An interesting thing happened while I was researching a slide from Bill Holt’s “Advancing Moore’s Law” presentation at last month’s analyst meeting. Slide #19 mentioned that Intel was the first to use “air gap” dielectric spaces to improve performance in a digital logic flow for microprocessors. I know a certain foundry that … Read More
Whenever a market matures, either it gets plagued by substitutes or it looks for complementary products or technologies which can fuel its maturation curve into further growth opportunities. While PCs and Notebooks got substituted by smartphones, there is no other device in foresight to substitute smartphones. The reason … Read More
There is no denying that mobile market is almost matured, the growth in the semiconductor industry has to pick up somewhere else. Although it’s expected that worldwide cellphone subscription will exceed the world population in 2015 (already exceeded in many parts of Europe) and continue for some time (while CAGR in unique subscription… Read More
Intel’s investor meeting was held yesterday and for me the presentation that is most interesting is Bill Holt’s. The presentations are available on the Intel website: Intel Corporation – Presentations Material 2014. Here is the 2013 version of this presentation: Intel Corporation – Presentations Materials 2013… Read More
It happened today. As I have predicted for over a year, Intel would not be successful in mobile and would be forced to exit the market. Last quarter they lost $1B on revenues of $1M (as Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up, that M is not a typo). They ship “contra revenue” with their chips for the tablet market, meaning… Read More
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
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
Last week was the Linley Microprocessor Conference. Not the mobile one, which I find the most interesting since smartphones are such a bit part of what drives process technology these days, this is the one focused on networking and servers. But increasingly both markets are being driven by the same thing, namely mobile data. In … Read More
As we are seeing more and more automation in most of our activities, not only through software but also smart electronics (at cutting-edge technologies) equipped with processors, micro-controllers, sensors and so on which make a whole system as an integrated entity on a small piece of semiconductor intertwined with other systems… Read More
Lucio Lanza is this year’s recipient of the Kaufman award. Unlike most recipients, Lucio worked closely with Phil Kaufman earlier in his career. I met with him at his office in Palo Alto to hear the story.
Even if you have never met him, it would be a reasonable guess from his name that Lucio Lanza is Italian. And you’d be right. He grew… Read More
