GLG News by Semiconductor & Component Experts

§ By some estimates there are over 50 companies currently offering products that they call solid state drives (SDDs)  §  Many of these products have been designed hastily and some of them show no improvement in benchmarking tests vs. hard disk drive metrics  §  There...

* There are rumors that Western Digital is working on a 20,000 RPM Raptor drive  * Other HDD companies such as Seagate, Fujitsu and others are also working on improving rotational as well as track change drive latencies  * SSDs are starting to compete against HDDs for performance oriented...

Both the server and PC markets seem to have held up very well during the past months, and barring a catastrophic collapse of the economy, likely will continue to do well.  Credit must go to the innovations in both technology and business processes achieved primarily by HP, Dell and Intel.

The next evolution of Xen software puts further pressure on VMWare’s market share and margins.  This is a clear indication that VMWare’s business model will require a major overhaul sometime in the next year or two.  Microsoft will be less impacted since they have less today. 

Certain parts of the automotive passive and active safety original equipment market are moving towards commodity status, with volume being the key to future profitability. Tier One safety equipment suppliers must invest in those technologies that will bring greater value and margins.

* Nintendo and InPhase are apparently doing some joint work on holographic storage  * InPhase has been pursuing a holographic storage system (primarily for write once archive applications) for several years  * Any holographic storage product likely will not be in a Nintendo game system for...

* SanDisk recently revealed a proposal for creating a single metric representing the expected lifetime of a solid state drive  * The SanDisk metric is called “Longterm Data Endurance” or LDE  * The SanDisk proposal comes at a time that several organizations such as IDEMA and JEDEC are discussing...

Intel’s next-gen Nehalem processor ups the performance bar, making it increasingly difficult for AMD.  Server manufacturers and software vendors will also be impacted, positively or negatively, by this generation of processors, which will also provide further impetus to cloud computing.

Cree is becoming a 'total LED company'. It has chip capability to produce SiC based LED chips. It has packaging capability by acquiring Cotco. It has fixture capability by acquiring its own creation LLF. It has now created tutoring center in China to train engineers/technicians in China to be ready...

!. The introduction of these new LED's from Cree will alllow Cree to be able to compete both in applications where a smaller form factor is needed, and in applications such as linear strip lighting where a wider viewing angle LED is required. 2. This smaller form factor package is probably less costly...