October 2008 Archives

Although Fairchild gave the first ISSCC paper on the feasibility of CMOS in 1963, and though RCA made the first working CMOS devices in 1964, it was over a decade later before anyone thought of the technology as a go-er.

Just when you think America's really in a mess brought low by incompetent politicians and a ruthlessly greedy Wall Street, you suddenly hear a wonderful story which shows all is well with America's greatest strength - its endlessly resourceful and energetic entrepreneurs.

Two of the many buzzes in the wireless world are the concept of ad hoc networks and wireless sensory networks.

It was good to meet a founder-CEO last week. These days so many CEOs seem to be parachuted onto a founding team by the financial backers. This kind of CEO tends to be a cool, financially-savvy, managerial type totally lacking in passion for the company and its products. So that's why it was good to meet Bob Swanson, Founding CEO, now Executive Chairman of Linear Technology.

Following the purchase of NXP in 2006 by a group of private equity companies led by Wall Street company Kohlberg Kravis and Roberts, some 3.7 billion of dollar-delineated debt and some 2.7 billion of Euro-delineated debt in the form of high-yield bonds secured on NXP's assets were sold. Paying the interest on these bonds is now costing NXP $450-500m a year.

Thanks to Sharp for this one. The ten best target markets for E-Signage are:

ACCORDING to the National Economic Development Office's "Annual statistical survey of the electronics industry," published on Monday, the gross output of the UK industry in 1968 exceeded £1,000 million for the first time when the total was 19 per cent up on that for 1967 at £1,047 million.

So starts a story in the July 16 1969 edition of Electronics Weekly.

There won't be a dominant player in the wireless industry again, reckons Rich Beyer, Chairman and CEO of Freescale Semiconductor.

Being in America in the run up to a Presidential election makes you realize how very different the Americans are.

As it further understands the potential of its trapped charge Mirrorbit technology, Spansion is extending it to new applications, such as data storage, DRAM replacement in servers, DRAM replacement in  wireless handsets, and ultra-cheap content delivery.

Interesting to meet Mentor Graphics people yesterday. Were they gloating about the problems over at rival Cadence? Of course not. Might they put in a bid for Cadence? Well it's a thought.

Was Linear Technology's decision to phase out its involvement in the cellphone and consumer markets when those markets accounted for a third of its revenues as ballsy a play as Intel's decision to get out of DRAM when DRAM accounted for 75 per cent of Intel's business? Probably Yes.

Intel and Microsoft are on a hiding to nothing in their efforts to find an efficient way to programme multi-core processors, according to the Professor of Computer Science at Bristol University, Professor David May FRS, who was the architect of the Inmos multi-core processor, the Transputer.

There was once a CEO who asked his CFO: "How much market share do I need to support my investment in this product line". The CFO replied: "Ten per cent".

Are the foundries trying to jack up prices? Future Horizons' CEO Malcom Penn says Yes; Rich Beyer, CEO of Freescale says No; TSMC's President for Europe, Maria Marced, says, well . . .up to a point.

Parallel processing came in for considerable attention at last week's IEE meeting on Computer Science and Technology, presented at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology.

So starts a story in the July 9 1969 edition of Electronics Weekly.

What level of pillock tries to put an egg yolk inside a potato? A two star Michelin chef level of pillock.

Japan has suddenly discovered something it has never had before - rich deposits of valuable mineral resources.

Lightbulbs lasting six years would be a fine thing, and Sharp believes that this is round the corner, now that that the declining ratio of $ per lumen and rising ratio of lumen per Watt is propelling LED into the general lighting market.

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"I did this deal - the first deal I ever did - with Associated Semiconductor  Manufacturers (ASM) which was a joint venture betwen Philips and GEC, later wholly-owned by Philips", recalls Sir Clive Sinclair, "ASM made transistors under licence from Philco in the US and was selling them to the computer industry at very high prices. I bought the rejects."

Interesting to see that NXP is working on phase change memory with a little UK start-up called Ilika. Memory is the elixir of life in the semiconductor industry - when it's not the harbinger of death.

Margin is the name of the semiconductor game these days and Rich Beyer, the new CEO of Freescale Semiconductor, sees increasing margin as one of his most urgent priorities.

There was once a wise man who started a semiconductor company. He understood the industry, and surrounded himself with the best people in his area. They made superior products which could always find markets at good margins.

The good news for the PC industry is that unit shipments grew 15 per cent in Q308 compared to Q307, according to Gartner Dataquest, the bad news is that a fair chunk of those shipments came from the tiny notebook market, e.g. the Asus eee, where units are cheap and profits elusive.

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Thanks to DisplaySearch for this one. The ten biggest apps in terms of $s for OLEDs over the next eighteen months are:

NATIONAL Semiconductor are to open new factories in Scotland and West Germany in the near future, and are to expand rapidly their Santa Clara and Singapore operations to ensure that they become the fourth largest in the world's semiconductor rankings.

So starts the lead story in the July 16 1969 edition of Electronics Weekly.

A typical Paris story. There I was, last week, sitting at a pavement table outside Le Relais Paris Opera Cafe, waiting for the bus to Charles de Gaulle airport.

Private equity has had its successes in the semiconductor arena, according to Rich Beyer, Chairman and CEO of Freescale Semiconductor, which was acquired in 2006 by a number of private equity companies led by Blackstone.

Gordon seems to be the only one who has picked up on the fact that bankers are  liars. The Japanese pointed out last week that one of the reasons why their economy and share market stagnated for 15 years after the crash of 1990, was that no one knew how badly the banks had been hit because the bankers lied about the extent of their exposure.

In 1975, Cyrus Tsui joined Monolithic Memories Inc (MMI) to work on the 5701 bit slice product line.

Although private equity buy-outs provide benefits to the person who sells their company to the private equity company, and also provides benefits to the private equity companies, it is difficult to see how it provides any benefit to the company which is sold.

The intriguing thing about the chip industry is that it appears to be able to hold contrary opinions simultaneously. Almost nothing you say about it is totally true, almost anything you say about it has some element of truth.

There was once a great chip company which invented a new product category, semi-custom, and dominated the market for it for a decade.

Earlier this week Ben Bernanke nicked my idea, published last week, on  how to solve the liquidity crisis.

WITH THE UNHAPPY experience of Emley Moor's tubular steel mast behind them - it collapsed on March 19 - the Independent Television Authority have picked a self-supporting reinforced concrete structure as the permanent replacement.

So starts a story in the July 9 1969 edition of Electronics Weekly.

It's good to see the Americans haven't lost their sense of humour over the collapse of the world's financial system.

Proof, if further proof were needed, that private equity and the semiconductor industry shouldn't come within a million miles of each other, came this week with the news that NXP, owned since 2006 by a private equity consortium led by Wall Street firm Kohlberg Kravis and Roberts (KKR), has crashed out of the semiconductor top ten rankings for the first time in 45 years.

Chuck Byers, Director of Brand Management at the world's No.1 silicon foundry, TSMC, tells a great yarn of how, as a 22 year-old cub reporter, he had a lesson of supreme importance inculcated into him by his editor.

Can using the sea-of-processors approach to address the programmable logic market work? Naturally, John Daane, CEO of programmable logic pioneer Altera, doesn't think it can.

In 1986, after Fairchild Semiconductor had been run by, in succession, Les Hogan, Wilf Corrigan and Tom Rogers, and had been sold to the French oil-field services company Schlumberger, National Semiconductor bought Fairchild for $122 million.

An unexpected benefit of Gordon Brown's ban on short-sellers of shares is that the hedge funds appear to be shafted.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini must have felt a little uncomfortable when he saw that ARM had joined IBM's Common Platform programme for next generation process technologies.

There was once a great company which was very good at linear ICs. It spent a lot of money trying to get into digital products - so much that many of its best linear people left to form their own linear companies.

The first US service for mobile Wimax users has opened for business, putting pressure on the main US LTE guys, AT&T and Verizon, to get their act together.

Thanks to DisplaySearch for this one: the ten fastest growing applications for flat panel displays  between 2008 and 2010. They are: