Power/Performance Bits: Jan. 5


A foggy consortium Scientists at Princeton University, ARM, Cisco, Dell, Intel, and Microsoft formed a global effort to develop architectures and tools to further "fog computing" and networks, which aim to harness connected devices' own computing, sensing and storage power to form edge networks that meet most of the demand of user devices that are at the periphery of a more centralized netwo... » read more

Consolidation’s Aftermath


The recent spate of industry consolidation continues to have repercussions across the semiconductor industry. Some of those effects will subside once the deals are either approved or nixed by regulatory agencies. Others will raise questions for months or years to come. Consolidation is not a new trend in the semiconductor industry, but the pace and size of the acquisitions in the past year a... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


An alliance led by IBM Research has produced the semiconductor industry’s first 7nm test chips with functioning transistors. The breakthrough, accomplished in partnership with GlobalFoundries and Samsung at SUNY Polytechnic Institute’s Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, could result in the ability to place more than 20 billion tiny switches, or transistors, on a chip. There i... » read more

Mid-Year Market Review: A Tale Of Two Halves


The month of July brings 110-degree weather to Phoenix and a welcome trip to San Francisco for Semicon West. It also means the year is half over and it’s time to assess mid-year market dynamics. Spirits were high last week at Semicon West. Most equipment vendors made significant revenue gains in the first half of 2014 and expect the second half of the year to be just as good or even bette... » read more

Executive Insight: Simon Segars


SE: What concerns you most? Segars: In the context of design and where chip design is going, ARM is a long-term business. We’re doing stuff now that is going to ship in five years’ time. Obviously, for everyone in this space, Moore’s Law has been a fantastic thing. It’s enabled us to achieve really fantastic scaling of transistors, and everyone knows that is getting harder and harder... » read more

The Week In Review: System-Level Design


ARM and its ecosystem teamed up to create a server platform standard based on the ARMv8-A processor. The new Server Base System Architecture specification leverages a broad swath of companies in ARM’s ecosystem, including Microsoft, Red Hat, SUSE, Linaro, Citrix, AMD, Broadcom, Citrix and Cavium, as well as OEMs HP and Dell. ARM has been successful in leveraging an ecosystem to win the lion�... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing And Design


Blocking cell phone use and texting while driving have been proposed by the U.S. government and for good reason. About 10 people a day are killed in “distraction-affected” car accidents in the U.S., according to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. As a result, some companies are developing technologies that can block texts while driving. But according to Strategy Analyt... » read more

The Week In Review: Sept. 3


By Mark LaPedus The cellular chip supplier landscape is littered with corpses. So will 4G lead to the destruction of Qualcomm and Intel? That’s highly unlikely, according to a blog from Strategy Analytics. “With the recent announcement of a multimode LTE chipset from Intel, it seems likely that Qualcomm and Intel will maintain their status as the top two cellular radio chipset suppliers in... » read more

Universal Memories Fall Back To Earth


By Mark LaPedus Ten years ago, Intel Corp. declared that flash memory would stop scaling at 65nm, prompting the need for a new replacement technology. Thinking the end was near for flash, a number of companies began to develop various next-generation memory types, such as 3D chips, FeRAM, MRAM, phase-change memory (PCM), and ReRAM. Many of these technologies were originally billed as “uni... » read more

Low Power Everywhere


By Kiran Vittal School is over for my kids and the summer holidays are here. We are planning to make minor modifications to our home, which includes installation of recessed lights. LED light bulbs are all over the place in home appliance stores and they claim 85% savings in energy costs with a life span of 50,000 hours. The cost of these LED bulbs is five to six times the cost of your average... » read more

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