April 2010 Archives

The problems being experienced as a result of the credit crunch were evident in Japan during its bubble economy period of the late 1980s.

Having spent the best part of a week in California, I know a good chunk of the IC industry is into video. They're trying to communicate video faster, they're trying to display video more effectively, and they're trying to communicate it and display it using less and less power.

The two greatest entrepreneurs in the history of the semiconductor industry were, early in their careers, put through a psychology test.

Many centuries ago, China was the richest country on the planet. Then, for many centuries until the present resurgence in economic activity, it was one of the poorest countries on the planet. Why?

It was a balmy evening, thanks to the outdoor gas heaters, on a Californian terrace, and I was talking to the only man I know who thinks Apple will take over ARM.

 Thanks to IC Insights for this one - the expected ten highest capex spenders in the IC industry in 2010. Interesting to see that Samsung is expected to overtake Intel this year - the first time for many years that Intel has not been the No.1 capex spender. And it's interesting to see that the top ten capex spenders account for a collective capex spend of $26 billion, representing 66% of the capex of the entire semiconductor industry. So here they are: the ten companies expected to be the top capex spenders of 2010:

That figment of the industry's imagination, the ARM-based netbook, could be due a revival, courtesy of the Koreans.

Fifty years ago this year, in the September 14th 1960 issue of Electronics Weekly, this headline was splashed across the top of Page 11: 'Britain Takes The Lead In Autoland.'

Guy Nelmes, who now works for HMG, but used to be productively employed at the chip businesses of Toshiba and Fujitsu sent me this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=7H0K1k54t6A

'To my amazement,' Ed writes in his diary, 'I find some people are getting what appears to be a second pay cheque.'

Non-volatile memory is a tease. Bubbles and Ferro promised much, and delivered little. Two years on from announcing its 128Mbit phase change, Numonyx announced, last week, a new phase change - at 128Mbit.

Back in the mid-1980s, a number of companies set out to commercialise E2PROM.

Intel had a team working on the technology and the Intel marketing team, plus the Perlegos brothers, walked out on Intel to set up a company, Seeq Technology.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", is one of Arthur C. Clarke's memorable sayings and the remark fits a development from Europe's No.1 microelectronics institute, IMEC of Belgium.

In the 1980s the most advanced technological country on the planet decided to break-up its dominant telecommunications company which owned the world's best R&D laboratory.

The Republican Presidential candidate, Senator John McCain, was among four members of the US Committee on the Armed Services to get a report from the US Government Accountability Office stating that China controls 97% of the world's rare earth materials.

One of the great books about Silicon Valley is called Accidental Empires because many of the pioneers - Gates, Jobs, Noyce et al - built their empires as a by-product of seeking to engineer something better. A new book, Obliquity, explains why wealth is often achieved accidentally, and is elusive when pursued as a primary purpose.

The ten hottest box-office draws in 2009 judged by the fastest rising ticket sales on Google were:

Everspin Technologies, the former MRAM group at Freescale, is sampling a 16Mbit MRAM. Production volumes are scheduled for July 2010. The chips are made for Everspin by Freescale.

50 years ago this year, in EW's first year of publication, the September 14th 1960b issue of the paper carried this prophetic headline:

'Japan Plans £300m Electronics Industry'

Ed is feeling rather chipper having run into an executive from a much larger company who tells him they could be interested in buying the company.

It might be thought that AMD only recently outsourced its production to foundry - a process which ended in its being included in the fabless category of companies for the first time last year.

This has been one heck of a turnaround. Intel and LinearTech have just had all-time record revenue quarters, Samsung says it expects an all time record profits quarter, and ASML says it expects a record revenue year.

There was once a very successful, highly profitable, company which supplied services to oil-field operators.

Having recently read Ian McEwan's new novel Solar, I am aware that photosynthesis is one of the possible energy sources of the future. Earlier this week, MIT reported that it may be able to produce a prototype photosynthesis device within two years.

If anyone was still in any doubt about the kind of people who inhabit the private equity industry, just look at the latest shenanigans from Kohlberg Kravis and Roberts (KKR).

Thanks to Gartner for this one: the top ten OEM/ODM consumers of semiconductors in 2009.

Didier Lombard always seemed to be a good egg. It was reassuring to see a techie - he started off in the R&D department - rise to the top of a major company like France Telecom. Too often it's a smooth bureaucrat, or smoother marketing man, who gets that kind of job.

Britain Can lead In Communications

But No Time To Lose.

50 years ago this year, this was the headline of an article in Electronics Weekly's edition of September 7^th 1960.

'As the IPO gets closer I don't want senior management to experience eye-off-the- ball syndrome', Ed writes in his diary, 'so I've decided that we need someone who can keep operations on an even keel while I, and some of the top management. look at what we need to do tart things up for the public offering.'

A switch currently made on a 3nm process, which will scale for 'a very long time', which operates at 1ns, which is non-volatile and can endure hundreds of thousands of read/write cycles sounds just what the doctor ordered.

One of the greatest breakthroughs the semiconductor industry ever made was the invention of the planar process.

Intel's 48-core processor sounds rather Inmosy - as Peter Claydon would put it. It's a mesh architecture with each core having loads of I/Os and its own memory.

There was once a great company which transitioned, successfully, through three generations of technology.

A great endorsement of this country's technological talent is the decision by one of the world's sexiest IC companies, Inphi, to set up a mixed signal design centre in Northamptonshire. And it's a decision which should give Lord Mandy, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, pause for thought.

It was good to hear a new CEO say he spends half his time seeing customers.

Curiously, there aren't a lot of books about the chip industry. Rating them is all very subjective but, in my view, these are the ten best:

With Moore's Law running into barriers all over the place, it is becoming clear that the shrinking of digital circuits is not going to be a particularly profitable pursuit.

TOP HAT

Diffused silicon rectifiers

AT CLOTH CAP PRICES!

Showing a sensitive regard for the British class system, this was the headline on a TI ad in the very first edition of Electronics Weekly, published 50 years ago this year, on September 7^th 1960.

There was once a company whose founder decided it would become the world's No.1 chip supplier. When it achieved that position, the company resolved to retain it for 100 years.

The most depressing foil I've seen for sometime went like this:

Exhaustion of Resources

Desertification

Viruses

Global Warming

Abnormal Climate.