Mannerisms

I can’t think how I’ve missed the climate change opportunity, Ed confides to his diary, you’ve got 100k people travelling to the Gulf for a two week chinwag about the environment – that suggests they’ve got money and time on their hands which is the perfect profile for a sucker. I call in the Permanent Secretary. “What,” I ask him, ...

George Perlegos invented the n-channel EPROM while at Intel and designed snd developed Intel’s first EEPROM, the 2816, before co-founding Seeq and then founding Atmel in 1984. ”Things have changed so much since we started out,” Perlegos told me in 1999, “semiconductors have a much bigger role in the electronics industry than they did back then. IP is very important. ...

You need to be an optimist to work in the semiconductor industry was one of the sayings of Pasquale Pistorio.  A similarly  successful and optimistic CEO, Jensen Huang, told the BBC earlier this week: “I have every confidence that between all of our colleagues around the world, we will invent technologies, philosophies, methodologies, practices, monitors, regulations, design practices, to keep ...

On May 1 1959 a patent application was filed which opened with the statement: “The present invention relates to an improvement in the manufacture of semiconductor devices including transistors and to an improved transistor structure. More particularly, the invention relates, as to the method thereof, to the control of semiconductor diffusing and masking to the end of producing an improved ...

The penny finally dropped on these mini-surveys companies ask you to do after interacting with their staff. Some of them ask at the beginning of your phone call: “Would you be prepared to answer a short survey after your call so we can find out how we did?” I used to think  this was a Big Brother-ish attempt to snoop ...

Photos taken on modern smartphones are edging ever closer to the quality once reserved to expensive interchangeable lens cameras.And it’s not just the high-end of the smartphone market. Most people no longer see the need to carry or buy a dedicated camera. Worldwide camera shipments dropped by 93% between 2010 and 2022, wiping out decades of growth says CIPA, a ...

Thanks to Semiconductor Intelligence for this one – the top 15 semiconductor companies:

The world can seem topsy turvy.. For instance you get 100,000 people to meet up to discuss reducing the use of fossil fuels. You choose the largest fossil fuel producing region in the world for the talks. To head up the talks you appoint, as president, someone who is head of a national oil company. The president then tells delegates: ...

During a discussion at the Guild of Air Traffic Control Officers convention at Bournemouth, it was stated that the US National Aviation Facilities Experimental Centre (NAFEC) at Atlantic City admits that Britain has a five-year-old lead in blind landing techniques. So, 63 years ago, started a story in Electronics Weekly’s edition of October 26th 1960. Mr A M A Majendie ...

Elon’s combative approach to his advertisers is killing X’s ad price. Since he bought X (formerly Twitter)  in October 2022. X’s CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) has falken by over 75%  down to $0.65 in August 2023 (from $5.77 in September 2022), its lowest level in three years, according to a report published by marketing agency Gupta Media. X’s CPM ...

There’s money to be had from drunken sailors, Ed confides to his diary. With late-stage venture money almost unobtainable, mature startups which completed their early funding rounds in the days when VCs threw money around like drunken sailors, are now marooned – needing new capital to scale up but unable to access it. My cunning plan is that government should ...

23 years ago Japan was, as it is now, trying to figure out how to restore the competitiveness of its semiconductor industry. Japan is a ‘sinking Titanic’ in need of urgent repairs to its high-tech industry structure, said the chief corporate technologist of Hitachi, Dr Tsugio Makimoto, in April 2000. At that time, Makimoto was heading a think-tank called SNCC ...

In 2023, mobile gaming revenue will amount to $92.6 billion worldwide or a 49% share of total video games revenues – triple that of PC games and almost double that of console titles, according to a Newzoo forecast from August 2023. With revenues of $1.8 billion in 2022 alone, Honor of Kings is the most successful game available for smartphones ...

271 years ago in Philadelphia, an experiment may or may not have happened, which may or may not have demonstrated anything but which made the putative experimenter famous. Moral: Kite-flying  can have remarkable consequences

AI corporate investment in the form of M&A, minority stakes, private investments and public offerings collectively amounted to $934.2 billion from 2013 to 2022, estimates a Stanford University analysis. As this chart shows, recent investment peaked in 2021, when $276.1 billion was ploughed into the sector by businesses around the world. A dip was observed in 2022, but with the ...

In the three months ended October 29, Nvidia’s revenue more than tripled from the same period a year ago, reaching $18.1 billion versus its own outlook of $16 billion. Once again, Nvidia’s data centre business was at the heart of the company’s blowout quarter, as it saw a 279-percent jump in revenue versus a year ago and accounted for 80% ...

Thanks to IDC for this one – the top five enterprise WLAN companies:  

With credit card debt at record highs and more and more (young) consumers falling behind on their credit card payments, Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) services are expected to see record spending levels this holiday season. According to Adobe Analytics, BNPL spending could climb to $17 billion this holidays season (Nov. 1-Dec. 31), up 17-% from $14.5 billion last year. ...

63 years ago you could buy a transistor for 49 shillings according to this ad from Electronics Weekly’s edition of November 2nd 1960 – that’s about £72 in today’s money

Oppenheimer is the most successful biographical movie in terms of worldwide box office revenues according to data by Box Office Mojo and compiled by Shawn S. Lealos and Stephen Barker of Screenrant with just over $950 million in revenue. In second place comes Bohemian Rhapsody, a tale of Queen’s lead singer Freddie Mercury, having pulled in roughly $911 million. Third ...