Intel has been making a little bit of a PR fuss about the 40th anniversary of the microprocessor. And they are entitled to. The Intel 4004 was the first customer-programmable chip. Of course if you look at it’s capabilities today they are laughably minimal, and even looking at the chip, a 16-pin DIP (dual-in-line-package … Read More
Semiconductor market to grow 3% in 2011, 9% in 2012
The outlook for the global semiconductor market in 2011 has deteriorated from earlier in the year due to multiple factors including slower than expected economic growth in the U.S., debt crises in Europe and the Japan earthquake and tsunami. Recent forecasts have narrowed down to a range of -1.4% to 3.5%. In the first half of 2011,… Read More
The Power of the Platform!
The Nintendo Wii is one of the most successful gaming platforms with the most diverse set of games — from fun games that can be enjoyed by the whole family to fitness programs that can be used by adults. They beat the dominant Sony Playstation and the Microsoft Xbox by thinking outside the box and creating a platform that was really… Read More
Who is winning the cell-phone wars?
Answer: it depends how you count. Units, market share, revenue, profit.
According to Gartner, Android has doubled its market share and now run just over half of the world’s smartphones. Android handset sales actually tripled during the year, selling 61 million last quarter, not that far off a million a day.
iPhone sales … Read More
Formally verifying protocols
I attended much of the Jasper users’ group a week ago. There were several interesting presentations that I can’t just blog about because companies are shy, and some that would only be of interest if you were a user of Jasper’s products on a daily basis.
But for me the most interesting presentations were several… Read More
Media Tablet & Smartphones to generate $6 Billion market in… power management IC segment by 2012, says IPnest
With worldwide annual media tablet shipments forecast changing –growing- almost every quarter, the latest from ABI research calling for shipment to approach 100 million units in 2012 and passing 150 million in 2014, with the same kind of forecast for smartphone passing 400 million units this year (438 million) and approaching… Read More
Jen Hsun Huang’s Game Over Strategy for Windows 8!
It is always a treat to listen to the nVidia earnings conference call as Jen Hsun Huang offers his take on the industry as well as a peek at his company’s future plans. Invariably a Wall St. analyst will ask about Windows 8 and Project Denver – the code name for the ARM based processor designed to run Windows 8 with great graphics performance… Read More
Not your father’s Tensilica
Tensilica has been around for quite a long time. Their key technology is a system for generating a custom processor, the idea being to better match the requirement of the processor for performance, power and area as compared with a fully-general purpose control processor (such as one of the ARM processors). Of course generating… Read More
Semiconductor Power Consumption and Fingertop Computing!
Can semiconductor devices change the temperature of the earth? The heat from my Dell XPS changes the temperature of my lap! A 63” flat screen TV changes the temperature of my living room. I just purchased six of the latest iPhones for my family (under duress) and signed up for another two years with Verizon, so our carbon footprint … Read More
Physical Verification of 3D-IC Designs using TSVs
3D-IC design has become a popular discussion topic in the past few years because of the integration benefits and potential cost savings, so I wanted to learn more about how the DRC and LVS flows were being adapted. My first stop was the Global Semiconductor Alliance web site where I found a presentation about how DRC and LVS flows were… Read More
AI Semiconductor Market