The Changing Face of Compute
A recap of our emerging thesis on the changing nature of compute and what that means for semis companies large and small.
Category Archives: Strategy
Can there be a long tail of semis?
There probably will not be thousands of companies designing their own chips – the upfront costs are just too prohibitive – but there will be enough to mark a major shift for the industry.
Doom and Gloom
The markets are terrible. Moore’s Law is slowing. 6G is distant. But we are actually optimistic. Solutions exist for building compelling, complex systems. All that is missing is imagination and a bit of capital.
Home Depot for DIY Chips
The large, incumbent chip companies are all choosing to embrace the trend of Roll-Your-Own chips by offering support services to non-chip companies’ efforts. Done well this may end up driving those customers to buy more catalog parts. Hopefully.
The Death of General Compute
The era of general purpose compute is over. This is going to bring about a shake-up in the semiconductor industry.
Will someone else buy Arm?
There seems to be some momentum for Arm to sell itself to some sort of consortium of major licensees. In theory, this could be a good outcome, but in practice would be very complex.
What has Broadcom Become?
Our readership is split, roughly evenly, between finance people and technology people. We are reminded of this whenever the topic of Broadcom comes up. Broadcom was once a leading semiconductor […]
The Battle for the Semis Roadmap
Companies designing their own silicon are motivated by the ability this gives them to control the roadmap and features of new chips.
We are thinking about AR/VR wrong
AR and VR share some technical concepts and will likely have similar components, but beyond that are completely unrelated – the way people use them and thus the software needed to power them will be very different.
The Return of the Conglomerate?
Fifty years ago the Street fell in love with diverse conglomerates like Gulf + Western. How different are the sprawling operations of the major Internet companies today?