Bringing Common Sense to Semiconductors
There’s something strange about the semiconductor world - Actually, about the modern world at large, it could be argued. It runs on precision, but often lacks coherence. Coherence sound too much like a fluffy, made up word to you?
OK then - how about common sense? That sounds like something we all get yeah? But let’s go ahead and define it anyway We know how to make chips that calculate, communicate, and consume less power than a thought - but we often forget to ask the most human question of all:
Why are we doing this in the first place?
For decades, semiconductor design has been about more - more transistors, more performance, more speed, more nodes, more integration. Moore’s Law was treated almost like a religion - and for good reason. It worked.Until it didn’t.
The cost of cleverness
Somewhere along the way, the industry got so good at chasing performance that it stopped asking whether that performance was even necessary.
We started putting full-blown computer systems into toothbrushes.
We shipped “smart” devices that still need coin cells replaced every few months.
“Cleverness is in building the machine. Common sense is in asking whether the machine needs to exist at all.”
We celebrated efficiency on paper and ignored the dumpsters full of “wireless” gadgets dying from battery fatigue.
This isn’t a rant against progress. It’s just an observation:
Brilliance without coherence creates noise.Cleverness without common sense is destructive.
And the world is now full of noisy devices that call themselves smart but are actually contributing to the planetary equivalent of chopping the very tree branch one is seated on - an archetypal situation where
Short term Success = Big picture failure
That single distinction - between cleverness and common sense is the missing piece in most modern tech. It’s what separates intelligence from understanding, speed from sanity, movement from direction.
What coherence means for us
Coherence, for us, is the alignment between what’s technologically possible and what’s sensible for the planet, the user, and the engineer.
It’s not about stripping away ambition - it’s about applying sense to ambition.
It means asking:
Common sense, when applied to semiconductors, is surprisingly radical.
What it looks like in silicon
That philosophy became ONiO.zero - our attempt to bring coherence to the bottom-most layer of technology.
We didn’t set out to build a chip that just used less power.
We wanted one that used power differently — that could harvest what’s already present and keep working indefinitely.
That meant a chip that could:
The result isn’t a gimmick. It’s a quiet correction - an act of restoring proportion, balance and common sense.
Here’s why we talk about “common sense” so much
Because it’s the one thing that seems to have gone missing.
Not just in semiconductors but in tech overall and even the world at large.
Somewhere between VC decks and keynote slides, sense became optional.
But the real elegance in engineering isn’t about more features or faster clocks - it’s about clarity of purpose.
When a product is well-designed, it feels inevitable.When a circuit is well-designed, it behaves like it understands itself.
That’s coherence.And coherence, in our view, is the highest form of intelligence.
The new north star
The next wave of electronics will not be about performance. It will be about integration, longevity, and autonomy.The world doesn’t need smarter gadgets - it needs smarter relationships between them.We don’t need chips that can do everything - we need chips that know when to stop.
This is why ONiO exists.
To put sense back into silicon. to remind our industry that sustainability isn’t a feature - it’s the baseline. And to prove that common sense, properly engineered, can be revolutionary.
ONiO — making semiconductors make sense again.
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About the author
Abishek Swaminathen
Senior Content Manager
Abishek is ONiO’s senior content manager. A medical doctor by profession, he stumbled onto a writing career almost by accident, as it were. Words have enthralled Abishek since the day he first held a book and at ONiO, he channels his inner wordsmith towards providing our subscribers with regular doses of fun and informative content.
