What are the ten best decisions ever made in the semiconductor industry's history? This is the stuff of which long evenings are made, but here, for what it's worth, is one list compiled after a long evening.
Continue reading "Ten Best Decisions Ever Made in the Chip Industry" »
A reader says that one of the best decisions ever made in the chip business was the decision to put a complete computer core on an IC (Intel's 4004) and suggests expanding the list of The Ten Best Decisions Ever Made in the Semiconductor Industry http://www.electronicsweekly.com/blogs/david-manners-semiconductor-blog/2007/03/ten-best-decisions-ever-made-i.html to the 15 Best Decisions Ever Made . . . . . .
Continue reading "10 + 5 More Best Decisions Ever Made IN IC Industry" »
This may not look like much but it took a lot more evenings to compile than the lists of ten best and ten worst decisions.
The list of ten best CEOs was a pretty easy list to compile. This list doesn't seem to me too debatable, but I may be proved wrong . . . . .
The ten most important breakthroughs in the semiconductor industry was an even more difficult decision than the ten best chips ever built and open to as much argument. But here are, anyway, ten of the most important breakthroughs in semiconductor technology.
Continue reading "The Ten Most Important Semiconductor Breakthroughs" »
Here are the ten best British chip companies.
These are the ten companies which have had the most effect on the evolution of semiconductor technology.
Continue reading "The Ten Most Influential Companies In Semiconductors" »
Here are the ten worst cock-ups in the history of the electronics industry. The UK has had its fair share of them, and two of them came from one UK company - GEC.
Continue reading "Ten Greatest Electronics Industry Cock-Ups" »
The electronics industry's ten best quotes span 150 years. They are as follows:
There are a lot of candidates for this list, but here are ten things that really deserved to have made it, and here they are:
The ten greatest survivors have outlived the rest of the semiconductor industry while retaining their original format.
The electronics industry's ten best quotes span 150 years. They are as follows:
This is a tricky one. These are not the ten best written or most entertaining books, or most authoritative or most insightful books on the industry, but each possesses one, or more, of those qualities. Some are by insiders, some by outsiders like academics and journalists.
Not an easy one. The chip industry has been built on the shoulders of many genius engineers, sung and unsung.
Thanks to Al Haun for suggesting this one, and for putting forward some of the names. Here they are, the ten best chip designers:
King of the Semiconductor Salesmen is, of course, Jerry Sanders, while Tom Bay, first head of sales at Fairchild Semiconductor, defined semiconductor marketing, and Bill Davidow, head of Operation Crush which won Intel the IBM PC design win, intellectualised semiconductor marketing practice in his book High Technology Marketing.
Here are the ten best ideas for founding a start-up semiconductor company.
Continue reading "Ten Best Ideas For Semiconductor Start-Ups" »
These are not the ten richest venture capitalists, nor are they necessarily the ten who've generated the biggest returns, but they've had the best effect on growing the semiconductor industry.
Continue reading "The Ten Best Semiconductor Venture Capitalists." »
For a product to be sexy:
1. You must want to get your hands on it, and it must feel good when you do;
2. It must have charm - intuitive use - ‘if I press this button I expect this to happen’, and it does!
The semiconductor industry has always required leaders, men who can bet the farm on a particular direction and have the company follow them. Some CEOs have done this by judgment, some by charisma and some by both. Here are the ten most charismatic:
Continue reading "The Ten Most Charismatic Semiconductor CEOs" »
Here are the ten greatest microprocessors ever built:
Some of these are product types made by various manufacturers, others were proprietary developments. Here are the ten best logic chips.
Very many thanks to Ian Dedic for the suggestions here. Below are the ten best analogue chips.
Four of these came from Intel: the first commercial MOS DRAM, the first EPROM, the first commercial EEPROM and MLC flash. The PROM had a major effect on the industry, hence the inclusion of the 5603 1K PROM. The other memopry chips had a profound effect on their markets at the time. The Mostek 16K DRAM, the Inmos 16K NMOS SRAM, the NEC 256K DRAM, the Toshiba 1Mbit DRAM set the standards for those product areas, and dominated their markets. So here are the ten best memory chips:
Recent years have seen a proliferation of excellent new wireless standards. It wasn't always like this: Remember CT2? The ghastly Rabbit wireless standard backed by Ferranti? Now we have loads of good wireless standards. My thanks to Richard Wilson for suggestions for this one. The ten best wireless standards are:
This is pretty easy because the analyst company VLSI Research provides a list based on revenues every year and, every year, it’s pretty much the same as the previous year.
Continue reading "Ten Best Chip Production Equipment Companies" »
This list comes from Future Horizons whose International System and SOC Conference started in Prague today. Here ‘Best’ means ‘Biggest’. I have to say I can’t think of anyone who makes much money out of chips for PCs and Servers, except Intel, and I find the No.10 slot, for USB sticks, just amazing. What on earth do people use all those memory sticks for?
Thanks to Rupert Goodwins for this one. A fascniating list with explanations from Rupert of why he chose them.
This is a pretty obvious one, they're the world's biggest electronics OEMs, not counting IBM. The top ten buy more chips than anyone else in the world, and collectively account for about a third of all the world's chip sales measured by value.
Here, is a list of the top ten chipless companies measured by the value of sales. ARM is twice the size of second-placed Rambus.
Over the chip industry's history there have been an increasing number of R&D collaborations as the cost of developing the technology has become increasingly expensive. The ten most effective examples of these have been:
There have been many famous female scientists, but surprisingly few in the fields of computing and communications. Here are the ten most famous:
From Faraday's 1833 discovery that increasing heat can increase conductivity in silver sulphide, the reverse of the normal effect of heat on conductors, to Bell Labs' 1947 invention of the transistor, were a series of all-important discoveries which made the transistor possible. Interestingly, six of the ten discoveries were made in the 19th century.
Continue reading "Ten Most Important Discoveries Behind The Transistor" »
There's never been anyone like Edison with his 1,093 patents and his 'Invention Factory' in Menlo Park, New Jersey, where he boasted he would invent something minor every ten days and a 'Big Trick' every six months. Here are Edison's ten best Big Tricks:
Sometime this year, the number of active mobile phones in the world will reach three billion out of a world population of six and a half billion people.The wireless industry has been built on a series of key steps of which the first took place in London, one year after the death of George IV.
Continue reading "The Ten Key Steps To Wireless Communications" »
These are not the CEOs of the ten best performing semiconductor companies of 2007, but they are the ten who did most for the future of their companies.
Thanks to iSuppli for this one. Here are the companies in the Top 20 of the iSuppli league table which grew fastest last year.
Continue reading "Ten Fastest Growing Chip Companies Last Year" »
Thanks to Future Horizons, Europe's leading chip industry analyst company, for this one. These are expected to be the fastest growing markets for chips between 2007 and 2012.
Continue reading "Ten Fastest Growing IC Applications 2007-2012" »
Thanks to Computing in Science and Engineering for this one. Here are the ten best algorithms:
This is a bit of a no-brainer because, except in the case of phase-change and MRAM which are included because of their promise, the others are chosen strictly on their pulling power in terms of dollars. Here they are, the ten best memory chips:
OLEDs have not turned out to be the storming replacement to TFT they were once cracked up to be with a market hovering around the billion dollar mark. Here are the ten best manufacturers:
Here they are: the ten best EDA companies in an industry which, apart from the top four, remains fragmented.
Pretty subjective stuff this but, I reckon, these are the ten best mobile phones ever built.
Thanks to VLSI Research for this one. Here are the top ten, measured by revenue, semiconductor production equipment manufacturing companies in the world.
Continue reading "Ten Best Semiconductor Production Tool Companies" »
Thanks to the FT for this one. The ten biggest US high-tech spenders on R&D, measured in billions of US dollars, are:
My thanks to Dr Dwight Decker, chairman of Conexant and the Global Semiconductor Alliance for this one. Here are the ten best reasons not to be engaged in the semiconductor industry:
Continue reading "Ten Reasons Not To Make ICs by Dwight Decker" »
In an era when the semiconductor industry is forming more alliances than at any time in its history, many of which are international alliances, it is salutary to turn to one of Japan's great CEOs, Tsuyoshi Kwanishi, formerly CEO of Toshiba Semiconductor, who set out in his book, Chip Management, ten rules for forming alliances.
Kawanishi formed notable international alliances in his time at Toshiba - e.g. with Siemens Semiconductor, later extended to Siemens, IBM and Motorola. His ten rules are:
Continue reading "Ten Rules For Alliances by Tsuyoshi Kawanishi" »
Thanks to VLSI Research for this one; the ten largest suppliers of critical sub-systems to the chip, flat panel and data storage manufacturers showing the emergence of photovoltaic suppliers as a "key opportunity for sub-systems suppliers," according to VLSI's John West.. Some chip manufacturing equipment OEMs derive 25 per cent of their revenues from photovoltaics.
Thanks to a combination of STMicroelectronics and iSuppli for this one which takes account of the new look to the market since ST and NXP pooled their wireless chip operations into a $3 billion revenue joint venture taking the No.3 slot in the wireless industry's rankings. That deal is expected to close in Q308. Assuming it does, here, with their market shares of the total market, are the wireless chip company rankings:
Continue reading "NASA Facing Problem Of Moonshot Follow-Up" »
According to rumours in the German press Infineon's CEO Wolfgang Ziebart will be ousted by Saturday, KKR is to take a 40-50 per cent stake in Infineon, and NXP will be sold to Infineon.
Continue reading "The Ten Biggest Wafer Processing Equipment Vendors" »
Continue reading "The Ten Best Process Diagnostics Equipment Suppliers" »
The hi-tec world is full of contests between companies, standards, technologies, etc. Here are the ten best contests currently excercising the hi-tec scene:
Continue reading "Ten Fastest Growing Semiconductor Applications" »
Continue reading "Ten Fastest Growing Fabless Companies In 2007" »
Where are the semiconductor-savvy bosses? This was the recent question of Malcolm Penn, CEO of leading analysts Future Horizons. With more and more companies run by finance-driven executives, here are the ten most semiconductor-savvy bosses. Some are no longer CEOs, but all are active in the industry.
Continue reading "The Ten Most Semiconductor-Savvy Bosses" »
Thanks to the Sunday Times for this list which was compiled by Professor John Quelch, Professor of Business Administration at
Continue reading "Eight Fastest Growing/Declining Flat Panel Technologies" »
Thanks to DisplaySearch for this one. The ten biggest apps in terms of $s for OLEDs over the next eighteen months are:
Continue reading "Ten Biggest OLED Applications 2008-2010" »
Thanks to Sharp for this one. The ten best target markets for E-Signage are:
Well, here they are, the top ten items on the semiconductor industry's wish-list:
Continue reading "Top Ten Wish-List For The Semiconductor Industry" »
Thanks to IC Insights for this one which came out last month.
Here, according to the Global Semiconductor Alliance (the old Fabless Semiconductor Association) are the top ten fabless semiconductor companies measured by Q2 revenues:
Continue reading "Top Ten Fabless Semiconductor Companies " »
This is based on companies' longevity in the top ten rankings. You might dispute RCA's place but it was one of only four companies (the other three being TI, Motorola and GE) which made the transition from being a top ten discrete transistor supplier to becoming a top ten IC supplier. RCA was a top tenner for over 20 years and was also, of course, the great pioneer of CMOS.
Continue reading "The Ten Best Semiconductor Companies Of All-Time" »
If you get one of these I don't think you'll complain. If you're still looking for presents- here are some ideas. If you're looking to treat yourself in the New Year Sales - go for it.
Looking at this I realise 2008 was not exactly a stunning year for the industry. But at least the chip business held up when other businesses, like finance and car-making, fell down. Let's hope 2009 produces better things. The ten best things about 2008 were:
Continue reading "Ten Best Things About The Semiconductor Industry In 2008" »
Here are the ten best inventions of all time:
Here are the ten best electricity-based inventions:
Eugene Kleiner, co-founder of Kleiner and Perkins which evolved into the tech industry's most famous venture capital company, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers, was good at propounding Laws. Kleiner generated many of these Laws which have passed into industry folk-lore, and which now form the set-in-stone tenets for today's VCs all over the world. These are the ten best:
Thanks to IFI Patent Intelligence [http://www.ificlaims.com/] 2008 for this one. The ten companies which earned the most US Patents in 2008 were:
Continue reading "The Top Ten Companies For Earning US Patents In 2008" »
Thanks to Tsuyoshi Kawanishi, former CEO of Toshiba Semiconductors, for this one. In his book Chip Management he quotes these ten rules about forecasting.
Thanks to The Independent for this one - the ten companies which have destroyed most value in the acquiring company's share price. The most destructive deal of all-time was, reckons The Indie, RBS' takeover of ABN-Amro. Apparently only 35 per cent of M&A deals lead to an increase in the value of the acquiring company's shares
Continue reading "The Ten Takeovers Which Destroyed Most Shareholder Value" »
Thanks to Future Horizons for this one. The ten fastest apps for semiconductors last year were:
Continue reading "The Ten Fastest Growing Semiconductor Applications 2008-2013" »
Thanks to Future Horizons for this. The ten biggest semiconductor applications in 2008 were:
Continue reading " The Ten Biggest Semiconductor Applications In 2008 By Value" »
Thanks to Future Horizons for this one. From a PC & Server market worth $85 billion in 2013, to a mobile phone market worth $60.7 billion in 2013 down to a Digital Audio Player market which will be worth just over $4 billion (and dropping), these will be the top ten semiconductor applications in four years' time.
Continue reading "The Ten Biggest Semiconductor Applications In 2013" »
Six of ten had been in the top ten rankings of manufacturers of vacuum tubes (thermionic valves) they were: GE, Westinghouse, Western Electric, RCA,
Continue reading "Top Ten Semiconductor Manufacturers For 1955" »
By 1965 TI had started its 25 year-long reign as the world's No.1 semiconductor company, a record which is unlikely ever to be matched. The Semiconductor Top Ten for 1965 were:
Continue reading "The Top Ten Semiconductor Manufacturers For 1965" »
By 1975, those who had mastered MOS early were in the fore. TI still reigned over the industry. Philips, having bought Signetics in 1975, had shot up the rankings, and NEC had become the first Japanese company to enter the ranks of the top ten - a harbinger of a new semiconductor world order.
Continue reading "Top Ten Semiconductor Manufacturers For 1975" »
By 1985, Japanese semiconductor world market leadership had lasted for five years but the Americans were not ready to roll over. In 1987 Charlie Sporck and Bob Noyce put together the Sematech consortium and, in 1992 the US had 44 per cent world market share, the Japanese had 43 per cent - the first time for 12 years that the US had led.
Continue reading "Top Ten Semiconductor Manufacturers For 1985" »
By now Intel, on the back of its commanding position in PC microprocessors was way out in front of the rest of the industry. The first Korean company, Samsung, had entered the ranks of the top ten and IBM made one of its brief appearances in the rankings.
Continue reading "Top Ten Semiconductor Manufacturers For 1995" »
The high-water mark of European participation in the semiconductor industry with three European companies in the top ten. The European success derived from its expertise in SOC, helped by pan-European R&D programmes like MEDEA, which emhasised the development of platforms.
Continue reading "Top Ten Semiconductor Manufacturers For 2005" »
Thanks to CNET for this one who came to the conclusion that the ten best phones at MWC 2009, in alphabetical order, were:
Well you can argue till the cows come home about this, and whether you're in the back of the pub, or sitting outside some Continental taverna, here's the basis for a bloody good argument. The ten best techie films are (or aren't):
Thanks to our sister paper Computer Weekly for this one, though apologies for the 10th slot - modesty is not their forte. Here are the ten best twitterers:
Alexander Graham Bell received numerous awards and honours in his lifetime. Of the many, these seem to be about the ten best:
Continue reading "Ten Best Honours Received By Alexander Graham Bell" »
Thanks to IC Insights for this one - the top ten semiconductor companies for 2008. Here they are:
Thanks to the Centre for Brand Analysis for this one. Here they are - the top ten brands in the world.
Thanks to iSuppli for this one. Here are the top ten contract electronics manufacturers for 2008 with, next to them, there estimated 2008 revenues in $billions:
Thanks to VLSI Research for this one. The top ten suppliers of semiconductor production equipment are:
Continue reading "Top Ten IC Production Equipment Manufacturers" »
Thanks to Yole Developpement for this one. Here are the ten biggest MEMS suppliers in 2008:
Over the years there've been many ingenious schemes for extracting money from managements and investors to pursue what appear to be world-changing technologies. You could call them Techno-Ponzi schemes - you keep getting money from new investors to leverage the progress made on the money thrown away by the old investors. Here they are: The Ten Best Techno-Ponzi Schemes:
Thanks to the French analytical specialist house DECISION for this one, taken from their World Electronics Industries 2008-2013 report. Here are the world's ten leading camcorder manufacturers.
Thanks to Semicast Research for this one. The top ten suppliers of semiconductors into the industrial market in 200, with their market shares, were:
Continue reading "Top Ten Suppliers Of Semiconductors To The Industrial Market" »
Thanks to iSuppli for this one - the top ten MEMs suppliers to the automotive industry last year.
Thanks to IC Insights for this list of the top ten suppliers of photovoltaic cells and panels, comprising a couple of German companies, three Chinese companies, two Taiwanese companies, two Japanese and one American. Here they are:
Continue reading "Top Ten Suppliers Of Photo-Voltaic Cells And Panels" »
Thanks to Future Horizons for this one - the top ten IDMs. Together they accounted for $117 billion in sales last year, representing half the semiconductor market by value.
Thanks to Future Horizons for this list of the top ten fabless companies. Last year they collectively had $27 billion of revenues.
Thanks to Future Horizons for this one, the ten biggest chipless semiconductor companies. Collectively their revenues just topped $1 billion last year.
Thanks to Jack Wallen of ZDNet for this one: The Ten Best Reasons for having Linux on your netbook:
Continue reading "Ten Best Reasons For Having Linux On Your Netbook" »
Thanks to Booz & Co for this one, the list of the top R&D spenders. Not a single semiconductor company in there, though Samsung comes in at No.12, IBM at No.13 and Intel at No.14. Electronics companies in the top 20 include Siemens (15) Cisco (19) and Panasonic (20). Here they are: the top ten R&D spenders for 2008.
At the end of Q309, the top ten semiconductor suppliers worldwide in terms of revenue stated in US $ billions were, according to IC Insights:
Continue reading "Top Ten Semi Companies At The End Of Q3" »
Compiled by our sister paper, Computer Weekly, here are the top ten smartphones for business:
The New Year is upon us, so what is the semiconductor industry hoping will happen in 2010? Here's a top ten wish-list:
Well here they are, thanks to iSuppli, the ten biggest chip companies measured by revenue in 2009. Also their % gain or loss compared to 2008 revenues.
There don't seem to be much more than about a dozen chips which can individually command a billion dollar market. Here are the ten biggest (each $1 billion+) markets for individual chip types:
Well this is very arguable but here, stretching from Julius Lilienfeld's 1926 patent filing for a solid state amplifier, through to Robert Dennard's field-effect transistor memory, are the ten most influential semiconductor scientists.
Continue reading "The Ten Most Important Semiconductor Scientists" »
Thanks to the toptentopten web-site for this one. The greatest engineering achievments of the 20th Century were:
Continue reading "Top Ten 20th Century Engineering Achievements" »
Thanks to Google for this - the ten biggest news stories (fastest rising news searches in 2009) were:
Thanks to Google for this one: What was the most searched on item in the UK in each year of the past decade? Here's Google's answer:
Continue reading "Ten Top Searches For Each Year Of The Noughties" »
Thanks to www.toptentopten.com for this one - the ten greatest geniuses in the history of the human race:
PRS For Music, which used to be called The Performing Rights Society, has been monitoring music use to collect royalties since the early 1990s. Part of its brief is to monitor karaoke usage. According to PRS For Music the most popular songs sung, over the years, by
The ten hottest box-office draws in 2009 judged by the fastest rising ticket sales on Google were:
Continue reading "The Ten Hottest Box-Office Draws In 2009" »
The fabless are creeping up on the fabbed, now accounting for 23% of the overall semiconductor market. In 1999, the fabless had only a 7% share. Here, thanks to IC Insights, are the top 25 fabless semiconductor companies in 2009.
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:
Thanks to Gartner for this one: the top ten OEM/ODM consumers of semiconductors in 2009.
Continue reading "The Top Ten OEM/ODM Consumers Of Semiconductors in 2009." »
Thanks to IC Insights for this one - ten good reasons for feeling good about the semiconductor industry in 2010.
Continue reading "Ten Best Reasons For Feeeling Jolly About ICs." »
Continue reading "Expected Top Ten IC Industry Capex Spenders In 2010" »
Thanks to Gartner Dataquest for this one - the ten biggest OEM/ODM consumers of semiconductors in 2009.
Continue reading "Gartner's Ten Biggest OEM/ODM IC Consumers In 2009" »
Thanks to VLSI Research for this one - the top ten suppliers of manufacturing equipment to the semiconductor industry.
Continue reading "Top Ten Manufacturers Of Semiconductor Manufacturing Equipment" »
Thanks to Strategy Analytics for this one - the top seven suppliers of baseband chips for mobile phone handsets.
Thanks to iSuppli for this one - their forecast purchases of semiconductors by the top ten OEM buyers:
Continue reading "Top Ten Forecast Buyers Of Semiconductors In 2010" »
Thanks to iSuppli for this one - the figures for the Q1 2010 cellphone market based, not on value, but on the number of phones shipped.
Thanks to Yole Development for this one - the Top Ten MEMS Foundries with their estimated annual revenues:
Thanks to IC Insights for this one. With the NAND and DRAM markets running crazy there have been some shae-ups in the ranks of the Top Ten while Samsung goes marching on narrowing the gap between itself and Intel. Here they are: The top ten IC companies in Q1 2010:
Thanks to SEMI for this one - a sharply upwards revised version of its expectations for fab spending this year. Here they are: the top ten spenders on fab in 2010.
Thanks to Databeans for this one - the top ten analogue IC suppliers last year.
Thanks to VLSI Research for this one: the top ten suppliers of semicondsucotr manufacturing equipment in Q1 2010.
Continue reading "Top Ten Semiconductor Equipment Suppliers" »
Thanks to iSuppli for this one - the expected top ten purchasers of ICs in 2010 and 2011:
Thanks to IC Insights for this one, the Top Ten semiconductor manufacturers in Q2 2010.
Thanks to Amazon for this one. Amazon can pick up when someone highlights a passage in a book being read on a Kindle. Here in descending order of number of highlights ate the ten most highlighted passages on Kindle:
Continue reading "Ten Most Highlighted Extracts On Kindle" »
Thanks to IC Insights for this one - the top ten IC product areas for growth this year:
Continue reading "Ten Fastest Growing IC Product Segments This Year" »
Thanks to CNN for this one: the ten most-watched videos on YouTube.
Thanks to Interbrand for this one - the world's ten best global brands valued from $70 billion for No.1 - Coca-Cola to $26 billion for No.10 - HP.
Thanks to Forbes for this one - the Asian Top Ten companies measured by revenue:
There is a possibility of debate over this, but extended recent research in America leads me to believe that the ten best cocktails are:
Thanks to the PriceWaterhouseCoopers book Five Frogs On A Log for this one - the ten most common stated objectives of CEOs looking to make an acquisition:
Continue reading "The Top Ten Intended Objectives For M&A" »
Here they are: the ten best CEOs currently serving in the chip industry:
Thanks to the UNCTAD survey for this one: the ten most attractive prospective areas for R&D. They are:
Thanks to the Global Financial Centres Index for this one. The top ten financial centres in the world today are:
These are the ten best things which have not yet been invented:
Thanks to Caris & Co for this one - the ten companies with the biggest % share price rise so far this year:
Continue reading "The Ten Best Performing Semi Stocks This Year" »
Thanks to Caris & Co for this - the ten best funded privately-owned semi companies:
Thanks to Bill Reichert, Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures, for this one:
The ten greenest computers in terms of MFLOPS per Watt are:
Thanks to Top500 for this one - the ten most powerful computers on the planet:
If the Euro is to be saved, and whether it's worth saving is problematical, then there'll have to be a two-tier Euro.
Thanks to Gartner for this one -the top ten IC suppliers in 2010 were:
Thanks to VLSI Research for this one - the top ten semiconductor manufacturing equipment suppliers for 2010:
Continue reading "Top Ten Semiconductor Equipment Suppliers 2010" »
Thanks to iSuppli for this one the top 20 semiconductor suppliers in 2010 with the revenue they pulled:
Continue reading "Top 10 (and Next 10) IC suppliers in 2010" »
Thanks to David Sweetman of Anchorwinch for this one - the top ten porkies VCs tell entrepreneurs: