semiconductor

Intel retained its hefty grip on the chip market last year with healthy revenues and a record market share.

Ending 2011 as the top chip supplier, Intel carved out 15.6 percent of the market, a gain of 2.5 points from 2010, research firm IHS said today.

The latest figure proved to the highest at least since 2001 when the company took home a 13.9 percent share. Over the last five years, Intel's share has varied from 11.9 percent to 13.9 percent.

Strong sales growth and a major acquisition both contributed to the surge in … Read more

The popularity of Apple's iPad and iPhone is driving the shift of chip spending to wireless from computers, according to IHS-iSuppli.

Global spending by the world's top device makers on chips for wireless products amounted to $58.6 billion in 2011, up 14.5 percent from $51.2 billion in 2010, according to IHS iSuppli. As a result, spending for computers was topped by wireless, which became the world's largest semiconductor spending segment for device makers--aka, OEMs or original equipment manufacturers--in 2011.

Though this is not the first time wireless spending has exceeded that of computer-related spending (… Read more

Apple was the top semiconductor buyer in the world last year, according to new research from Gartner.

In a report issued today, the firm said that Apple outspent the rest of the industry with $17.3 billion spent in 2011. That's up sharply from the the $12.8 billion Apple spent in 2010.

The move puts Apple on top of Samsung Electronics and Hewlett-Packard, companies that came ahead of it in 2010's list. Samsung kept its number two spot from Gartner's study last year, and while not matching Apple's 34.6 percent growth year over year, … Read more

LAS VEGAS--While teams of people worked through the night to get their booths looking pretty--or at least not pretty awful-- there were some who could lounge a little and be glad that all they had to do was sip a little wine.

Fortunately, I was allowed to be embedded with them--in the Iraq sense, you understand--in order to get an understanding of just how these devious minds saw CES 2012.

When I speak of these devious minds, I do not even think of Justin Bieber's management team. No, I bow in reverence to those whose jobs it is to … Read more

Robert Noyce, a man as responsible as anyone for the name and culture of Silicon Valley, was honored today with a Google doodle to commemorate what would have been his 84th birthday.

Visitors to Google.com are greeted with an image of an integrated circuit with Google etched onto its center. Noyce is credited as one of the inventors of the integrated circuit, which combines multiple compute functions on a semiconductor.

Noyce was a co-founder of the Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel, which he co-founded with Gordon Moore and Andrew Grove in 1968.

He was considered a visionary and … Read more

Bad news for anybody in the business of making the chips that power PCs and store movies on iPads.

IHS today said it's dramatically reduced its forecast for semiconductor sales worldwide for 2011, cutting the expected growth rate from 2.9 percent all the way down to 1.2 percent. The industry has swung from boom to bust many times in its decades of existence, but hard times still have the same unpleasant ripple effects: less money to fund research into next-generation products and to pay for next-generation manufacturing facilities.

And it's those investments that ultimately matter to … Read more

Apple and Samsung may be battling each other in the courts over patent claims but the two companies are reportedly still working with each other on the technology for the next iPhone.

Samsung will supply the A6 processor slated to appear in the iPhone 5, or whatever Apple dubs its next phone, says The Korea Times. Citing industry sources, the publication reports that Samsung has boosted the production of Apple-designed A6 chips at its plant in Austin, Texas.

"Apple has been in talks with Samsung over shipment of its A6 quad-core mobile processor (AP) chips to be used in … Read more

A group of semiconductor heavyweights led by Intel, IBM, and Globalfoundries will invest $4.4 billion in a New York-based chip R&D hub, New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said today.

The five-year investment will target upstate New York, which is already a major center of chip research and development activity tied to IBM and Globalfoundries. The latter--Advanced Micro Devices' erstwhile chipmaking arm now owned by Abu Dhabi-based ATIC--is in the process of completing a massive manufacturing complex to make 28-nanometer chips in the town of Malta, NY. IBM has had manufacturing and R&D facilities … Read more

IBM has created what they're benignly calling "cognitive semiconductors," which are computers that can actually learn, think, and creatively process information. So, that sounds like a good idea, right? I mean, seriously, great work, IBM, but when one of your big backers is DARPA, you can't fool us. We know Skynet is upon us. Also, don't get caught with your patents down!