Chances are, you have not heard of British chipmaker ARM, and don’t understand their business model. ARM develops semiconductor IP cores that most other chip vendors license and include in their products, to speed up their design cycles. ARM, in turn, collects royalties from these licensing deals. It is by far the largest IP core
“Apple plans to sell its iPhone through an exclusive marketing agreement with AT&T’s Cingular Wireless unit. While Cingular’s data network is woefully slow, the Wi-Fi feature will give the mobile phone high speed data capability when users can find Wi-Fi hotspots. To date, cell phone service providers have been reluctant to introduce mobile phones with
In January, EE Times wrote: :: We’re not drinking the Apple Kool-Aid, but Jobs and team do seem to get it: It’s not the technology, stupid; it’s the experience. We love engineers, but you shouldn’t need one to make your digital home work. Whatever the quibbles over iPhone’s price and novel touchscreen interface, Apple seems
I mentioned Chip Scale Packing (CSP), which I should also explain further. In simple terms, for these miniaturized consumer devices, Printed Circuit Board (PCB) real estate is a big problem. CSP is a packaging technology that allows chips to be packaged “at the scale of the chip” with marginally more area requirement. In recent times,
Okay, so I should explain what is the big deal about System-in-Package (SiP) … You must have noticed the trend in cellular handsets of packing in dramatically diverse functionality? Samsung’s latest model has a 5 Mega Pixel camera, and if this is any indication, consumers will further reap benefits of such integration trends in the
Semiconductors and Electronics have invaded every aspect of our lives in fairly extensive ways. During the last quarter of the twentieth century, this segment received enormous attention, venture investment, and duly provided some amazing vision, thought leadership, and innovation. Now, in the first decade of the 21st Century, the industry is showing signs of hitting