Back in the 1990s in the middle of the 2G GSM era, cell-phone manufacturers would display a “triangle of difficulty” with a large base labeled radio, a middle smaller part labeled baseband and a little triangle on top labelled software. The idea was that the radio was incredibly difficult, then the baseband chip and… Read More
Tag: qualcomm
Skate to where the mobile puck is headed, Intel
Mobile World Congress 2014 has already showcased two very different mobile SoC machines in high gear. After watching one big US moment and Canada otherwise dominate everything involving ice and a stick at the Sochi Olympics, I’m reaching into the Wayne Gretzky pile of quotes for a metaphor to examine Intel’s move – and why they are… Read More
ASTC and the new midrange ARM Mali-T720 GPU
When we last visited texture compression technology for OpenGL ES on mobile GPUs, we mentioned Squish image quality results in passing, but weren’t able to explore a key technology at the top of the results. With today’s introduction of the ARM Mali-T720 GPU IP, let’s look at the texture compression technology inside: Adaptive… Read More
A Brief History of Qualcomm
Qualcomm is the largest fabless semiconductor company in the world. If you have a smarphone there is a good chance you have a Qualcomm chip in your pocket. It is headquartered in San Diego with offices pretty much everywhere.
Qualcomm’s roots are in Linkabit, which was founded by Irwin Jacobs and Andrew Viterbi. They, along with … Read More
The Changing Semiconductor Foundry Landscape!
The foundry landscape is changing again and it is definitely something that should be discussed. There are some people, mostly influenced by Intel, that feel the foundry business has hit the wall at 20nm which couldn’t be further from the truth. After spending 30 years working in Silicon Valley, I have experienced a lot of change… Read More
SilabTech Awarded 2013 Best Start-up in India
This is obviously great news for SilabTech, and this is the type of news which will change the perception that we (non-Indian) have of the Semiconductor industry in India. About 15-20 years ago, the India Embedded/VLSI industry was perceived as low cost design resource pool, a good place where to implement design center. The hidden… Read More
MIPI Alliance Specifications Adoption Status in 2013
At the beginning of December in Paris I had the opportunity to make a presentation to a very impressive audience, technical gurus from companies contributing to MIPI Alliance specification were here, including ST-Microelectronics, Intel, Qualcomm, TI, Toshiba, Nokia, Samsung, to name a few. … Read More
Things to do in Denver when you’re 64-bit
When Apple announced last September their A7 chip had gone 64-bit, the congregation immediately swooned, but analysts reacted skeptically: “So what? Phones don’t need more memory, and there are no 64-bit apps.” Even pundits miss once in a while, and now the topic is how the chip industry is headed for 64-bit.… Read More
Why SOI is the Future Technology of Semiconductor
No doubt that FDSOI generate high interest these days and I found a very interesting contribution from Zvi Or-Bach, President and CEO of MonolithIC 3D, Inc. Zvi has accepted to share his wrap-up from IEDM, in a blog for Semiwiki readers. If you remember the long discussion we had in Semiwiki about cost comparison, some comments were… Read More
Why CEVA Is My Favorite Semiconductor IP Stock For 2014
As a full time financial writer/investor, I am always on the lookout for compelling risk/reward opportunities, particularly in small-cap tech. While the world of large-cap tech is generally well understood by the investment/analyst community, smaller cap names are usually under-followed and often misunderstood. One such… Read More