Home Depot for DIY Chips: What's the going trend?
The chip companies are never going to really love this business
The big picture: Earlier this year we were reviewing Analyst Day slides from leading semiconductor companies and a clear theme emerged. Large companies are all shifting in a similar direction, posing some potential challenges for their long-term positions. More and more customers are looking for special purpose chips, a coping mechanism for dealing with the slowdown in Moore's Law. And the big players are all looking to support those customers.
Opinion: What is a technology company?
If we use a broad definition of technology, then everything is a technology company and that's a problem
Facebook in the Metaverse of Madness
The technology is just not there yet, and the entire concept might not be either
Opinion: The Android-ification of Cars
Cars are still less than 10% revenue for most chip companies
Why it matters: Over the past few years the semis industry has become somewhat obsessed with autos. Every major chip company now dedicates a fair amount of coverage to cars in all their investor presentations. Or at least it seems that way. In part that reflects a genuine growth in auto semis, and in part the tapering of growth in many other categories like mobile, PCs, etc.
Lenovo drives form factor innovations in PCs and "extended reality"
Technical advances in devices are critical, but physical design is arguably even more attractive
Networking: the more things change, the more they stay the same
Some insight on Google's Aquila, built for ultra-low latency networking
AMD Ryzen 7000 is off to a slow start, Zen 4 sales are not good
The big picture: As you know, AMD launched their new Zen 4, Ryzen 7000 processors about two weeks ago now and hopefully you've all seen our reviews of the four models. There are a number of strengths to these new parts, including performance – however, AMD is facing a bit of a hurdle since their introduction, and that is convincing people to actually buy them.
Google unveils a host of open data and AI advancements at Cloud Next
And the launch of a new industry consortium called the OpenXLA Project
Ubisoft thinks you should pay $120 for Far Cry 6 GOTY Edition even though it didn't win a GOTY award
Does this mean I can declare myself Employee of the Month?
WTF?! Far Cry 6 Game of the Year (GOTY) Edition launches on Friday as an inexplicably strange bundle and costs $120. Several things make this version of the game weird, which I will touch on, but the main takeaway should be: Don't buy it. We don't want to encourage this type of marketing.
From PCs to cars: Nvidia, Qualcomm and Intel race to automotive semis
The influence that semiconductors and tech continue to have on traditional industries
Who will be Intel's first foundry customer?
The big picture: Intel has ambitions to create a foundry business by manufacturing chips for other companies. This is an important strategic initiative that the company will need to recoup the massive investment it is now making in fabs around the world.
Meet the... SQL Processing Unit?
The world is obsessed with "data"
In context: Databases are in something of a Golden Age right now. There is an immense amount of development taking place in and around the way we store and access data. The world is obsessed with "data," and while we would not call it the "new oil," our ability to manipulate and analyze data continues to advance in important ways. But at their heart, databases are fairly straightforward things - repositories of data.
Very Expensive: First reactions on Nvidia's RTX 4090, RTX 4080, DLSS 3 and more
The big picture: Nvidia finally took the wraps off their next-generation GeForce 40 series graphics cards, which feels like it's been a long time coming considering all the leaks and rumors over the last year or so. We've spent some time analyzing Nvidia's presentation to give our thoughts on the new RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 series GPUs and to break down some of Nvidia's confusing performance reveals that obfuscate the most important information.
US-China semiconductor battle: Second and third order consequences
Not so obvious ripple effects
Why it matters: Earlier this month, the US government blocked the sale of specific chips to anyone in China. We see this as an important change by the government in the tactics they are deploying. The United States has gone from blocking specific companies in China, to blocking all companies and focusing on specific products. This is a big change, and opens up the question – what exactly are they hoping to achieve? This matters obviously in that it can help us predict the outcome, but we increasingly hold the view that the government may not have entirely thought through how this will ultimately play out.
Intel teases Raptor Lake platform innovations as AMD prepares to launch Ryzen 7000
Beyond raw performance: wireless connectivity and AI enhancements
Hard vs. Soft: Software may be eating the world, but hardware monetizes better
Are software businesses less capital intensive than hardware?
Trillion with a T: A word on the Internet of Things
The world is awash with Things and Objects
VMware brings to life data processing units from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia
DPUs set to become a big deal on enterprise computing
There is TSMC and there's everybody else, can Samsung or Intel catch up?
The leading edge of semiconductor manufacturing
Why is Amazon building CPUs?
AWS is pushing customers to run workloads on Graviton CPUs more and more
Innovation in enterprise data management and understanding what a data lakehouse is
Cloudera CDP One brings advanced data management to the mainstream