Is Silicon Valley dead?

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.