category: Editor’s Note

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

Counting By The Billions
By Ed Sperling - 29 Oct, 2015 - Comments: 1

The semiconductor industry has been on cruise control since the advent of the personal computer. By 2002, a total of 1 billion PCs had been shipped, according to Gartner, and by 2008 that number had doubled. But that was nothing compared with the smartphone. In 2014 alone, Gartner reported sales of 1.2 billion smartphones. Both of those markets will remain healthy for years to come. Despite... » read more

Pick A Number
By Ed Sperling - 24 Sep, 2015 - Comments: 0

For the past two years there was some mumbling that 16/14nm would be short-lived, and that 10nm would be the place that foundries would invest heavily. Now the buzz is that 10nm may be skipped entirely and the next node will be 7nm. After all, 10nm is really only a half-node. Or is it? The answer depends on who's defining 10nm. The 16/14nm node is based on a 20nm back-end-of-line process, un... » read more

Getting Paid More
By Ed Sperling - 27 Aug, 2015 - Comments: 0

Consolidation is a regular news item in the semiconductor industry, and has been for years, but most of those deals have been relatively small. What's changing is the amount of consolidation involving big companies, fueled partly by a massive M&A fund in China, partly by an arms race in preparation for the IoE, and partly by the kind of thinking that if other companies are doing it, it's dan... » read more

The Next Big Things
By Ed Sperling - 30 Jul, 2015 - Comments: 0

Progress in electronics has always been about combining more functions into devices and making access to information more convenient. This is what drove the PC revolution in the 1980s, when centralized data was made available on desktops, and it's what drove the notebook PC revolution in the 1990s as computers became untethered from the desktop, as long as you could find an Ethernet connecti... » read more

Intel Plus Altera
By Ed Sperling - 25 Jun, 2015 - Comments: 0

Since the Intel-Altera deal reached the handshake phase earlier this month, there have been a lot of theories being forwarded and a lot of questions being raised. And there have been very few answers, in part because the deal isn't finalized yet and in part because this marriage will take time to play out in the market—maybe years. But along with the GlobalFoundries-IBM pairing, this is th... » read more

M&A Season Now Officially Open
By Ed Sperling - 28 May, 2015 - Comments: 0

A year ago many people were making jokes quite openly about the IoT. It wasn't uncommon to hear quips about the Internet of Nothing, the Internet of Disconnected Things, the Internet of Cars, or some other variant that questioned just how connected everything would become. The tenor of the conversation has changed significantly in the past year. The jokes are fewer, the stakes are higher. An... » read more

Moore’s Law At 50
By Ed Sperling - 23 Apr, 2015 - Comments: 0

Moore's Law turned 50 this week…but not because of Gordon Moore. He observed that the number of transistors crammed onto a piece of silicon was doubling every 18 to 24 months and predicted that would continue to be the case. He was right, but it took many thousands of engineers who created methodologies and tools to automate the design and equipment to manufacture complex chips to make that o... » read more

Playing With Bubbles
By Ed Sperling - 26 Mar, 2015 - Comments: 0

The first is in the social media world, where there simply are too many sites for a fixed population of users. Much has been written about this trend, including in this blog, and the big question is whether there is enough new business in new markets such as the IoT to soften the landing. The IoT has a long way to go, and a long way to grow. That growth will propel everything from the desig... » read more

Obsolescence Isn’t Always Good
By Ed Sperling - 26 Feb, 2015 - Comments: 2

One of the main reasons smartphones are pervasive around the globe is that their cost is subsidized. They can be replaced every couple of years with minimal pain as designs get slicker, more energy-efficient, and new features are added such as better screens or better performance. That works particularly well when a consumer's out-of-pocket expenses after trading in an older model are basically... » read more

Bigger Systems, Bigger Profits
By Ed Sperling - 29 Jan, 2015 - Comments: 0

Markets work in very mysterious ways. Technology that should be a slam dunk—think 2.5D with its promise of re-usable analog IP and faster performance, for example—are still hobbling along because no one wants to deal with the risk of a new architectural and manufacturing approach. They haven't even shown up yet in servers, where price is almost irrelevant. At the same time (no pun intended)... » read more

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