Electro-ramblings

I thought I would look through our site analysis package Webtrends and list the top ten articles from 2006 on ElectronicsWeekly.com.

The result is mostly a mixture of legislation and IT stories:

Dr RoHS answers your questions

Clearspeed plans AMD co-processor linkup

Intel rebrands business systems as VPro

European Commission to plug RoHS loophole

WEEE RoHS Directives doomed to fail, says consultant

Rambus pushes complete memory patent packages

RoHS Directive turmoil as loophole stays open

Electronics Weekly start-up map 2006

Qualcomm makes consumer bid with iPod style chip technology

RoHS Distance selling loophole explained

Electronic design automation pioneer Richard Newton, a professor in electrical engineering and computer science at Berkeley, has died aged just 56.

Newton was instrumental in helping to develop many of the basic techniques used in EDA, such as Spice, timing and circuit simulation, and logic synthesis.

He helped set up Cadence and Synopsys, among others, and many of the EDA industry's leading lights passed through his department at Berkeley.

It's fair to say he was one of the cleverest blokes on the planet.

There's a well-written obituary at EETimes EDA icon Richard Newton dies.

Meanwhile, Electronic News has some comments from Cadence executives.

One of the most read stories on the Financial Times website is Plastic may spell the end of the silicon microchip.

The article expands on the news this week that Plastic Logic, the Cambridge University spin-off, has won $100m in equity funding to build an e-book display factory in Germany.

It's brilliant news for Plastic Logic, and may herald the arrival of the technological basis for the next 'killer app' in the form of a lightweight, low power flexible display.

But according to the FT story, developments at Plastic Logic are:

holding out the possibility that before long the electronic characteristics of the company’s plastic devices might not be too different from those of conventional silicon chips

I'm sure the silicon manufacturers are quaking in their boots. Or maybe they aren't. It'll be a long, long time before plastic substrates can match silicon.

Even the much vaunted end to Moore's Law keeps getting put back a few years at a time, pushing back the time when plastic might take over.

So expect circuits on plastic substrates to have niche applications in the next couple of decades, but don't over-hype the technology.

Michael at the Black Sheep Blog has suggested I do the Five Things meme that is floating around the blog world at the moment. So here goes with five things people would (probably) not know about me:

1 Richard isn't exactly my real name, as I was born Mungo-Jump Twister the Second.

2 I can eat a (whole) Mars bar sideways.

3 My first job was singing in a church choir, where we got paid 10p per service.

4 In a previous life I was incarnated as the child of an Inuit woman and Sir John Franklin, the famous arctic explorer. To this day my favourite food is shoe leather - grilled, not fried, obviously.

5 I am currently reading EMC for Product Designers by Tim Williams, published by Elsevier, ISBN10: 0-750-68170-5.

Amazingly I didn't know these facts myself until I wrote this piece. I think I shall offer a random prize to someone who guesses which of the five so-called facts is true (click on comments to post your answer).

Now then - who should I challenge to carry on the meme/theme? I think David Manners, Tom Foremski, Ed Sperling, Mike Santarini and Nick Flaherty. Although if they read this posting they'll probably think I've lost the plot completely.

Prove if it were needed that hobbyists are resourceful fellows comes from Dutch hardware geek Mark Hoekstra, who has gone to extremes to repair an Apple iBook.

His blog post at DIY obsolete iBook logic repair shows in exquisite detail how he fixed the (in)famous graphics problem on an iBook.

Here's the YouTube vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u68G-gCkswk

Amazingly the board is powered up as he heats the ATI graphics chip! And he posted to the blog using the repaired iBook. Superb.

I once did some accidental BGA rework on a military avionics graphics board by forgetting to reconnect the airflow cooling system. Unlike Mark's, the board did not survive!

The incredible story of Amr Mohsen, former chief executive of EDA firm Aptix, has finally come to an ending of sorts, with a US judge sending him down for 17 years.

Electronic News has the full story here: Aptix founder sentenced to 17 years for perjury, obstruction of justice, but the beginnings go back nearly ten years.

Aptix, known for its FPGA prototyping tools, sued emulator maker Quickturn for patent infringement. However, the judge in that trial found that evidence was falsified in the patent lawsuit.

Mohsen had added pages to his engineering notebook to make it look like he invented key claims in a Quickturn patent.

With a plot that would not disgrace a Hollywood blockbuster, forensic testing determined the notebooks were written well after Mohsen claimed. The notebooks were then mysteriously stolen from Mohsen's car.

Lying in court obviously got Mohsen charged with perjury, which he compounded by attempting to flee the US, thereby getting himself incarcerated in Santa Rita jail.

While on remand waiting for the trial (by the same Judge Alsop), Mohsen got a fellow inmate to intimidate witnesses and allegedly hatch a plot to kill the good judge (Ex-CEO on murder plot charge).

Mohsen was found guilty in March last year on 17 counts, including conspiracy, mail fraud, perjury, subornation of perjury, obstruction of justice, contempt, attempted intimidation of witnesses, and solicitation of the arson of a government witness's car.

Luckily for Mohsen he was acquitted of soliciting the murder of the judge, as 17 years would have seemed a brief instant in time compared to his sentence.

Rapid prototyping is fantastically cool. Design an object, then watch as a machine constructs it in front of your eyes. The prioblem is the machines cost anything up to a million quid or more.

However, a kit that allows people to build their own rapid prototyping machine has been developed by researchers at Cornell University, according to the linked article at New Scientist.

The standard version of their Freeform fabricator – or "fabber" – is about the size of a microwave oven and can be assembled for around $2400 (£1200). It can generate 3D objects from plastic and various other materials.

The machine connects to a desktop computer running software that controls its operation. It then creates objects layer-by-layer by squeezing material from a mechanically-controlled syringe.

So far it has been tested with silicone, plaster, play-doh and even chocolate and icing. Different materials can also be used to make a single object – the control software prompts the user when to load new material into the machine.

Once you've created your silicone or plaster object, you can take a mould and then cast it in something more solid, like metal or acrylic.

I want one.

Here's a link to the Fab@Home project.

The Inquirer has a story titled The three reasons why AMD acquired ATI, based on an interview with AMD's Mario Rivas, executive vice-president in its computing products group.

AMD, so the article says, had three reasons for buying ATI: getting into graphics in a big way; getting ATI's consumer business, which is growing fast; and combined graphics processor and microprocessors.

The third point is further in the future and it is called Fusion. It is a GPU on CPU integration scheduled for late 2008 if not even later. This is the way to go, he explains, as it will make a more power efficient processor for all of the tasks. It is all about increasing the overall computational speed.

Like them or loath them, wind farms have become a part of rural life in many parts of the world.

If you're a turbine-sceptic, then you might like this video from Google:

I'm not sure how long it really takes to build an Airbus A380, but here's a beautiful time lapse video of the assembly in seven minutes.

I was doing a bit of home decorating this weekend, and thought my masking tape work was pretty cool until I saw the video.

HP's announcement that it plans to use its cross-bar technology for a field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) has been commented on in Cross bar for next generation FPGA by Nick Flaherty.

The technology calls for a nanoscale crossbar switch structure to be layered on top of conventional CMOS (complementary metal oxide silicon), using an architecture HP Labs researchers have named “field programmable nanowire interconnect (FPNI)” – a variation on the well-established FPGA technology.

However, so far it's all modelling simulation - a real life chip doesn't yet exist. As Nick points out:

One of the challenges will be yield, as the small size of the cross bar on the upper layers will make it sensitive to defects, and that will also hit the cost, so don't write off traditional CMOS and Xilinx and Altera just yet.

According to this story floating around the wires Intel to sell Israel fab, build China plant, Intel is going to build a fab in China.

How the firm is expected to get around export restrictions to China for any technology below 0.25micron will be a major blockage to any deal of this sort.

Supermarket retailer Tesco is spending around $13m to cover the roof of a distribution centre with solar photovoltaic cells.

The building in the US will be capable of generating up to 2MW of power, and is believed to be the biggest of its type yet built.

Solar Integrated Technologies is supplying the 46,000m² PV system, which has a total output of 2GigaWatt hours a year.

The firm said:

Our BIPV roofing system at this distribution center will produce over 2.6 million kilowatt hours per annum, provide a fifth of the depot’s power supply, and save 1,200 tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year.

The image shows a 230kW roof on Coco-Cola's Los Angeles bottling plant, also supplied by Solar Integrated Technologies.

The roll-out of Internet Explorer 7 continues apace, with the stats for Electronics Weekly's website showing that for January, IE7 has overtaken Firefox.

Up until the launch of IE 7, various flavours of version six of Microsoft's browser brought around 75 per cent of the traffic to EW.com, with Firefox making up the bulk of the remainder with around 20 per cent.

Firefox obviously hasn't changed much, but the shift from IE 6.x to 7 is fairly clear.

Distributor Digi-Key's first visit to Electronica last November has proven to be lucky for Svend Kristensen, who has won a Harley Fatboy in the firm's raffle.

Svend, an analogue hardware engineer with TC Electronic in Denmark, seems very laid back about the whole business:

Visiting Electronica 2006 with my firm, I was admiring the bike in your display when I got ‘caught’ by two pretty young girls who asked me to participate in a lottery. Of course, I agreed.

Live the dream Svend, live the dream.

My blogging colleague David Manners has written a brilliant blog on the subject of chip firms getting out of basic process development.

In NXP, TI, STMicro and the end of process development, David points out that ending fundamental process development puts semiconductor companies firmly into the hands of foundries.

This might not seem such a bad thing, but in the long term will leave the big chip firms very exposed:

Will prices go up? Will terms get harsher? You bet they will. What looks like a saving in overhead today for the big companies could come back and hit them between the eyes in higher prices tomorrow.

It's not as if it actually costs very much to do some basic R&D, with Texas Instruments saying it will save the firm about $150m a year. For firms such as NXP, ST and TI, says David:

For a small contribution to the bottom line in 2008, they are prepared to sacrifice their long-term independence.

One of the problems with reporting financial performance of companies is that it's really easy to end up with a completely different slant to other reports.

Today is no exception, with Microsoft's figures coming under scrutiny.

Here's how The Inquirer put it at Microsoft's profits plummet:

[Microsoft's] focus on its new operating system Vista has seriously damaged its last quarter profits. Microsoft saw a 28 per cent drop in earnings over the last few months, despite revenue growth that exceeded forecasts. Earnings fell to $2.63 billion from $3.65 billion during the same period last year. Wall Street bean counters were pleased that Vole's Revenue rose to $12.5 billion, but shareholders were not and the price of a share in Vole dropped 64 cents.

As opposed to Silicon.com's angle at Lack of Vista not felt on Gates' bottom-line:

With holiday PC sales apparently unscathed by the lack of Windows Vista, Microsoft reported quarterly profits that topped expectations and its own forecast. The software giant said it earned $2.63bn, or 26 cents per share, on revenue of $12.54bn for the three months ended 31 December, its second fiscal quarter. That compares with profits of $3.65bn, or 34 cents per share, on revenue of $11.83bn for the same quarter a year ago.

And for a third view, here's the Register at Microsoft pulls in record Q2:

Microsoft drummed up record revenues in the December quarter - its fiscal Q2 - and could have done even better if it hadn't squirreled away some of its sales to 'recognize' in Q3. The company today announced Q2 revenues of $12.54bn, six per cent up on last year, and net income of $2.63bn - a 28 per cent drop. But it deferred $1.64bn to account for Vista and Office upgrade coupons given to PC makers to dish out to their customers, which are expected to be redeemed in Q3. Without this set aside, revenues would have been 14 per cent higher than last time.

So which is correct? Well they all are, but it goes to show how readers need to understand the background, politics and tone taken by each individual website, just like we have always done with newspapers.

When it comes to public relations, you'd think Intel would have a learnt a thing or two over the past few decades. Though not, it would seem, about timing.

Late on Friday (actually Saturday in the UK), when all self-respecting journalists were down the pub, the chip behemoth released details of its 45nm process for the next generation of microprocessors.

This isn't some thrupenny-bit, "we punt these out every day" type release - this is one of Intel's biggest press events of the year.

Anyway, it seems the Penryn processor will use a high-k gate dielectric based on Hafnium and metal gates for transistors, although the latter will differ for NMOS and PMOS transistors.

The combination offers 20% more drive current, or one-fifth of the source drain leakage, or a tenth of the gate leakage.

Lithography remains at 193nm, and Intel will not be using immersion, it said.

To read some of those tedious facts about how many billions of transistors fit aongside the angels dancing on a pin, see Intel's Fun Facts pdf. (I kid you not)

There's loads more proper detail on the release from these quality sites:
The Register: Intel 45nm CPUs to use metal gates, high-k dielectric
ZDnet: Intel shows off Penryn chips
The Inquirer: Intel does High-K and metal gates
EETimes: Intel tips high-k, metal gates for 45-nm

Richard Goering from EETimes has spotted that Mentor is about to move back into the chip packaging market.

At the FSA's SiP Conference, Per Viklund from Mentor apparently said he was charged with getting Mentor back into the market:

Viklund said the packaging tool will let users manage I/O planning, interconnect, functional verification, signal and power integrity, thermal and mechanical analysis, and manufacturing and test, all in a collaborative environment with IC design.

What's interesting is the origins of the project - from Mentor's purchase of Dansk Data Electronik. DDE was known for its high end (ish) PCB tools from the late '90s, although used internally at the firm for a lot longer, with Ericsson said to be one of its bigger customers.

And guess who used to be product and technical support manager at DDE? Yep, one Per Viklund.

So far this year we've seen two plastic semiconductor firms decide on their route to manufacturing.

What's bizarre is the choice of location for those manufacturing plants. The UK firm - Plastic Logic - has chosen to go to Germany, while the Dutch - Polymer Vision - are coming to the UK.

In the current socio-economic climate of "British is best", why did Plastic Logic feel the need to go to Dresden?

According to Steve Bush at EW (Philips plastic display spin-off uses UK fab) a failure of the DTI is to blame.

Dutch flexible display firm Polymer Vision has chosen the UK for its first manufacturing fab, aiming to be in production this year. This constrasts with the recent decision of Cambridge-based flexible display firm Plastic Logic to choose Dresden rather than a site in the UK for its $100m production facility which uses similar technologies. DTI funding failure loses UK Plastic Logic fab

Bushy's story suggests that a UK facility would have the capacity to cope with Plastic Logic's manufacturing requirements.

According to Polymer Vision chief operating officer, Guido Aelbers, Southampton-based manufacturer Innos has the capability of scaling up the technology to a level that can be used to ship volumes to customers.