If one wireless IoT technology fit every possible use case, we would have one specification. Many tradeoffs – battery life, mobility, indoor coverage, licensed versus unlicensed spectrum, and more – have made for many potential solutions. A heated discussion right now is over the future of LPWAN technologies, with LoRA, SIGFOX,… Read More




Climbing the dimensions (part 2)
In the first part of this article we tried to present a way to capture the essence of the tesseract. We did that by “climbing” the dimensions from the point (no dimensions), through the segment (1-D), square (2-D), cube (3-D) and finally tesseract (4-D).
In the following figures we present other attempts at visualizing… Read More
CEO Interview: Geoff Tate of Flex Logix
This is the second in series of interviews we will do with executives inside the fabless semiconductor ecosystem. Geoff Tate was the founding CEO of Rambus and is now CEO and co-founder of Flex Logix (embedded FPGA). This one should be of great interest due to the recent $16.7B acquisition of Altera by Intel. We all now know the importance… Read More
DOJ takes victory Lap in KLAC / LRCX deal post mortem (3 of 3)
The KLA deal died due to fox guarding the hen house.
Fox can’t guard Hen House…
In an industry where there are relatively few widget makers and only one, very dominant, widget inspector, the thought of one of the widget makers buying the most crucial widget inspector obviously would be anti-competitive. Not only would… Read More
The KLAM deal has died now how will KLAC and LRCX recover? (2 of 3)
As we had been suggesting the merger deal between KLAC and LRCX has failed. It obviously ran into too many complications, costs or other issues to continue. Unlike the Applied TEL deal which went on for a staggering 18 months before calling it quits in this case 12 months was enough to figure out it wasn’t getting done.
In our … Read More
KLAC & LRCX – Fall Out from the deal Falling Apart (1 of 3)
The odds of deal completion has fallen to low levels. Whats the fallout on the companies and stocks? Is there life after a failed merger?
“A quagmire wrapped up inside an enigma” – LRCX & KLAC’s merger is the talk of the town, both in the semiconductor equipment industry as well as DOJ watchers in Washington… Read More
One line of macOS code could cap a 20-year pivot
When Steve Jobs made it clear at the 1997 Apple Worldwide Developer Conference he was taking back his company, he tossed the now famous line in his opening monologue: “Focusing is about saying no.” Approaching 20 years later, that decision still reverberates.… Read More
Drift is a Bad Thing for SPICE Circuit Simulators
My first job out of college was with Intel, located in Aloha, Oregon and I did circuit simulations using a proprietary SPICE circuit simulator called ASPEC that was maintained in-house. While doing some circuit simulations one day I noticed that an internal node in one of my circuits was gradually getting higher and higher, even… Read More
Climbing the dimensions (part 1)
Translated and adapted from an article by Jaime Poniachik
The novel Flatland was written en 1884 by Edwin A. Abbot. This novel describes a fantastic, two-dimensional, flat world. Hence the name of the novel. This world has living beings. They have only two dimensions and they move in a plane which they cannot abandon.
It is not difficult… Read More
Takata’s Deepest Betrayal
There’s been a lot of betrayal in the automotive industry over the past few years. Consumers have been betrayed by car makers that failed to identify, report or anticipate problems or that deliberately misled their customers. But no betrayal was deeper than that of Takata and the ongoing airbag recall effort. And Takata’s… Read More
Intel Foundry Delivers!