17/05/2011
When the mobile phone goes down, it can be a blessing. But it can also be a curse, particularly if the mobile is your main communication device. And it must be particularly galling if you're coughing up £45 a month for all the features and benefits of an iPhone, only to find yourself cut off from the world.
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16/05/2011
In the latest incarnation of the 'internet enabled fridge', NXP has announced technology that can be integrated into the base of an energy efficient light bulb. Not only does this technology offer dimming abilities, it will also allow light bulbs to be turned on and off over the web.
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16/05/2011
A friend once asked me what software developers do when they're not creating the next new release of a software application. I thought it was the opening line of an uncharitable joke, but it was actually a serious question.
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10/05/2011
It's nearly a year since Cadence launched its EDA360 initiative, described at the time as a 'new vision' for the eda world. EDA360 was created as a way to expand the eda market beyond its traditional boundaries, growing it from today's $5billion a year to what Cadence's chief marketing officer John Bruggeman called a 'crazy growth' market worth $25bn a year. Big goals.
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27/04/2011
Semiconductor manufacturing encompasses two wildly differing approaches. At one extreme, there is the need for absolute precision when building devices with feature sizes of 40nm and smaller. At the other extreme is the wild imprecision of building manufacturing capacity – balancing supply and demand.
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19/04/2011
Apple has filed a lawsuit against Samsung, claiming the South Korean electronics giant has copied the design of its iPhone and iPad for the Galaxy S 4G, Epic 4G, Nexus S and Galaxy Tab.
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15/04/2011
In 1974, the BBC launched the world's first teletext system.
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15/04/2011
It's become a cliché in news or science reports. A water treatment plant manager, or perhaps politician, is enthusiastically promoting the quality of the water that comes out the back end (pun intended) of an elaborate purifying system.
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12/04/2011
When Gordon Moore developed his eponymous law in the heady days of the 1960s, he focused only on the number of transistors that could be accommodated on a given area of silicon.
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11/04/2011
Very much 'of their time', the magazines below are now valuable collectors' items.
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07/04/2011
It's been a while since there has been a takeover on the scale of that involving Texas Instruments and National Semiconductor. Apart from the cost – $6.5billion – there's a substantial amount of products and an awful lot of people to be dealt with, not to mention production facilities.
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06/04/2011
There are so many things happening this year at National Electronics Week 2011 – 12th – 13th April NEC Birmingham.
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04/04/2011
Despite expectations, programmable logic has remained a $3.5billion a year market for a long time. Yet in 2010, programmable logic sales broke through the $5bn mark. And this, it seems, is attracting attention from investors.
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01/04/2011
New Electronics archive: April 3, 1979
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28/03/2011
Chancellor George Osborne said, in last week's budget, that he wants the words 'Made in Britain, Created in Britain, Designed in Britain, Invented in Britain to drive our nation forward'. "That is how we will create jobs and support families," he said.
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25/03/2011
With the burgeoning television market now offering consumers thinner, wider and sleeker devices than ever before, it's clear to see the days of bulky black and white televisions are now a thing of the past.
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24/03/2011
I was in our local off licence a few weeks back, picking up the mandatory supplies for what turned out to be, thankfully, a successful New Year's Eve party.
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23/03/2011
A year ago, the Vote Manufacturing Campaign was established to encourage voters to petition MPs in a bid to salvage UK Manufacturing.
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22/03/2011
The electronics industry anticipates a period of component shortages and price hikes.
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21/03/2011
With the situation in Japan becoming clearer, it seems a number of key fabs are shut and won't be back in production for many weeks. An example is Renesas, the world's leading supplier of microcontrollers, where five fabs are out of action – representing half of its capacity.
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18/03/2011
New Electronics archive: March 18 1975
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16/03/2011
Server farms and data centres are 'out there' somewhere. But if it wasn't for them, we'd have no internet, no online shopping and no cloud computing.
As demand for bandwidth continues to grow, the number of data centres needed to satisfy demand increases. But providing bandwidth and the instant access to data and services that we crave needs more and more data centres – and they consume huge amounts of energy.
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14/03/2011
Coverage of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami will inevitably turn away in the coming days from the human suffering to more mundane issues, such as its effect on businesses on the other side of the world.
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11/03/2011
New Electronics archive: March 1981
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08/03/2011
Programmable logic manufacturers have had their collective eyes on the industrial, or embedded systems, market for some time, but have yet to break through in any meaningful way. There are a number of reasons for this, ranging from cost to suitability via all points in between.
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