Mannerisms

In the Wild West days of the semiconductor industry, you’d get fifteen manufacturers investing in enough capacity to each achieve fifteen per cent market share in a particular product area, and think nothing of it. If, they argued, the resultant over-capacity resulted in driving down prices, then that would work to expand the market. The thinking was that, as prices ...

Intel’s diversification into NAND flash is going to be interesting. It says it’s bringing up its first part, a 4Gbit memory, in three different 300mm fabs and is currently outputting samples. That sounds like a triple-risk, triple-expensive sledgehammer to crack a nut. Intel says it will add a new fab every year for NAND, which seems excessive when Samsung, Sandisk/Toshiba ...

Paranoia corner Has anyone else come across the phenomenon that, where there’s a paid WiFi connection, the free connections don’t work? Going through San Jose airport in October, there were about half a dozen network providers, one of which was free. I connected to all the others in turn but was unable to get onto the Web. Connect up to ...

Convergence is a lovely idea for the chip industry but a poor idea for consumers. The two best-selling products of the last few years have been the Blackberry and the iPod, both, effectively, single-purpose devices. One a mobile email terminal; the other a mobile music player. Both flying in the face of the contemporary mantra of convergence. For the chip ...

Seeing the other guy screw up is always a pleasure so it was good last week to see the truly awful state of the US wireless telephone network in Arizona. Whether you got to finish your call was problematical. Much of the time there was no coverage at all. The networks are grim in Europe. In Arizona they’re 3X grimmer. ...

Sir Robin Saxby’s Corona ballad, trailed back in October, is now released and can be enjoyed below. For those wishing to join in, the lyrics are added below the audio file. In a difficult time for everyone, especially those most affected by the virus, this is a special big thank you to the health professionals. Lyrics Analogue or Digital Feeling ...