Trends & Market Research

Shanda Group invests $15 million in AR display company Among the many issues that make AR development a complex proposition, latency and FOV (field of view) are big issues. Getting a small, light-weight high-resolution and bright display superimposed in your vision area is challenging. One company that has been working on this problem for the past seven years is Israel-based … Read more

The VR engine of future mobile HMDs Qualcomm was an early supporter of Google’s Day Dream reference design, before it was even announced, and as such Google had early access to Qualcomm’s roadmap. It was good enough for Google’s ambitions and so the Google heartily endorsed it. That endorsement was then taken up by HMD builders like HTC, and new … Read more

GE former CEO finds changing course is a lot harder than running the company; so is weathering investor impatience The news of Jeff Immelt’s replacement as CEO got me thinking about these dark days for CEOs. Technology CEOs are dealing with The Chasm, a big one. The growing capabilities of the cloud to compute, interpret, analyze, and communicate could well eliminate … Read more

A gathering of tribes What do you call a conference that combines a serious call to action from a major semiconductor company and an invitation to go navel-gazing at the Esalen institute for the incurably Californian? That would be Augmented World Expo 2017, whose target demographic seems to range from hardnosed engineers with stars in their eyes to some distinctly … Read more

Our lives will be different beyond imagination with AR When consumer smart glasses become common, my forecast is 2020, they will change how we behave, and how the world behaves toward us. When you examine the root cause of bigotry, belligerence, and bullying, it all (and other social symptoms) trace back to fear. Anxiety, apprehension, and apathy are also rooted … Read more

Giant CPUs and big plans There was a bit more of a showdown between AMD and Intel this year as AMD has got new products to put up against Intel in addition to a compelling argument. So compelling in fact, that it looks like Intel has jiggered their roadmap to answer AMD’s claim that Intel has gotten a little fat … Read more

Qualcomm introduces new audio products At Qualcomm Technologies Inernational voice and music developer conference in Shenzhen, China, the company introduced a new Qualcomm Smart Audio Platform, which will enable the development of smart, net-worked speakers. The company is offering two SoC options based on the APQ8009 and APQ8017 and including them with software options to allow OEMs to build smart … Read more

11.5 TFLOPS and 11 billion triangles/second  AMD has taken two WX 7100s and combined them into one AIB. The GPUs have 16 GB of GDDR5 each, and run two separate apps, or can be combined in Crossfire to run one app. Like the single GPU WX 7100, the Radeon Pro Duo is based on the Polaris architecture. AMD has 2x … Read more

As computers make more decisions for us; who will be there to question their choices? In my constant search for knowledge, which is best undertaken when deadlines loom, I found an interesting news story published in the New York Times after Chief Justice Roberts gave a talk at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He was asked by the college president Shirley Ann … Read more

PTC says it is happy with the way its current strategy is going. The company is transitioning its customer base to subscription, which will smooth out the company’s revenues and it is building new business in IoT. The company hopes to see a synergistic effect between its IoT business, its IoT tools, its PLM products, and its service products. It’s … Read more

$984 million in sales, $73 million GAAP loss for the quarter, sales and profits down from last quarter AMD reported its calendar Q1 2017, revenues of $984 billion, an operating income (GAAP) loss of $29 million, and net GAPP loss of $73 million, or -$0.08 EPS. The revenue of $98 million was down 11.3% sequentially and up 18% year-over-year. “We … Read more