Electro-ramblings

One of the problems with the electronics industry is that if you're good at something - like making DRAM or graphics cards - then eventually the authorities will want to know why you're making so much money.

This week the graphics cards makers AMD (which now owns ATI) and Nvidia have come under the US Department of Justice spotlight.

The DoJ has subpoena'd the two firms in an antitrust probe of the graphics card market.

So now they'll be dragged through a very expensive process with lawyers being the only winners. It's unlikely the DoJ will find any real wrongdoing on the part of the companies (unlike its recent DRAM probe).

Mobile chipset firm Qualcomm looks like it has begun a spirited fightback against CSR in the Bluetooth market.

Qualcomm has bought the Bluetooth assets of RF Micro Devices, and the wireless LAN firm Airgo Networks.

The San Diego firm will put both the wireless LAN and Bluetooth technologies into its mobile phone chipsets, presumably with the hope of cutting CSR's runaway success in the Bluetooth arena.

CSR has so far garnered over 50 per cent of the Bluetooth market, and has chipsets for wireless LAN.

ABI Research's principal analyst Stuart Carlaw noted:

Outside the cell phone, Qualcomm now effectively owns a stake in the Bluetooth market that will enable it to expand into the CE environment with greater ease, due to the growing profile of Bluetooth in the gaming, PMP and music player markets.

Meanwhile, Maury Wright at EDN speculates in his blog about the IP strategy of Qualcomm, now that it owns the Airgo patents on multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) technology.

In his blog at Silicon.com, Peter Cochrane notes that Wi-fi is beginning to be supplied for free in many European countries.

For the folks in North America this will all seem so very quaint but believe me, this is quite a revolution over on this side of the pond. People here are still paranoid about new technologies and what to do with them. They have been protecting wi-fi and restricting access like it was all a very scarce and expensive resource.

Anyone working via laptop in London and other European cities will know the frustration of finding Wi-fi at a reasonable rate. £10 an hour is not unusual in the big hotels, but a few chains are breaking the mould:

All over London there are posters advertising that the Radisson hotels provide free broadband globally.

Meanwhile CNet, which owns Silicon.com, has set up a nice website to help find those free Wi-fi networks at airports.

The Chipworks blog is proving to be a rich vein of information at the moment. The firm's Jim Morrison has posted a story about a 65nm Nokia baseband processor, which although designed and packaged by Texas Instruments looks like it was manufactured by UMC.

The picture on the left shows the overall package and the TI logo on a metal layer. Morrison said:

The die marking certainly shows that TI provided the mask set... However, this has turned into a particularly interesting project because there is evidence that this device was fabricated by UMC, showing evidence of an increasing trend for IDMs to outsource certain products.

The Chipworks team used SEM analysis to look at the back end process used on the Nokia chip, concluding it could only have come from UMC's fabs.

However, the transistors look more like TI's design. So TI either gave its transistor design to UMC for this project, or the front end was manufactured in a TI fab and the back end at UMC.

The image below shows a TI tranny on the left and a UMC version on the right. Both designs use TI's differential offset spacer technology.

The Inquirer reports that a British car audio firm is planning an amplifier system with a valve front end.

The story "Genesis to cram a few more valves into your car" says the amp will use a Russian built triode valve, the Sovtek 6H30Pi (pictured right).

According to the blurb it utilises a Russian built 6H30Pi tube. This incredibly linear triode was developed for use in missile guidance systems and can withstand up to 500G-force while working quite happily at loads of 100G. We're hoping this means we can fire the cars off great distances with explosive effects, safe in the knowledge the amplifier will probably survive.

Actually, that tube is well known within audio circles, so Genesis ICE isn't doing anything too radical (apart from putting it in a car). Sales literature says the tube has "low plate resistance and high transconductance".

There's a nice article on why people should use this tube "The 6H30 Tube - One Designer's Perspective" at Balanced Audio Technology.

Electronics purists look away now, because this is going to hurt. The University of Bath is about to offer a Masters degree course that combines mechanical and electronic engineering.

According to Professor Alan Bramley from the University’s Department of Mechanical Engineering:

The concept is to bind the two disciplines together as soon as possible in the degree. Teaching engineering as a whole to students is something that is done on the continent, but not here in Britain – here they are either taught the different areas of engineering completely separately or, where there are joint courses, these just mix modules from the various engineering degrees.

In many ways it makes sense. One of the problems with doing a pure electronics degree is that it leaves the graduate totally at sea when joining in a modern engineering firm. If you want to design microprocessor systems then a degree that combines electronics and computing would seem to be in order. (I can highly recommend University College London's course.)

On the other hand, if you want to be a systems engineer, then Bath's mix of mechanical and electronic would provide a much better foundation, as knowledge of mechanics and materials will be essential at some stage in your career.

The Royal Academy of Engineering has already said that more integrated teaching is essential:

The reality of today’s workplace is that employers (particularly the larger ones) expect graduates to join multi-functional teams engaged in the development of complex system projects, for which graduates of traditional mono-discipline degree courses might feel ill prepared.

UCL recently added electronics with nanotechnology, and electronics with biochemistry would seem a logical combination. I expect we'll see more of this blurring of the traditional subject boundaries, and a good thing it is too.

A really sad story today is Atmel's decision to sell-off its North Tyneside fab.

The plant has had a chequered history, a bit of a rollercoaster ride really. First built by Siemens, the plant came on line in 1997, with the Queen in attendance for a 'majestic opening'.

In late 1997 the firm said it planned to fully equip the fab and increase capacity to 20,000 wafer starts per month

Unfortunately the writing was already on the wall for much of the memory industry, and in July 1998 Siemens said it would cut back on DRAM production, including at North Tyneside. It then immediately announced the closure of the fab.

Thereafter followed a period of uncertainty, with various mystery groups being touted as potantial buyers of the fab, including the Blackfriars group and a Chinese telecoms firm.

The whole sorry saga dragged on through 1998 as Siemens Semi changed to Infineon, and Fujitsu AMD was considering the fab.

Incidentally, at that time the fate of all three of the UK's big foreign owned fabs was wide open.

Eventually Atmel emerged as the white knight, buying the plant with the promise of creating 1,500 jobs.

Unfortunately, this was six months before the crash of May 2001, so it wasn't long before Atmel was itself announcing huge job cuts and a freeze on the UK fab. By 2003, a recovery meant Atmel could start to take people back on, a process that continued through 2004.

Finally, as recently as August 2005 the firm said it was committing to the plant with the promise of 0.13µm technology.

The fact that the plant has rebounded so many times is testament to staff and local management of the fab. With the buoyancy and promise of good growth in electronics, let's hope a buyer can be found.

The BBC has a great story covering news that the Planetary Society is offering a $50,000 prize for the most innovative way of tagging or tracking an asteroid that will pass close to Earth.

The problem is an interesting one:

Apophis is an approximately 400 meter near-Earth object (NEO), which will come closer to Earth in 2029 than the orbit of our geostationary satellites. On that pass, the asteroid will be gravitationally perturbed to an unknown orbit, one that could cause it to hit Earth in 2036.

Thus the Society wants to find a neat way of tracking Apophis if it changes its course following its first fly-by of Earth. According to the Society:

Such precise tracking may require “tagging” the asteroid, perhaps with a beacon -- a transponder or reflector -- or some other method. Exactly how an asteroid could best be tagged is not yet known, nor is it obvious.

Here is the original press release from the Planetary Society.

John Cooley has this great post on his Wiretap page on Deepchip about the chief exec of Aprio, Mike Gianfagna (pictured left), who seems to have done the honourable thing and laid himself off.

Cooley quotes EETimes' Richard Goering, and adds:

And I must cite Gianfagna's honor as a leader for laying himself off during these bad times -- a lot of CEOs would cut anyone but themselves in a time of corporate crisis.

Aprio is an electronic design automation start-up in the design for manufacturing sector, and Cooley describes the troubles in this area as the "DFM Deathwatch".

Yes, DFM got a LOT of hype at the recent DAC, but the reality is that means we're in the Death Watch for the bulk of these DFM start-ups. It's exactly like watching the Titanic sinking.

The big four EDA firms - Synopsys, Cadence, Mentor and Magma - are likely to end up with one technology each, leaving it would seem, space for just a couple of independents.

In ESNUG 453 we listed 27 companies as passengers doing DFM, 21 of which were start-ups. That's waaaaaay too many companies to keep afloat in this niche; now it's just a question of how are they going to die. I see 5 to 7 lifeboats when the fog clears.

Eek!

According to my colleagues at PersonnelToday.com, a third of graduates believe they chose the wrong degree.

One in five employees who graduated in 2005 said they should have chosen a more business-based course or a professional qualification, the study by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) showed.

Now I don't know about you, but I thought that I'd picked the wrong course about 24 hours after turning up at my halls of residence at the tender age of 18.

This highly critical analysis was based purely on the fact that electronics undergrads had to attend over 20 hours of lectures per week plus practicals, lab work and assignments.

Contrast this with my new-found drinking buddies:

• English - eight to ten hours in the lecture halls plus some reading - nice.
  
• Nordic Studies - that'll be five hours a week plus a bit of reading (optional), and you have to go skiing at Christmas - cushy.
  
• Media Studies - politeness prevents me from commenting on this choice of study.
  

Some 20 years later my feelings have changed somewhat, in that I'm gainfully employed (no, really, honest - publishing does count) and I can look a person in the eye when asked what degree I took.

So to all those fresh graduates who think they've chosen badly - wait a few years, and see what life brings.

One of the joys of the run up to Christmas is spending time enjoying the fuits of other peoples' labour. The best from this year is an advent calendar populated with games like space invaders and tetris.

I can recommend day 3 (Christmas Invaders), day 5 has a YouTube video of a great trick with three pool tables and some dominos, Golf is quite tricky on day 7, while day 17 is Tetris.

If you want to release some anger, may I suggest day 14, which allows you, a Yeti, to thrash falling penguins with a big stick. My best distance was just over 250m.

Meanwhile day 18 has some wise words from Peter Kay (for our US and overseas readers, Kay is a comedian and actor in the UK), including:

"One of the most awkward things that can happen in a pub is when your pint-to-toilet cycle gets synchronised with a complete stranger."