It has been a hectic year for the semiconductor industry so now is a good time to reflect on how we got to where we are today in hopes of better understanding where we are going tomorrow.
Given the importance of semiconductor IP (the $32B ARM acquisition by SoftBank for example) I would strongly suggest attending the REUSE 2016 event… Read More
A lot of the press we see on AI tends to be of the “big iron” variety – recognition algorithms for Facebook images, Google TensorFlow and IBM Watson systems. But AI is already on edge-nodes such as smartphones and home automation hubs, for functions like voice-recognition, facial recognition and natural language understanding.… Read More
There are always debates on who does what best in the semiconductor industry, but most agree that Intel is the best in process and transistor technology. This leadership has served the company extremely well over the last few decades and allowed them to reach a position of dominance in the PC and server semiconductor markets. In … Read More
By Fred Allibert
The IEEE S3S Conference (10-13 October 2016 at the San Francisco Airport Hyatt Regency) brings together 3 key technologies that will play a major role in tomorrow’s industry: SOI, 3D integration, and Subthreshold Microelectronics. The numerous degrees of freedom they allow enable the ultra-low power operation… Read More
Intel’s news at IDF this week about partnering with ARM for foundry services on 10nm set off some wild speculation. It’s not a surprise that ARM would enable Intel – they’ve worked together before, ARM is an equal opportunity ecosystem partner, and ARM has publicly announced 10nm cores taped out at TSMC.… Read More
In 2015 Qualcomm stunned the fabless semiconductor world with an unprecedented layoff. When I first heard about it the number was 5% but it kept growing and finally hit 15%. The big misstep here was, that after being the SoC leader starting in 2007 with the Snapdragon series of chips that powered the Smartphone revolution, QCOM did… Read More
The MIPI Alliance was founded in 2003 by large IDM to standardize chip-to-chip interfaces in the wireless phone (mobile) segment. The various MIPI specifications (CSI, DSI, DigRF and many more) have been adopted by the application processor chip makers (usually large IDM or fabless, like Intel or Qualcomm initially and many … Read More
Last week the Linley conference on mobile and wearables started with an overview and keynote address by the event’s namesake Linley Gwennap. His talk offered a few surprises and was informative all around. As you have seen recently reported here on SemiWiki, he sees smartphone shipments continuing to rise, but with a declining… Read More
One of our astute readers caught what looks like a major gaffe in the Linley Group mobile conference presentations from this week. It’s another indication of the speed of change in mobile markets and the instability that is giving Apple and others heartburn.
Here’s the chart in question:
The point of contention is who, exactly, … Read More
You may not know this, but on-time delivery at expected performance with 5G is being determined right now in engineering labs across the globe. This is true even though end user deployments won’t be for another three to four years. You see, the ground is being laid right now with manufacturers, operators and standards bodies. With… Read More
