Intel announced their quarterly results today. They beat consensus by a cent. Not surprisingly their business is driven heavily by the microprocessor businesses, what Intel calls PC and Datacenter. Revenue and earnings both set new records in both groups.
As Brian Krzanich, the CEO, said:In the Data Center, we saw double-digit… Read More
The Albuquerque Journal had an article about a local company sending silicon carbide wafers into suborbital space to improve their quality. ACME Advanced Materials plans to buy low quality $250 wafers, send them into space using their process, and sell the higher quality wafers for about $750. They are working to add gallium nitride… Read More
Samsung’s profits fell to $3.8B which is 60% down on where they were a year ago. They said this is primarily due to a shortfall in smartphone sales. Samsung’s problem is not that it competes with Apple, their phones seem close enough that the Galaxy line has been doing very well in places like the US. It’s problem… Read More
In the 30+ years that I have worked in Silicon Valley I have seen many great products fail and even more mediocre products succeed, the difference being how the companies communicate to the outside world. In the semiconductor industry, presenting the value proposition of your company or product is under even more scrutiny now that… Read More
On the Cadence booth at DAC, Lars Liebmann of IBM presented on the challenges of 10nm. As he put it, how the lithography folks are keeping things very interesting for the EDA tool development engineers. Although 14nm/16nm hasn’t yet ramped into HVM, the advanced work for tools and IP has all moved to 10nm. Although Lars gave… Read More
This week is the 10[SUP]th[/SUP] annual ARM Technical Conference in Silicon Valley. In regards to size, content, and relevance, I believe ARM TechCon is the #1 event for the fabless semiconductor ecosystem for sure. I attended keynotes, sessions, and walked the hallways on Wednesday and Thursday. I wish I could write about everything… Read More
The global semiconductor market was US$82.2 billion in the second quarter of 2014 according to World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS). 2Q 2014 was up 4.8% from 1Q 2014 up 10.1% from 2Q 2013. Healthy growth should continue into 3Q 2014. The table below shows initial revenue growth guidance for 2Q 2014, final reported revenue… Read More
Recently someone described the Internet of Things (IoT) as being the semiconductor classification that we used to call ‘other’. It’s a nice line but actually I think IoT really is something different from what we were already doing before. Although it is a market that cuts across medical, automotive, home-electronics,… Read More
SEMI’s Strategic Materials Conference is coming up fast, on September 30th and October 1st next week at the Biltmore in Santa Clara. This year’s theme, Materials Matter—Enabling the Future of IC Fabrication and Packaging, will take a broad look at what is driving the demand for new materials, and how material suppliers … Read More
I was in Tanzania a few weeks ago. One of the conceits that we have in the US is that we lead the world in technology. That is true in many areas but in mobile the US is a laggard. Just look at the fuss made about NFC payments in the new iPhone given that Japan had mobile payments over a decade ago.
Another area where the US is a laggard, or maybe… Read More
