Robert Dow

It’s spring and a new crop of graphics processors are being readied for market and I’m very excited about what’s coming. I was going to say graphics processors are so cool—but then I would have had to add seventeenleven sentences explaining that I was using the vernacular convention of the word and not the thermal usage of the word, for … Read more

Two gigantic camps are forming for a war of the hand. One is the incumbent Nokia/Symbian-TI axis, and the other is the bullies from PC-land, Intel-Microsoft. Nowhere in the history of technology has a market exploded so fast with so much technology as has the handheld market. With PC sales slowed, Intel and Microsoft have no choice but to enter … Read more

PCI Express will revolutionize workstations; CAD is the big winner Workstation users, especially high-end workstation users, have an insatiable appetite for high performance in their workstations, and historically they have never gotten all the power they have needed. The situation is about to improve as computer architecture is due to undergo a major overhaul. Performance is measured in terms of … Read more

As we were working on our new Multimedia in Handhelds report, I was struck by the partnerships and technology transfers that go into the SoCs developed for this booming market, and also by the lack of standards. Known as application proces sors, media processors, and smartphone engines, these SoCs support media-rich applications such as video camcorder, megapixel digital still camera, … Read more

Friction—n 1: a state of conflict between persons [syn: clash] 2: the resistance encountered when one body is moved in contact with another—Las Vegas doesn’t get it; they should make it smoother for visitors We had been warned. Richard called and said the airport was a mess and to get there two or three hours before the flight. So we … Read more

Two thousand three was the watershed year for the PC and in some respects the multimedia and graphics market as well. It was the year we saw the leader of graphics unseated, and the number two supplier rocket to prominence in the eyes of the users and the stock market. XGI coalesced out of the remnants of SiS’s graphics group … Read more

I’d like to think it was our enthusiastic forecasts and long-term interest in the Entertainment PC that’s attracted all the current interest in the category—in fact, it’s just become a category within the last year—but I fear it’s all Microsoft’s doing, again. I do all the work, they get the credit—sigh, such is life as a soothsayer. Fujitsu’s C90EW EPC … Read more

  This week in Tech Watch: DVDs, Home Entertainment, and, yes, Comdex 2003. Editorial from this week’s Tech Watch There’s not much sense in going on and on about the death of Comdex. Either you were there and you have your own opinions or you weren’t there and you’re too pleased with yourself to give a rat’s patootie about what … Read more

Everett Rodgers’s adopter curve. Jon’s adopter curve. Since we’re all real smart we all know all about the early/late adopter curve. We quote it and some of us even base business and marketing plans on it. I may have bad news for those of you who are expecting the “hockey stick” effect next year (which has always been a next-year … Read more