April 2009 Archives

There was once a visionary called Geoffrey Dummer. Four years before the invention of the IC he described one and how it might be made and, one year before the IC's invention, a non-working model of an IC based on Dummer's concept was fabricated by Plessey and demonstrated at the 1957 International Symposium on Components in Malvern, Worcestershire.

President Barack Obama's appointment this week of the members of the USA's Science and Technology Council looks as if it has fallen into exactly the same trap as the UK does in these matters: it has too many scientists and not enough technologists.

How far should Microsoft feel threatened by Linux? Quite a bit, if ARM's CEO Warren East is to be believed.

By 1975, those who had mastered MOS early were in the fore. TI still reigned over the industry.  Philips, having bought Signetics in 1975, had shot up the rankings, and NEC had become the first Japanese company to enter the ranks of the top ten - a harbinger of a new semiconductor world order.

To take a pay freeze when you're earning $12m a year like the boss of Intel, or $5m a year if you're a senior Intel exec, might seem like a meaningful gesture, but the directors of Japan's Sharp Electronics are said have agreed to a pay cut of up to 50 per cent.

'Closely following upon Electronics Weekly's report that Mullard would soon announce its plans for Signetics in the UK Philips Organisation, the company now says that, from November 1^st Signetics will become a Mullard sales operation, operating under the Signetics name'.

So starts a story in the Oct 29 1975 edition of Electronics Weekly.

Unlike leopards, Qualcomm may have changed its spots. According to the Wall Street Journal, Qualcomm has reached a global settlement of all its lawsuits against its Southern California rival Broadcom.

The Japanese  used to argue that when consumer electronics became the biggest sector of the high-tech market - overtaking computing and telecommunications - that their companies would be in pole position to benefit  because of the traditional Japanese company model of  vertical integration - where a company makes every important part of a product from the componentry to assembly to the applications software.

Nicholas Negroponte, Director of the Media Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology tells a good yarn in his book, Being Digital, of how US President John F Kennedy met the television pioneer Vladimir  Zworykin.

Freescale's decision to give up trying to sell its cellular handset chip unit after a year of trying, shows just how commoditised the handset chip business has become.

There once lived a most wonderful man. Not only was he a great intellect but he was described as 'the incarnation of altruism'.

Is the iPhone changing the balance of power in the wireless industry? The battle for power between the operators and the handset manufacturers could be tilting in favour of the handset makers.

Has Wimax had its day? Is Wimax a case of the Blight of Intel striking again? At the Avren Next Generation Networks conference in Bath this week, it certainly looked that way.

By 1965 TI had started its 25 year-long reign as the world's No.1 semiconductor company, a record which is unlikely ever to be matched. The Semiconductor Top Ten for 1965 were:

What is it with telecoms operators? Instead of building a super product which gives customers enormous scope to develop their applications, they build the lowest-capacity network they feel they can get away with.

'In an attempt to repeat, throughout Europe, the level of market penetration achieved in the UK, Sinclair Radionics have concluded a licence agreement with a Spanish company concerning the Cambridge range of calculators.'

So starts a story in the October 22 1975 edition of Electronics Weekly.

The 450mm wafer issue is becoming a fascinating debate. Is it worth doing? Is it affordable? Who will benefit from it?

The poll of what will succeed silicon produced some interesting comments so we've decided to give the poll thing another whirl. Here's No.2: Who was the greatest chip CEO?

Believe it or not, when the semiconductor world was young there was a time and a company where new recruits with a freshly minted PhD could work on any project they wanted until it either succeeded or totally failed.

Q: What's slower than the mating of tortoises? A: The consolidation of the Japanese semiconductor sector.

One day the greatest man in the semiconductor industry was asked a question by his wife. Should she invest in a start-up company in Cupertino.

What  is very odd is that DigiTimes of Taiwan is reporting that 'orders from the netbook and 3G handset segments will help drive foundry growth for the third quarter of 2009', while Intel reported that revenues for its netbook processor, Atom, were down by 27 percent in Q109 compared to the previous quarter.

When the CEOs of major constituents of the chip business publicly announce their expectation of recovery, the chances are that  the horrendous slump in demand in Q4 08 and Q109 took the industry to the bottom in one sharp jolt, and that the trend is now upwards and to the right.

Six of  ten had been in the top ten rankings of manufacturers of vacuum tubes (thermionic valves) they were: GE, Westinghouse, Western Electric, RCA,  Sylvania and Philco  - all six successfully making the transition from vacuum tubes to transistors. The earliest companies to get into transistor manufacturing which had never been in the vacuum tube manufacturing business were TI, Motorola, Transitron, Hughes, Clevite and Germanium Products (which set up solely to make transistors for hearing aids). So the 1955 Semiconductor Top Ten were:

'During this 25^th anniversary year of the Racal  Electronics Group, Ernest Harrison, the chairman and managing director, has been announcing plenty of surprises for the group's 6,000 employees as part of the celebrations. The have included inscribed tankards and revere bowls for all employees, a special savings scheme, free overseas holidays for 30 members of the staff and their families, and cash prizes in a slogan contest'.

So starts a story in the Oct 22^nd edition of Electronics Weekly about the company which was to morph into Vodafone.

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Before the monetary excesses of the late 2000s, came the monetary excesses of the early 2000s and it was at a birthday party in 2001 where an electronics tycoon beat all previous records for vulgarity.

As the programmable logic manufacturers stew in their $3.6 billion niche, a few brave souls are trying to solve the two key problems which have always plagued programmable logic products: they cost too much; they use too much power.

The MEMS sector seems to be the Mr Wimpy of the semiconductor industry. It is content to be led by its customers, whereas real semiconductor companies get out there and show potential customers the amazing thing which their products can do.

Thanks to Yole Developpement for this one. Here are the ten biggest MEMS suppliers in 2008:

At the Intel-TSMC press conference announcing the outsourcing of Atom, it was illuminating to hear a number of Wall St analysts asked if Intel was transferring process technology to TSMC to make Atom.

'Ferranti is to launch a microprocessor chip early next year. The F100L , as it is to be called, has now reached the final stage of development and is expected to go into production at the Electronics Division Gem Mill plant in the near future'.

So starts a story in the Oct 22^nd 1975 edition of Electronics Weekly just four years after Intel's Ted Hoff made the first microprocessor, the 4004. 

IP is the vital resource which drives all technology advance, but it has a flipside. It can be ruthlessly exploited to unfairly extort money. With IP being a Heaven and Hell kind of thing, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Silicon Valley's pre-eminent VC firm, have funded a company to buy up potentially troublesome patents - but not to use them, and not to use them to sue anyone.

This is something new. Hopefully it will generate some interesting responses. If it doesn't I'll can it.

After a week's conferencing in San Franciso it's off to Georgia for R&R.

Barrelling down I-16 from Atlanta to the sea, we hole up at Statesboro, 30 miles short of Savannah.

In his book SPINOFF, Charlie Sporck tells an amazing tale about Bob Widlar the genius analogue IC designer.

Twenty five years ago a country decided to try and get ahead of the rest of the world by investing nearly a billion dollars in developing a computer which would massively outperform contemporary computers.

Four weeks ago I was in Manchester at a meeting of the North-West Technology Network (NWTN). The meeting was mostly devoted to high-tech start-up activity. Last week it occurred to me that we had missed a trick.

TSMC looks as if it will win the race to the next process node with Intel and Globalfoundries trailing behind.

Thanks to Future Horizons for this one. From a PC & Server market worth $85 billion in 2013, to a mobile phone market worth $60.7 billion in 2013 down to a Digital Audio Player market which will be worth just over $4 billion (and dropping), these will be  the top ten semiconductor applications in four years' time.