Wireless technology is all around as I use cellular on an Android phone, WiFi to connect my MacBook Pro to the internet, Bluetooth for a headset, ANT+ for my cycling computer, and NFC to speed up electronic payments on the Android phone. Here’s a big picture look at some of the modern wireless standards available to choose from:… Read More




eSilicon Try IP Before You Buy
I’ve written before about eSilicon’s IP Marketplace. This is the latest in several steps to automate more and more of the interface between eSilicon and its customers: MPW quotes, production quotes, tracking orders through manufacturing, and now IP quotes. There is a phrase in software development called “eating… Read More
Customizable IP for HP and LP Audio Subsystems
Today, Smartphones and mobile devices have become center of innovation with multiple functions getting into them. Considering the audio or voice application, there can be multi-way conferencing, video chat, complete audio/video streaming, gaming, voice triggering and recognition,… you name an application, and it will … Read More
Which Foundry will be First to FinFET?
The final session of the SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium (The CxO Panel) was the most interesting for me because executives from three of the four most influential semiconductor companies were on the panel: Dr. Goeff Yeap of Qualcomm, Dr. Jack Sun from TSMC, and Mr. Mark Bohr of Intel. Who is fourth you ask? That would be Apple of … Read More
SEMI ISS: The Outlook
I spent Monday at the SEMI ISS meeting in Half Moon Bay. There is a lot of stuff to choose from, the entire day was interesting throughout. The day started with a keynote from Scott McGregor, the CEO of Broadcom. I’ll cover that in a separate posting.
Next up was Andrea Lati of VLSI Research on The Cycle: Is It Different This Time?… Read More
The Dynamics of the China Semiconductor Industry
Paul McClellan and I are at the SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium this week in Half Moon Bay. Honestly there is too much to blog about here so I will have to pick the topics most interesting to me. The full capacity audience is also impressive. SEMI provides a list of attendees on their website which reads like “Who’s Who” of the semiconductor… Read More
2015 International CES: wearables and smart home
2015 International CES was held last week in Las Vegas. The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) which puts on the show said over 170,000 people attended. The show featured more than 3,600 exhibitors covering over 2.2 million square feet of exhibit space.
In advance of the show, CEA released highlights of its forecast for the… Read More
HiFi Sounds Better than Ever
If you think that the sound atmosphere created by Dolby or Surround–sound audio is the best you can achieve today by using complexes algorithms on DSP, like I thought before knowing about “Object-Based Audio”, you must read these lines! In fact Surround-sound Audio is limited by the number of speakers installed in a room, or a car,… Read More
A Group of Happy Employees that Excels in Everything They Do!
I visited AtrentaNoida in August 2013 during the inauguration of its newly expanded facility. At that time, I had written about the beautiful environment Atrenta has, with its presence at many sites across the world in my blog – “Innovation + Thoughtful Management = Productive Expansion”. Innovation cannot happen without happy… Read More
Twelve Years of Sonics at Toshiba
Sonics announced today that Toshiba has completed the SoC design using Sonics’ on-chip network IP for its new TZ2100 group of application processors. The TZ2100 group of applications processors are the newest addition to Toshiba’s ApP Lite (Application Processor Lite) TZ2000 series. With this group of ApP Lite devices, sound… Read More
Musk’s new job as Samsung Fab Manager – Can he disrupt chip making? Intel outside