Joe Sawicki, VP and GM of the Design-to-Silicon Division for Mentor Graphics, joined us at the Semico Summit on Tuesday to discuss scaling and the conversion to 3D.  He focused on a motto of “Willful Optimism” for the future.
Moore’s Law has been a cornerstone of our industry for 40 years, and a trend the speakers [...]

I’m normally not a big fan of 3D with the gimmicky movie effects, clunky glasses, and the inevitable headache and eyestrain that comes with it. But Nintendo seems to have circumvented many of these issues with their upcoming Nintendo 3DS handheld.
At CES the N3DS was a big hit with its ability to switch between [...]

Everything these days is smart. You’ve got your smart phone, your smart grid, your smart car, and now your smart TV. And the question is, why? Consumers can get the same functionality with their Blu-ray players, set top boxes, and gaming consoles, etc….
And my answer, like for most technology, is [...]

I’ve always been unlucky when it comes to notebooks. They never last more than a few years before their motherboard explodes, usually just a few days after the warranty expires. That’s why last year I decided to get a desktop instead. It has everything I’ll ever need (hopefully) in a computer:

Intel i5 [...]

3-D integration and packaging is now well known to all in the semiconductor industry.  Today the focus has shifted away from trying to understand the technology opportunity to one of understanding the practical challenges of technology adoption and commercialization, including who is getting there first, how, and at what cost.  Many see 3-D integration and [...]

It seems everywhere we turn, there is hype about how low 2011 will go. Our own opinion is that 2011 will be an above average growth year, rising 9.5% over 2010. Considering an average growth year for the semiconductor industry is 8% growth, 9.5% is pretty good.
Our forecast is based on our IPI [...]

Right now we have two different segments for e-readers, Electronic Paper Displays, and Liquid Crystal Displays. Mainly, we can consider the two powerhouses to be the iPad with LCD and the Kindle with EPD. Personally, I’m anxiously waiting for the combo platter: the low-power color display.
The low-power screen segment has the potential [...]

As a handheld console, the PSP in North America is on its last leg.  It has been losing market share to smart phones, Apple products, and the NDS.  But this doesn’t mean the PSP is out for the count.  As Sony recently said, “the PSP has life left in it yet.”
Sony claims that right now [...]

When Semico released our e-reader report, one of the predictions we made was that Amazon would introduce an updated Kindle this quarter.  They were right on track and are estimating new orders will ship September 10th.  This was a highly anticipated step, considering all the new competition and great products being [...]

There was a time when nothing was hipper than Apple—it had colors when others were grappling with grayscale,  a sense of style that was way out front, and mice when the rest of the world was stuck on “chicklet keyboards”—but gradually computing shifted. Due to wide adoption of the PCI bus family, the PC industry [...]