Mannerisms

Back in 2004 the chip industry’s technologists were in despair – processes wouldn’t shrink, scaling was dead – or so it was thought. “Scaling is already dead, and no one has noticed it’s not breathing and the lips have turned blue,” said Dr Bernie Meyerson, chief technologist at IBM Systems and technology group, adding, “somewhere between 130nm and 90nm everything ...

The OECD Employment Outlook 2023 says that unions have four major concerns about AI: 1. The trustworthy use of  the technology including risks relating to privacy, transparency, security and accountability; 2. The skill demands associated with high re- and up-skilling costs for businesses and workers; 3. The physical and mental health risks e.g. through AI-based surveillance; 4. The risk of ...

A famous Nobel Prize winning physicist once blurted out over lunch: “But where is everyone?” Since his three lunch companions were all eminent physicists they immediately realised that he was talking about extra-terrestrial life. The question they then debated was: If the universe is so big, then the chances of intelligent life in it must be high, so why haven’t ...

With Turkey green lighting Sweden joining NATO,  the organisation now has 30 members. “Putin wanted less NATO along his borders,” said  NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg  in April, “he is getting exactly the opposite. He is getting more troops, more readiness, more forces, land, sea and air in the eastern part of the Alliance. And he is getting more members.” ...

The UK inflation rate reached 7.9% at the end of May, according to OECD data and is the only G-7 member where the year over year inflation rate rose compared to the previous month. Comparatively high food and energy prices are the main reasons for this increase, but even when excluding these two especially volatile segments, inflation sat at 6.5 percent, considerably ...

Thanks to IDC for this one – the top ten Asia/Pac fabless companies:

The Wimbledon final might be the last when we see the rituals of a Djokovic appearance – the extensive pre-serve ball-bouncing, extended loo-breaks, time-wasting, racquet abuse, mind games and flashes of temper. The crowd, rightly IMHO, showed their displeasure at these antics. Djokovic was on the verge of equaling three records: Most consecutive Wimbledon titles (five), most Wimbledon titles in ...

THE first electronic airline seat reservation system in Europe has been installed by the Scandinavian Airlines Systems. So, 62 years ago started a  story in Electronics Weekly’s edition of January 25th 1961 The story continues: At the heart of the equipment is an electronic computer at the airline’s centre in Copenhagen. This consists of two magnetic drum storage devices functioning as ...

Holiday travel is here again but most people are finding it’s more expensive this year. This may help. Thanks to DealsDaddy, which analysed the latest travel data published by the Office for National Statistics,  the countries which cost Brits the least are:

India’s having a few problems at the moment, every chip venture it initiates falls apart. The government is dead keen to get something going, and is offering billions in subsidies. This looks like an opportunity for Yours Truly, Ed confides to his diary. I  get on the blower to my old schoolmate the Maharajah of Jam Jarre who has some ...

Once upon a time there was an expectation of single chip mobile telephones. In 1999, Lucent Technologies was planning a single chip solution for ‘Internet telephones’. Internet telephones connected to a single Ethernet outlet and sent data and voice through the same cable. Lucent’s chip was to combine 13 electronic functions and reduce the number of chips typically needed from ...

15 years ago, on July 10, 2008, Apple launched the App Store, so unleashing the creativity of third-party developers and unlocking the iPhone’s full potential. According to a study commissioned by Apple, users have downloaded apps more than 370 billion times in the past 15 years, while developers have earned more than $320 billion on the App Store since its ...

Encouraged by the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation (IRC) set up by a Labour government, a series of mergers in the late 1960s was designed to give the UK a National Champion in the electrical and electronic industry. In 1968, the combined company had, according to the IRC,  UK  market shares of: 90% for locomotives and equipment; 70% for grid switchgear; 50% ...

There are many reasons for postponing the 2030 date for banning the sale of new ICE vehicles but one of the more compelling is that, sometime between 2000 and 2035, solid state batteries are likely to enter volume production and boost EV range by 2-3X According to a report called “Development of Solid-State Batteries for NEVs” by TrendForce, the Nickel ...

Fashion is a fickle thing. A few decades ago Western companies were rushing to manufacture in China. The mantra was: ‘Manufacture wherever it’s cheapest’. The rallying cry was ‘Globalisation’. Now Western companies are rushing to get subsidies from their governments to manufacture domestically, are pulling out of their manufacturing arrangements in the East, and are looking to establish domestic, or ...

Thanks to TrendForce for this one – the top ten fabless companies in Q4:

Apple is hovering around the $3 trillion market cap figure – just above on Friday, just below on Monday – having added around $900 billion in value this year. What’s more Apple has done it without waxing hyper about AI. Who can imagine where the value will go if/when it gets an all-singing all-dancing autonomous EV on the road. 23 ...

Partial communications coverage of the United States by satellites is a possibility in 3 to 5 years. This was one of the opinions given at a discussion on a lecture by Mr W J. Bray of the Post Office Engineering Department before the electronics and communications section of the Institute of Electrical  Engineers last week. So 63 years ago, started ...

Gallup recently released its Law & Order Index, which reports confidence in the police, feelings of personal security and incidences of theft or mugging in different countries over the past year. Gallup found that riot-wracked France had a score of 85 out of 100, whereas the UK scored only 79 – putting us 62nd in the global ranking – although ...

I have recently completed a project setting up a Digital Twin of the government which I have called HMG-2, Ed confides to his diary. HMG-2 will model the effect of every government decision on every other government department, so that we will know, in advance of decisions being taken, exactly what the effect is going to be across the whole ...