Some companies say China's digital terrestrial TV standard isn't open to all. Others say it is, but acknowledge that a few companies definitely got a head start by getting early...

Continue reading "China DTV: Sharing is caring"

Posted by Mike Clendenin on May 31, 2007 09:30 AM in China

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For a guy who was intensely private, a few interesting tidbits are emerging in the wake of former Altera CEO Rodney Smith's untimely death last week....

Continue reading "More Rodney Smith memories"

Posted by Brian Fuller on May 30, 2007 07:38 PM in Industry

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Here's my "what's hot" list of ten top technology announcements you might want to see at the Design Automation Conference (DAC) next week -- or read about, if you're not...

Continue reading "A "what's hot" list for DAC 2007"

Posted by Richard Goering on May 30, 2007 01:23 PM in EDA Software

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First it was the humble mouse and joystick. Then it made its own videogame console. Then an iPod-alike MP3 player. And now we have Microsoft Table....

Continue reading "Microsoft's hard side"

Posted by Rick Merritt on May 30, 2007 12:39 PM in Computing

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The emerging technologies part of the yearly Siggraph exhibit is always the most exciting "electronics toy factory" to rummage thru. Now Microsoft is making one of those toys available to...

Continue reading "The wonders of Siggraph come alive"

Posted by Nic Mokhoff on May 30, 2007 07:22 AM in Consumer

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It's a small but important step forward for TD-SCDMA in China as Nokia says it will ship phones based on the local standard in early 2008. So we'll assume that...

Continue reading "Nokia calls on TD-SCDMA"

Posted by Mike Clendenin on May 29, 2007 07:32 PM in China

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I'm still shaken by the tragic death last Friday of former Altera CEO Rodney Smith. It's one thing to think of a vibrant man dying too soon (he was 67)....

Continue reading "Altera's Rodney Smith, in memoriam"

Posted by Brian Fuller on May 29, 2007 05:40 PM in Industry

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The drive to consolidate the number of networks used in the data center may leave Fibre Channel the odd man out, said my colleague Loring Wirbel in his report from...

Continue reading "Fibre Channel odd man out?"

Posted by Rick Merritt on May 29, 2007 09:32 AM in Computing

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As soon as I wrote a blog last week about 40 new exhibitors at the Design Automation Conference (DAC) next week, I got a comment about 60 exhibitors at DAC...

Continue reading "Missing in action at DAC 2007"

Posted by Richard Goering on May 28, 2007 08:20 PM in EDA Software

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I wouldn't call this wafer madness. The silicon wafer market is maddening, however....

Continue reading "Wafer madness"

Posted by Mark LaPedus on May 28, 2007 12:56 AM in Semiconductors

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The IC-assembly and test market is slowing down in 2007, according to Gartner. 2008 looks up!...

Continue reading "IC-assembly and test biz forecast"

Posted by Mark LaPedus on May 28, 2007 12:51 AM in Semiconductors

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When I registered for the Design Automation Conference to be held the week of June 4 I got a chance to be entered into a drawing for driving GM's Sequel...

Continue reading "Flying to DAC, driving back in new car?"

Posted by Nic Mokhoff on May 26, 2007 01:37 PM in Consumer

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Lothar Maier is a character in a bizarre video game called "Rollcage." That's news to Lothar Maier, the CEO of Linear Technology....

Continue reading "Lothar Maier: game character or CEO?"

Posted by Brian Fuller on May 25, 2007 03:39 PM in Industry

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Newly-published survey data by John Cooley suggests that SystemVerilog and SystemC are primarily used for verification, with design lagging far behind. That's cold comfort for vendors who have been pushing...

Continue reading "SystemVerilog, SystemC: duds for design?"

Posted by Richard Goering on May 25, 2007 01:39 PM in EDA Software

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One of the projects I will be working on when we all come back from a nice three-day weekend is an exploration of flash in the server. Dean Klein of...

Continue reading "Flash in the server"

Posted by Rick Merritt on May 25, 2007 11:28 AM in Computing

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The Society for Information Display conference and exhibit is coming to a close in Long Beach, Calif. this week not without its share of exciting developments in display technologies. The...

Continue reading "Displays, displays and "real" displays"

Posted by Nic Mokhoff on May 25, 2007 08:50 AM in Consumer

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China's spec for making the Digital Home almost stupid-easy to set up is inching along at ISO. That's a good thing....

Continue reading "One small step for … IGRS"

Posted by Mike Clendenin on May 24, 2007 11:01 PM in China

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Disclaimer: The fact that I work for CMP, which is now owner and sponsor of the Interop trade show, did not influence my opinion on the show's fortunes. Heck, I...

Posted by Loring Wirbel on May 24, 2007 09:27 PM in Communications

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The EDA rumor mill is buzzing these days about a number of supposed acquisitions, but one that apparently isn't happening is Cadence Design Systems buying Clear Shape. And somehow, I...

Continue reading "No, Cadence is not buying Clear Shape"

Posted by Richard Goering on May 23, 2007 01:39 PM in EDA Software

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These guys started out in the PC camera business, so it was no surprise to hear that they are getting into the IP surveillance market. But it was interesting to...

Continue reading "Vimicro: I spy …"

Posted by Mike Clendenin on May 23, 2007 05:15 AM in China

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This week's announcement of a threaded timing analyzer from startup CLK Design Automation raises a question: Will the next major move in EDA platform support be multicore CPUs?...

Continue reading "EDA software may have multicore future"

Posted by Richard Goering on May 22, 2007 09:16 PM in EDA Software

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Jacques Noels says it is hard to beat a product to market that has been around for more than 2300 years. Yet his company wants to put a dent into...

Continue reading "Nemoptic attempts to save trees"

Posted by Nic Mokhoff on May 22, 2007 05:04 AM in Consumer

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In order to see interesting 3G-based multimedia services in China, a couple of old comrades will have to learn how to play nice....

Continue reading "Sibling rivalry"

Posted by Mike Clendenin on May 22, 2007 02:26 AM in China

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DRAM tags continue to tumble, causing vendors to say: ''The sky is falling!'' In fact, since the start of the year, average spot pricing for DRAMs is down by a...

Continue reading "The sky is falling on DRAMs!"

Posted by Mark LaPedus on May 21, 2007 05:29 PM in Semiconductors

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What's going on with NAND flash? It's up. Down. Up. Down. And down again....

Continue reading "NAND goes up, down, down, down"

Posted by Mark LaPedus on May 21, 2007 05:18 PM in Semiconductors

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Putting to rest any doubts about the continuation of EDA startup activity, the Design Automation Conference (DAC) has released a list of 40 new exhibitors at this year's conference. Here's...

Continue reading "40 new exhibitors at DAC"

Posted by Richard Goering on May 21, 2007 02:58 PM in EDA Software

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There's something eerie about Saudi Basic Industries Corp. buying GE Plastics for $11.6 billion....

Continue reading "A little resin goes a long way"

Posted by Nic Mokhoff on May 21, 2007 10:23 AM in Consumer

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Pericom Semi is jumping the gun by announcing two switches for the 5 GHz PCI Express Gen2 before the PCI Special Interest Group even completes its compliance tests. I guess...

Continue reading "Here comes the fast Express train"

Posted by Rick Merritt on May 21, 2007 10:02 AM in Computing

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Few were surprised on May 18 in San Jose when former Atmel Corp. CEO George Perlegos failed in his bid to have a new board of directors voted in,...

Posted by Loring Wirbel on May 19, 2007 10:45 AM in Semiconductors

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Any of you obsessive blog readers who happen to be checking this site on Saturday, May 19, and happen to live near New Haven, CT, might want to check...

Continue reading "From Bling to Sing"

Posted by Loring Wirbel on May 19, 2007 10:35 AM in Communications

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SeeReal Technologies has developed a method to display content in 3-D on monitors without the use of special polarizer glasses and wants to demo these to you at SID during...

Continue reading "3-D without glasses at SID"

Posted by Nic Mokhoff on May 19, 2007 08:16 AM in Consumer

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The floodgates have opened and I'm deluged with announcements for the upcoming Design Automation Conference (DAC). Without citing specific announcements, here are a few trends I'm seeing....

Continue reading "What's coming up for DAC"

Posted by Richard Goering on May 18, 2007 06:45 PM in EDA Software

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So it looks like China's 3G spec is going to trounce all others in the local market, or so says Chen Haofei, secretary-general of TD-SCDMA Forum. Forgive me for being...

Continue reading "TD-SCDMA: crumbs for the starving masses"

Posted by Mike Clendenin on May 17, 2007 10:33 PM in China

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Microsoft has always been about volumes, and increasingly its focus is on links to the consumer electronics world. The company put out some stunning stats in a Wednesday keynote at...

Continue reading "Vista uber alles"

Posted by Rick Merritt on May 17, 2007 11:39 AM in Computing

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I was digging through old emails today, trying to separate the junk from the trash, when I came across this little gem on Semiconductor Manufacturing International Co....

Continue reading "Email gem: SMIC"

Posted by Mike Clendenin on May 16, 2007 09:48 PM in China

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Tired of canned demos at the Design Automation Conference? The folks at FishTail Design Automation have an offer for you. Bring in your design, and they'll verify and generate timing...

Continue reading "Get your design verified at DAC"

Posted by Richard Goering on May 16, 2007 09:18 PM in EDA Software

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Will Apple adopt the recently minted CEA-2017 standard for linking portable media players to docking stations, car audio systems and the rest of the digital media world? That's the question...

Continue reading "An interface for the iPod"

Posted by Rick Merritt on May 16, 2007 10:03 AM in Consumer

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Magma Design Automation, which cast a shadow over IC low power standards efforts with an earlier patent claim, now says it will license that patent to anyone on a royalty-free...

Continue reading "Magma patent offer eases low-power standards"

Posted by Richard Goering on May 15, 2007 07:48 PM in EDA Software

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Hey, take a look at EET veteran Craig Matsumoto's May 14 story on LightReading regarding the possibility that JDSU may sell its optical communications division, becoming a de facto...

Continue reading "JDSU's Tail and Dog Problem"

Posted by Loring Wirbel on May 15, 2007 02:31 PM in Communications

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Tom Abate, writing in today's San Francisco Chronicle, offers general readers a tutorial on manufacturing outsourcing in our industry. It's nothing we haven't lived in the semiconductor inudstry for the...

Continue reading "The power of 14"

Posted by Brian Fuller on May 15, 2007 10:56 AM in Industry

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OK it's an off year at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference. Fewer people than usual were exhibiting and milling about the show here and expectations are low. Past big time...

Continue reading "Wassup at WinHEC?"

Posted by Rick Merritt on May 15, 2007 10:24 AM in Computing

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If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, right? That's sort of what Vivace Semiconductor is doing. Since most of their talent is in China, the media processor company has decided...

Continue reading "It's official: Vivace is Chinese"

Posted by Mike Clendenin on May 15, 2007 05:25 AM in China

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Mobile gamers from two Indonesian provinces participated in that country's first electronics game of darts and walked away with game consoles as prizes....

Continue reading "Nothing beats throwing darts across the Web"

Posted by Nic Mokhoff on May 15, 2007 03:21 AM in Consumer

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Cadence Design Systems has briefly acknowledged its purchase of design for manufacturability (DFM) startup CommandCAD, but doesn't want to say anything more. It's part of a recent reticence on Cadence's...

Continue reading "Cadence's silent DFM acquisitions"

Posted by Richard Goering on May 14, 2007 09:26 PM in EDA Software

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Add Broadcom Corp. to the growing list of chip makers jumping into the pool for bringing 10Gbit/second Ethernet on the PC server. The company claims its dual-port 10G part can...

Continue reading "Pool party for 10G Ethernet"

Posted by Rick Merritt on May 14, 2007 10:54 AM in

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Now that even reservists are being coerced into three to four re-ups lasting up to 15 months each, you would think that the armed services would be looking to...

Posted by Loring Wirbel on May 14, 2007 09:56 AM in Communications

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If a recent report from the Open SystemC Initiative (OSCI) is accurate, the usage of SystemC is shifting from design to software development and functional verification. That may change the...

Continue reading "SystemC for verification, not design"

Posted by Richard Goering on May 10, 2007 07:44 PM in EDA Software

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Last year a handful of notebook engineers told me they thought wireless USB might make an appearance in their systems built around the next generation Intel Centrino platform dubbed Santa...

Continue reading "Wireless USB a no-show in Santa Rosa"

Posted by Rick Merritt on May 10, 2007 11:49 AM in Computing

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First, a warning: Stories in Information Week and The Wall Street Journal did not prove the case that the T.J. Maxx data theft last year was caused by random...

Continue reading "The Hot Part of Hot Spots"

Posted by Loring Wirbel on May 10, 2007 10:08 AM in Communications

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DISCLAIMER: I am mentioning this item to address corporate ethics and sponsorship, not from personal interest. When a multibillion-dollar transnational company sponsors a multibillion-dollar transnational pop star, I'm not interested....

Continue reading "If Verizon Votes with its Feet and Dollars, So Can We"

Posted by Loring Wirbel on May 10, 2007 08:17 AM in Communications

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As expected, the IEEE Standards Board has approved the P1801 low-power standards effort based on Accellera's Unified Power Format (UPF). With backing from three of the four major EDA vendors,...

Continue reading "IEEE nod shifts momentum to UPF"

Posted by Richard Goering on May 9, 2007 02:07 PM in EDA Software

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In the OEM Dark Ages before the "Intel Inside" campaign, EE Times made an effort to increase the design engineer's "cool factor," under the premise that chip design rarely was...

Continue reading "The Rodney Dangerfield Effect"

Posted by Loring Wirbel on May 9, 2007 01:31 PM in Semiconductors

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Had a very interesting conversation with ARC International CEO Carl Schlachte today, who was in Taiwan trying to drum up more business for the IP provider. He waxed on about...

Continue reading "Taiwan: still in the game"

Posted by Mike Clendenin on May 8, 2007 12:25 PM in China

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At the upcoming SID show in Long Beach, Kopin will be featuring the future of video eyewear in high-resolution 3D....

Continue reading "3D video games on your nose"

Posted by Nic Mokhoff on May 8, 2007 11:52 AM in Consumer

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The June Design Automation Conference (DAC) is not a run-of-the-mill EDA-only conference. Consider a few of the unusual items on this year's DAC program, including driverless cars and synthetic biology....

Continue reading "DAC 2007: Driverless cars, synthetic biology"

Posted by Richard Goering on May 7, 2007 08:18 PM in EDA Software

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It's always sad when an EDA vendor goes out of business, but there are always lessons learned, too. Such is the case with IC optimization tool provider Zenasis Technology....

Continue reading "Farewell to Zenasis, and lessons learned"

Posted by Richard Goering on May 4, 2007 08:31 PM in EDA Software

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One could look at Christoph Hammerschmidt's dispatch from Munich on May 4 and say that the planned furlough of 9,000 from Nokia Siemens Networks was a foregone conclusion. The...

Continue reading "Nokia Siemens: Where's the IP Expertise?"

Posted by Loring Wirbel on May 4, 2007 11:27 AM in Communications

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I have used this space before to rag on satellite TV company Echostar for failing to get on the train to the future. Echostar needs to find a way to...

Continue reading "Echostar rises in Redmond"

Posted by Rick Merritt on May 4, 2007 01:04 AM in Computing

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It's no surprise that Cisco Systems is pointing analysts to a new study from IDC that calls Provider Backbone Transport "wildly hyped." Cisco's never been a huge fan of...

Continue reading "Wild Hype and Transport Fads"

Posted by Loring Wirbel on May 3, 2007 04:06 PM in Communications

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Eyeing emerging markets in the Balkans and neighboring nations, Greece is jockeying to become the development gateway to this vast, untapped market of over 146 million consumers....

Continue reading "Greece opens door to Balkans"

Posted by Richard Wallace on May 3, 2007 03:28 AM in Going Global

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Engineers who are thinking of launching a silicon intellectual property (IP) business in their garage with a couple of friends had better think again, according to panelists at this week's...

Continue reading "Garage IP operation? Forget it!"

Posted by Richard Goering on May 2, 2007 09:45 PM in EDA Software

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That's the concept Michael Feldman the editor of HPCwire throws out in an interesting think piece posted recently. While his thinking is really just an extrapolation from an interview with...

Continue reading "Are clusters passé"

Posted by Rick Merritt on May 2, 2007 10:36 AM in Computing

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China's launching of a 15-year plan akin to the U.S. post-Sputnik research initiative to achieve "indigenous innovation," is a laudable objective, bound for failure....

Continue reading "China on futile innovation track"

Posted by Richard Wallace on May 2, 2007 09:29 AM in Going Global

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Does anyone still recall the vitality and geographical diversity of communication trade shows in the 1990s? Supercomm in Atlanta. NetWorld+Interop in Dallas. DSLcon in Boston. CTIA in New Orleans....

Posted by Loring Wirbel on May 2, 2007 08:21 AM in Communications

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There's no official announcement yet, but sources tell me the IEEE New Standards Committee (Nescom) has approved the project authorization request for the P1801 low power working group. That means...

Continue reading "UPF gets nod from IEEE"

Posted by Richard Goering on May 1, 2007 08:12 PM in EDA Software

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I was chatting today with Peter Percosan, DOCSIS guru at Texas Instruments Inc.,and it struck me how low key the cable-TV multi-system operator community had been in recent months....

Continue reading "Fear of FiOS"

Posted by Loring Wirbel on May 1, 2007 07:53 PM in Communications

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Jim Fister, a senior technologist from Intel's Itanium group I interviewed recently, has been reading between the lines in Jonathan Schwartz's blog about the Sun Rock microprocessor. Jim believes Rock...

Continue reading "Studying Sun's Rock"

Posted by Rick Merritt on May 1, 2007 12:56 PM in Computing

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...in the next advancement in consumer electronics security, your DVD may well be secured at point of distribution and released for playing at point of sale using radio frequency identifcation...

Continue reading "Your new blockbuster DVD is not safe, but..."

Posted by Nic Mokhoff on May 1, 2007 06:42 AM in Consumer

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