I was pretty annoyed over lunch yesterday, and it wasn't because I'd just broken a front tooth on an olive pit. I had just come from the closing panel of the IEF here in Dubai, where, instead of focusing on the future of innovation, the panelists and attendees devolved into navel gazing, finger pointing and—dare I say it—whining. It was like a mirage gone bad.

IEF puts Dubai in electronics spotlight

The 17th International Electronics Forum kicks off today in Dubai, an Emirate energetic in its efforts to become a high-tech hub in a region stereotyped as awash with oil. While skepticism remains, the DSO is taking concrete steps in the right direction, most importantly in education (TechOnline exclusive). At the IEF itself, photovoltaics and energy in general loom high on the priority list, as does 22-nm investment and the logic of fab-lite strategies.

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Reader's speak out: Engineering as art

My musings from ESC on the irrelevance of silicon sparked quite the flood of emails. Responses ranged from flipping the argument to how software isn't keeping up with silicon and is slow to adapt, to the need for more efficient architectures such as ASIPs and reconfigurable silicon, to the complete failure of the EDA and chip-design communities to innovate. But one reader hit it out of the park.

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The irrelevance of silicon

It's Wednesday, day three of the Embedded Systems Conference, and I'm here in the lobby of the Marriott Hotel in between meetings. It occurs to me that twice in as many days I've heard off-hand remarks in two completely separate contexts that slam home the long discussed prospect of the irrelevance of silicon. As the iPhone showed, it really is all about the software.

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iPod or bust!

Part of my job entails running around the country doing teardowns in front of a camera for our very own TearDown TV. I enjoy doing teardowns, but the video thing, well, put it this way, I'm no Brad Pitt.

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Stop the tears: Find your 'latch points'

My wife's part Irish, part German, so while there's a glint in her eye, she's pretty tough. So it was with much amazement that I heard her break down crying on the phone while talking on the washing-machine repair hotline, before hanging up in frustration. And this was the second time in as many months.

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