Today, the wearable device market is a nascent, but growing one. There are about 160 unique wearable devices on the market, and IDTechEx predicts wearables will grow to a $70 billion market in the next ten years. The future of wearables, which includes activity trackers, smartwatches, smartglasses and embedded sensors in clothing,… Read More
Tag: mobile
2.5D supply chain takes HBM over the wall
SoC designers have hit the memory wall head on. Although most SoCs address a relatively small memory capacity compared with PC and server chips, memory power consumption and bandwidth are struggling to keep up with processing and content expectations. A recent webinar looks at HBM as a possible solution.… Read More
Yelling fire in a crowded chip factory
Semiconductor market forecasts for 2016 are all over the place. Jim Handy and Tom Starnes floated a report in January looking for 10% growth. Jim Feldhan at Semico turned outright negative at -0.3% just a couple weeks ago. Tossing out the high and low scores, analysts tracked by GSA range from 0.3% to 7.0% in March updates. What’s … Read More
Qualcomm Rounds Out IoT Offerings
Lots of chip companies like ARM Holdings, Intel, NVIDIA and Qualcomm are spending time and effort to find a place for themselves in the IoT market because they, like I, believe in a gigantic, future market. Some companies are focusing on wearables and drones while others are looking to automotive and smart home. Qualcomm previously… Read More
Google’s New Nexus 5X Features One Major Overlooked Wireless Upgrade
In the world of smartphones there is a never ending list of specifications that are constantly considered by consumers when buying them. No line of phones is more scrutinized for its specs than the Google Nexus line of smartphones. This is primarily because the people looking to buy Nexus phones are already Android enthusiasts … Read More
OCF shows there may be hope for IoT consortia yet
The recent launch of the Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) was met first with a wave of “oh good, another IoT consortium”, then “phew, it’s just a rebrand of the OIC”, followed by a bit of confusion over why a few AllSeen Alliance players and some other names jumped in. Is it just a marketing ploy, or is there more to this?… Read More
The Best Analyst Presentation at SEMI ISS 2016!
The problem I have with semiconductor analysts and media today is that they rarely have depth in what they are talking about. Some because they have never actually worked in the industry and others because they have not worked in the industry since the 1970s. One famed analyst even repeated the mythical “Fabs cost $10B” generalization… Read More
Mobile Unleashed Review
The story starts for me back in the 1980s when one of my partners told us we had to buy a machine called a BBC micro and learn how to program it. When someone asked him what can it do, apart from play space invaders, I was told as a “for example”, I could store my wife’s recipes. To view results we would have to plug the machine… Read More
TSMC OIP: What to Do With 20,000 Wafers Per Day
Today it is TSMC’s OIP Ecosystem Innovation forum. This is an annual event but is also a semi-annual update on TSMC’s processes, investment, volume ramps and more. TSMC have changed the rules for the conference this year: they have published all the presentations by their partners/customers. Tom Quan of TSMC told… Read More
Breakthrough Battery Life for Mobile Devices
Battery life is a never-ending battle for me with all of my mobile devices: Laptop, Tablet, Smart phone, bike computer, Kindle Reader, Bluetooth headset, etc. It seems like I’m constantly having to charge up my battery at the most inconvenient times. When I think about the history of batteries for mobile devices I can recall… Read More