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Tid-bits
11/17 - The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) nudged its forecast for the market higher—again. In spite of consumers recently shelling out over $3.00 a gallon in gasoline, energy prices have not had much of a negative impact. The association had originally predicted flat results for 2005. The chip industry is notoriously difficult to predict, with cycles going boom and bust. It's confusing, because first of all there's the lion's share of the market which is held by more established countries and then there's the emerging markets, which are the main reason that the industry is experiencing this healthy growth. "Asia-Pacific remains the driver of the semiconductor industry".
The performance gap between between desktops and their notebook counterparts is narrowing. Laptop computers because of their cramped quarters have thermal limitations that can force manufacturers to lower the graphics clock and memory speeds for those that use discrete solutions. This accounts for part of the performance differential between desktops and notebooks. Loyd Case compared an nVidia GeForce 7800 GTX card with a Geforce Go 7800 GTX and found that the clocks were lower in the notebook version. This was "most likely done for thermal and power considerations".
LCD TVs are selling like hotcakes. The sweet spot—as measured by popularity—has inched up. Consumers can expect to find LCD TVs in the 30- to 32-inch range for around $1,300-$2,500 this holiday season. "Increased availability and plummeting prices have finally pushed larger size LCD TVs into the mainstream".
Maxtor is pulling out of the one inch hard drive business before even getting started. The one inch hard drive is designed for consumer electronic (CE) devices. Many believe that flash memory shall supplant the hard drive in CE. Maxtor canceled its plans for the drives due to "recent developments in the market" (Dow Jones).
Samsung and Hynix are working on long-term deals to supply memory to Apple. The memory makers hope to lock in future market, while Apple hopes to lock in supply. Prices are a function of supply and demand. Strong demand and tight supply sends prices up. The deals that Apple is working on will create a tight supply of NAND flash memory, which will send the prices up. Prices are in fact already up due to tight supply. "A deal with Apple and the two Korean NAND flash producers would lead to an even tighter supply of the chips in the global market"
Symantec has released a book on database encryption. Book should probably be required reading for anyone who stores credit card data, social security numbers, or other forms of sensitive informaiton on company servers: "there have been almost 100 reported data breaches" this year. Encryption done right is very secure. You encrypt with someone's public key, and you decrypt with your very own private key. So long as those who break in and steal data do not possess the private key, the data is safe.
A webcast of Bill Gates' keynote Tuesday does not appear to be available (unfortunately). However, a transcript of the keynote can be found here.
HP is expected to post strong results today for the last quarter. Since Mark Hurd took over the company, it seems there's a competitor in town capable of taking on the likes of Dell. Speculation abounds that one day HP may spin off its PC Unit, much like IBM did it's PC business to Lenovo. "That might not be a bad idea down the road".