March 2011 Archives

The British Post Master General was an important figure - a Cabinet Minister and the official guru on communications.

Cambridge's optical plastics start-ups have not met with unqualified success, so the progress of Eight19 will be watched with interest.

Wouldn't it be the answer to our prayers if the entire financial community were dispatched to floating mid-ocean data centres?

Thanks to Fortune for this one - the ten most admired companies in America:

In the 19^th century, Africa was dubbed  'The Dark Continent' and night-time satellite pictures of Africa show it is not a misnomer. But no one has done anything about it until now.

'Quite unlike the position in the US, the European scene in transistors and diodes is at present dominated by the demand of the domestic side of the industry, notably for transistorised portable radio receivers.'

So, 50 year ago, starts a feature from an outside contributor - a Swiss firm of consultants - in Electronics Weekly's edition of Feb 1^st 1961.

''The COO tells me that we have four business units which are not  the No.1 or No.2 players in their field, and yesterday I called in the general managers in charge of those units and told them each to produce a plan to get to be No.1 or No.2 in 18 months' time  or prepare their unit for disposal,' writes Ed in his diary.

Europractice, the only way European universities, researchers and small businesses can get chip designs put into silicon, is under threat from a gap in its EC funding arrangements.

The current debate about the efficacy of going from IDM to fab-lite was addressed some years ago by the founder and former CEO of Bookham Technology, Andrew Rickman.

There's been an awful lot of speculation over the supply of NAND - now someone's stuck their neck out - JP Morgan says supplies will be down by around 30% by mid-May.

On Thursday, July 1^st 1948 a press release was issued by Bell Labs which started off by saying:

The week after next is when the full extent of the Japanese earthquake on the electronics supply chain is expected to be felt.

It looks as if Ofcom is going to try and keep four UK wireless operators after auctions for 800MHz and 2.6GHz spectrum for 4G services.

Thanks to IC Insights for this one - the Top Ten Fabless Companies in 2010.

When you've got a great big instruction set, an architecture designed long before power consumption was an issue, a process technology devised to deliver blazing speed and nothing else and a reputation for bullying your customers, it's unlikely that changing the manager is going to make a lot of difference to your efforts to enter the mobile market.

£500m worth of electronic tubes and semiconductors will be sold in the USA this year, according to a report 50 years ago in the January 25^th 1961 issue of Electronics Weekly.

'We'll close the American factories first,' Ed confides to his diaries, 'it's cheap and easy to sack Americans - thank God there's not much employee protection law in the Land of the Free. Then we'll announce a vague intention of closing some of our European sites in the hope people will leave voluntarily.'

Japan gave us all something last week - the example of the Fukushima Fifty.

 William Shockley was a genius. But like many geniuses he had personal peculiarities. In Shockley's case this took the form of paranoia.

It was the dog that didn't bark in the night that gave Sherlock Holmes his clue.

A few months after the transistor was invented, a professor at Grinnell College, Iowa wrote to the devices' co-inventor John Bardeen with whom he had been a classmate at Wisconsin University, and asked him for a transistor.

Many thanks to all those who sent in a test comment. The upgraded system seems, crossed fingers touch wood, to be working OK. A benefit of the upgrade is that anyone who signs in once and gets 'trusted' sees their comment go up automatically without moderation. Any hiccups please report to david.manners@rbi.co.uk

On Monday, Ofcom  announces the rules by which the auction for UK 800MHz wireless spectrum will be conducted.

The two most pressing problems for the semiconductor industry in the wake of the Japan disasters, are the state of Toshiba's NAND flash fabs, which supply over 40% of world supply, and the state of Japan's makers of raw silicon wafer manufacturers which supply over 60% of the world requirement.  

Thanks to IC Insights for this one: The Top Ten Foundries in 2010:

'The GPO's (General Post Office) first electronic telephone exchange is expected to be completed next year at Highgate Wood,' says a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of February 1^st 1961.

Philips and STMicroelectronics want to see Europe prioritise the implementation of healthcare technology.

David Potter, the founding CEO of Psion, did not have a lot of faith in conventional business plans.

The Asian earthquake and tsunami could have devastating effects for the worldwide chip industry, says Malcolm Penn, CEO of Future Horizons -  Europe's top semiconductor analyst company. The earthquake also may point up the stupidity of Western CEOs sending their manufacturing to Asia.

According to Bloomberg it would now cost $12.5 billion to buy ARM - a  lot of dosh for a company with $600 million in revenues.

The SIA says January's sales of $25.5 billion were up 1.5% on December's $25.2 billion which is pretty sensational news when the Dec-Jan market change has been an average minus 17% for the last ten years.

Renesas has made one of the most surprising decisions in its history - it is letting go of its Chairman, J.J.Yamaguchi in June.

Thanks to Ernst & Young for this one - the Top Ten countries for technology M&A activity in 2010:

Intel has not yet found a low-leakage device, according to Paolo Gargini, Intel Fellow, ITRS chairman and group director of Intel's technology and manufacturing group.

End Traffic Chaos With Computer

Is the headline on a story 51 years ago in Electronics Weekly's edition of Dec 7^th 1960.

The story opens:

"The only way to solve London's traffic problem is by the use of an electronic computer," says Mr T Cauter, managing director of CEIR (UK) Ltd.'

'The VCs' brats were bad enough,' writes Ed referring to the 20-something super-bright employees of VC companies who monitor their investments' performance), 'but the brats employed by private equity companies are ten times worse.'

The theme of  last week's ISS-SEMI conference was the importance of having semiconductor manufacturing in Europe.

The European Commission has had a change of heart and now believes that manufacturing semiconductors in Europe is important.

Sir Robin Saxby's management style is to take nothing at face value, to check and balance every input.

You never know, when one of these new catchphrases gets aired, whether it's got some substance to it or is bollox. So it was with 'The Internet of Things'. 

A key question was asked at the ISS-SEMI conference in Grenoble earlier this week: "Is 450mm a curse or a blessing?"  

According to IBM, the ten companies which were granted the most US patents last year were:

Domestic electric car chargers should soon cost $1,000 as the big boys like Siemens, GE and Eaton get in on the act.

'US To Put Man In Space Next Year'

This was a headline 51 years ago in Electronics Weekly's edition of December 7^th 1960.