April 2011 Archives

Once upon a time there was a fine semiconductor company which fell upon hard times and was sold to the French.

The ten best engineers are:

It's a bit surprising when the financial statements of companies become the subject of spin.

'In an attempt to meet their continuing shortage of engineers, the Admiralty are now offering commissions to graduates who have mechanical, electrical or science degrees with suitable subjects.'

So starts a story 50 years ago in the May 10^th 1961 edition of Electronics Weekly.

There was once a company which decided that making ASICs was all about using heavyweight computing power for IC design.

A shudder must have gone through the consumer electronics industry with the news that Toshiba is cutting its NAND output by half in May and June.

Between 1959 and 1984, one semiconductor company reigned supreme over the industry at No.1 - TI.  Will TI's unprecedented 25 years at the top ever be matched?

Thanks to IC Insights for this one - the top ten capex spenders this year:

Maybe there's a psychological synergy between chip-making and earthquakes. Semiconductors is an unpredictable business, while people in seismically active areas live with uncertainty - and  Silicon Valley spawned in an earthquake zone.

'Ferranti have ordered Plessey memory systems to equip the first production model of the Atlas digital computer', starts a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of April 19^th 1961.

(Atlas was the most powerful computer in the world at that time and used germanium transistors rather than vacuum tubes).

'The problem is motivation,' Ed confides to his diary, 'after the cuts to the manufacturing and the R&D budgets were announced, there's a feeling that's no one's safe. I'll have to call a managers' meeting - everyone down to product manager level.'

The effect of the transistor on the computer industry was astonishing.

Capex - the barometer of the chip industry's chutzpah - is soaring again but from a low level.

There was once a chip company which grew like a weed: revenues were$2,678 in 1968; $66 million in 1973; $400 million in 1978; $1.1 billion in 1983; $2.8 billion in 1988; $8.7 billion in 1993 and $43.6 billion in 2010.

Chad has come bottom of a league of countries which use most computing and communications technology, compiled by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Semiconductors are fomenting the worldwide political turbulence in Egypt, Libya, Ivory Coast, Tunisia, Qatar, Bahrain and Syria.

"There has almost been a whole generation of MBA students and managers who have been brought up on a false idea that manufacturing is kind of the brawn and not the brain, and that the country should focus on the brain."

'A remote controlled pacemaker for training runners has been developed by the Tokyo Shibaura Electric Co,' opens a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of April 19^th 1961.

(The company's name was later shortened to Toshiba).

'I'd been dreading meeting the unions, but it had to be done,' Ed confides to his diary, 'they came in yesterday, firing on all cylinders with me as the target.'

The answer to the Libyan conundrum seems straightforward.

There was once a company which had a lab which invented laser printing, Ethernet, the PC, the graphical user interface (GUI) and object-oriented programming.

One of the prime candidates for post-silicon electronics could be more suitable for quantum effect devices than field-effect devices, according to Georgia Tech.

Thanks to IC Insights for this one: the ten companies with the most 300mm capacity:

A 1mm³ sized camera, about the same size as a grain of salt and costing a Euro or two, could be a tool in doctors' surgeries next year.

'52 years ago the transatlantic liner Republic was rammed by the Italian liner Florida in thick fog near Sandy Hook,' runs a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of April 19^th 1961.

'Won't do that again,' Ed confides to his diary, 'sitting on that panel at the ISS conference was a massive mistake. Especially when it's a panel about the future of the semiconductor industry.'

When the European global positioning satellite system gets up and running next year it will be so precise that it will be able to locate avalanche victims to within a few centimetres, says the Fraunhofer Institute.

One of the many great qualities of Sir Clive Sinclair is that he thinks big. When the money was rolling in he addressed his company's research to some of the most thorny problems the computer industry has ever faced. Then, in the microcomputer market collapse of 1984, he had to sell out his computer business to Amstrad.

If I pay you, I can now send the payment directly from my bank to yours without a transaction charge.