. My wife loves Celine and had a great time. Me not so much so it was an expensive nap.

CES officially starts Monday night with a bunch of press events. I will take some pictures with my iPhone 4s as I stroll down Las Vegas Blvd tonight using Siri to navigate.

D.A.N.

 

[Camille Kokozaki]

Try to catch Le Reve (non CES related) if it is playing this week . best show by far. Check out the auto audio show where sound equipment costs more than the cars; this is some great photo op of fancy wheels. ( not sure if this year it collocates with CES).


OLED display status? Windows 8? SSD+PCIe 3? CNet best of show awards. It would be nice to tweet announcements or YouTube key events. Drink lots of water, bring a wheeled backpack and good walking shoes. Try not to be on TV;-) I am envious of the great time you will have.

 

[arungande]

Its great to hear from you sir, about the CES . i have dreamed of attending these type of show's where in i have a chance to see the latest gadgets that will be coming to the market and fair amount of knowledge on them. having started my carrier in VLSI Physical design, my zeal for electronic items as grown so much that one day i may get a chance to attend CES. Waiting for more updates from you sir..

 

[Jasopin]

From what I read online so far, the highlights will be:

1) Thin LED screen mainly for TV
2) Many more Tablet PCs, running andriod and window OSs.

Personally, I like a Tablet PC with MS office editing capability when I dock it. And, I can show
and tell my presentation or documentation on the Tablet PC later.
​

3) A slew of new ultrabook PCs which look like the MacBook Air.
4) TV w/internet capability, or they call it internet TV.
5) SmartPhone in the car, or you can get online by touching a screen on the dashboard which has a smartphone 3G/4G connection.

I am not sure the car manufacture or cell phone maker will claim the feature. Or, both will.​

6) New Robots.

I heard there will be some new SmartHome applications or Energy Management demonstrations, too.

 

[Daniel Nenni]

The day before CES:

I walked around Las Vegas in search of a Walgreens (supplies for my wife), Wells Fargo, and a Starbucks. Also to get some exercise. Using my iPhone 4s and Siri I easily found all three and used the GPS for walking directions. Once you get a block or two off the Las Vegas strip it is very impoverished. Even the end of the strip where I am there are abandoned construction projects and boarded up building and hotels. Financing was pulled from Las Vegas during the 2009 recession and it has not returned. Very depressing.

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The once famous Sarah is abandoned.

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Circus Circus is right next door. I'm scared of clowns so I did not go in.

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This is my wife's favorite picture. Her eye for art is way better than mine.

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It was about a 3 mile walk to Caesars Palace where I was to meet an old school friend ShaunieG. He is a famous Las Vegas glamour/fashion photographer and knows the town intimately.

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Treasure Island has a free pirate show out front. If you expect a Pirates of the Caribbean type thing you will be very disappointed. If you expect something cheesy and risque you will not be disappointed.

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The Venitian has gondola rides outside and inside. You definitely want to walk through this hotel, it is amazing.

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The Mirage has a volcano show out front. I saw it last time I was in Vegas. Lots of fire shooting out of the water, very cool.

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Caesars Palace is where my wife and I renewed our vows last October. Lots of statues and fountains.

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This one had clothes on. Others did not.

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This one is inside the Forum shopping area. That is fake sky.

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This is ShaunieG. We ate dinner at the Mesa Grill. Great food and drinks. Very expensive though.

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These guys made our dinner. I had a tuna steak, ShaunieG had pork something. His dinner was better than mine.

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Afterwards we went to a "sports bar" to watch the Alabama LSU game (college Superbowl). ShaunieG knows people so we got in for free. Hard game to watch, not very exciting and too many distractions.

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We stopped at the Sugar Factory to buy my wife dessert in hopes she would not be mad at me for staying out late and coming home smelling like a "sports bar". It totally worked. I hit the Jacuzzi tub and slept like a baby. I will spend the day tomorrow at CES walking the floor and talking to random people since I'm Press. Thank you SemiWiki for this trip, so far so good!

D.A.N.

 

[totalize]

Microsoft's last hurrah at CES TV's and Tablets

So this Microsoft's last time attending CES. According to them the timing no longer fits with their product launch schedules. Understandable but I am sure they will be missed to some extent. They were a key anchor for this show.
As for Thin TV's I expected this to be the goal for the TV manufacturers. Not sure where these guys go next. Bigger but thinner TV's? While Thin TV's will create some mileage for these guys I don't see how creating ever bigger TV's is going to keep sales going up and to the right. After all there is a limit to the size of TV the average consumer can have in their home. I never became interested in 3D TV but I wonder how their market share compares to to standard TV's. Despite the plethora of tablets on the market Its seems pretty clear from what I have read that the IPAD, Samsung Galaxy and Blackberry Playbook are the standouts for best performance. RIM is heavily discounting their playbooks to to get off load the current generation of devices but I suspect they will re launch another one again. Would be interesting to hear if there is any talk about this at CES.

David.

 

[Daniel Nenni]

CES Day 1

I go to CES every year to try and figure out what new technologies will drive the semiconductor industry. Smartphones set the standard a couple of years ago for sure. Last year was tablets, there were probably 100 shown but very few made it to market and none were successful. This year I saw some interesting things which I will blog about when I return and have time to process all of the information. Even more interesting than the show itself was the conversations I had with industry professionals and random people.

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The convention center was only a mile away so I walked and skipped the jam packed shuttles.

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I thought LG stood for Lucky Goldstar?

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As packed as it was I think last year was even more crowded. Lets see what the official numbers are but my guess is that attendance was down. Most of the badges I saw were either vendor or press.

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The camera on the iPhone 4s is very nice! It is great to not to have to carry a camera and a phone!

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iHealth apps were abundant. I really like this vertical market. It would be really nice to know my health stats real time. I see big potential here.

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Car stuff was big. It would have been really nice to have WiFi driving down here. The GPS in our Toyota Sienna is not as good as on the iPhone 4s. Integrating smartphones into our vehicles is a must for a better driving experience.

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Mercedes was there too with the cockpit of the future which we will probably never ever see. I want that 15 minutes of my life back.

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Lots of cool audio stuff, most of which is lost on me. I prefer to listen to Pandora on my iPhone. Just give me a USB port in the car and I'm ready to go.

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Another good vertical market since Mom's spend most of the family discretionary income.

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TV's were a big deal which I'm totally into. 3D TV's with glasses not so much. Google TV not so much. Thinner, cheaper TVs with incredible pictures I like. The problem is how often do you buy a TV? I still have a 63" plasma that does fine. When it dies I will get a new one for a fraction of what I paid for the Plasma.

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Panasonic had the best booth, absolutely!

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Some stars showed up to sell us stuff. Robert Horry is one of my favorite athletes so I hung around for him. Snooki from Jersey Shore? Seriously? I like Dennis Rodman as a basketball player but not as a pitchman. Miss America 2011 is worth the wait. Jillian Michaels (Biggest Loser) did an iHealth pitch which I missed unfortunately. I'm into fitness plus she is totally hot. Justien Bieber was there, why I do not know.

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ESPN is pushing 3D TV. 3D TV gives my wife a headache. Enough said.

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Samsung owned the show, it was overwhelming. I'm not a Samsung fan but I have to admit they did a great job.

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The Samsung Galaxy Note was the best product at the show that I was able to use, which means it actually exists. It weighed less than my iPhone 4s, I kid you not. This device can replace my iPhone, iPod, and Ipad.

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This was Microsofts last year at CES. The industry has passed them by anyway so who cares.

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I had an interesting discussion with the McAffe people. First they said the virus stuff is now below the BIOS. I called BS so they had a technical guy explain to me how the application runs above the BIOS but has hooks into the silicon. I like the "below the BIOS" sound bite better.

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Intel was all about Ultrabooks, they had 20+ of them floating around but Asus had the best one. Product of the show is tied between this and the Galaxy Note. I have Dell XPS with SSD and an 8 hour battery, boots up in a matter of seconds. The problem is that it cost $2k and weighs as much as I do. My family is getting Ultrabooks for Christmas.

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I think they made the walkways smaller this year to give the illusion of more people. Seriously it was jam packed. I got groped more times than I can count and I just hope it was by women. It was an exhausting day so that is is for me.

D.A.N.

 

[totalize]

Daniel Great Pics of CES

Nice to see the old convention center and various hotels. The last time I was there was for NAB which is smaller but still takes up most of the convention space.
Interesting to see the Treasure Island Hotel which is where we usually stayed until the new management at my company in their infinite wisdom put us farther away at the MGM.

Please post more pics of the show.

Cheers,
David

 

[Schmidty]

CES

A techie's dream. I'd loved to have had an opportunity to have been there to see the latest and greatest first-hand -- but in lieu of I have so enjoyed reading about it all from those in attendance. The ultrabooks especially hold my interest.

 

[Twinkies25]

I wasn't able to attend this year, I have twins and I couldn't fit it into my schedule but I have been watching everything I'm missing. I saw that 50 cent talked about the headphones. LL Cool J was also there and signed a laptop. Lady Gaga also attended. I liked the dropcam which is basically a security camera. Samsung showed their OLED TV's which are awesome. I'm drooling over all the gadgets and can't wait what 2012 brings us.

This is always a great way to start the year!! Happy New Year

 

[Daniel Nenni]

CES GlobalFoundries Party

Tuesday night was the GlobalFoundries party at the Mandalay Bay Hotel. I attended the one last year as well. My wife was feeling better so she escorted me.

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ARM and GFI are close thus the sign. ARM and AMD people were there as well.

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I blog for food.

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Real live wafers from 32nm and 28nm GFI fabs.

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The guy on the left is Kevin Kimball VP of Global Communications. He is a new addition to the GFI executive staff. I spent quite a bit of time with Kevin and will meet with him soon in the coming weeks. Communications is one of the weaknesses in the foundry business so Kevin has his job cut out for him.

The guy on the right is the new GFI CEO Ajit Monocha. Ajit is from AT&T Microelectronics, AT&T Bell Labs, and NXP. He is a real semiconductor guy, not a stuffed suit. I had a nice chat with Ajit and hope to meet with him again for a more detailed discussion on how GFI is going to remain relevant in the foundry business.

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The guy in the middle is Mojy Chian, GFI Senior VP Design Enablement. I worked with Mojy at Conexant and Altera, he is one of the top semiconductor executives, and has been with GlobalFoundries since the beginning. Moji and I agreed to meet again to discuss how GFI can avoid the "not TSMC" label.

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The guy in the middle here is Subramani (Subi) Kingeri, GFI VP of Design Solutions (14nm). Subi wokred at Virage Logic, Silicon Access, and TSMC before moving to GFI. He was also one of the first to join. Subi is a deal maker, I'm looking forward to 14nm!

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It was a good crowd and the GFI executives worked the room like professionals.

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The Madalay Bay is what Las Vegas is all about, larger than life.

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Made a quick stop in one of my favorite clubs on the way out of the hotel. I love the blues man, my wife not so much!

D.A.N.

 

[kingmouf]

What caught me by surprise is Intel's disclosure of the power envelope of the Medfield SoC in CES. I could not believe that Intel would be able to offer a competitive product for smartphones without significantly redesigning the core architecture of Atom. Unless this has happened and I missed those details, Intel did a pretty good job here - however I'm still a little bit skeptical until I see final devices on the hands of end users. Let's see. Competition is good.

Tablets and smartphones is the new fighting arena for chip manufacturers. ARM is there, x86 is finally getting there, MIPS is there (especially in developing markets), I'm wondering why POWER is totally absent?

 

[Daniel Payne]

I discovered that Tensilica is at CES this week because they have customers using their dataplane processors (DPUs) in digital TV, Blu-ray disc players, 4G handsets and data cards, etc.
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Cadence and Synopsys also had booths at CES 2012 in order to make contacts with new prospects and meet with existing EDA clients.

On the e-reader front I read about new entrants however I think to be succesfull in that segment you need a good library of millions of titles and a push-button way to browse, sample and buy new content. So I see Amazon, B&N and Google continue to lead the way here with sufficient infrastructure built up and ready to go.

 

[Paul McLellan]

I think that the most significant thing at CES will turn out to be Intel getting serious in the cell-phone market. See here.

 

[LinkedIn]

CES Booth Babes Pictorial

For those of you who care about stuff like that:

More CES Booth Babes

 

[anktdshmkh]

For those who virtually wants to attend CSE or wants to check new products can use bing,
here is the link http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/ces-2012-whats-new-in-tvs/q9m4f0rw?q=consumer +reports&rel=msn&from=en-us_msnhp&form=MSNRLL&
- In summary OLED is going to be 3-4 times costlier than LCD and Plasma,
- Something new is 4K TVs (an 84-inch 4K "Ultra Definition" is WOW), Voice control and gesture is something new I think in TV.
- Ulta books, Interactive games through Cell phone is something new too

 

[m_mcgovern]

I enjoyed the improvements to the "affordable" 3D printer market by Makerbot made to the Thing-o-matic to create this year's Replicator 3D printer. It is still pricey for someone without a business need, but I like the direction Makerbot is headed and I look forward to seeing what this year's Replicator adopters will make with it.

 

[Daniel Nenni]

Mashable did a nice job covering CES:

CES 2012

D.A.N.

 

[jsn_nardllc]

Thanks for all the reports from CES 2012. The product introductions from lesser known companies are always fun to discover on the floor at CES. I think this will be a critical year for the mobile market place. Five companies/technologies to watch:

-Android - this is the make or break year for the confederation of companies that use the ARM/Android platform. They have critical mass in the smartphone market. I think its now or never for Android tablets. Prospects look good on both fronts. But the bottom line is: can they make money at it? The big question in my mind is can they create a compelling marketplace for the masses to go head to head with App Store and Amazon? High and Low margin is spoken for. Is there a middle market? Second item to note is the course of litigation against Apple, now that Google has Motorola and continues to accumulate patents.

-Nokia - Seems to have made favorable impressions with their initial Windows 7 Smart Phones. Its a long road ahead of them. Can they with Microsoft create that compelling App Store? Perhaps a closer tie to XBox will help. Microsoft also has a fair amount of skin on the outcome of Nokia. I'm worried about RIM. Also a bit sad to see the apparent demise of Palm IP...

-Intel - Will their prospects in the mobile market change in 2012? They seem to have made favorable impressions with the latest Atom processor. Will the Nokia, Intel, Microsoft (NIM?) troika break out of prison in 2012? So far so good, but the year is young. Looking forward to Ivy Bridge introductions. Will we really see the promised reductions in power? That would be great. Need to watch their progress on 14nm. If the "Semiconductor Story of 2012" post pans out, Intel will be golden. Awaiting the Apple tie-up with bated breath...

-Microsoft - Are they becoming cool agin? Interesting cover story in this week's Bloomberg Business Week about Balmer. Windows 8, ARM support, tablet and mobile are all the things to watch. Rumors of Office on iOS. OneNote is pretty good. Like Intel and Nokia, so far, so good. No blunders here...

-ARM - Lots of significant product introductions late in 2011. big.LITTLE is going to be significant to outflank Intel's process technology edge. NVIDIA's Tegra 3 supposedly has a stealth fifth processor, but far as I know, it has not been called big.LITTLE. Arms formal introduction of the ARMv8 architecture marks the frontal assalt on the data center and Intel's XEON line. The high performance market place is also not safe. Arm Maii and Imagination Technologiess GPU are poised to attack this formerly niche. As processing power, bandwidth and memory become affordable, more and more of us will be able to run sophisticated modeling, simulation and data mining application right on our desktop. Arm's advantage is the ingenuity of its licensees. Take a look at products form Ziilabs and Calxeda.

Hey, what about Apple? Awaiting iPad 3 intro in March? I'm ready to replace my original iPad. And the iPhone 5? I'm getting to replace my iPhone 3G, and the choices are amazing. If they have a retina diaplay for the MacBook Air, I'm sold! Rumors is retina display is for MacBook Pro... with Ivy Bridge power levels, perhaps MacBook Pro and Air will merge into one product line. AppleTV, if anyone can cut the media deals it was Jobs. We'll see if Cook has the same flair. AppleTV/Siri is a blockbuster combination.

Best Regards,

Jim