Measure for the Men and Women Or Hewlett-Packard F MAY 19N
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Measure For the men and women or Hewlett-Packard f MAY 19n • ICs the HP way (pages 2-6) • Revised Corporate Objectives (pages 7-10) • The role of enterprise (pages 11-13) • Lucky young lady (pages 14-15) The miracle in asmall package HP's big stake in the Ie revolution o The introduction of HP's 9100A desktop calculator in 1968 was hailed as a technological milestone. The 91 OOA could solve problems in science and engi neering that had been beyond the reach of earlier electronic calculators, even In a speech to Stanford graduate stu outperforming some computers of its day. It could be programmed with mag dents and alumni last November, HP netic cards so that complex problems could be solved with a fe\'l keystrokes. Executive Vice President John Young And it was no bigger than an office typewriter. which was quite an accomplish commented on the dramatic progress of ment at the time. IC technology. "In 1960," he said, "simple minicomputers would typically need Today that same capability - and a little more - is packed in a pocket 10,000 separate, discrete transistors, each sized, battery-powered version, the HP-67. It weighs only 11 ounces - 58 times made on a single chip of silicon. Then less than the 9100A. came the integrated circuit revolution. By The reason for this tremendous reducing act in less thEm a decade? Inte 1965 there were commercially available grated circuits. Tiny devices that combine thousands of circuit elements on a ICs that combined about ten transistors, single silicon chip. The Ie, third-generation descendant of the vacuum tube with all their interconnections. in a single and the transistor, has made it possible to put the equivalent of more than chip. Semiconductor technology has. ever 70,000 transistors into that pocket calculator. since, been giving us ICs of larger and 2 Under the strictest of clean-room conditions, Jane Plankinton of HP Labs inspects a silicon wafer that may contain up to 150 identical integrated circuit chips. Each chip can routinely accommodate 10,000 or more circuit elements with present technology, and the number is growing rapidly. larger scale, concentrating more and more Sandi Carr of Data Systems transistors and other circuit elements into Division "digitizes" a sketch of a new integrated circuit design less and less space. and enters it into the computer. "When these devices become more and Much of the software used in more complex, and smaller and smaller, IC design and production was much more is accomplished than minia developed within the company. turization. We can also cut costs, increase speed, reduce power requirements, and at the same time improve reliability. "By 1968, 100·transistor ICs of rea sonable price became common, costs came down, speeds went up, and reliability im proved. Minicomputers began to grow up, doing many of the jobs that once required big mainframe computers ... At the same time, the new and more complex ICs were making it possible for large mainframe computers to expand their performance ten times and more, without comparable increases in price or reduction in reliabil When that happens, the next techno At that time HP already had nine IC ity. This process has continued right up logical step, according to John Young, will facilities. A crucial question was whether to today, when manufacturing a 10,000 probably be the use of an electron beam to centralize for greater production econ circuit-element chip is about as easy as to etch the chips directly. "Refining the omy or continue to locate new facilities putting one transistor there in 1960. If same methods used in electron micro close to the R&D labs they served. one extends this growth rate, the number scopes - actually the same way the elec It requires enormous investments of of elements per chip will reach 100,000 in tron beam in your TV set is focused capital to establish and operate IC facili 1980, and perhaps 1,000,000 in 1985." we can produce powerful beams 1000 ties, and they can be obsolete in three to An integrated circuit is made by fo times narrower than the tightest light five years if they're not continuously up cusing light on photosensitized silicon beams. We can direct the beam entirely graded. Divisions were told to anticipate surfaces through a succession of complex by electronic means under computer con annual expenses approximating the total masks. Each layer is formed by "develop trol, so we can create new designs rapidly, replacement cost. "This is just a rule of ing" that surface much as you would a duplicate them reliably, and eliminate thumb," explained Merrill Brooksby of photograph, leaving a pattern of exposed many problems that surround the use of Corporate Engineering, "but if it costs a substrate. The appropriate semiconductor fragile optical masks. &beam circuits will million dollars to start an IC facility, then material is then diffused into the silicon be so small they will be unrecognizable it'll take at least that much each year to and this sequence is repeated, with varia under the most powerful optical micro sustain it. To keep up with changing tech tions, for the next process step. scope." nology, about one fourth of the facility The 10,000 or more elements that go should be replaced each year." into it are first laid out and drawn in large Making ICs the HP way Still, it was felt that de·centralization scale - often with the help of computer Realizing that integrated circuit tech was more in keeping with the HP style of aided drafting equipment - and then re nology was vital to the company·s future, product innovation. As it was pointed out duced photographically to form the masks. managers at the corporate level began in in the written strategy statement, HP is As more and more elements are concen 1975 to formulate a long-term strategy for generally most successful when its prod trated on a chip that's only about a quarter the development and production of ICs. ucts are novel and unique at a reasonable of an inch square, the photomask method In October of that year, an eleven-page price rather than undistinguished and will become obsolete - the fine Jines re document was distributed, outlining the cheap. When low price is an objective, the quired will be impossible to achieve corporate strategy and setting guidelines through optics. for the divisions and product groups. (continued) HP approach is to usc new technologies Ie revolution in new ways to achieve it. "If we had a central Ie faeiJity it would be difficult to bend enough to ac commodate the R&D people," ~\'lerrill went on. "It's hard to do research at arm's length. And HP just doesn't need the high volume production some other companies do, so production efficiency is not our main goal. As Dave Packard put it, our objective is to produce the right product at the right time - not to keep the diffu sion furnaces fulL" With that general direction established, the questions that remained concerned di vision economics, and for the most part they had to be answered by the divisions themselves. Whether to start an Ie faciJ- Henry Chiang of HP Labs puts a batch of IC wafers through one of many process steps - in this case to add a dielectric material. This laboratory on Deer Creek Road in Palo Alto is the newest and most automated IC facility in the company. " . Design engineer Lou Scheffer of Loveland (Colorado) Instrument Division checks an Ie drawing made on the large horizontal plotter in the background. Most HP divisions use similar computer-aided artwork (CAA) systems to simplify the job of drafting complex circuitry. ity, share one, buy from a vendor or even from another HP division - these deci sions had to be based on each division's requirements. It was decided that no division should have to be responsible for the success or failure of another. So a division wanting to make use of someone else's IC facility for R&D would have to provide its own people and any special equipment as well as funds. Production commitments would A glossary of Ie terminology be made only after careful consideration of the costs and schedules. Did you think you'd mastered the lot of circuitry is packed onto a tiny chip. Facilities are to be used for all phases jargon of the electronics age when you Contrast with MSl and SSI, for medium of the development and production proc learned that "byte" wasn't a misspelling? and small scale integration. ess. To have separate lab and production Well now it is the integrated circuit that NMOS - N-channel MaS facilities would not only be too costly, it has HP engineers speaking in tongues. Just PMOS - P-channel MOS would also lengthen the time required to when we think we're catching on about MOS - Metal oxide semiconductor, a transfer an IC design from R&D to pro RAMs and ROMs, they throw in some basic IC technology using metal oxide duction. At some time in the future when new acronym like PROM. And there we silicon field-effect transistors. facilities are highly automated and con are, waxing nostalgic about our big high p.P - Microprocessor, a semiconductor trolled, the transfer of IC designs from an school dance while technology passes us central processing unit (CPU), principal R&D facility to a separate production fa by. Here's an attempt to bring you up to component of a microcomputer. cility might be practical.