Opinion articles

I got to play with the Apple Vision Pro and saw the future of computing. Again.

Editor's take: I was one of the lucky few who got to attend Apple's WWDC keynote presentation in person, and also got to try the new Apple Vision Pro headset for a 25-minute hands-on, er, heads-on demo. The experience was very good – as it certainly should be for a product that's going to cost a whopping $3,499 – but it was also a bit more similar to other devices I've tried over the years than I initially expected it to be.

The new trade war: China's dramatic rise in the EV market

Hybrid AI concept would move AI generation from the cloud to our devices

The AI chip market landscape: Choose your battles carefully

Dell and Nvidia launch Project Helix, generative AI for businesses

Is Nvidia now a software stock? The competitive advantage of CUDA

The big picture: The world has gone mad for AI. Setting aside what the latest AI models are actually good for, it is not surprising that investors are looking for stocks with "AI exposure." Unfortunately, this turns out to be a fairly short list at the moment, and at the top of that list is Nvidia.

IBM unleashes new AI strategy with "watsonx"

Opinion: Everybody wants to software

In context: For years, hardware makers have observed the attention and valuation multiples enjoyed by software companies with envy. Employees at hardware companies have also longed for the fancy perks their peers receive at software companies, while their hardware teams are fortunate to even have coffee at work. Software may be eating the world, but does that mean only software companies get foosball tables at work?

Amazon debuts Bedrock, a new cloud service for AI-generated text and images

How many CPUs do we need?

The tech world has a new obsession with AI

Latest Cadence tools bring generative AI to chip and system design

Education or experience: Should IT jobs focus more on candidate skills and less on degrees?

How to sell a CPU

Editor's take: Much of the focus in semiconductors is on chip performance, and so for many outside the process it can be mystifying why sometimes a "better" chip loses out to a "weaker" chip. To name just one example, Intel still sells a lot of server CPUs despite their poor comparison with the latest AMD or Arm offerings.

With no easy path to replace Apple revenue, can Qualcomm ever grow again?

Amazon Sidewalk opens up to third-parties offering a low-bandwidth, long-range network for IoT devices

Does Android need saving? If yes, here's how to do it.

Editor's take: Android is a hot mess. Google should make it truly open source. This would relieve them of a major antitrust vulnerability and infuse a massive amount of energy to the project.

For new hardware companies, waiting is the hardest part

Microsoft Copilot enables next-gen AI for Word, Excel and other Office applications

Google unveils AI tools for Gmail, Google Docs, Meet and more

Blurred lines: the difference between fabless and foundry companies

Lenovo revs desktop workstations co-designed with Aston Martin

Opinion: Semis Top Five

Editor's take: The industry has changed a lot in the eight years since we wrote our first analysis on the top five chip companies. We anticipated semis were no longer a growth industry and the only way for companies to keep growing was to win market share (hard) or buy other companies. This is especially true in semiconductors because most of these companies outsource their manufacturing to foundries like TSMC and GlobalFoundries.

The computerized, cloudified 5G network is getting real

Forward-looking: One of the most famous phrases about the value of networks came from Sun Microsystems' Scott Gage in 1984 when he declared that "the network is the computer." That long-time Sun tagline referred more to the value of connecting computers together and the concept of thin clients attaching to a centralized computing infrastructure than cellular networks. Nevertheless, it remains a prescient, pithy synopsis of where the computing and telecom worlds have been headed for the last three decades.

China on autos: Consider yourselves warned