Monday, December 31, 2007

CEO Interview: Eric Broockman, Alereon, Inc.

Alereon is an Austin semiconductor firm specializing in high-bandwidth, low-power Wireless USB and WiMedia UWB chipsets for PCs and portable products. Alereon's AL5000 Worldwide Wireless USB Chipset is currently the only silicon that operates over the full 3.1 to 10.6 GHz spectrum, giving developers all 49 UWB channels across all 14 UWB bands over which to transmit.

Portable Design interviewed Alereon's CEO Eric Broockman about his views on Ultrawideband, Wireless USB and a wide range of wireless issues that affect portable designs. Catch the video below and watch for the interview in a forthcoming issue of Portable Design.



If you'd rather listen to Eric, click on the podcast below, which you can also download here.








Sunday, December 30, 2007

CEO Interview: Mark Thompson, Fairchild Semiconductor

After inventing the planar semiconductor and giving birth to the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley, Fairchild Semiconductor has gone on to become a premier power semiconductor company--and more, recently, an active advocate of green technology, an area where it's well positioned to make some significant contributions.

Portable Design sat down with Fairchild's CEO Mark Thompson to catch up with his views on portable power, green power, and where the semiconductor industry is headed. The following video is an excellent primer on all three. The interview will appear in the February, 2008 issue of Portable Design.


Friday, December 14, 2007

Carl Schlachte Interview 4 Dec 07

Portable Design interviewed Carl after his 2007 ConfigCon keynote, following up on some of the issues he raised and raising some of our own. Interesting, informative and relatively short (11 min.).

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Interview with Joe Mitola

On November 6, 2007 at the SDR Forum Tech Conference in Denver, I interviewed Joe Mitola of Mitre Corp. Mitola is–to understate his role–one of the originators of Software-Defined Radio and cognitive radio (CR). This interview runs 54 minutes, but it’s entertaining, wide ranging and an excellent update on SDR and CR theory and practice.

You can listen to the interview below or download the podcast here.

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

ARC CEO: SIP Vendors Must Adapt to the YouTube Generation


ARC’s CEO Carl Schlachte kicked off this year’s ConfigCon in Santa Clara today, declaring that for semiconductor and SIP providers, “Value is in the experience of the consumer.”

In a presentation entitled “Technologies Enabling the YouTube Generation,” Schlachte exhorted semiconductor and SIP vendors to “put technology in the background and clearly address user needs.” PMP users don’t care if you have a 7-stage SIMD pipeline, they just want to watch high-quality videos that aren’t jerky; and the ODMs who cater to them don’t care either, they just want something that works.

For the full story, please go to http://www.portabledesign.com/news/104.
The video follows below.

Carl is a lot more entertaining than my writeup would indicate. Ignore the "2008" flash screen--it's the 2007 conference.



OR, if you'd prefer to listen to Carl while you're fighting traffic, you can listen to the following podcast or download it here.