January 2011 Archives

The programmable logic market first hit $3 billion in 2000, and it didn't make $4 billion until 2010, according to Ed Lepkowski of L-Mar Associates.

It's not just Facebook, now LinkedIn is looking to cash in on the inflated asset values for social networking sites which have been boosted by Goldman Sachs' investment in Facebook.

Tsuyoshi Kawanishi, the great CEO of Toshiba Semiconductor, used to write a weekly column in the Japanese daily newspaper Nippon Keizai Shimbun.

There was once a Texas company which had the Silicon Crown Jewels - an x86 processor design.

Why on earth should the European taxpayer pay for 450mm development? Only six companies: TSMC, Samsung, Intel, Toshiba, GloFo and IBM can afford a 450mm fab - and they are all foreigners.

Is the semiconductor industry model broken? Did companies cut back so much that the normal mechanisms of the supply chain don't work?

'For over 70 years - since the Treaty of the Metre was signed in 1889 - the metric standard of length was defined as the distance between two lines engraved on a bar of metal. This special bar of platinum-iridium alloy was kept at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sevres, a few miles from Paris.'

So, 50 years ago today, starts a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of January 25^th 1961.

The foundry industry is getting interesting. TSMC ended the year with 300mm capacity of 2.5 million wafers a year from two Gigafabs, and GloFo says it will end 2011 with 300mm capacity of 100k wpm.

Will the practice of venture capitalists forcing an outside CEO onto the founding teams of start-up companies change after the example of Google?

Despite 20-odd years of trying to grow a domestic IC industry, China's IC trade deficit gets worse and worse.

The OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project of Professor Nicholas Negroponte of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology may end up having the last laugh on Intel.

The Facebook bollox has started. A post last week - A Super-Scam - pointed up the unholy alliance between Goldman Sachs and Facebook to hype Facebook shares before their IPO.

Thanks to David Sweetman of Anchorwinch for this one - the top ten porkies VCs tell entrepreneurs:

The 40 Years War between the makers of DRAM and the users of DRAM is a psychological battle of wits.

'Epitaxial transistors are being shown in a demonstration on the STC stand at the Physical Society Exhibition.'

So, 50 years ago today, starts a story in the January 18^th 1961 edition of Electronics Weekly.

A good guide to Who's Going To Be Who in the tech world is provided by the list of companies which are granted the most US patents.

What would be the best thing that could be invented?

We are about to see a super-scam

The old joke was that volume production would start in 18 months time.

The ten greenest computers in terms of MFLOPS per Watt are:

Memory, both volatile and non-volatile, and logic can both be scaled to sub-20nm geometries, according to IMEC and its partners in its core CMOS programme: Intel, Micron, Panasonic, Samsung, TSMC, Sony, Fujitsu, Infineon, Qualcomm, ST Microelectronic and Amkor.

'The British firm of MCP Electronics Ltd is all set to manufacture and market low-priced silicon transistors next March.'

So, 50 years ago today, starts a story in  Electronics Weekly's edition of January 11^th 1961.

IMEC has shown how to fabricate III-V devices on silicon wafers. It has grown InP layers on silicon  wafers and shows the way to using other III-V compounds on silicon.

IBM predicts five life-changing innovations for the next five years.

A good yarn is told in Bo Lojek's incomparable History of Semiconductor Engineering.

Confined to a sweltering Caribbean island on a diet of flying fish and rum punch this week, my thoughts turn to how to avoid the ruinous charges for trivial phone calls like getting  taxis, reserving restaurant tables and booking jaunts.

That old Techo-Ponzi scheme phase change memory  (PCM) refuses to die. Dubbed Techno-Ponzi because it's a good way of getting an R&D budget or raising some VC money, PCM  has been under development for 40 years without achieving commercial viability.

 Heat and light can be converted into electricity by a single device.

Thanks to Bill Reichert, Managing Director of  Garage Technology Ventures, for this one:

This could be the year freedom comes to mobile comms.

Warren Savage, CEO of IPExtreme, reckons 2010 taught the silicon industry five major lessons and it has emerged into a New Era.

Who was the best semiconductor CEO in the world in 2010?