I could only make it to one day at the show - here's a good resource for audiocasts and papers from the DesignCon sessions in San Jose.

The much-delayed rollout of broadband-over-powerline technology has received a boost from the IEEE, which announced that a working group has developed requirements for a baseline BPL standard.

A U.S. District Court has ordered Intel to produce documents and other evidence related to its business conduct outside of the U.S., according to a statement issued Thursday (Dec. 28) by Advanced Micro Devices. Intel downplayed the ruling Thursday, telling EE Times that it was narrowly focused on whether or not a Sept. 26 ruling by the court dismissing foreign commerce claims brought by AMD. The spokesman said the ruling did not speak to the merits or admissibility of the evidence.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony Corp. (6758.T) will cut back on future chip spending and may not produce advanced chips used in its PlayStation 3 (PS3) in-house, a senior executive said on Tuesday, in a move aimed at driving the semiconductor unit's nascent earnings recovery.

With the Freescale iMX31L processor, we already knew Zune could run Linux - but who was gonna be the first to try? Well, according to one fearless warranty-voiding individual, that prospect is now at least one step closer to reality. In a post on ZuneBoards, “Mys Videl” claims that he’s managed to get Linux on Zune “partway working,” currently only able to be booted while synced and with limited capabilities. While Videl’s not willing to let the secret loose just yet (or even provide pics of it in action for that matter) he is promising to release it as open source when its finished, and open it up to beta testing before that. Exactly when that might happen, he isn’t saying.

The good news for the semiconductor industry is that 2007 will represent the peak year of its present growth cycle, with double-digit growth expected. The bad news for the semiconductor industry in 2007 is that due to the changing dynamics of the business, growth will amount to only 10.6 percent for the year—far below historical market peaks.

Bob Pease cracks me up. He's just got a unique way of looking at things.