My Samsung Galaxy Note 2 phone lasts about 1.5 days on a single battery charge, thanks in part to the clever power conservation approaches like when the screen is automatically dimmed then turned off after no activity. Mobile phones and many other battery-powered devices used today all need power-saving designs, which then means… Read More
Money for data and your MEMS for free
An ongoing IoT debate centers on the notion that just because we can do something does not mean we should. From discussions at the recent MEMS Executive Congress, looking at what TSMC and some others see as the endgame for a trillion sensors signals possible trouble ahead.… Read More
Getting a Quote Without Talking to a Salesman
VLSI Technology, for those of you not of a certain age, was one of the companies that, along with LSI Logic, created the ASIC business. One challenge in ASIC is that the customer needs to decide which ASIC company to use (since the libraries and technologies are all different) meaning they needed to get quotes from several companies.… Read More
Who is Using Samsung 14nm?
As I have mentioned before, there are very few secrets in Silicon Valley. Just last week I was minding my own business at a Starbucks when I overheard two engineers complaining about Samsung 14nm shuttles being delayed. They had badges on but I won’t out them because it could have easily been any of the fabless companies in Silicon … Read More
Look who is Leading the World Semiconductor Business
A couple of days ago I was reading a news article which said how long the world economy will be dependent on a single engine to drive it; obviously that single engine is USA. If we consider the overall economy, definitely USA is driving it, and semiconductor is a large part of it. The semiconductor is driving electronics and that is attracting… Read More
Xiaomi Already #3 in Smartphones Behind Samsung and Apple
The Q3 results are mostly in now and there are two big stories. The iPhone 6 of course, which started shipping just before the end of the quarter. The other story is China, now the #1 mobile market in the world. These have led to very different stories for different companies.
Samsung is basically flat with Q2, but that was a big drop. … Read More
Bluetooth Smart Crashes IoT Party
When you hear the term Internet of Things the first image that comes to mind is, well, a lot of things talking over TCP/IP, maybe using WiFi or god forbid Ethernet. But upon closer examination it seems that Bluetooth is crashing the IoT party. This was driven home for me when my girlfriend gave me a FitBit Flex. For those unfamiliar, … Read More
Amorphous Silicon and TFTs
Most ICs are fabricated with crystalline silicon (c-Si), which is a tetrahedral structure forming a well-ordered crystal lattice. There’s another form of semiconductor material called amorphous silicon (a-Si) which has no long-range periodic order. It turns out that a-Si is a great material for the active layer in thin-film… Read More
What does the Ford Mustang and Intel’s Gordon Moore Have in Common with Local Motors?
1964 Vision, Volume and Moore’s Law
The 1964 New York World’s Fair saw Lee Iacocca, then a young 40 year old General Manager, introduce a car that inspired “total performance” and was for a “young America out to have a good time.” This young America would become the baby boomer generation. The Mustang was revolutionary in its affordability,… Read More
Lucio and the Kaufman Award
Tuesday was the Kaufman award dinner. This year it was awarded to Lucio Lanza. Last week I wrote about how Lucio ended up in EDA, although that was not where he finished up. He is currently a venture capitalist running Lanza Technology Ventures, one of the few VCs to make any investments in the EDA/IP/semiconductor space. Also, unlike… Read More
Real men have fabs!