Failure by design

With the smartphone market showing year over year growth of 60+%, and the recent Iphone announcement likely to popularize WIFI, I see wifi becoming a huge driver for semiconductor sales.

My two picks: Marvell Technology (MRVL) and Atheros (ATHR) (more…)

Well after a miserable first quarter with a giant loss, AMD looks like it is going to keep losing for the rest of 2008. ATI and AMD are both failing to perform and a miserably falling behind their competitors. AMD still does not have 65 nm products on sale in volume, and looks like it is just happy to live another day. Nvidia is dominating ATI in the discrete graphics market with AMD failing to release its latest generation of video on schedule. (more…)

Ok so using some of the money I got from selling my GM calls, I bought a D-link DIR-655 802.11n router and wireless PCI adaptor. Now the benefits of wireless N are numerous: 4x the range, 300 Mb/s throughput, and less interference. How does it do this is MIMO (multiple in, multiple out), which basically opens multiple channels of communication with the router and allows each adapter to process multiple channels simultaneously. Interference is reduced since if any channel has interference there are other channels to provide bandwidth.

(more…)

AMD’s recent purchase of ATI for $5.4 billion, which is scheduled to be completed in early 2008, will have a huge impact on an industry dominated by a few players. Intel is by far the largest supplier of computer graphics, due integrated graphics included in OEM laptops and desktops as part of their popular chipsets. The discrete graphics portion of the market is roughly held in equal portions by ATI and Nvidia. This balance has historically oscillated around the 50% market which each company taking the lead momentarily in 6 month product cycles. (more…)