Digilux 2: "analog" digital Leica
IC Insights forecasts profitability of the top 30 fabless chip vendors
On the problems with VIA Hyperion 4in1 v4.50 drivers. Company´s dictum
Digilux 2: "analog" digital Leica
It´s been a year and a half since Leica and Panasonic announced their Digilux 1. Yesterday the company introduced a newer model, Digilux 2, calling it an "analog" digital camera. Of course, there are no analog components in both Digilux 1 and 2, but the controls are stylized as in a rangefinder film camera: exposure and acutance are set by lens ring and body switch. Another important difference of Digilux 2 from Digilux 1 is the 5Mp CCD instead of the 4Mp.
It seems Digilux 2 is designed for those photographers who can´t forget their "good old" film cameras. Or maybe it´s just a tribute to nostalgia and an effort to attract attention to company´s products.
Digilux 2 brief specs:
- Lens: LEICA DC VARIO SUMMICRON, 7-22.5mm (28-90mm in 35mm equiv.), f/2 f/2.4
- CCD: 2/3", 5Mp
- LCD: TFT 2.5", 211,000 pixels
- EVF: 235,000 pixels, 100% of the frame
- Media: SD/MMC (64MB bundled)
- Timer: during PC connection
- Interfaces: USB2.0, าย PAL/NTSC
Source: DC Views
IC Insights forecasts profitability of the top 30 fabless chip vendors
Publishing various forecasts is a favourite of marketing companies, especially at the year-end. The demand for such researches is always high as it enables to estimate future market prospects.
The regular report from IC Insights forecasts profitability of the top 30 fabless chip vendors for 2003.
As you can see, the palm of supremacy remains with Qualcomm again this year. Moreover, this company expects a considerable growth of 29% comparing to 2002. NVIDIA still occupies the second place despite the 4% reduction. And ATI is to raise from the 8th to the 6th place with its 76% shipments volume growth.
In general, we must state the 23% total sales growth expected in 2003.
The table below contains only chip vendor data and doesn´t consider the discrete component sales.
IC Insights: shipments forecast for 2003, $ million |
| 2003 |
2002 |
Vendor |
Country |
2002 |
2002 / 2001 |
2003 (forecast) |
2003 / 2002 (forecast) |
| 1 |
1 |
Qualcomm |
USA |
1942 |
39% |
2510 |
29% |
| 2 |
2 |
NVIDIA |
USA |
1915 |
50% |
1835 |
4% |
| 3 |
4 |
Broadcom |
USA |
1083 |
13% |
1595 |
47% |
| 4 |
3 |
Xilinx |
USA |
1125 |
2% |
1265 |
12% |
| 5 |
5 |
MediaTek |
Taiwan |
854 |
91% |
1170 |
37% |
| 6 |
8 |
ATI |
Canada |
645 |
34% |
1135 |
76% |
| 7 |
10 |
SanDisk |
USA |
493 |
56% |
930 |
89% |
| 8 |
7 |
Altera |
USA |
712 |
15% |
830 |
17% |
| 9 |
11 |
Marvell |
USA |
482 |
75% |
780 |
62% |
| 10 |
9 |
Conexant |
USA |
627 |
3% |
650 |
4% |
| 11 |
6 |
VIA |
Taiwan |
729 |
28% |
620 |
15% |
| 12 |
12 |
QLogic |
USA |
415 |
16% |
520 |
25% |
| 13 |
18 |
Globespan Virata |
USA |
229 |
(14%) |
360 |
57% |
| 14 |
16 |
Sunplus |
Taiwan |
250 |
28% |
320 |
28% |
| 15 |
23 |
Novatek |
Taiwan |
193 |
56% |
311 |
61% |
| 16 |
24 |
Silicon Lab |
USA |
182 |
146% |
310 |
70% |
| 17 |
15 |
Realtek |
Taiwan |
265 |
24% |
300 |
13% |
| 18 |
17 |
SST |
USA |
244 |
6% |
250 |
2% |
| 19 |
21 |
PMC-Sierra |
Canada |
213 |
34% |
245 |
15% |
| 20 |
20 |
ICS |
USA |
228 |
47% |
237 |
4% |
| 21 |
19 |
Lattice |
USA |
229 |
22% |
218 |
5% |
| 22 |
29 |
Zoran |
USA |
141 |
41% |
213 |
51% |
| 23 |
22 |
Genesis Microchip |
Canada |
196 |
56% |
211 |
8% |
| 24 |
28 |
SMSC |
USA |
145 |
13% |
202 |
39% |
| 25 |
|
Zarlink |
Canada |
|
|
201 |
|
| 26 |
25 |
ALi |
Taiwan |
176 |
11% |
200 |
14% |
| 27 |
13 |
Cirrus Logic |
USA |
304 |
43% |
198 |
35% |
| 28 |
14 |
ESS |
USA |
273 |
1% |
180 |
34% |
| 29 |
32 |
DSP Group |
USA |
125 |
42% |
170 |
36% |
| 30 |
26 |
Semtech |
USA |
170 |
0% |
160 |
6% |
| |
|
The rest |
|
2210 |
12% |
2514 |
14% |
| |
|
Total |
|
16795 |
11% |
20640 |
23% |
Source: The DigiTimes
On the problems with VIA Hyperion 4in1 v4.50 drivers. Company´s dictum
The hype over the information stating that the latest Hyperion 4in1 version 4.50 drivers from VIA Technologies published at VIA Arena official website caused problems in some configurations came to the final. If you don´t know what this all is about, the problems were noticed in systems equipped with ATI graphics cards, over 1GB RAM, and BIOS AGP aperture of over 32MB.
VIA confirmed this problem and posted its official statement at British
The Inquirer:
We would like to sincerely apologize for any problems that people have experienced with the Hyperion 4in1 4.50 drivers.
These drivers were removed from the download page on VIA Arena and from the VIA Arena ftp, once we started receiving reports of the drivers causing problems. These drivers were officially tested and certified by Microsoft and VIA to work correctly and efficiently with Windows Operating systems that have Microsoft certified drivers installed.
After detailed investigation of the issues that have been reported, we have found that they only occur with systems configured with 1GB or more of memory and an ATI graphics card where the AGP aperture has been set above 32MB.
We are currently working on a new revision of the driver that changes the default size of the AGP aperture to 32MB.
Once again, we would like to offer our deepest apologies for this issue.
All is well that ends well. Today at VIA Arena we saw the updated VIA Hyperion 4in1 v4.51 drivers (available for download here).
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