My last editorial was titled "The Only Constant is Change." So it is in our industry, and so it must be in our publication. An abiding passion for the dynamic microprocessor business drives our readers, and it drives us to continue following the industry. And because the microprocessor industry and the information industry keep changing, we too will change. Our corporate owners want to see more subscribers and increased attendance at our forums. Those indicators are less frequent feedback points, however, so I am also asking you, our readers, for more timely feedback on our present content and on the format plans I'm about to reveal.
The most important change we plan for Microprocessor Report is that we will provide additional analysis in our stories, including a specific, deep "cover-story" article each month. We believe our monthly average page count will remain roughly the same, but the weekly online posting of stories may become less regular. There may be weeks in which we have stories in process but don't have a completed story. Fundamentally, the newsletter was never about news but about the context of that news. There are plenty of free websites you can go to for basic speeds and feeds and for the official corporate statements. Our report needs to provide the news within the context of competitors, larger industry trends, and market changes. To do so takes more time, and, unfortunately, we frequently are not briefed more than a week in advance.
The in-depth stories may not be tied to a particular announcement but rather to a significant issue in the industry. We may also call upon more outside contributions from recognized authorities in areas in which we are not expert. We also recognize that traditional microarchitecture has become less critical as system-on-chip (SoC) designs proliferate. The areas of semiconductor process development and tool chains are becoming more integrated into the microprocessor design decisions. The problems the industry faces in complexity, process problems like leakage and lagging transistor interconnect speeds, and probabilistic circuit behavior are changing the way high-performance microprocessors are built. The race for higher frequency and deeper pipelines led to dead-end processors that were too hot and too power-hungry. A different design paradigm, one that balances performance and power, is rising today. Intel recently made it official that multicore processors are the future of PC and notebook designs. Another design challenge will be the addition of more performance into portable devices while still maintaining or increasing battery life.
Getting the Stories Out
I'd like to take you for a quick tour of our story process. The analysts first spend one to three weeks doing the research, conducting interviews, and writing the story. We then submit the first draft of the story for our editorial board's review, for vendor review, and for peer review. During the following week, the author integrates the various reviewers' feedback. In the week preceding publication, our copy editor finalizes the language and makes the style consistent with MDR style, and our production staff converts the final version into HTML and PDF formats. As you can see, the production process usually requires more than three weeks. Our process takes a lot longer than that of newspapers and news websites, but the end product is a more thoughtful, accurate, and definitive analysis of an announcement or industry trend. From time to time, we do take shortcuts to get stories out sooner, but these are largely simple stories that need little, if any, review. These shortened stories do not allow in-depth analysis, however, and we found we were doing too many of them. Such quick stories do not provide the value you expect from our premium newsletter.
For quick coverage of announcements, we are creating new section called Chip Watch. It will replace Resources and will be updated as needed. Chip Watch will have a format similar to that of Patent Watch, with a short list containing the company name, product name, date announced, and key speeds, feeds, and features.
New Forums and New Names
We also plan changes to our twice-yearly forums. Although Embedded Processor Forum and Microprocessor Forum have each had its own unique identity, at times that identity got in the way of having the best and most timely content. To give the forums more flexibility, we are renaming them Fall Processor Forum and Spring Processor Forum. We needed a name that still conveyed the content and the heritage. Many people had come to associate Microprocessor Forum with PC and server processors only, even though more than half the content concerned embedded devices. The Embedded Processor Forum name was very clear, but it prevented us from including PC and server processors. The new names give us the flexibility to bring the best content twice a year. We are also planning to have our first forum in Taiwan later in October based on the material presented at the Fall Processor Forum.
These are some changes you will be seeing very soon. We also plan to make some of our data, like those from our chart watches, available for download. To cover system issues, we've added Jim McGregor to our staff, and he will be hosting an additional Electronic Design Forum, co-located with the Fall Processor Forum. For more information on the new Electronic Design Forum, see more our web site at www.mdronline.com/edf04/.
We have planned these changes to make our newsletter your essential read and to make our forums more relevant and timely. I welcome your feedback. You can reach me at Kevin.Krewell@reedbusiness.com.
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