The Birth of the Semiconductor Industry
With thanks to Angela Creager, Princeton Image Credits
• Most of the images in these slides came from the Computer History Museum’s online exhibit • http://www.computerhistory.org/semiconductor/ welcome.html • Also see SV Modern: Celebrating the Silicon Valley’s Mid-century Past • http://www.svmodern.com/index.html Semiconductor Industry!
• An undersung hero in the history of technology
• Amazing growth postwar
• Large, coordinated industrial research, not madcap entrepreneurs
• Impacts Silicon Valley, defense industry, and Moore’s law • Electron Tubes – Thermionic emission of electrons in a vacuum • Transistor – The next wave of the electronics industry
– Based on the conductive properties (The “Fairchild Eight” Founders of the company) of semiconductors Independent Inventors
• A pervasive cultural mythology surrounding invention
• Common biographies
• Telegraphy
– > 400 patents to individuals, 1865-1880
– Western Union underwrites inventions though buying patents
– WU is transcontinental in 1861, dominant by 1867 Alexander Graham Bell
• He started inventing after reading about Western Union buying a patent for a duplex telegraph Thomas A. Edison
• Independents modeled themselves on him • Originally a telegraph operator, savvy with Wall Street and WU • “Invention Factory” in Menlo Park, NJ, 1876-1881 • Invention as risky, and WU’s corporate strategy to externalize it Industrial Labs
• GE and Willis R. Whitney, 1900
– MIT Chemist – Offered a quasi academic environment to lure talent
– 1902: 45 scientists, budget of $15,830
– Offers a variety of services to GE Industrial Labs
• Interwar Expansion – 1921: 1,600 company labs employ 33,000 – 1940: 2,000 R&D departments employ 70,000 • Bell Labs, 1925
- during WWII 80% of budget from were gvt contracts Bell Labs!
• William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain
– Crucial experiments (Dec. 16, 1947) were done on the point- contact transistor
– Shockley’s idea was to use external electrical fields to influence behavior in semiconductor layers
– Shockley left Bell Labs for the SF Bay Area in 1955, to start first semiconductor firm
The Birth of the Semiconductor Industry The Making of Silicon Valley! • WW2 impact on SF region–a great place to get into electronics • Huge population increase between 1940 and 1947
– 40-70% of Silicon Valley workforce in components industry.
– Per capita, wealthiest region in the nation (Santa Clara County Ad, 1947) Dispersion!
• 1947 National Security Act sets up National Security Resources Board to monitor civil defense • 1950 tax code changes encourage building of new plants away from city centers Dispersion!
• Science funding at major universities • Dispersion initiative concentrates science and engineering in certain areas
– 50% of nation’s scientists were in 6 states: in CA, IL, NJ, NY, OH, PA
(Santa Clara County Ad, 1963) – West has 2x engineers of the South, and 50% more than Midwest Military Demand!
• End of the war kills vacuum tube market, companies cannot recover • 1950-1964: $50M of military money goes to semiconductor industry- benefits established firms (Raytheon, GE, Western Electric, Sylvania, RCA) • Military has both pulling and pushing effects on industry Stanford University!
• President Wallace Sterling and Dean Frederick Terman plug University into regional developments • Uses federal science and engineering grants to expand • Builds housing, shopping, and industrial park to bring growth (Aerial photo of Stanford, 1950) Commercializing Transistors!
• Hewlett-Packard and Shockley Semiconductor were first, Fairchild came later • 25 transistor manufacturers in early 1950s, six with no amplifier experience • Texas Instruments is first to commercialize the transistor licensed from Bell under Gordon Teal in 1953 Commercializing Transistors!
(Sonotone Hearing Aid, 1952) Integrated Circuits!
• IC industry made Silicon Valley the center of microelectronics • By 1975, 5 of the 7 largest producers in the area
– National Semiconductor, Fairchild, Intel, Signetics, American Micro-Systems
– Others were Texas Instruments and Motorola Intel!
• By 1975, largest producer of MOS ICs • First major high-tech firm to have no R&D lab • New model of innovation, betting on silicon
(Intel chip) Moore’s Law (1965)!
“The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year... Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase. Over the longer term, the rate of increase is a bit more uncertain, although there is no reason to believe it will not remain nearly constant for at least 10 years. That means by 1975, the number of components per integrated circuit for minimum cost will be 65,000. I believe that such a large circuit can be built on a single wafer.” Moore’s Law
• Moore’s Law as a self-fulfilling prophecy
• Are there limits to it?