As an investor, one has to always be aware when Jim Cramer informs the world of the investment scenario you have been playing comes out of the shadows and sees the light of day. Soon the herd will follow which is positive, but now one has to figure how long to ride the roller coaster. In an article posted on thestreet.com entitled “Tech… Read More
In response to changing industry dynamics, AMD announced in October 2008 a new strategy to focus exclusively on the design phase of semiconductor product development. To achieve that strategy, AMD partnered with Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC) of Abu Dhabi to create a new joint venture company designed to become… Read More
The worldwide semiconductor market in 2Q 2012 was $73.1 billion, according to WSTS data released by the SIA. 2Q 2012 was up 4.7% from 1Q 2012 but down 2.0% from 2Q 2011. Major semiconductor companies are generally expecting slower revenue growth in 3Q 2012 versus 2Q 2012. The table below shows revenue estimates for calendar 3Q 2012… Read More
The Mobile Tsunami wave has yet to crest and the surfers strong enough to mount it are dwindling fast to the dismay of market watchers and experienced analysts. The distraction of these past few days is the courtroom drama being played out between the sumo wrestlers, Apple and Samsung, which in the end will not result in a cessation… Read More
From the very start I continually asked the GF guys what their value proposition is other than, “We are not TSMC”, which seems to be the easy way to foundry riches but clearly is not. In the early days of GF there was a lot of pride, pomp, and circumstance but that does not necessarily sell wafers. Today we are seeing a very different GF … Read More
Not yet a year into Rory Read’s term and the AMD board must be considering that the value of the x86 patents and engineering talent is worth much more than the stocks $3B valuation and easier to fathom putting on the auction block than continuing to sell $25 processors into the back channels of China and the Developing World. As I read… Read More
Qualcomm has a nice problem to have: too much demand for its Snapdragon and 4G LTE baseband parts. How Qualcomm realigns its manufacturing strategy around this problem will determine whether or not they can breakaway from the ARM camp and go toe to toe with Intel. Last week Malcolm Penn claimed TSMC was too big to fail. Really? The … Read More
A Bloomberg article from early July caught my eye as it portends further changes in the competitive mobile market landscape. Intel is now in the business of paying Taiwanese panel suppliers to ensure the supply of touch-screen panels for PC ultrabooks. In essence it says that to win in the PC market, Intel has to mimic Apple and go … Read More
Microsoft is in trouble. Many of you already know that. Steve Ballmer has one last opportunity to set the company on a growth path or they will retreat into IBM legacy mode… ala the post 1990s Lou Gerstner era. And so they introduce a large tablet-convertible in direct competition with their PC partners Dell and HP. The End Game is coming… Read More
At EDPS in Monterey, Tom Spyrou of AMD talked about their compute environment in the context of parallel algorithms. I discovered that they are a big user of RTDA’s FlowTracer so I talked to Philip Steinke at AMD about how they used it.
He said that they largely use it as described in The Art of Flows as a graphical distributed … Read More
