A highly dense memory technology introduced in 2011 takes another step closer to reality with the launch of new interconnection specifications. At this rate, we’ll see the new tech in devices in 2014. Read more »
While they may be selling the “picks and shovels” associated with the internet of things gold rush, the world of connected devices is a rich opportunity for semiconductor companies. Read more »
Spending on chips actually shrank 3 percent in 2012, but was helped out by Samsung and Apple’s seemingly insatiable appetite for semiconductors. Read more »
Figuring out how to bring the speed of light to communications on chips, between chips and everywhere has been an overarching goal of semiconductor research. IBM says it is ready to bring a technology that puts optics and electronics on a chip using conventional manufacturing methods. Read more »
Sales of semiconductors are expected to fall this year. The only sector that didn’t see a decline year-over-year is the wireless business, and in that sector Qualcomm has seen sales grow by 27.2 percent. More proof of the upheaval occurring in the chip biz. Read more »
Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini will step down in May. So far no successor has been named, but the transition in leadership will occur as the entire chip industry deals with a transition from high performance general purpose computing to more special-purpose, efficient chips. Read more »
There has been a lot of bad news from the chip giants this quarter, but it’s not the decline of the PC or even merely economic worries pressing on the sector. No, there’s a systemic change in the market and the industry giants are reacting. Read more »
IBM has developed a microscopy technique that lets it see the bonds between molecules. While that’s pretty esoteric for most of us, the tool could help develop graphene-based semiconductors that would result in better batteries, faster chips, nicer displays and more efficient solar panels. Read more »
Zplasma, startup spun out of the University of Washington hopes that its ability to harness super hot, stable plasma to to make light will help the semiconductor industry continue its march to cram more transistors on a chip. Read more »
In the latter half of the 19th century, the introduction of elevators and steel trusses enabled us to put up taller buildings with denser cores. It changed urban landscapes forever–packing more people into small spaces. Now, chips are set to benefit from a similar design leap. Read more »
AMD, ARM, Texas Instruments and two smaller chip firms have teamed up to create a nonprofit that will try to unseat Intel’s x86 dominance in computing. But this group isn’t just after Intel; it’s taking the CPU — the beating heart of computers today — down a peg. Read more »
The adoption of tablets, social media and new interfaces and the changing nature of the TV itself mean the digital living room will continue on its path of rapid change, thanks to new ways of creating, viewing, bundling, distributing and selling content. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Intel has introduced its latest generation of processor cores at 22 nanometers. The new chips are up to 20 percent faster and consume 20 percent less energy, but the biggest news is that these chips are the first that will use Intel’s new 3-D transistors. Read more »
Intel has taken the top spot when it comes to semiconductor market share, making 15.6 percent of the overall chips sold in the world, according to IHS iSuppli. This year it made more money on more products — achieving a market share it hasn’t seen since 2001. Read more »
When building chips, designers have to trade energy efficiency for performance. But Cyclos can help designers boost clock speeds while shaving 10 to 30 percent off the power required by the chip. As mobile devices need more gigahertz, this will be a big deal. Read more »
Now that AMD has confirmed its purchase of low-power server maker SeaMicro, I bet its next move will be an announcement around licensing the ARM architecture. That’s right: AMD will do a deal with the company that provides the architecture for chips inside your cell phone. Read more »
Apple spent the most on semiconductors in 2011, beating out Samsung and HP to take the crown. HP dropped from the top spot, thanks to overall weakness in the PC market, while Apple soared upward on the rising tide of smartphones, tablets and the MacBook Air. Read more »
IBM has made three breakthroughs that could help chips continue following Moore’s Law, resulting in more performance or memory at lower prices. These breakthroughs may also allow us to take advantage of new spectrum for mobile broadband and make better batteries. Read more »
What happens when you place the equivalent of 1024 neurons in parallel on a chip? Well, you get a new form of computing for cloud computing and sensor networks as well as toys that can recognize cue cards, better artificial intelligence and pattern recognition. Read more »
Venture capitalists have generally given semiconductor startups the cold shoulder for years now in favor of the web and software spaces. But LSI Corporation’s $400 acquisition of VC-backed chip startup Sandforce could encourage more VCs to warm up to chip technology once again. Read more »
Sevin Rosen is trying to raise a tenth fund, according to Al Schuele, a partner with the Texas-based venture capital firm. Sevin Rosen hasn’t been big since about 2006, when it stopped raising money on a proposed fund and returned money back to investors. Read more »
Thin Film Electronics ASA, a maker of disposable memory used in toys, has developed a way to add computing to its chips. This means it can offer thin, disposable tracking tags for a few cents apiece, providing a valuable component for the Internet of things. Read more »
The chip industry is really good at making faster CPUs, but it’s lagged when it comes to giving the calculating cores enough information in time. So Samsung and Micron have created a new type of chip that boosts the amount of information memory chips can send. Read more »
Both mobile and high performance computing are placing huge power efficiency and performance demands on chips, but the real $64,000 question is how long until such extreme computing use cases hit the server mainstream. Asked another way, how long till Amazon adopts ARM-based servers? Read more »
As our demand for data increases, so too do the number of mobile devices and services. Add to that the infrastructure needed to support such connectivity, and a wide, complex picture of the mobile industry emerges. This report examines the various sectors of the mobile landscape and what the future holds for each. Hardware, cloud services, mobile search, advertising, location-based services and the growing ubiquity of the Internet of Things will all play an important role in the concept of mobility as it shifts and evolves over the next several years. With the help of more than a dozen contributors, GigaOM Pro presents a comprehensive analysis of the companies and trends that will lead us into the next era of mobile. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
We want information, and we want it now, so technologists are racing to keep up. From a stealthy startup in New Mexico getting funded to Infinera providing gear that could download Netflix’s entire library in 5 seconds, the secret for our need for speed is light. Read more »
After a century of making tabulation machines IBM has come up with a new chip that marries our brain’s architecture with silicon guts. The goal is to create a new style of computing aimed at making sense of big data without consuming a lot of power. Read more »
Facebook engineers have tested a 64-core chip from Tilera and found it ideal for grabbing data quickly from key value stores. This may galvanize the creation of new benchmarks as the debate of which architecture works best for webscale and cloud computing rages. Read more »
We give Intel a lot of flack here at GigaOM for not being mobile enough or low power enough for scale out computing, but the chipmaker is doing all right in the server category. We discussed how well and the future for servers in this video. Read more »
Mobile phone manufacturer HTC has purchased VIA Semiconductor’s graphics business. The deal is indicative of the need for compelling graphics on mobiles as well as an admission that mobile device makers may get an edge if they can bring some silicon capabilities in house. Read more »
Apple is joining the board of the Bluetooth standards organization as the group focuses the latest iteration of Bluetooth on the market for fitness and health sensor data from mobile devices. But can Bluetooth beat out a variety of other standards hoping win in bioinformatics? Read more »
Compute giant Hewlett-Packard has teamed up with Nvidia to make a server containing up to eight graphics processors designed for the high performance computing market. The two have built the world’s “Greenest Production Supercomputer” together, and the machine using Nvidia’s latest GPUs offers more performance. Read more »
We are moving from the Information Age to the Insight Age, and as part of that shift we need a compute architecture that will handle the storage and processing required all without requiring a power plant hooked up to every data center. What architecture will win? Read more »
Intel has managed to keep pushing Moore’s Law by developing a 3-D transistor that allows the chipmaker to deliver ever smaller chips that will be more powerful, yet consume less energy. The new chip moves Intel ahead of the industry and positions it competitively against ARM. Read more »
LG, the South Korean makers of phones televisions, household appliances and a variety of other consumer devices has licensed the ARM-based chip cores that can be found in devices from handsets to set-top-boxes. Once again, a vendor has forgotten to invite Intel to the party. Read more »
Freescale Semiconductor and Fuji Electric Systems are forming a new partnership focused on hybrid and electric vehicle tech. The two companies announced plans to collaborate on a type of power semiconductor for electronic powertrains, as well as other products for green cars down the road. Read more »
Fourteen venture-backed companies went public in the first quarter of 2011 raising 1.4 billion, the highest number to go public since 2007, according to the NVCA. And many companies that did make it to the public markets are trading at or above their original offering prices. Read more »
In a quest to make faster chips and deliver low-power computing, scientists have creating good-enough chips that instead of performing every calculation to its exact decimal point, are allowed to make mistakes. This field of computing could improve big data analysis, networking and even hearing aids. Read more »
Apple’s iPad 2 contains the Apple-designed A5 application processor, which is running two cores. Onstage, Apple’s Steve Jobs indicated it was the first dual-core chip shipping at volume, but the folks at Nvidia might disagree, given its dual-core Tegra 2 is out in handsets and tablets. Read more »
People are complicated organisms that have evolved systems of feedback and governance to ensure our minds and out bodies perform well. As computers gain more cores, MIT scientists are building an operating system to create a similar system of feedback to ensure the machine performs well. Read more »
