Silicon, the Final Frontier

It used to be said that what’s good for Detroit is good for America.  This idiom referred to the dominant role of the automotive manufacturing in the American economy.  During the boom of the 1950′s and 60′s many controls companies grew into their current positions as dominant controls suppliers by developing ever more powerful solutions for automating the auto makers.

It is somewhat ironic that as we move into the e-tainment era of the 2010′s, surrounded by e-media delivered by ever more powerful portable electronics, that the US semiconductor industry is at least the size of, and by some accounts, a much larger enterprise than the auto industry.   The Department of Commerce shows semiconductor manufacturing at $90B for 2002 and computer manufacturing at about $88B, some of which of course is overlapping.  If you start adding all the flat screen display, cellphones, well, you get the picture.  Semiconductors enable so many products that we take for granted, it is hard to estimate the impact. Read more