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Google Glass is gaining more interest.  The product will not be officially available to consumers until early 2014.  However, devices have been delivered to developers. 

CNET got its hands on one for a teardown.  Except the teardown didn’t go much further than a few pieces that could be easily removed. To get to the processor or memory would require destroying the plastic housing.  At a retail price of about $1,500 that is not likely to happen.  What has been figured out comes from Google’s specs, software developers and debugging tools.

According to Google, Glass has a high resolution display.  The camera is 5 megapixel and the video is 720p.  Connectivity is 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.  Total Flash memory is 16 GB of which 12 GB is available to the user.  It has a micro USB cable and charger. 

What has been determined is that the main processor is the Texas Instruments OMAP 4430 with 1 GB of RAM.  TI first targeted OMAP for the smartphone market.  It has lost market share to other chip vendors, notably Qualcomm.  However, TI has refocused OMAP on a broader market, including consumer. Amazon uses the TI OMAP 4430 in the Kindle Fire. 

Android developers note that there are 16 sensors which are part of the Google Android Sensor Manager system.  These sensors are used by apps developers.  They are listed:

Well, the title is a little facetious, but given all the recent acquisitions in the 3^rd Party IP market, it may certainly feel like that to some people. You can relax, there are still plenty of IP vendors left in the market and that won’t change anytime soon.

So what is going on?

• Does this foretell a slowing in the market growth so the smart people are getting out now?
• Is this the start of the long prophesied market maturation?
• Are we finally seeing the so-called market consolidation down to 4 IP vendors?

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard these questions over the last 10 years. It seems like anyone with an opinion on these issues usually speaks up when certain activities occur – like one IP vendor being acquired by another IP vendor. Or people see the acquisitions as a sign that the IP market can’t keep growing at the same rate as the last 3-4 years, which by the way was really quite good. In fact much better than the overall semiconductor market.

Let’s start by looking at the 3^rd Party IP market growth over the last several years.

3^rd Party IP Market Growth Rates: 

There are hundreds of semiconductor fabs, spread all over the world. The trend over the past several years has been one of consolidation into several main manufacturing centers in the Asia/Pacific region, the United States, and Europe. Unfortunately for the industry, many of these fabs are located in areas prone to earthquakes. Some locations are also at an added risk of damage from tsunamis generated by earthquakes.

The northeast coast of Japan is a prime example; in March 2011, the region suffered a massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami that killed 15,883 people, injured over 6,000, and left almost 2,700 still missing. The disaster also caused seven meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The plant is still running on makeshift equipment and recently suffered a power outage that left four fuel storage pools without cooling water. In terms of damage to buildings, almost 130,000 buildings were completely leveled, and over a million others sustained some sort of damage. The amount of devastation was astounding, but the Japanese have done an amazing job of clearing away debris and recovering in the two years since, as illustrated by these photos posted at the Atlantic.

Last week while traveling in the Bay Area, I forgot my GPS so I used my iPhone 4s to guide me around. My rental car came with a Microsoft SYNC USB connection, so I thought I’d have no problems using my phone with the car system. I plugged in my phone, input my next destination and was on my way. Not quite.

MapQuest audio was not working. I had to unplug the phone from the car to hear the turn by turn navigation. The iPhone 4s uses an A-GPS or assisted GPS and has an integrated digital compass, providing additional directional information. But for some reason, the mapping application was continually re-calculating. I was on the route, but the navigation system thought I was somewhere else!

I drove to the ISQED SensorsCon Conference and Becky Oh, President and CEO of PNI Sensors provided some great insight on sensors and the real world. Nine-axis sensing is common today. The combination of a gyroscope, accelerometer and magnetic sensors provide the tracking data to determine up and down, side to side, and back and forth movements. Sensors can register how fast we’re moving, which direction we’re facing, and turning radius.

So have you seen what DARPA is up to lately?  They appear to be giving robots cinder blocks to throw around willynilly.

Take a look at how BigDog has evolved over time.  It can take some abuse.

Is the BigDog too much for you? How about the LittleDog. Cute, and isn't throwing large boulders at us. I like it.

On February 25th, 2012, Altera and Intel announced an agreement to build next-generation, high performance FPGAs on Intel’s 14nm Tri-Gate technology.   This is significant because Altera has used TSMC as their sole foundry for years.   Altera has never before been swayed by price or lured away by the promise of technology.  But, as the saying goes, “never say never”.  As of today Altera has two foundry relationships.

This announcement comes less than a week after Achronix announced the successful rollout of their Speedster 22i which is being built using Intel’s 22nm Tri-Gate technology.  Achronix used TSMC for their 65nm and 40nm product development.  It was somewhat of a risk, but Achronix left the TSMC technology track at 40nm, skipped 32/28nm and went straight to Intel for their 22nm Tri-Gate technology.   Was Altera watching in envy?

During TSMC’s Q4 2012 financial conference call, Morris Chang, TSMC’s CEO, was asked at what technology node and for which end markets does TSMC view Intel as becoming a more fierce competitor?   Morris Chang is not new to this business.   He stated that he already viewed Intel as a fierce competitor.

Hello, my name is Adrienne, and my son is a video game addict.  He’s only 8, but he loves games for iOS devices, the Wii, Xbox 360, and online Flash games.  But the game that has inspired the most “gotta-have-it” mania, and the most dollars leaving our pockets, has been Skylanders.  If you’re the parent of an 8-10 year old boy, you probably just groaned in sympathy as you read that last sentence.  If not, then here’s the short version of what has become Activision’s latest $1 billion game. Skylanders is a video game that is playable on all the different platforms (with the appropriate software), but it’s the real-world collectible component that has really taken off.  Skylanders is played with a platform onto which a player can put their character, and that figure comes to life onscreen.   The platform has a wired or wireless connection to the game console, and the figure has an NFC connection to the platform.  Each figure remembers any points or achievements it earns, so that it can be taken to a friend’s house and played there. Skylanders has taken the “toys to life” category to a whole new level.  It passed the $1 billion worldwide retail sales mark in 15 months, with half of those sales in the U.S.

At CES Toshiba announced the industry’s first microUSB Adaptor Module for the TransferJet standard.  Production will begin March 2013 and will be targeted for smart phones, tablets, and the PC peripheral market.

The astounding thing about TransferJet is that it can transfer a one-minute HD movie in about three seconds, and it takes about two minutes to transfer a full DVD sized movie.  At CES they had a few demos showcasing how easy TransferJet is to use between tablets, smart phones, cameras, and notebooks.  Basically, you simply pick the data you want to transfer, tap the two devices together (after each device gives permission), and voila.  Done.  It really does take just a few moments before you’re able to watch the video on a completely new device.

The rate of transfer is about 375Mbps, which is about 8X faster than WiFi, and about 1000x times better than NFC.  For security and functional reasons, the data transfer only works up to 5 centimeters before the devices are disconnected.  The farther the devices are from one another, the slower the transfer speed.

Semico recently released an NFC report and had this to say about TransferJet:

I'd love to give an unbiased review of SpacePoint, PNI's 9-axis motion tracker module for games, but I can't.  At CES they were demoing their motion tracking module with a gun controller and a first person shooter custom game.  They put that controller in my hands, and as I leaned forward, my avatar moved forward.  As I leaned backward, my avatar moved backward.  The pointing technology was accurate, and very responsive.  I was in love almost immediately.

See, their pointer technology is the most accurate I've experienced for a pointer controller.  I could point the controller in an intuitive manner, and it aimed at and hit the right targets with little drift.  Given a bit more practice, I doubt there would be any drift at all, a hypothesis I’m more than willing to test out (was that too strong of a hint?).

But this is basically tech that anyone will be able to pick up and use accurately. Their demo included a gun controller with a joystick next to the trigger to make looking around within the game environment super easy and intuitive.  Forward and backward movements are done by slightly leaning forward or backward, something that anyone could easily take to.

I can see something like this being very popular with friends who want to play Halo together, and I hope someone in the future makes a controller like this that could work with Tribes (a flying game).