January 2012 Archives

In the Land of the Free is the system rigged against employees?

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Now . . . .a

transistorised

chopper

So, 50 years ago, starts an ad in EW's issue of May 24^th 1961.

'Things are bad,' Ed confides to his diary, 'the private equity company which owns us has not only put in its own person as COO, but the new COO has gone and appointed her own people to all the key positions in the company. I don't know who's saying what to who, who's reporting to who, or who knows stuff I don't know.'

The notorious '2 & 20' fees of private equity companies have come under scrutiny by Yale University and the University of Maastricht in a study commissioned by the FT.

John East was, for 22 years, CEO of Actel. His first job was at Fairchild in the Wild West days of the Silicon Frontier.

The Yanks are much better than the Brits at understanding that governments can't do much that is useful.

Back in the century before last, a very great engineering company invented the first automatic dial telegraph, the water meter and the electric dynamo.

It seems a bit rich for a company proposing to spend $12.5 billion on capex this year to be asking other companies, and government institutions, for help in developing a technology which will, mostly, benefit that one company.

Huge 2012 capex budgets at Intel, Samsung and TMC will skew the industry to make it extremely challenging, and in some cases impossible, for smaller companies to remain competitive, says IC Insights.

Thanks to thinkdigit for this one - the ten best Android apps:

The recently appointed CEO of train wreck ST-Ericsson is turning out to be a master of the art of stating the boringly bloody obvious.

'The provision of suitable storage constitutes a major engineering problem in computer design. Memories are inevitably slower than the associated processors, and resort has to be made to parallel memory operation to achieve reasonable processing speeds.'

So, 50 years ago, starts a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of May 24^th 1961 written by K.L.Smith from IBM British Laboratories.

'It gets worse, much worse' Ed confides to his diary, 'Horrible Harriet Huntsman (the new COO appointed without him being consulted by his private equity owners) has appointed a new head of HR (as if I care) a new head of manufacturing (I can cope with that) a new head of marketing and sales (this is a mega-bummer) and a new head of engineering (another mega-bummer). I don't think she's stopped there.'

There were some notable company cock-ups in 2011. Who did worst?

Hans Snook, Founder of Orange, tells how the back-packing trail was a great recruitment vehicle for Hutchison, Orange's backer.

Future Horizons is expecting 8% growth in the semiconductor industry next year and, if the economy bounces back, it could be as much as 20%.

Back at the end of the century before last, a couple of brothers started making light bulbs.

Even Republicans are queuing up to slag off private equity in the US.

Thanks to Bit9 for this one. Apparently some Android phones are no longer getting software updates which leaves bugs un-patched and loopholes unclosed. Here, according to Bit9, are the ten most vulnerable phones:

IBM scientists have stored a memory bit on 12 atoms of magnetic material at low temperature. They have also fabricated a device utilising eight 12 atom bits to make a memory byte.

'Exports of British transistors and photo-transistors achieved a new record in March, reaching a value of £117,723. This was a gain of 55 per cent on the February total of £76,006 and a substantial increase of more than 260% on the export figure of £32,900 in March last year.'

So, 50 years ago, starts a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of May 24^th 1961.

'I just couldn't believe it,' Ed confides to his diary, 'A Brat phones me today about appointing a new COO after he'd forced me to sack the last one.'

Intel's Medfield chip-set aimed at getting the company into smartphones has been dissed by ARM CEO Warren East.

John East was, for 22 years, CEO of Actel. His first job was at Fairchild in the Wild West days of the Silicon Frontier.

Barrier layers are a bugger. Ten years ago I asked the CEO of Cambridge Display Technologies when we were going to get a roll-up display and he said I could have one now if they could only find a barrier layer to protect the display from the water in the atmosphere.

There was once a far-sighted government which, in 1967, gave one of its semiconductor companies a contract to instal an MOS process (a year before Intel was founded expressly to develop MOS memory).

ARM-based processors will be in notebooks this year as well as tablets, with servers to follow later, giving x86 a run for its money in the hardware market.

Micro-springs and tilted micro-cantilevers less than ten microns wide are a couple of structures made from 3D-structured carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in a methodology developed by Imec and Michigan University.

So, even the Americans are beginning to see the dangers of fab-lite strategies. The author of the Innovators Dilemma, Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, says that going to foundries is an exporting of brains.

'The introduction on of the first commercially available epitaxial transistor was announced last week by Texas Instruments.'

So, 50 years ago, starts a story in the May 24^th 1961 edition of Electronics Weekly.

'A dreadful day. A Brat phones telling me I have to fire the COO,' Ed confides to his diary, referring to one of the 20-something year-old super-sharpies his private equity proprietors employ to monitor Ed's company.

By the end of  the year these issues will look old hat, but what do you reckon now will be the most interesting topic in 2012?

There were three 'bold, hairy audacious plays' on the UK semiconductor scene, to quote Icera's founding CEO Stan Boland - Icera, PicoChip and XMOS.

The American semiconductor industry went through turbulent times between 1978 and 1988.

Silicon solar cells can achieve a better than 20% efficiency using a technology called IBC (interdigitated back-contact). A group led by Imec have demonstrated 23.3% efficiency on a small-area cell.

I didn't realise there were ten Android tablets let alone a top ten but here, thanks to the Register, is a list of the top ten Android tablets.

'The next five years will see microelectronics investment in Europe outpace the world average. The key question is: can Europe succeed in parlaying its world-beating strengths in communications and automotive electronics into world-class microelectronics capability?'

'Or will foreign microelectronics suppliers sharpen their technological teeth on the fat pickings of the European market which they have been eyeing up for many years?'

This is how a story opened in Electronics Weekly's September 14^th 1994 edition.

It looks a lot like being Morris Chang, but there are other candidates for being the best CEO of the year. What do you think?