This is what caught my eye this week.
- Why 8 CPU cores in smartphones are a bad idea – an auto industry lesson by Patrick Moorhead, Forbes – TL;DR? Putting 8 cores in a mobile chip is like having 5 blades on a razor. You can also read the rebuttal from Gary Sims (he also makes a few good points) here.
- Moore’s Law milestones by David Lammer, IEEE Spectrum – How is this still a thing and why am I bringing it up? Don’t look at me, ask Murphy. Or maybe David Kanter.
- Semi IP licensing growth slows, vendor ranking stabilizes by Peter Clarke, EE Times Europe – Synopsys ships 1.3 billion ARC processors every year and Cadence bought Tensilica. Fun times to be in silicon IP!
- China’s smartphone market reaching saturation as Apple takes top spot by Gary Sims, Android Authority – Apple steals the headline (naturally) and the article focuses mostly on Xiaomi; have a look at the (lack of) YoY growth for everyone else though. It’s a different world out there.
- Meet CHIP the world’s first $9 computer that could give Raspberry Pi a run for its money by Rob Williams, Hot Hardware – It’s not a long way to the bottom if you want to rock n’ roll. Allwinner was in the news at MWC 2015 for announcing a 64-bit processor worth $5. Don’t be fooled by the price though, the company builds solid platforms; we’ve used Allwinner-based tablets for GPU driver work and they are good development platforms.
- prpl Foundation strengthens board with new members from Broadcom, Lantiq, Qualcomm [press release] – Art has been doing amazing work since taking the reins of the prpl Foundation. After creating a solid Security PEG two months ago, he has now built a strong board that is ready to take the foundation forward .
- IoT under threat, says Semico Research [media alert] – “While there is no 100 percent guarantee, a hardware solution is more difficult to crack than a software solution,” says Tony Massimini, Chief of Technology at Semico Research. I never miss a report from Tony Massimini, he always tells it like it is.
- Ford CEO: we won’t take a back seat to Google and Apple by Ina Fried, Re/code – If you thought it was hard to run an automotive company when the financial crisis hit a few years ago, think again. I’ve always had a soft spot for Ford so I hope they continue to succeed. However, two words: Tesla Motors.