What are they thinking? – Google used its burgeoning chip design capabilities to create an apps processor phones. It is likely to have some incredible AI features, but it is unlikely to see much adoption or to change the industry.
2021 State of the Mobile Baseband – Apple’s share gains, its leading Apps Processor, and growing pricing pressure for Android phones risks creating a vicious cycle for Qualcomm.
Plumbing for Semis – Arm and SiFive are M&A targets, they provide crucial plumbing for almost all chips today, and their ultimate fate will have a big impact on the industry.
Roll Your Own Chips – When you design products that someone else is going to manufacture using processes that trip against quantum physics effects, no one is cool enough to not be a little worried that something will go wrong.
Let’s Build a Chip – We lay out the costs of building a chip – with spreadsheets!
Pretty much everyone. We have been doing a lot of work lately on in-house silicon, most recently with our post on Google’s VCU. And it got us thinking about who […]
The 5-Year Plan for Semis – the whole debate about industrial policy for the US semis industry is muddled. One clue – whenever people start talking about Shenzhen it means they are focused on some other problem.
Where did Apple’s margins come from? – The M1 probably added only $300m to Apple’s gross margins this quarter, but it probably also helped them sell a lot more MacBooks, the benefit of Apple Silicon is strategic not cost savings.
Intel 2.0’s Customer Dilemma – If Intel can sort out its manufacturing process, if it can find the funds it needs, if it can build up a true customer service capability, and if can do all this in under three years, then IFS may be viable.
Could? Should? Would? – In which we totally make up a scenario in which mobile operating systems get better.
Digits to Dollars 