TechEye |  |
- TSMC to spend, spend spend
- Asus intros ARM based servers
- Lenovo shakes off Big Blue image with new logo
- Chipzilla’s Altera on-again off-again relationship is on
- North Korean hackers could kill
- Avago buys Broadcom
- More than half of UK homes own tablets
- Tablets haven’t had their day yet
- IBM aims predictive analysis at industry sectors
| Posted: 29 May 2015 05:53 AM PDT
It will also spend over $10 billion in 2015 on capital expenditure. Every time a semiconductor manufacturer produces a new process, it involves buying expensive equipment from specialist suppliers in order to build the chips. TSMC – the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co – makes micoprocessors for a number of so called "fabless" designers of semiconductors including Apple and Nvidia. Yesterday it said that it spent $1.9 billion on R&D last year, and now has a staff of 4,600 engineers. It also produced 8.26 million 12 inch silicon wafers, according to a report in the Taipei Times. The company is set to mass produce 16 nanometre semiconductors this year while it is also producing a 16 nanometre specialist chip next year that is 50 percent more power efficient. It also promised to produce 10 nanometre semiconductors in the second half of 2016. Every time a semiconductor manufacturer reduces the line width of semiconductors, it means that more dies can be produced on a single silicon wafer, allowing for efficiencies of scale.        |
| Posted: 29 May 2015 05:35 AM PDT
The ThunderX series it is claimed outperform two socket server machines for both cloud workloads and HPS benchmarks. The company has teamed up with Cavium to produce the products. The boards and servers will be available in the fourth quarter of this year and support single and dual socket configurations, integrated accelerators, and it is claimed are optimised for cloud, big data and scaleable web workloads Cavium and Asus allso claim they have very high energy efficiency and good performance.     |
| Lenovo shakes off Big Blue image with new logo Posted: 29 May 2015 01:52 AM PDT
It brought out dance club music, a Chinese movie actress, and a retired NBA player at a company event that hailed Lenovo's new logo and said that users need something a little cooler. CEO Yang Yuanqing told the Beijing event that Lenovo devices need to be more capable, fashionable, and they need to have personality. This is a little shocking when you consider that the Thinkpad image is legendary for belonging to faceless business clones filling out Excel spreadsheets on the 7.30am train to Paddington. In fact the company buyers actually invested in Lenovo gear precisely for that faceless, but reliable quality. Lenovo wants to hang around with the cool kids and it is going to target consumers. It has hired Hollywood actor Ashton Kutcher as a product engineer after all he played Steve Jobs in a movie so knows exactly how to draw a rounded rectangle. It has unveiled a redesigned logo that's colourful and has lettering more suitable for Internet marketing. It is apparently designed so partners can change the background. David Roman, Lenovo's chief marketing officer, said the world has changed. Now consumers drive the market, and buy tech products that they then bring to work. This influences which IT brands companies end up buying. On Thursday, Lenovo held a major event in Beijing, called Tech World, to usher in a new age for the company. It invited journalists from across the globe, and showed off concept product innovations, including a dual-screen smartwatch, and a smartphone fitted with a projector.     |
| Chipzilla’s Altera on-again off-again relationship is on Posted: 29 May 2015 01:51 AM PDT
The Hollywood gossip mags have confirmed that Intel and Altera have been seeing each other and this time Intel is determined to buy. The deal is set to be about $15 billion, at least according to the New York Post. It is expected that an announcement of a merger might even be as soon as today. Altera sources have confirmed that a deal is close but warned that the talks could still fall apart. If Altera does not agree then Intel might actually mount a hostile takeover. Chipzilla signed a standstill agreement earlier this year with Altera that expires on June 1, giving the world’s largest chipmaker the option to launch a hostile bid after that. What might have changed is an increased awareness that the Avago purchase of Broadcom was going to go ahead. That deal signalled a period of consolidation in the industry as more Internet of Stuff products are demanded.     |
| North Korean hackers could kill Posted: 29 May 2015 01:50 AM PDT
Prof Kim Heung-Kwang told the BBC that the country had around 6,000 trained military hackers and is spending ten to 20 percent of its huge military budget on cyber war projects. Prof Kim has called for international organisations to step in to prevent North Korea launching more severe attacks before it was too late. For 20 years Prof Kim taught computer science at Hamheung Computer Technology University, before escaping the country in 2004. While Prof Kim did not teach hacking techniques, his former students have gone on to form North Korea’s notorious hacking unit Bureau 121 hacking unit. He said that he keeps in contact with people in North Korea. North Korea has been harassing other countries is to demonstrate that North Korea has cyber war capacity and it is reaching a point where their cyber-attacks could have similar impacts as military attacks, killing people and destroying cities. A Stuxnet-style attack designed to destroy a city has been prepared by North Korea and is a feasible threat,” Prof Kim said. Prof Kim said that if North Korea continues to cause damage in this way, an organisation such as Icann should ban North Korea from the Internet.     |
| Posted: 29 May 2015 01:49 AM PDT
The deal is the largest merger of chipmakers ever and turned a minor company run by a ferocious dealmaker into one of the biggest industry players. It should also put the fear of God into its large rival Qualcomm. Avago works the wireless and industrial markets and it is offering Broadcom shareholders $17 billion in cash and Avago shares valued at $20 billion. Broadcom makes connectivity chips, which are used widely in smartphones made by Apple and Samsung. The deal is the biggest so far by Avago Chief Executive Hock Tan, who has developed a small chipmaker into a $36 billion company through acquisitions since taking the over nine years ago. The combined company is going to be based in Singapore and known as Broadcom and will be the third-largest U.S. semiconductor maker by revenue, behind Intel and Qualcomm. It is not a bad price either more than 28 percent over Broadcom’s market value of $28.85 billion and it is fairly likely that the new company is going places. People want the cheaper chips and new products to power Internet-connected gadgets that the two companies make. Avago and Broadcom first spoke about a potential merger in October 2014 but could not agree on a price, said people familiar with the matter who are unauthorized to speak publicly about it. Talks heated up in April when Avago approached Broadcom again with higher offers, and negotiations continued until the two agreed on a deal. Broadcom is the weaker partner and has been struggling to grow as competition in the mobile chip business intensifies. The company’s revenue increased by just 1.5 percent last year. The new Broadcom would have annual revenue of $15 billion and an enterprise value of $77 billion, the companies said in a statement.     |
| More than half of UK homes own tablets Posted: 28 May 2015 08:35 AM PDT
Only two percent of homes owned one in 2011 – a year after Apple's iPad launched. And they're most popular with people between the ages of 35 and 54, with nearly two in three people owning one. It's not just people of a certain age, though. Ofcom said seven in 10 children between the ages of five and 15 had access to a tablet by the end of last year. They don't have to share tablets, either. One in three kids in this age group have their own device. Worse than that, one in 10 three to four year olds are glued to their tablets. News apps are popular with grown ups, with 48 percent getting their daily fix using one. The silver surfers don't seem to have really engaged with the tablet computer yet, according to this Ofcom table of tablets.     |
| Tablets haven’t had their day yet Posted: 28 May 2015 06:27 AM PDT
That's according to a report from IDC, which said cellular tablets and 2-in-1 devices are showing strong growth in some regions. Jean Philippe Bouchard, an IDC research director, said: "Cellular connected devices fill multiple needs for vendors and carries around they world. They offer a quick solution to price and margin erosion, and when compared to smartphones they offer a less expensive way for carriers to increase their subscriber base." Bouchard said that these type of devices currently only represent a small part of the whole market but will grow this year and beyond, compared to wi-fi only devices. The rise of smartphones with larger screens – so called "phablets" – are having an impact on the market because people think that they won't need a tablet because a phone with a bigger screen fits the bill. IDC released a chart showing tablet and 2-in-1 share by operating system, which shows a decline in the Android operating system and a gain in the Windows operating system.     |
| IBM aims predictive analysis at industry sectors Posted: 28 May 2015 06:15 AM PDT
The company is targeting the systems at sectors including telecomms, banking, insurance and retail and claims it will give them the ability to unveil and then act on business insights. It gives several examples of what it believes the IBM products can bring to the sector. For example, shops can assess the amount of money individual products and product lines make to help them decide which products they should carry and promote. Banks can use spending partners of customers to give them an idea of what's happening to them in terms of money and their lives. And oil and gas companies can reduce costs by predicting failures before they happen and be more productive. IBM claims that by using these analytic techniques, enterprises will be able to better understand their customers, their assets and operations and to make better decisions and cut costs.     |
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