category: Editor’s Note

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

Moving Electrons Is Getting Harder
By Ed Sperling - 13 Aug, 2015 - Comments: 1

Numerous executives across the ecosystem—from EDA and equipment companies to foundries—recently have stated that Moore's Law has at least 10 more years of life. This is interesting math, considering the semiconductor industry is now working on 10nm, with chips expected to roll out next year. So given that Moore's Law is on a two-year cadence of doubling the number of transistors every 24... » read more

Here Comes 7nm
By Ed Sperling - 09 Jul, 2015 - Comments: 0

A consortium of companies involving IBM, GlobalFoundries and Samsung has rolled out the first 7nm test chip using silicon germanium as a substrate, using EUV to pattern multiple layers. While this doesn't mean the cost equation is even close to being solved, or that more than a handful of companies will push forward to that node anytime soon using SiGe as the substrate material, it does cre... » read more

Consolidation And Innovation
By Ed Sperling - 16 Jun, 2015 - Comments: 0

Consolidation is happening across the semiconductor industry, in ways that are very apparent and others that aren't so obvious. On the chipmaker side, NXP's acquisition of Freescale, Avago's acquisition of Broadcom and LSI, and Intel's acquisition of Altera are so big that they require approval by multiple governments. Less obvious are moves such as Apple's build out of its processor team, a... » read more

Always-On Energy Challenges
By Ed Sperling - 14 May, 2015 - Comments: 0

The roar over the Internet of Things these days is almost deafening. Inside of China, everything being made for the domestic market is smart-ready. And companies ranging from watchmakers to appliances to automotive manufacturers are building connectivity into everything. The problem is that in order for it to work as planned—to communicate with other devices and send alerts to consumers or... » read more

Big Acquisitions, Big Changes
By Ed Sperling - 09 Apr, 2015 - Comments: 0

Rumors swirling about Intel's romance with Altera—this has been off-again, on-again, and now apparently off-again, for the better part of a decade—coupled with Apple's decision to shift A9 APU production to Samsung and away from TSMC, NXP's pending acquisition of Freescale, along with the Chinese' government's massive semiconductor investment fund, all add up to some massive shifts under wa... » read more

Dark Data
By Ed Sperling - 12 Mar, 2015 - Comments: 0

Last month the National Resources Defense Council updated its study on data centers. The numbers themselves are rather mind boggling, and the NRDC has done an exceptional job over the years in ferreting out the biggest, baddest culprits of wasted energy. Witness the 2011 report on set-top boxes, which is finally beginning to yield changes in set-top box designs. The data center report is eq... » read more

How Long Will Your Battery Last?
By Ed Sperling - 12 Feb, 2015 - Comments: 0

Designing an IP block or memory subsystem to fit within a power budget is essential for building energy efficiency into hardware and software. There's only one catch—it's meaningless to the end customer. Twenty years ago this was a pretty straightforward formula. If you used a device consistently, whether it was a computer or a calculator or an electric motor, then you would burn up X numb... » read more

Low Power Everything
By Ed Sperling - 15 Jan, 2015 - Comments: 0

A decade ago, former International Rectifier CEO Alex Lidow pronounced that there were three main categories for saving energy on a mass scale—variable speed motors, fluorescent lighting, and more efficient servers. He was right at the time. Those weren't necessarily semiconductor-driven markets, but they were the place where the most power could be saved. In fact, at the time, the rough e... » read more

Power Is Now Every Engineer’s Concern
By Ed Sperling - 04 Dec, 2014 - Comments: 0

Every semiconductor engineer by this point recognizes the need to reduce power inside of SoCs and software. What they don't always see, though, is the chain of events those efforts are beginning to set off—unpredictable, difficult to model, and altogether more difficult to contain. There is no doubt that more functionality on mobile devices requires new ways of designing SoCs, including re... » read more

Why Social Media Matters To You
By Ed Sperling - 06 Nov, 2014 - Comments: 0

There is a growing consensus among VCs and top executives that some sort of shakeout is coming in the social media world. There are simply too many companies fighting for a fixed number of advertising dollars and too little money coming in the door in the short term. A report by IAB showed online advertising revenue in the United States was $42.78 billion in 2013, up from $36.56 billion in 2012... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →

  • Sponsors

About

Navigation

Connect With Us

Copyright ©2013-2025 SMG   |  Terms of Service  |  Privacy Policy