RED: I find I'm so excited that I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel. A free man at a start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.....

The Shawshank Redemption

Hope is good thing. We all have hope, hope for our families, our children, the future, the globe. The problem with hope is thus.... in some cases/times in our lives its been fleeting and many times non existent. The problem with hope is that the world wants fact, not hope. The problem with hope, for some, is that its too speculative. We need hard facts ....right ? We thrive on guaranteed, bonafide, absolute pure accurate data...yes ?

Can you show me "anywhere" in your life where this is the case, that the facts are hard and fast and not at all ambiguous or moldable to suit an argument or discussion ? Work data, personal data, stock data, car repair data, etc etc. All of the data in our daily lives has a percentage of vaguarity, ambiguity, and margin of error. No matter how much your told or presented with "facts", a percentage of it is, in a word, speculative. Why ? Because somewhere in that data stream, it passed through human hands. Whether business or baseball stats or a human created algorithm, stats, data pass through human hands and are prone to error.

Heard the term "plus or minus 5 points for margin of error" or something similar ?

Thats your catch all for the data you see or hear as fact, thats really not necessarily so.

So Eileen whats your point ?

Quite simply, in the absence of news releases laden with hard facts. We have to speculate, make an educated guess, connect the dots.....if you will....until we get....hard facts. Case in point, the 40nm question. Who asked for it ? Why was it asked for ? Is it a negotiation point ? Sort of a ..."If you build it...we will come" sceneario ?

Well do a little work on that node and you'd be surprised at what you come up with.....and yes I know its all Silicon based....in the absence of hard GaaS data....its what we have. Not all is lost. From the TSMC website.....highlights by me....

The 40nm Process Family

The 40nm logic family includes Low Power (LP), General Purpose Superb (G) and low-power triple gate oxide (LPG) process options. All three processes offer multiple threshold voltage (Vt) core devices and 1.8V, 2.5V, 3.3V I/O options to meet different product requirements.

The 40nm LP process provides double the gate density of the 65nm process with significantly lower power and manufacturing cost per die making it ideal for small footprint designs such as those used in cell phones, portable media players, PDAs and other handheld devices.

Are we then to assume that the requester of the 40nm is a consumer electronics manufacturer ?

Or an auto manufacturer ?

http://am.renesas.com/edge_ol/special/02/index.jsp

Going forward, even larger numbers of embeddable MCUs will be needed to meet the growing number of standard and optional electronically controlled capabilities required by regulators and desired by car buyers. These design requirements will necessitate chips with greater functionality. Devices in new groups of Renesas 40-nm MCUs fulfill the processing requirements of the exciting economy, mid-level and luxury vehicles being developed for future production.

Whatever its for or whom ever its for, would it not strike you as entirely possible that the entity had some sort of sway or pull to get the company to start a whole new node in the middle of other projects integral to the companies time line, in the middle of readying for monetization the greatest development in the second life of technology ?

So strike off BOB-N-BETTYS Computer service from the list. Probably quite a few could be eliminated from it (our candidate list)

Nonvolatile memory solutions usage..... ?

SAN JOSE, Calif., January 21, 2015 – Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (NASDAQ: CY), a leading provider of embedded nonvolatile memory solutions, and United Microelectronics Corporation (NYSE: UMC; TWSE: 2303) ("UMC"), a leading global semiconductor foundry, today announced that UMC licensed Cypress’s SONOS (Silicon Oxide Nitride Oxide Silicon) embedded Flash memory intellectual property (IP) for the 40-nanometer process technology node. Cypress’s SONOS delivers an easy-to-integrate nonvolatile memory cell with unmatched scalability for future development. The technology will primarily be used in Internet of Things (IoT) applications, wearables, microcontrollers and logic-dominated products.

Suffice to say, with a national ad campaign underway, using a teaser with a message as strong as any ever seen in advertising, let alone a "speculative" product. It seems that there will be some substantial developments downline.

"From a position of strength"...the NASDAQ entry will come....sounds a lot like theres a few names coming to a news release near you. In the near future.......

Sorry BOB-N-BETTY....