August 2008 Archives

In this, the the seventh of our Friday series about the early microprocessors, Masatoshi Shima, fresh from the success of  designing the 8080, decides to leave Intel. Shima's friend, Federico Faggin, was preparing to leave Intel to found Zilog to pursue his vision of the next generation of microprocessors, and Shima was anxious share in it.

Further to my earlier blog on making-millions-while-sitting-in-the-pub type businesses, it seems that Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Silicon Valley's top venture capital company, has put $100 million into a fund which will exclusively back start-up companies developing iPhone applications. Naturally, it's called the iFund.

After offering up an excellent article about Freescale's options in the wireless arena, the Austin American-Statesman, which sounds a distinguished organ of the US press, asks its readers for comments.

 How cash-strapped is NXP? Apparently NXP gobbled $830 million of cash in the first six months of the year and the loss in its mobile telephony business may allow ST the chance to renegotiate the deal over ST-NXP Wireless which may reduce the $1.55 billion it originally agreed to pay to NXP.

A couple of weeks ago I was put in my place by a French sommelier who thought it unnecessary to decant a bottle of Chateau Belgrave 2000.

'SCIENTISTS AT Mullard's Redhill research laboratories have been able to transmit television pictures by modulating a light beam', starts a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of January 28th 1970. 

Clearly there is a need for a new type of 'C' class officer in technology companies alongside the Chief Executive Officer, the Chief Financial Officer, The Chief Operating Officer, the Chief Information Officer and the Chief Marketing Officer.

Word is that the Sealed Knot, who re-enact old battles, will be helping to re-create the famous Battle of Cambridge to celebrate the 30^th anniversary of the founding of Acorn Computers, the iconic PC company whose architecture should have become the world PC standard instead of the crummy IBM PC architecture.  

There was once a company which was highly regarded for its technological excellence. One day, one of its products was found to be faulty.

India's technology industry is shrinking, according to the Wall Street Journal, hit by the various negative forces of the credit crunch, the falling dollar, the slowdown in US spending, rising labour costs, and low-cost competition from places like Vietnam, the Philippines and Eastern Europe.

The eighth, and last, in our Friday series on the early microprocessors is the story of Dr Federico Faggin, who, after getting the 4004, 8008 and 8080 to market at Intel, decides to strike out on his own and set up Zilog.

Every now and again a scientist comes up with the notion that humans are going to get taken over by machines.

Sylvania have signed up the international marketing organisation Impectron to represent their semiconductor activities in this country. As indicated in the January 7 issue, Sylvania are among an increasing number of American semiconductor firms looking to Europe for their growth.

So starts a front page story in Electronics Weekly's edition of Jan 28^th 1970.

Amazing to think that NXP, the former Philips Semiconductors, is now out of the wireless business. Who would have thought it could ever happen?

Today's amalgamation between ST-NXP Wireless and Ericsson Mobile Platforms is  aimed at stopping the Americans from taking over the wireless telecoms industry in Europe.

 Two empires once fought to gain supremacy over each other.

Rambus, the memory interface specialist, was dealt the most fantastic cards, but appears to have had little clue about how to play them.

Pointing out that the Post Office would be the biggest capital spender in the Government at the rate of £2 million a day, Kenneth Baker (Cons) urged in the Commons last week that, in order to reduce this burden, it would be sensible, to allow the public and industry to buy their telephones direct from the suppliers rather than through the Post Office.

So starts a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of January 28^th 1970.

Was Philips' investment in TSMC the greatest semiconductor investment ever made? Last week Philips said it had sold the last of its shares in TSMC. Was it the biggest single investment coup in chip industry history?

The sixth in our Friday weekly series on the early microprocessors, is told by Masatoshi Shima, designer of the breakthrough microprocessor, the 8080. "With the 8080, Intel wanted to develop a second generation 8-bit microprocessor which would compete with 16-bit minicomputers", explains Shima, "I knew how to do it."

That Great American, Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36^th President of the United States of America, had a useful little homily: "Never miss a chance to get laid or take a piss."

Well I've always thought that TV-to-the-handset was a no-go, but the wireless industry has persisted with it, and now it seems even the Asians don't want it.

Taken, at the weekend, by a generous friend to Le Manoir Aux Qat'Saisons - Raymond Blanc's place which has had two Michelin stars for the last 22 years - I am deputed to interface with the sommelier on condition that I ultimately defer to the sommelier's judgment.

There was once a lonely engineer in Japan who believed that MOS transistors were the future.

With the Royal Bank of Scotland writing off over $10 billion of losses last week, that takes the total tally of losses written off by UK and US banks on sub-prime mortgage debt to over $400 billion since the start of the credit crunch.

'The £25m bid by Leasco Data Processing for Pergamon Press makes considerable sense for a number of reasons', starts off an Electronics Weekly report in its issue of June 25^th 1969.

SEMI has come up with a great guide to the Intel/Samsung-promoted push for 450mm wafers in which SEMI destroys what it calls 'The Five Misconceptions' about 450mm wafers.

The fifth in our Friday weekly series on the invention of the microprocessor is an account of how, after getting the world's first microprocessor, the 4004, into silicon, Dr Federico Faggin set about his next task at Intel  - designing the first 8-bit microprocessor,  the 8008.

For Intel, another day means another diversification. Even as it tries, reportedly, to sell to Seagate its share in its last diversification -  the NAND jv with Micron - Intel is diversifying into new areas: application specific microcontrollers, graphics processors, Wimax,  and, of course, Atom.

In that ideal world of making-millions-while-sitting-in-the-pub, the new boom for cell-phone applications is the perfect pub-based industry.

The semiconductor industry always surprises. Now, when gloomsters from economists to politicians to bankers to retailers to manufacturers and pundits are predicting a bleak economic year, the semiconductor industry is booming.

 Wow! Sanjay Jha, formerly Qualcomm's best executive, is to get a package worth, potentially, $94 million for jumping ship to go to Motorola.

There was once a CEO whose company made a wonderful microprocessor. He was so proud of it that he wanted as many people as possible to use it.

There've been some odd comments on the settlement of the Nokia-Qualcomm lawsuit along the lines of who won? This is a weird way to look at a deal which has so many upsides. There are four clear winners:

"Minicomputers - the latest section of the electronics industry to succumb to the 'bandwagon effect' - are to be put under the microscope by the Ministry of Technology, writes Steve Liebmann."  

So starts the front page lead story in Electronic Weekly's issue of January 28^th 1970.

"We've not been a litigious company," Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm, said last week after the settlement of the Nokia-Qualcomm dispute. Crikey. What would a litigious company be like?

On Friday July 11th, Ted Hoff told the story of how he invented the microprocessor. On Friday July 18th, Busicom's Masatoshi Shima, told how he designed it. On Friday July 25th, Federico Faggin described how the first microprocessor was made. This week, Ted Hoff, tells the story of how it got taken to market.

Google has a knack of giving the world what it wants, when it wants it, and if the Wall Street Journal is right, Google's next offer to the world will be a massive source of venture capital.