First the good news: 4G LTE design in activity is off the charts as OEMs building smartphones, tablets and Ultrabooks are buying into the capability for product rollouts that will occur starting in September. Now the bad news: there’s not enough to go around until probably well into 2013. For a Company sitting on over $26B in cash,… Read More
The second day (more like a half-day) of EDPS was devoted to 3D ICs. There was a lot of information, too much to summarize in a few hundred words. The keynote was by Riko Radojcic of Qualcomm, who has been a sort of one-man-band attempting to drive the EDA and manufacturing industries towards 3D. Of course it helps if you don’t … Read More
If I say “graphics chip”, most techies will say NVIDIA or AMD. But in the new post-PC world , neither of these players holds the key to the future. One that does is a little company making 43 cents on every latest version iPad and iPhone. Another is designing their own approach. Should you care what graphics is in your phone?… Read More
I first met Betty Pokerwinski of Qualcomm at LinkedIn in the group called IC Layout Designers. I post frequently on LinkedIn and a blog article on an EDA tool called Visual Design Diff from ClioSoft created quite a discussion, enough so that I contacted Betty to learn more about her IC layout group at Qualcomm.
Questions and Answers… Read More
Sometime early in 2013, Intel will tape out its first production chip for 14nm and it won’t be an x86 processor. It’s neither necessary nor prudent to lead with a new x86 processor when the one missing element that the mobile market desperately needs is nowhere to be found: an ultra low power 4G LTE chip that fits under the battery… Read More
Holman Jenkins, the distinguished writer of business trends for the Wall St. Journal, recently penned an article entitled “The End of Apple’s Roach Motel?” (Personally, I think that since Apple is in California, he should have used Hotel California in his title), questioning the iPhone and iPAD maker of its ability to continue… Read More
With the introduction of the “New iPAD”, we now have the 2012 benchmark for the tablet market, including the offerings that will come from Amazon later in the year. As has been noted earlier, with each new mobile product iteration Apple unmoors itself from the PC foundations of Microsoft, Intel and even nVidia and AMD. At the unveiling… Read More
The world semiconductor market grew a slight 0.4% in 2011, according to WSTS. In early 2011, expectations were for growth in the 6% to 10% range. Various natural and man-made disasters lead to weaker than expected growth. The March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan disrupted semiconductor and electronics production. Floods… Read More
The Corporate PC may finally be on life supports and with it the purveyors of the hardware and software solutions as consumer adoption of new technology outpaces the carefully planned IT budgets that guarantee positive 3 year Returns on Investments (ROI). The Apple of the consumer’s eye will soon feast on the iPAD 3 with its retina… Read More
In a previous blog, I was forecasting smartphone shipment to reach 430 million units in 2011. I was wrong! Apparently, I am not better than other analysts, as the actual figures for the smartphone shipment in 2011 are more than slightly different, as these have topped 491.4 million units! After 304 million in 2010, that’s a 61.3 percent… Read More
