-
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
Archives
- November 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- September 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
Categories
Meta
Monthly Archives: May 2009
Fab rankings
The latest semiconductor rankings are out for Q1 and there are a few moves around. Intel of course remains #1 at $6.5B for the quarter, nearly twice the size of #2 Samsung at $3.6B. In turn, Samsung is almost twice … Continue reading
Posted in semiconductor
Comments Off
Friday puzzle: series
Friday is the day before the weekend, of course, so time for something less directly related to EDA, design, semiconductors and, well, work. In the UK, there is an expression about being POETS, which stands for “p*** off early tomorrow’s … Continue reading
Posted in puzzles
Comments Off
San Francisco: Silicon Valley’s dormitory
San Francisco is a dormitory town for Silicon Valley. Not completely, of course. But unless you regularly drive between Mountain View and San Francisco you probably aren’t aware of the huge fleet of buses that now drives people from San … Continue reading
Posted in silicon valley
Comments Off
Test cases
I talked recently about customer support and how to handle it. One critical aspect of this is the internal process by which bugs get submitted. The reality is that if an ill-defined bug comes in, nobody wants to take the … Continue reading
Posted in engineering
Comments Off
Old standards
About 12 years ago I went on a three-day seminar about the wireless industry presented by the wonderfully named Herschel Shosteck (who unfortunately died of cancer last year although the company that bears his name still runs similar workshops). It … Continue reading
Posted in culture
Comments Off
Customer support
Customer support in an EDA company goes through three phases, each of which actually provides poorer support than the previous phase (as seen by the long-term customer who has been there since the beginning) but which is at least scalable … Continue reading
Posted in management
Comments Off
50th anniversary of the IC
On Friday the IEEE unveiled a plaque commemorating the 50th anniversary of the first practical IC, which was created at Fairchild’s original building at 844 Charleston Road in Mountain View (it’s just off San Antonio Road near 101). The plaque … Continue reading
Posted in silicon valley
Comments Off
DAC
DAC has just announced the program. You probably already know, but just in case you don’t: DAC is late this year, July 26-31st and it is in San Francisco at the Moscone Center (walking distance from where I live, yeah!). … Continue reading
Posted in eda industry
Comments Off
SaaS for EDA
SaaS, or software as a service, is the capability to deliver software over the net. In web 1.0 years this was called the ASP model, for application service provider. The archetypal company doing this is Salesforce.com, which provides customer relationship … Continue reading
Posted in eda industry, marketing
Comments Off
Royalties
Venture capitalists love royalties. They love royalties because they think that they might get an unexpected upside since they are hoping that a customer, in effect, signs up for a royalty and sells far more of their product than they … Continue reading