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Technical Editor Paul Rako looks at analog technology in power supplies, interface, the signal path, and life in general.

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Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Is Silicon Valley dead?

So a woman that used to work at Cisco Systems and was in a startup just did a book about how innovation is dead in Silicon Valley. A lot of commenters piled on with their own obituaries of Silicon Valley. I beg to differ. Innovation here is booming. What I love is that innovation is booming for hardware analog folks. I had a buddy lose his job at a big semiconductor company. He looked on Monster, Career-builder, jobs.com and Craigslist. He had 8 in-person interviews in a week. I told him I thought there was a recession— he told me there was no recession for analog people. Yippee, its 1999 for hardware people.

The first thing you should know about his lady’s book is what I heard at a futurist conference ten years ago. A very honest person, it might have been George Gilder, admitted that almost by definition, no one with the time to be a futurist who writes books is close enough to the trenches to know what is really going on. What I see is an exponential increase in innovation here in the valley. My buddy took a job in a start-up that is using semiconductor industry techniques in the manufacture and yield control of drugs. And it is not just the startups that are innovating. I had lunch today with Dennis Monticelli, chief technologist at National Semiconductor and I can assure you innovation is alive and well, not just here in the Valley but all over the world. I had a meeting last week at Linear Tech about some of the most innovative chips I have seen in a while. Silicon Labs briefed me the week before that about a chip that may really change the scene in oscillators.

No, sorry lady, the death of Silicon Valley is greatly exaggerated and has been predicted twice before, once when a lot of the manufacturing went overseas and down to Austin Texas, and once when it seemed that all the valley was doing was software. There was one great comment from the NY Times article about the book posted by Edok Callaway that I wanted to print:

Norbert Wiener wrote a book about invention, “Invention: The Care and Feeding of Ideas”. One of his main points is that invention thrived in ancient China (printing, gun powder, etc) but eventually suffered a big setback when the Chinese society morphed into a divided society, with the educated elite primarily concerned withs hands-off activities like poetry and statesmanship, and the hands-on crafts (from which invention stemmed) relegated to the lower rungs of society.

When I read this point in the mid 1990s — accurate or not — there was something that rang true about it. In America, our educated elites as a rule just don’t work with their hands; it’s dirty and it certainly doesn’t pay. I don’t mean to denigrate anyone — our VCs, our analysts, our patent attorneys contribute greatly to progress. But this situation sounds reminiscent of what Wiener described happened in China thousands of years ago.

Another point Wiener makes is that invention really can’t be manufactured. I’m sure there are some who would disagree with that. So it begs the question of what VCs or government or anyone else could do to help. I think a couple of simple strategies are (a) creating a hands-on, project-based education early-on, (b) maintaining a society where freedom of expression and differences are widely acceptable (this may sound a little leftish, but I think it was only within the last 12-18 months a teacher was dismissed in Kansas for teaching evolution — which reminds us of the case of Galileo and the Catholic church); (c) throwing good money away at “bad” projects.

Point (c) reminds me of Tom Landry, the former coach of the Dallas Cowboys. I believe his first 3 seasons with the Cowboys were losing ones. In today’s investor climate, he would have been fired, easily, after that performance. Instead, the owner kept him on, and the Cowboys emerged as a preeminent team to be reckoned with for years.

This comment really resonated with me since I have always admired “hands-on” engineers like Bob Pease and Jim Williams. One of my first blog posts was about the dignity of working with your hands. When it comes to choosing between the Eloi and the Morlocks I am firmly in the Morlock camp.

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at 9/3/2008 1:42:15 PM, Norrin Radd said:
Estrin was the CTO of Cisco, whose innovation has long been the ability to acquire and integrate other people’s technology, which is certainly a skill, but not exactly the innovator’s mojo that makes Silicon Valley tick. Estrin has credentials – she has founded successful small companies and serves in the boardrooms of successful big companies. But despite the obsequious blurbage from local geek-celebs McNamee and Cerf, I didn’t really get her point, other than trying to sell mediocre management books. She provides anecdotes and case studies from P&G, Pixar and HP Labs, amongst others, but it smacks of someone who has spent too much time in the Disney and Cisco boardrooms and has forgotten her startup garage roots. Because innovation is alive and well in Silicon Valley, on Route 128 in Boston, in the Pacific Northwest, in Colorado, in Austin, and in tech clusters all over this nation. It’s just not where Estrin is looking for it. Maybe she’s looking for it in networking companies. Wrong place, I guess. She speaks of Venture Capitalists not willing to take risks. But in greentech and renewable energy markets, VCs are tearing it up. Cool Earth Solar uses balloons to focus sunlight – it’s a longshot but VCs are bankrolling it. SolFocus, A CPV startup, really was founded in a garage. VCs have not been shy about funding every algaepreneur like Solazyme or Greenfuel or Livefuels with a new pond scum strain and the potential to create biofuels from the stuff. If anything, these VCs seem to be attracted to crazy ideas. Electric cars in really strange configurations are being backed all over the U.S. There have been at least 150 new solar power companies funded by VCs in the last three years. That’s 150 new companies. Just in solar. Estrin also talks about impatient investors and and short-term mentality. She’s wrong again. Silicon Valley investors are investing in energy firms, knowing full-well that the gestation period for a solar firm or a biofuel firm is a long time. It’s not a software company where you lock 20 coders in a room with an espresso maker, a foosball table and 10 cases of Ramen noodles. These investors know it’s going to take a lot of investment and a long time to make a real energy company. Nanosolar was founded in 2002 and received its first venture round in 2002. It just recently closed another round for $300 million. None of these investors expected a quick turnaround. What thwarts innovation are spineless politicians and the fossilized and corrupt government control of R&D spending. Recent examples are the ITC idiocy from our Congress and Senate. Nancy Floyd of Nth Power and Dave Edwards at VantagePoint could testify to the government’s shortsightedness in sabotaging the American wind industry with an on-again, off-again tax framework. Just ask them. We do need lots more government sponsored R&D. And we need it to be controlled by technologists and entrepreneurs, not policy-hacks and bureaucrats. We need a revamped educational system with an emphasis on science and perhaps a little less creation “science.” (See earlier Vice Presidential citing). Lastly, technology like solar doesn’t always advance because of innovation, it advances because of political clarity and an informed and willful public. That’s the innovation we need.

at 9/3/2008 1:49:30 PM, Mark Beauchamp said:
The shortage of "Hands On" Engineers can be attributed somewhat to the outsourcing of mfg in the 90's The career path of the past that allowed motivated technicians to combine experience and ongoing education to become engineers with real world knowledge has almost disappeared in he valley.Today companies have to hire a BSEE and implement OJT [on the job training] to replace a intermediate level technician (especially in the RF/Microwave world) (Of course this subject is MUCH more complex than can be addressed in a BLOG) BTW enjoyed the article

at 9/3/2008 2:22:10 PM, Hughes said:
Silicon Valley is definitely not yet dead. The hands-on design work is mainly still here, for now. Innovation surely does not come from thin air. But the trend is troubling. The outsourcing is definitely impacting the innovation. First manufacturing, now the design work, after that would be the architect, then perhaps the CTO.

at 9/3/2008 2:29:35 PM, RobS said:
"We do need lots more government sponsored R&D." Nope. Sorry, Radd. That's the typical prescription for inefficient deployment of capital. And the venture lemmings chasing that largess may (or may not) see a profit from that pursuit, but it will destroy productive capital in the process. It doesn't matter who provides the upfront cash - as long as the end solution is economically unattractive without government subsidies and tax support. It's still an inefficient deployment of a productive economy's resources and makes that economy poorer in the process.

at 9/3/2008 2:56:39 PM, archie wu said:
It seems that are we are comparing apple to orange, what is definition of the "Dead"? Getting 8 interviews ? VC''s funding 150 green company? I will use the following metric: 1. Fabrication: long going 2. patent : surpass by china and Japan. 3. Logic design: GPU,CPU. anything else? ya, SOC integration. 4. Analog design: 8 interview? but how many head count for analog designer ? 5. VC funding : new IC design house ???? 6. CAD design : Mentor almost got swallowed. It feels like a dinosaur watching the whether report.

at 9/3/2008 3:18:44 PM, cquiroz said:
I totally agree with having more people in the work force who can use their hands on experience along with their thoery. More and more engineers have no clue how things are made, but only know how they work or how they can make them faster, better, and more productive. Understanding things at a basic principle gives more depth to the concept of innovaton.

at 9/3/2008 4:04:37 PM, Bluebear said:
Silicon Valley is not yet dead but is dying. From 2000 to the present the rate of info tech new VC funding, by various estimates, has been down by as much as 80%. Medical device sector may be the only one that is “hot” in Silicon Valley today. The trend seems irreversible due to many factors: the globalization and its “Bangaloring” of technology jobs; ill-timed SFAS 123 requirement counting the employees’ gains of IRS Qualified employee stock options (the seed money for many garage projects before angel- and VC-funding) against GAAP income of the companies making stock option compensation much more costly; lowered affordability of living in the Valley; added California labor and environmental laws that are anti-business, etc... Analog IC looks like one of the sectors that hold up very well market pricing power, currently fetching fat gross margin averaging over 40%. Other sectors, such as the most-growing wireless communication industry, earned only about half that rate. So although the multiple interview case is a biased example, I would believe that experienced analog designers who are specialized in designing the impossible chips will remain in short supply worldwide for many years.

at 9/3/2008 7:19:41 PM, Dave W said:
Silicon Valley - and the US - is not dead. It only looks dead to those who want to bet on the last race. The PC is now a commodity, like the washing machine. Networking is becoming telecom. There will never be another Intel or Microsoft, just as there will never be another AT&T or RCA, in their original sense. But there will be other companies and industries as large or larger than these. Examples: 1) Robots are coming. They just won't be artificial people like Data on Star Trek II. But we DO know how to build them. 2) We are at the start of a revolution in materials (nanotech, cheap titanium), particularly metals. 3) The new Lithium batteries will spawn many revolutions beyond the plug-in hybrid. Desiring to bet on the last race is merely a product of human habit. Betting well on the next race is the gutsy but profitable possibility.

at 9/4/2008 2:39:29 AM, Vish said:
I have lived half my career in the Valley & half in Bangalore. The article is very thought provoking with very valuable responses. I have studied both the ecosystems very closely. I find that Silicon Valley needs a forest fire to renew itself. I would like to go comment-by-comment as each have brought a perspective that needs substantiation or outsider view: Norrin’s: (a) But in greentech and renewable energy markets, VCs are tearing it up – Yup. Silicon Valley has basics to deliver solutions in this critical area. The use & deployment of energy is one of the most important areas of 21st century technologies. (b) Government’s shortsightedness – I read it as “applications myopia”. Unless someone launches Sputnik, your American government doesn’t wakeup. One example here is, NASA is still toying with high school level competition on Flying Cars/Personal-Air-Vehicle (PAV). This is 21st Century and this technology is necessary & inevitable in a world of traffic gridlocks. High School competition? Kid stuff? Not anymore! I think government’s collective brain is stuck too much in 20th century. What will happen if wingless-rotorfree Flying Car demonstrated tomorrow elsewhere in the world? Can the U.S. afford late 50s Sputnik-like reaction to this? (c) We need a revamped educational system – American educational system is fundamentally sound. But globally, system demands have changed and the technology needs have gone multi-disciplinary. Mark Beauchamp’s: Hands On engineers – rightly said. My experience with U.S. professionals is that their approach & reasoning combined with simplicity & discipline equips them to meet challenges. This is the very essence of American system; may eventually help U.S. keep the lead but near term focus is badly needed. Hughes’: Innovation surely does not come from thin air – Yes. It can come from anywhere in a globalized world. This can be very threatening for America early in the 21st century. America must understand what it is good at – creative concepts, product design, common sense in applications and delivery with great support. Valley must integrate itself to a greater & broader globalized technology world. This transformation is crucial as world will look for solutions from the valley & the valley has big kitty of technologies; it has greater stakes in leveraging its built-up strengths. RobS’: No government sponsored R&D – Typically technology ecosystems thrive by themselves, cross breed by cross-pollination. But the government has crucial role facilitation & setting playing fields across regions. I somehow feel the government is lost because U.S. currently lacks visibility to what it must tackle next, especially post-defense era. archie wu’s: (a) Comparing Apples & Oranges - May I ask: “In which orchard (meaning which ecosystem)?”. It depends. World is now inter-region era. (b) List of technology examples - Again, it is 21st century. One may where do you “apply” multi-processor system in a post-computing era? Where do game machines fit beyond games market? The valley has to position itself in flat world. I notice that some of the best R&D folks in the valley are sidelined or backgrounded as newer applications have not demanded them or yet to be established, internet era engineers going after easy jobs eroding deeper R&D needs, lack of visibility (Are valley’s visionaries taking back seat or what?). PS: 1. Fabrication: long gone – Vish: Expensive. Leverage Arab Oil money (Jerry Sanders predicted this way back in 1969-70) 2. patent : surpass by china and Japan – Vish: The U.S. still drives key products; the trend is something to worry about though. 3. Logic design: GPU,CPU. anything else? ya, SOC integration. – Vish: Yaah. What about Satellite-on-Chip? 4. Analog design: 8 interview? but how many head count for analog designer ? – Vish: Supply & demand problem So also balck art of memory design. 5. VC funding : new IC design house ???? Vish: Read my comment on Platforms below. 6. CAD design : Mentor almost got swallowed – I agree. Vish: Deep R&D folks have migrated to better pastures leaving this back in 80s, the golden era of EDA. But is the valley equipped to collaborate with Bangalore on EDA for Embedded Systems wherein quite heavy in-roads are made by Bangalore? This may give renewed market of over $5 billion in embedded EDA easily per year right away. cquiroz’: Understanding things at a basic principle gives more depth to the concept of innovation - Here, I think Stanford’s multi-disciplinary Design School is one good example. But this needs to be proliferated across broad U.S. educational system. MIT does have built-in culture in this space. But beyond educational setup, the industry is driven by quarterly pressures. This undermines the very basic of science – the need to think in removed world with lot of time on hand. Bluebear’s: (a) Valley dying – I agree with you here. But why? Because, for example, Silicon Valley has become part of supply chain in a market dominated by GSM mobiles that covers 2.5 billion user base. Unfortunately, Silicon Valley is still grappling with carpet corner in this market. What was Intel’s & AMDs doing when such dominance was established? Technology creator to supplier is a kind of demotion. But the valley can still dominate; the key component, the mobile browser! If the valley goes back to basics & thinks hard, 3.5 billion mobiles need a “native” mobile browser. The valley can dig deep & I know for sure it has passed through the mobile browser solutions several times before. VCs need to dig deep to identify the gem…I know many technologists in the valley who are retired, sidelined (retired hurt) or gone into backgorund. Where Netscape founders? [HINT: Mobile is not used for calls only. ANOTHER HINT: The answer is not SMS!] (b) Bangaloring – This is inevitable. I have seen the valley ecosystem and I am here in Bangalore ecosystem, I think the two can co-exist. There exists a beautiful common ground found few other places in the world – breeding ground of technology entrepreneurs. Bangalore may help flatten kinks in flattened world. In the near term, I accept Bangaloring jobs is a big concern (It worries me more. It is augmenting technology dilution in valley & losing sense of deeper basics, an attribute I studied very hard here. We are still predominantly dealing with superficial levels of technology; we are not hands-on as yet. Many Indians may lash me on this. But deep within I know we are far away from dealing with architecture & specification). But, remember, Bangalore gives access to technology accepting middle class of India which may cross 350 million 2-3 years. Keep in mind, mobile is the first fully accepted technology device here; at the ground level it is the first technology device to reach common man. In fact Europeans have helped open up potentially huge market in this case. Is the valley ready to leverage it? Which valley product crossed billions in just a span of 5 y

at 9/4/2008 2:44:30 AM, Vish said:
Continued from last line... 5 years (c) Analog design: I have seen the best in the valley. Again, American common sense! But, needs heavy & quick adaptation to consumer era, especially move to creator role than supplier role. Dave W’s: (a) The PC is now a commodity, like the washing machine – I look at it this way: the valley has to look beyond the PC era. Computing is not history but going VAX way; at the same time, it has direct role in interplay in a converged platform. It has lagged in tapping its visionaries in terms of getting better visibility into 21st century. For example, Dual Core & Quad Core plus beyond computing has enormous implications on applications that are still invisible but, in time, nevertheless, will surface. I think many valley companies are not open enough to accept application/inventions/innovations evolving globally. But this evolution is unavoidable; so also scalability. India gives 350 million user base for mobiles. What next? What can valley do? (b) Betting well on the next race is the gutsy but profitable possibility – Yes. But first the valley needs to wake upto possibilities of technologies that it has helped create. That is, leverage global platform? One possibility is, government-industry interaction may be needed to understand & assimilate future applications platform roadmap like SIA-ITRS Fab process roadmap. Some kind of strategic diligence is needed to set the stage for 21st century early on. The future technologies will build on what the valley has created. It is not that the valley is dead. It is yet to open up upto live in a globalized world & leverage the same. On technology front, it is going to be multi-disciplinary engineering in any given line of technology. It is going to be ‘platforms’ & beyond. Here, the valley’s role can be road-mapped but needs heavy facilitations from industry-government bodies. Post-defense consumer era is erratic. But there are a new 500 million middle class to replace old defense era. The Silicon Valley has built enormous knowledge and technology base that can be leveraged across diverse platforms addressing multiple demographies. It is not dead. It has to learn how to live in a new world wherein it can leverage regions & ecosystems. Maybe, valley has expanded into Bangalore! I for sure, will leverage Silicon Valley!

at 9/4/2008 10:30:27 AM, John Mardinly said:
With Intel closing the last manufacturing FAB in Silicon Valley, the silicon part is dead meat for sure. Innovation? Well, that's still to be seen.

at 9/4/2008 10:43:16 AM, Chinoise said:
Inovation will never die either in Silicon Valley or anywhere else. The message I take from her comments is that what we used to be clear and transparent as well as exiting is not visible anymore. Engineers do not go as much directly to the entrepeneurs and ask for the funds to make an idea a reality. It is more of a concealed operation much like Bell Labs was for a long time or IBM Research center. It belong to the owners of this country not to the engineers. George Carlin (RIP) said it very well with a nice touch of humor. The problem with this is not about innovation being dead. How fast are we moving now. Everyone conceals even in education. Guys like Randy Pausch and his Alice projects are the only few that leave the doors open for creativity to truly be promoted in the young generations. C.

at 9/4/2008 11:27:08 AM, Ken Best said:
How about Apple''s iPhone for innovation? Here we have a company that had no experience in mobile phones, yet it designed something most people want, and from components already available. Ten of thousand of engineers from Nokia, Sony, Samsung were neither utilized nor given chance to work free as a few dozen engineers from Apple. Silicon Valley is currently stucked at building bricks, not architecture wonders.

at 9/4/2008 11:56:32 AM, bob f. said:
Paul... this is one of your best blogs... look at the responses from many of us here in The Valley... As an Analog guy since moving here in 1972, I concur...Analog is alive and well. Further evidence?? ...look at the past few years worth of ED and EDN and the content of contributed design ideas... Analog, Analog, Analog

at 9/4/2008 1:54:17 PM, Justin said:
The innovations in silicon valley are certainly not dead, but it is also true that we are yet to celebrate a ground-breaking innovation that shakes the industry, or builds one. Use semiconductor industry as an example, when a lot of companies are happy enough to make money and stay in business, people tends to stay with the way how they ran their business and not ''think out-of-the-box''. When the whole industry does this, no wonder people from outside would rush to a decision that the valley is ''dead''. Let''s just say that what Estrin said in her book has some truth in it. We need some revolutionary innovation to match the layman''s expectation of ''silicon valley innovation''.

at 9/4/2008 6:08:26 PM, Moe Rubenzahl said:
Was going to comment but am too busy innovating.

at 9/4/2008 7:42:20 PM, Brenda said:
Washing machines are no longer a commodity. If the appliance industry can figure it out, then we can also. Reference: "Unleashing Innovation: How Whirlpool Transformed an Industry", N. Tennant Snyder, D. Duarte, 2008. I really enjoyed the article and comments, by the way.

at 9/5/2008 10:50:01 AM, Franklysaid said:
I''ve been involved in technology development for over three decades. About a third of that time at a corporate research center. There has been a general decline in the pursuit of innovative solutions in the corporate world since the Reagan eara. There are several contributing factors such as changing tax incentives, and popular fashions in investing. Neither politicians or money managers know the first thing about technology. That is why they are not engineers. In my time, the best engineers that I have met were well educated mechanics. As long as we allow people who know nothing about science, have the attention span of a five year old child and the memory of a goldfish make our tech decisions, we face the same end as that dead goldfish.

at 9/6/2008 5:03:58 AM, G H Tan said:
If you look at the students entering Universities all over the world, they are going after the high growth sectors. Now with less students going into Electrical, Analog, RF, Civil, Mechancial, very traditional engineering courses, it will be a matter of time, these graduates will command a higher salaries as there will be a higher demand when the baby boomers retire from these professions over the coming years. Now just to maintain the traditional services, the demographic bulge will already impoe a strain on the demand. So young students of engineering, do consider the traditional engineering career and strat your own business later on and you can command a higher eraning power after some years of investments of your life to pick up traditioonal engineering

at 9/8/2008 11:55:02 AM, Silicon Valley long gone said:
There is no more silicon in the valley so that's an arcane term. The Bay area long ago eclipsed the south bay and is still an innovation center. The bad part is that the place is insanely expensive to live and has a disfunctional state government. The execution side of innovation is long gone to the "low-cost region", which _this week_ is Vietnam. California has become a place of startling contrasts between the rich and the working poor. There is very little left in the middle any more, and the quality of life that made the place such an attractive combination for decades is gone.

at 9/10/2008 11:37:01 AM, P H Williams said:
Paul – you hit on what I think is an unfortunate trend in American high-tech. The corporative mindset now (under the smokescreen of “asset lite”) seems to be that of manufacturing and selling ideas or designs, rather than real products. Why do the manufacturing when we can simply send it overseas? Here are the problems with this way of thinking: (1) A few people will get rich off of it, but it is a death-blow to the overall economy for obvious reasons. (2) For inventive and creative technologists to flourish, they need a way to physically test and even pilot produce their ideas. (3) Product quality deteriates, because the feedback connection between concept and reality is ambiguous if not lost. When this “hands on” aspect is removed from the culture… oh well, I should stop now. By the way, my father’s name was Jim Williams (probably not the same guy!). He was one of those types of technologists you referred to – the kind that built the industry out of their true love and understanding of science/technology/manufacturing. Kind of like the old WWII vets, these hands-on scholarly gentlemen are getting harder and harder to find.

at 9/16/2008 1:28:55 PM, Garvin Tinsleydale said:
Point well taken about the death of innovation as societies stratify. The same argument was made for the difference between England and Germany. England becoming a banking power and educating its sons in commerce and administration of the empire, while Germany followed the physical sciences and made great strides in chemistry and the other sciences enabling it to produce many of the inventions we still enjoy today. America has a great history to reflect on but has raised a generation of mindless tv jello heads that can neither think nor analyze, but only imitate and irritate. It has raised its sons and daughters to measure themselves only in dollars and sense and to isolate themselves from each other. Copyright & patent laws have taken their toll as well, restricting desemmination of ideas and improvements and variations on them. We have ensured a society of people unable to innovate within a structure intended to inhibit innovation, certainly it should not be a suprise that we have accomplished that which we set out to do. We have built a society of "consumers" - receivers awaiting their bounties of goods, unquestioning and ruled by a thin layer of badly educated oligarchy. I guess I know where the flying cars are, stillborn in the imagination of a dying American society. I should hope we awaken from this nightmare, the question is will we arouse ourselves from this malevolent slumber or be shook to wakefulness by the destruction of our economy and our displacement in the world heirarchy by our former enemies?

at 9/17/2008 7:17:00 PM, Steve said:
Having spent most of my career in the Silicon Valley and witnessed the ups and downs of the Valley, I am very worried about whether I could finish my career here and secure my retirement. To those who still have full faith that the Valley is alive and well, my opinion is that they are either very fortunate or very naive. Personally, I think they are living in their dreamland and think taht all is well when in fact, most jobs have either been relocated or are being relocated to China, India and other low cost regions of the world.

at 9/19/2008 1:50:56 PM, Franklysaid said:
Having spent most of our lives with our nose stuck in our little corner of our world, we don't see that we're in a maze. Sniffing for the cheese. Turning this way and that as the walls of the maze are set in now places by our "masters". They tell us "change is good" or at least inevitable. Selling ideas rather than prodcts is now an outdated idea, replaced by sales and marketing teams set up here to provide market access to foreign made products. The question was, "What will happen when we begin to export our technological knowlege?" The new question is, "Why do the foreign manufacturers need our sales and marketing team?" Change. Change is good. By the way can you spare a dollar, mister?

at 9/19/2008 11:24:12 PM, Vish said:
COMMENTING 2nd ROUND: I see that people are still commenting, expressing concerns and criticisms. But the bottom-line is, going forward, Silicon Valley does need to re-look at itself. Perhaps, it needs Oxygen to re-position itself! The emergence of multi-processors (the issue is: How to exploit?), powerful gaming machines (PS3 did indeed move away from the valley's LSI Logic to IBM), MPSoCs, etc on the one hand and inter-region dependencies in consumer era on the other, offer new opportunities for Silicon Valley to re-position itself for 21st century. I think these opportunities are coming in under different ‘wraps’ that Silicon Valley is not accustomed to, like, Platforms, System-of-Systems (what I call SyOSy), Satellite-on-Chip (I call it SatOn; hyper connected wireless device is nearly complex personal Satellite). Newer and emerging applications demand bigger and greater role for Silicon Valley and it can, given its collective technology consciousness. I have done quite a bit of study on this hoping to model technology needs of 21st century vis-à-vis connect regions. For those who are interested, I have (1) my original comments in MS-Word format (2) Visual depiction of changing fortunes of technology to hopefully present a way to depict the current paradigm shift (in PowerPoint format). I have mailed these documents to Mr. Paul Rako. Please do obtain a copy from him. Comments are welcome.

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Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Is Silicon Valley dead?

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