TechEye |  |
- Silicon crunch "around the corner"
- Internet freedom is dying
- French police switch to desktop Linux
- Nearly 3 million Adobe accounts hacked
- Ballmer wants to stay on board
- Facebook to build its own town
- Blade Runner replicants? Well, not quite yet
- TSMC sizes are just all wrong
- TSMC: forget PCs
- Samsung shape shifts on node size
| Silicon crunch "around the corner" Posted: 04 Oct 2013 04:59 AM PDT Malcolm Penn, CEO of chip analyst Future Horizons, gave his annual rundown on the semiconductor market at the IEF2013 in Dublin, and he had some warnings of what the industry should expect. The financial crisis is clearly not over: “We’ve got three more years to go through, but still the [semiconductor] industry was not that bad". "We’re cruising at slow speed,” this year, Penn said. Companies have got money but they’re not spending it. “We’re still in this lack of confidence period. Everyone is still waiting, waiting, waiting. “The real fundamentals of the chip industry is that peaks and troughs are the natural part of the fabric. When this industry does rebound, it will rebound more strongly than it ever has. “ICs represent 10 percent of the world’s GDP because of its influence. It varies from country to country. Long term demand for units has been incredibly consistent over the last 30 years. The amount of units shipped over the last 30 years is 10-11 percent per annum. Penn said that sales are coming from capacity not stock, and most saleable inventory is gone. A small increase in demand will trigger a massive undersupply, he warned. “The basics of fab capacity is cast in stone," Penn said. "Capacity can’t be influenced for a year. We’ve not being building capacity which I think is dangerous. “There’s a silicon crunch just around the next corner. The most crucial part of the food chain is being treated with complete cavalier indifference,” said Penn. “That’s because the capital spend is too low.” Revenue per wafer starts continues to be flat at $9 per square centimetre on average for a very long period of time. Penn said that chip industry growth is driven by the four horsemen of the Apocalypse – economy, unit demand, fab capacity and ASPs. He forecast semiconductor growth in 2013 last year would be plus 10 percent growth at around $325 billion, but the first quarter was particularly bad. In 2014 he forecasts six percent growth. All new fab shell constructions are 450mm ready but the industry is divided on whether to say yes or no. The semi industry says no, or rather, wonders who is going to pay for it. If 450mm wafers do happen it will affect all the industry and the cost structure will annihilate any firm that is still 300mm based. The 200mm fabs will struggle. |
| Posted: 04 Oct 2013 04:35 AM PDT Internet freedom is going the way of the dodo, the dinosaur and the MP3 player thanks to government enforcers, according to a new study. A report, penned by the advocacy group Freedom House, looked at online trends in 60 countries. It noted that despite a pushback from activists that successfully blocked some governments' repressive laws, internet freedom plummeted in the last year. In 35 of the countries monitored, governments had expanded their legal and technical spying powers over the internet. Broad surveillance, new laws controlling web content and growing arrests of social media users drove a worldwide decline in internet freedom in the past year, the report concluded. Iceland has the most internet freedom while China, Cuba and Iran had the least. Declines in online freedom were led by three democracies - Brazil, India and the United States. Revelations by Edward Snowden showed that changes in US online freedom were eroding faster than Blackberry's bottom line. However, the US still made it to fourth in Freedom House's list. Some of the governments have acted against the internet because social media was used to organise national protests. Since May 2012, 24 countries have adopted some form of legislation restricting internet freedom. Bangladesh imposed a prison sentence of 14 years on a group of bloggers for writing posts critical of Islam. Bahrain has arrested 10 people for "insulting the king on Twitter," a teen in Morocco was jailed for 18 months for "attacking the nation's sacred values" over a Facebook post that ridiculed the king. A woman in India was arrested for "liking" a friend's Facebook status, the report said. Sanja Kelly, project director for Freedom on the Net at Freedom House said that blocking and filtering remain the preferred methods of censorship in many countries, but governments are increasingly looking at who is saying what online and finding ways to punish them. Laws restricting online freedom were blocked with a combination of pressure from advocates, lawyers, businesses, politicians and the international community, the report says. This is the third consecutive year internet freedom has declined, according to Freedom House. |
| French police switch to desktop Linux Posted: 04 Oct 2013 03:41 AM PDT The French National Gendarmerie has switched on a project running 37,000 desktop PCs with a custom version of Linux. Stage one of the plan is already online and by summer 2014 the agency plans to move all 72,000 of its desktop machines to open source. The move is being seen by Wired as another one of those "year of the Linux desktop" things where a huge roll-out in a government department is touted as proof that Windows is dead. Certainly the roll out is similar Linux break-throughs in Germany which were never repeated elsewhere. The French National Gendarmerie claims the total cost of ownership of Linux and open source applications is about 40 percent less than proprietary software from Microsoft. Aware that a switch might hack a few people off, the Gendarmerie first moved to cross-platform open source applications such as OpenOffice, Firefox, and Thunderbird. This allowed employees to keep using Windows while they got used to the new applications. Only then did the agency move them onto a Linux OS. It has taken an incredibly long time to get this far. The migration started in 2004, when the Gendarmerie faced providing all its users with access to its internal network. Moving from Office to OpenOffice was designed to save cash. Then the agency rolled out Firefox and Thunderbird in 2006. Finally, in 2008, it switched the first batch of 5,000 users to a Linux OS based on Ubuntu. Other governments, such as Brazil, have resolved to use more open source software. China and India even have their own government-sponsored Linux distributions. However, some government plans to move to Linux are hardly committed. The UK is committed to use open source software "wherever possible", for example. But the majority of its IT budget is spent on proprietary software from companies like Microsoft and Oracle. Microsoft is also entrenched in many companies who depend on its Active X tech, which only runs on Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser. |
| Nearly 3 million Adobe accounts hacked Posted: 04 Oct 2013 03:14 AM PDT Adobe has admitted that over 3 million of its customer accounts have been hacked and customer names, encrypted credit or debit card numbers, and expiration dates have been pinched. The company said that it was the target of a major security hack in which sensitive and personal data about millions of its customers have been put at risk. Writing in his blog, Brad Arkin, senior director of security for Adobe products and services said that customer information and illegal access to source codes for "numerous Adobe products" were taken in the hack. Source code for Acrobat, ColdFusion, and the ColdFusion Builder was lifted, although Adobe claimed that there was no "increased risk to customers as a result of this incident". Perhaps more importantly the hackers have nicked a huge number of Adobe customer IDs and encrypted passwords. Investigators don't "believe the attackers removed decrypted credit or debit card numbers" from Adobe's systems. Adobe is resetting the passwords on breached Adobe customer IDs, and users will receive an email telling them they might be affected. The software giant is telling customers whose credit or debit card information was taken, Arkin said. Adobe will offer these customers an option of enrolling in a one-year complimentary credit monitoring membership. Commenting on the news, Peter Armstrong, director of cyber security at Thales UK, said organisations are "either not taking cyber security seriously or are still unsure about how to tackle the problem". "Companies need to ensure they're protecting all of their assets, and that includes people, places and information," Armstrong said. "Security threats present themselves in a number of forms, and these increase by the day, if not hour, minute or second. For example, an employee could pose an internal threat through malicious intent or unintentional ignorance. |Regulation in this case is a necessity to alter corporate behaviour," Armstrong said. "Once the full extent of the cyber threat is uncovered, greater collaboration on cyber issues should lead to an improvement in cyber awareness and cyber standards". |
| Ballmer wants to stay on board Posted: 04 Oct 2013 02:34 AM PDT Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer dashed hopes that the days of their domination over Microsoft's Vole Hill were over by announcing they want re-election to the company board of directors. Some investors want to curb the dynamic duo's control of the company so that it can boldly go where no multinational has gone before. According to Reuters, the feeling among these shareholders is that Ballmer and Gates, both 57, need to go so that new leaders can transform the company and compete with Apple, which is doing so much better now that Tim Cook has taken over. Ballmer is supposed to be retiring as CEO some time in the next 12 months but there is no sign that Gates will leave. Three of Microsoft's top 20 investors have lobbied the board to press for Gates to step down, mostly because he is getting rid of his Volish shares and is considered less important to the company. However, it is more than likely that both Gates and Ballmer will be re-elected by shareholders at the annual meeting on 19 November. Ballmer made it clear that he plans to remain linked to the Vole as a major investor. Gates is still the company's largest individual shareholder with a 4.5 percent stake, followed by Ballmer with four percent. Next spring, Ballmer will eclipse Gates as the largest individual shareholder if Gates continues to sell 20 million shares each quarter. |
| Facebook to build its own town Posted: 04 Oct 2013 02:30 AM PDT Facebook is considering building its own small town so employees never have to leave work. New plans for the campus in Menlo Park include a $120 million, 394-unit housing community within walking distance of its offices. Called Anton Menlo, the 630,000 square-foot rental property will include a sports bar to a day care for pet dogs. According to the Wall Street Journal, the move towards a 24 hour work lifestyle is new, even for Silicon Valley. Facebook insists that employee retention isn't a major factor in the cunning plan. It's a good idea to have more housing options closer to campus, and people will want to live in it because “what they do is rewarding and they believe in our mission", Facebook reckons. There will be lots of amenities on the site, such as cafes, a store, a sports pub, bike repair shop with onsite storage, pool, spas, and gyms. The development will fix some of Facebook’s accommodation problems for workers. There is a housing shortage in Menlo Park and some employees found it difficult to find places to stay near the corporate campus. In many ways the move is turning the clock back. The US had "company towns" at the turn of the 20th century. American factory workers lived in communities owned by their employer and were provided housing, health care, law enforcement, church and just about every other service necessary. The downside is that your life becomes the company. The 20th century company towns died out because they were too oppressive for workers. The 2013 flavour will mean that employees will always be working. Only 10 percent of Facebook’s Menlo Park employees will be housed on-site, and we guess there will not be too many families. The apartments will go for market rates and some will be set aside for low-income staff. |
| Blade Runner replicants? Well, not quite yet Posted: 04 Oct 2013 02:24 AM PDT Robots are used across different industries and in the armed forces, but Ram Ramamoorthy said that it’s really the defence sector that’s driving most applications. Of course the film Blade Runner is set in October 2013 but it looks like there’s a way to go before beautiful Sarah tips up. |
| Posted: 04 Oct 2013 01:35 AM PDT A senior semiconductor analyst has claimed that chip giant TSMC is being economical with the truth about the size of its semiconductors. |
| Posted: 04 Oct 2013 01:33 AM PDT Yee-Chaung See, senior director of R&D at TSMC confirmed what we all really know – mobiles and tablets rule and PCs are on the way out. TSMC "will never" compete with its customers, said See. Unlike Intel? |
| Samsung shape shifts on node size Posted: 04 Oct 2013 01:32 AM PDT A senior semiconductor analyst has claimed that chip giant Samsung is being economical with the truth about the size of its semiconductors. |
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