Intel’s decision to exit the semiconductor memory business, is usually attributed to a conversation between former CEOs Gordon Moore and Andy Grove. But Grove, in his book Only The Paranoid Survive, lays the credit elsewhere.
Apple’s coyness in refusing to reveal whether the iPhone it is launching in ten countries shortly is in fact the 3G iPhone has been a waste of time. Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM) revealed that it is the 3G version of the iPhone which it is going to launch in Italy next month.
Continue reading "Yes, It Is The 3G iPhone In Europe Next Month" »
The reason why Samsung, Intel and TSMC announced last week that they were combining to push 450mm wafer manufacturing technology is because no one else wants it, according to Dr Mark Pinto, executive vice president and CTO of Applied Materials, the world’s largest manufacturer of semiconductor production equipment.
Continue reading "No One Else Wants 450mm, Says Mark Pinto" »
Satellites casting all communications barriers aside, and making television and radio available to the world’s most inaccessible settlements are about to become a reality, according to Mr Fred Adler of the Hughes Aircraft Company, who presented the main lecture at the 6th International Television Exhibition and Symposium in Montreux last week.
Apple seems to have become paranoid about its foreign iPhone sales. Yesterday, Vodafone announced it has signed an agreement with Apple to sell the iPhone in ten countries: Australia, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy and Portugal, Egypt, India, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey.
My thanks to Dr Dwight Decker, chairman of Conexant and the Global Semiconductor Alliance for this one. Here are the ten best reasons not to be engaged in the semiconductor industry:
Continue reading "Ten Reasons Not To Make ICs by Dwight Decker" »
It’s funny to see Intel, TSMC and Samsung saying they want 450mm wafer manufacturing. Wouldn’t any device manufacturer? The question is: Will Samsung, Intel and TSMC pay for it?
A great semiconductor company has a culture, and that culture usually comes from one person. At Intel it came from co-founder Bob Noyce who, as the son of a non-conformist Minister, respected excellence and loathed hierarchy.
A re-spin is nowadays considered a disaster when a 90nm mask costs half a million, and a 65nm mask over a million, and when three months lost time to market is supposed to lose you 30 per cent of the potential revenues.
Continue reading "Five Re-Spins Is Doing Well, says Rhines." »
April was an excellent month for new memory technologies. First we get IBM saying its Racetrack technology can increase memory density by ten times; then we get Glasgow University saying they can make a molecular switch which could implement a Petabyte memory on a square inch substrate; then Manchester University says it’s made a transistor one atom thick and ten atoms wide out of graphene; Duke University, using a masking technique, makes the highest density cluster of carbon nanotubes ever achieved - ten nanotubes a few atoms thick, and then H-P comes up with its ‘memristor’, a resistor with storage capabilities which could be used in FPGAs and for ultra-low power memory.
Continue reading "Memristors Complete Great Month For New Memories" »
The UK semiconductor industry has never been in better shape. With start-ups like Icera, picoChip and XMOS it is better placed to grow major new companies based on UK technology than it has ever been.
‘To ease their customers through the pangs of decimalisation, ICL are offering them file conversion programmes’, begins a story in Electronics Weekly’s issue of May 28th 1969.
Dear old Bozotti. Like a gramophone record which has got stuck, the boss of STMicroelectronics has blamed the dollar for poor results for the third quarter in a row.
Thanks to the FT for this one. The ten biggest US high-tech spenders on R&D, measured in billions of US dollars, are:
Ever since we saw Bernie Ecclestone try and bribe Tony Blair over cigarette advertising at Formula One meetings we’ve known that New Labour is corruptible. Cash for Honours confirmed it.
Continue reading "Presbyterian Rectitude and The Wireless Operators" »
“The industry needs a new transistor, a new device”, reckons Dr Dwight Decker, Chairman of the Global Semiconductor Alliance and Chairman of Conexant, “we’ve been lucky to put it off for 20 years. We need something to reduce the cost of manufacturing dramatically, maybe a completely new material.”
Continue reading "Post-Silicon Electronics Needs A Cutting Tool" »
Hillary Clinton is making an impact on the semiconductor industry. Her ‘No Quitting’ stance has spread to Intel CEO Paul Otellini who, almost unbelievably, says Intel is still trying to get into the cellphone business.
Well it’s Monday morning again and, if you want something to make the world seem a better place, read Gene Wilder’s new novel: ‘The Woman Who Wouldn’t’.
Akio Morita was born into a wealthy family which regularly bought all the latest electric gadgets. His father’s purchase of an electric phonograph triggered his interest in electrical things.
Another week, another semiconductor joint venture. This week we’ve had MeiYa Technology, the new DRAM joint venture between Micron and Nanya. Last week we had the NXP-STMicroelectronics wireless joint venture. Another half a dozen DRAM companies are talking about joint ventures. Why are JVs so popular?
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