All Blog Posts (131)

Peter Clarke has recently published the Silicon 60: hot start-ups to watch.

There's an interesting side discussion asking "…

I attended a briefing in London in early January to hear plans from Government and TSB regarding the merging of 2 UK centric technology showcases: Technology World and Innovate.

The aim of the new combo is to create a premier event for trade and innovation networking. It's a mix of exhibition, trade show, seminar, workshop and keynotes formally making it - what is known as - "a…

This made me chuckle - hope it does the same for you!

...

An engineer dies and reports to the pearly gates. St. Peter checks his dossier and says, “Ah, you’re an engineer — you’re in the wrong place.”

So the engineer reports to the gates of hell and is let in. Pretty soon, the engineer gets dissatisfied with the level of comfort in hell, and starts designing and building improvements. After a while, they’ve got air conditioning, flush toilets, and escalators, which…

NMI are giving away Raspberry Pi kits to inspire tomorrow’s engineers. Just tell us how you would use a Free Raspberry Pi to stimulate, excite and interest young people in computer science, software and electronics in your area. Closing Date is 19th October. More Details

I was at an engineering employers event in London recently and was interested to hear the words of Juergen Maier from Siemens.

As part of his talk he stated that one of the reasons why engineering in the UK does not attract more talent is because it is not as highly regarded in our society as it should be... yes, it's that old chestnut again. I've heard this so many…

The UK skills agenda is always a hot topic for debate. I found this out first hand when I was asked to look at it from the electronics industry perspective (after many of NMI members made strong suggestions). Anecdotal evidence is not lacking however this is often not a good reason for making relatively sizeable investments hence we looked to gather data to help us understand 

the situation more fully. One area we looked at was UCAS data to view the uptake…

Have you noticed how much of the electronic systems content is being integrated at the chip level? Of course you have... it's been a long term trend and accompanies Moore's Law.This gives rise to what Dr. Aart de Geus, (pictured) CEO and Chairman of Synopsys Inc. calls "multi dimensional…

A sharpened focus on the economy and what really matters is a direct consequence of the austerity measures that Europe is undertaking. Funding cuts regularly grab the headlines and the education system has seen dramatic changes driven by Government keen to balance the books. However what about the longer term questions surrounding the quality of  education? The financial cost is only part of that long-term equation and for my purposes I am less interested in the  grading of our young people…

From the NMI Website: www.tiny.cc/FWS2012

We're pleased to announce that FWS-2012 will be taking place on April 24th and 25th at the iconic Wembley Stadium.

The Future World Symposium is NMI's flagship conference and exhibition and seeks to explore the road ahead. Over two days…

India seems to be going through a new era in high-tech – whether it is in software, with new product entrepreneurs emerging in huge numbers, or electronics and telecoms which are both in the process of having new national policies formulated.

There is certainly a wave of enthusiasm among technology businesses, and among policy-makers who want to create the environment for Indian companies to both serve the growing domestic market in…

Tech entrepreneurs Nigel Toon and James Collier had much advice for the electronics industry at the NMI Industry Summit in London in November 2011, particularly about building scale and using new business models to overcome current limitations to growth for the semiconductor start-up and entrepreneur community. In particular they talked about how semiconductors are not seen as good investments any more, and a future for semiconductors in which the silicon is free and is merely a vehicle to…

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS or "DTI" in old money) ran a showcase of British electronics early in December at 1 Victoria St., London. It was a great opportunity to exhibit to Ministers, civil servants, the passing public and the many visitors to the building. It illustrated…

A new £1 million global award for engineering will celebrate outstanding advances in engineering that have created significant benefit to humanity... Engineers are the real revolutionaries... exciting and dynamic profession...to reach the same status as a Nobel Prize...…

I've stolen the title of this blog post from a question asked by Peter Claydon at a recent SiliconSouthWest event and I thought it worth a comment or two.

According to the David Manners blog Peter answered "it probably is...". However an alternative view was presented in…

NMI has a brand new award this year: The Technology Entrepreneur Award.

We're interested in people you may know who have vision and the courage to turn ideas into business reality... if…

NMI held a great event recently (more details) where Low-Power Design/Verification was hotly debated. One of the key discussion points was on hardware and software groups not communicating, leading to sub-optimal solutions and a significant impact on power consumption.

If you want to know more, checkout the…

Ok, Microsoft is not dead, nor is Google either however their business models are being called into question by Forrester's CEO, George Colony. Introducing the term 'app internet', Colony explains why Microsoft's PC centric model is in trouble and why he thinks Googles Chromebook is "the greatest act of corporate idiocy that I've ever observed."

I have to admit that I shared a similar thought when I heard about the…

Ok, I admit it - I am a grumpy (getting older) man... but some things need airing.



I tried to have a call with my boss yesterday whilst driving (hands-free of course). He was in a car too and we both knew there was little chance of it lasting long enough to be of any use - sure enough we did not have "that all important call" when it was needed. In fact it was very short lived.



It caused me to reflect back to the early 90's when I was fortunate enough to have a mobile phone…

In 2010 Apple topped the OEM table for purchase of semiconductors - a trend that is forecast to continue in 2011 spurred by demand for iPads, iPhones and (to a lesser degree) iPods and Macs. When I saw the headline figure projected at $22Bn for 2011 -  it got me wondering how polarised the market actually is at the top end as the…

Former Electronic Engineering editor Ron Neale has tracked the progress of phase-change memory (PCM) for many years. His work on the technology dates back to when it was first proposed as a rad-hard memory for the military. Since then, PCM has promised to become a universal, low-power memory but, some 40 years, on has still failed to achieve it.

The development of a carbon-nanotube form of PCM could signal a way for the technology to deliver on its promise -…