October 2009 Archives

Lee De Forest, inventor of the triode which made amplification of radio signals possible, was no shrinking violet.

I don't usually think much of the EU. Corrupt, undemocratic, unaccountable, non-transparent, extravagant. That's about it. But when they standardised on the micro-USB for  portable device chargers, making universal chargers possible, I began to see some good in the EU and now, with the EU plan to get European countries to each reserve the same chunk of disused  broadcast spectrum for a pan-European mobile broadband network, I'm beginning to positively warm to it.

In the 1870s it was assumed that, with the discovery of atoms, there was not much more to be discovered about the make-up of matter.

Sometimes you just can't make it up. To see the biggest US chip firm and the biggest US telco getting worried about lack of innovation in the US is a joke. These are companies which stifle innovation.

I am taken to task by a financial analyst for my remarks in Giving The Finger To Wall Street.

Thanks to Future Horizons for this one - the top ten IDMs. Together they accounted for $117 billion in sales last year, representing half the semiconductor market by value.

Whatever you do, don't stick a cellular dongle in your laptop. I know. I did it.

'Intel has announced availability of what is claimed to be the first static NMOS RAM with an access time of  70ns.'

So starts a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of November 5^th 1975

Where better, I thought, to track down that elusive beast, the ARM-based Netbook, than the ARM Tech Con in Santa Clara, last week.

Trotting round Silicon Valley last week, one of the nice things was that everyone has a similar view on Wall Street: It stinks. Some companies have stopped giving quarterly earnings guidance to Wall Street analysts and have replaced it with an annual outlook.

Who was the best-ever VC? Well my candidates for the title are all American, but you may have some other suggestions. So, who was it, who was the greatest IC VC of all-time?

The strangest proposal ever put to a VC has to be the one put to Tom Perkins, co-founder of Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, the premier Silicon Valley VC company.

With flash seen as a doomed technology, always predicted to run out of steam at every new generation, then miraculously finding a way to the next generation, are any of the alternatives to the traditional floating gate flash process looking promising?

Once upon a time, a man stood up in the San Francisco Hilton Hotel and demo'ed an ARM-based computer which drew its programmes off remote servers, sent emails played video clips, did word processing and handled spread sheets.

No sooner has the prospect of allocation been raised than the reality has started to appear. Arrow's latest lead time guidance paints a picture of long and lengthening lead-times with Micron SDRAM parts on allocation until Q1 2010 and Samsung SDRAM 'supply constrained'  with DDR1 on allocation and DDR2 in 'tight supply'.  

Battle was joined last week when Richard Clemmer, CEO of NXP, said the analogue and mixed signal market is worth $85 billion, a figure which was immediately challenged by Europe's leading semiconductor analyst, Malcolm Penn, CEO of Future Horizons.

How long is it since we last heard the word Allocation? Seems like a long time. Maybe 2000. In 2000, the chip market beat $200 billion for the first time. 2009 could be the last year the market comes in under $200 billion.

Thanks to IC Insights for this list of the top ten suppliers of photovoltaic cells and panels, comprising a couple of  German companies, three Chinese companies, two Taiwanese companies, two Japanese and one American. Here they are:

Is America an experiment? We now know that when, in 1917, communism became the system of government in Russia, it was doomed to be seen as a failed experiment.

'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 Electronics Weekly's edition of October 22nd 1975.

Poor old Ed. I keep finding the most pitiable entries in his diary. Ed is a serial CEO who kept a diary which fell into my hands. In these published extracts I have given him the name Edward Rushbridger to protect his real identity. Ed seems to be having a rough old time of it after being parachuted into his latest company by the venture capitalist backers. Previous entries here, here, here and here document the trail of Ed's woes.

Arriving here in Silicon Valley at the weekend, I find it embroiled in another of its periodic scandals. Last year it was the stock options back-dating scandal, this year it's an insider share trading scandal.

Can broadband be a purveyor of prosperity and democracy? Well, if Alain Dutheil, CEO of ST-Ericsson and COO of STMicroelectronics is right, and he usually is, then the answer is: Yes.

At the 1985 Dataquest European Semiconductor Industry Conference in Vienna, Jacques Noels, then General Manager of Thomson Components (later merged with SGS to form STMicroelectronics) pointed to several initiatives which would lead to European success in high technology:

NXP's claim that its new strategy to focus on high performance analogue allows it to address an $85 billion market, has been questioned by Europe's leading semiconductor analyst, Malcolm Penn, CEO of Future Horizons.

There was once a company which achieved the remarkable feat of getting the first junction transistor to market.

There's only one company making flash-based FPGA, that's Actel. Is it a good idea? What's it used for?

It was interesting to meet the CEO of Numonyx, Brian Harrison, at IEF 2009 earlier this week. Why? Because Numonyx is bringing out a Phase Change RAM and Phase Change RAM is, like wafer scale integration and the universal memory, a bit of an industry joke.

Thanks to Jack Wallen of ZDNet for this one: The Ten Best Reasons for having Linux on your netbook:

My iPhone App is done and dusted and sent to Apple for approval. The last bit was the worst.

The loveliest people in the world come from Louisiana. The thought came to me as the lady in the filling station tactfully explained that the Holiday Inn I'd booked was in Lafayette Indiana, not, as I had thought, Lafayette, Louisiana. She found us a nice Hilton down the road.

I've never had much time for this Cloud computing bollox, but it made me sit up to hear the CEOs of Inphi and Imagination saying that this is where the semiconductor industry's growth is coming from, and where start-up opportunities are to be found.

'Texas Instruments is aiming at 20 to 25 per cent of the projected £15,000 million world micro/minicomputer market over the next ten years. In order to capture a share of this lucrative market, it is launching a new family of third generation 16-bit microprocessors, two new microcomputers and a minicomputer.'

So starts a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of October 15^th 1975.

NXP is being asset-stripped by its private equity backers led by Kohlberg Kravis and Roberts (KKR), according to Europe's leading semiconductor industry analyst, Malcolm Penn, CEO of Future Horizons.

What is the best logic series ever produced? In terms of technological advance, in terms of money-earning capacity, in terms of its effect on end-product design and in terms of its effect on the evolution of semiconductor logic. So what do you think was the best series of logic ICs ever made?

I make a point, during last week's five day stay in Switzerland for IEF 2009 (+ R&R), to say a hearty "Bon Jour" to every Swiss I meet, because they look so miserable, and I assume that a smile and a greeting will cheer them up.

Texas Instruments was a small maker of seismological geophysical instruments when its CEO, Pat Haggerty, decided that transistors were going to be the next big thing.

There was once a company which designed unlicensed second sources of the hottest product in the chip industry. The company had its products made in factories which had been given a factory license by the original design source.

Despite Texas Instruments chickening out of the Netbook market saying it doesn't fancy competing with Intel, there are feistier players seeing disruptive traction in the new format.

 Will the FPGA market find growth again? As Moshe Gavrielov, CEO of Xilinx, puts it: "We are perceived to be stuck in a $3.6 billion niche." Is there a way out of the niche for the programmable logic companies?

It's a bit of a facer to see Texas Instruments going frit on the Netbook market. But, according to Bloomberg earlier this week, TI's wireless boss, Greg Delagi, has chickened out of the Netbook market before the Netbook market got started.

Thanks to CoolBrands for this one - its list of the ten most coveted brands in Britain. This year, the iPhone knocked Aston Martin off  CoolBrands' top spot in 2008, and Apple had three out of the top five brand names. Here is the top ten list.

What should you ask a semiconductor CEO? The answer, according to Pasquale Pistorio, the great former CEO of STMicroelectronics is: 'Are you out shopping?' And, if  not: 'Why not?'

'Reports and rumours surrounding the Sinclair digital watch will reach fulfilment next week when the long-awaited product will be officially launched.'

So starts a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of October 15^th 1975.

This is the fourth entry from the diary of Edward Rushbridger (a nom de plume to protect the owner's identity) which fell into my hands recently. Ed, a serial CEO, has been parachuted by venture capitalists into his latest company. He is, it seems, serially adept at putting his foot in it (see previous diary entries here, here and here).

After IEF2009, the lovely Terri & I mosey up to Gstaad for lunch. Sitting in the sunshine outside a restaurant in the main street with a bottle of local Vaudois Pinot Noir-Gamay, we hear bells. Low, slow, mellow bells.

So what does fab-lite mean? Malcolm Penn, CEO of Future Horizons, tried to figure out the answer at his company's International Electronics Forum 2009 (IEF 2009) in Geneva last week.

One of the biggest cock-ups ever seen in the industry was the 1979 take over of Fairchild by the French oil-field services company Schlumberger. The price paid was $400 million.

So what's the way out of the semiconductor industry's problems? Finding renewed growth and better profitability was very much on the agenda at the opening day of the Future Horizons' International Electronic Forum 2009 in Geneva yesterday.

There was once a Silicon Valley chip which was the fastest growing IC company in the industry's history.

Oh dear. It was a bit of a shock to hear the party's over from one of the industry's pioneers, but Actel CEO John East told me earlier this week: "The semiconductor industry has not been a growth industry since '99", adding, wistfully: "Most of the fun has been had."