Posted on 03/16/2005 4:13:11 PM PST by Dat Mon
At a news conference in Washington, D.C., today, U.S. semiconductor industry CEOs and an economist stressed the importance of continued progress and leadership in semiconductor technology since the coming transition to nano-scale semiconductor devices means leadership in IT is up for grabs.
Advertisement Organized by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), the conference included Craig Barrett, CEO of Intel Corp.; Steve Appleton, CEO of Micron Technology and current chairman of the SIA; Dale Jorgenson, a Samuel W. Morris University professor at Harvard University; and George Scalise, president of the SIA.
Following the vision of Moore's Law, the U.S. semiconductor industry has led the worldwide industry, contributing key innovations that have helped drive America's economic growth. The panelists noted that four decades of continuous advances in microchip technology have led to creation of entirely new industries, including PCs, the Internet and cellular phones, while enabling major advances in biotechnology, medicine and environmental protection.
SIA called for support of basic research in the physical sciences to be stepped up in order to assure continued U.S. technology leadership. Experts believe current semiconductor technology could run up against physical, technological and economic limits around 2020, the SIA reported.
“U.S. leadership in technology is under assault,” Barrett said in a statement. “The challenge we face is global in nature and broader in scope than any we have faced in the past. The initial step in responding to this challenge is that America must decide to compete. If we don’t compete and win, there will be very serious consequences for our standard of living and national security in the future."
Barrett also said industry scientists believe current CMOS scaling that supports Moore’s Law can remain in effect for at least another 10 to 15 years but when the smallest features on a chip shrink to less than 10nm, current chipmaking technology will reach its ultimate limits.
To keep Moore’s Law alive, the industry will have to leave Newtonian physics behind and transition to the realm of quantum physics -- the era of nanotechnology.
“U.S. leadership in the nanoelectronics era is not guaranteed,” Barrett also said. “It will take a massive, coordinated U.S. research effort involving academia, industry, and state and federal governments to ensure that America continues to be the world leader in information technology."
Further, the panelists agreed that sustaining continuous advances in semiconductor technology is vital to sustaining improved U.S. economic performance.
“The mantra of the ‘new economy’ is faster, better, cheaper, which characterizes the speed of technological change and product improvement in semiconductors, the key enabling technology,” Harvard’s Jorgenson said.
Development and deployment of information technology is the foundation of the American growth resurgence that has occurred since 1995 and the economics of information technology begins with the precipitous and continuing fall in semiconductor prices, Jorgenson suggested.
The rapid price decline has been transmitted to the prices of a range of products that rely heavily on this technology, like computers and telecommunications equipment and swiftly falling prices for information technology equipment have provided powerful economic incentives for rapid diffusion of information technology, which in turn has led to accelerated economic growth and strong increases in productivity, he continued.
“The four IT-producing industries -- semiconductors, computers, communications equipment and software -- are responsible for a quarter of the growth resurgence, but only 3 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. Obviously, the impact of the IT-producing industries is far out of proportion to their relatively small size,” Jorgenson noted.
At the same time, Appleton called for a concerted national effort to increase the resources devoted to R&D in the physical sciences.
“Our current efforts are inadequate,” Appleton said. “Federal funding for R&D as a percentage of U.S. gross domestic product has been almost cut in half over the past 20 years. We must return to the investment levels of the mid-1980s in order to compete for leadership.”
SIA also said its leaders are to call on legislative and executive branch leaders to support increasing research budgets for the physical sciences in the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), and the Department of Defense.
Specifically, the SIA is calling for increases of 7 percent per year in the research budget of the NSF for 10 years, doubling the research budget over that period; an appropriation of $20 million to match the semiconductor industry’s support for the Focus Center Research Program, which supports pre-competitive research on microelectronics technology at 30 universities to ensure continued U.S. leadership throughout the remaining years of the CMOS era; an increase of $20 million to enhance the nanomanufacturing and nanometrology research capabilities of NIST; and an increase in funding for the Math and Science Partnership program of the No Child Left Behind act.
“U.S. leadership in technology is not inevitable,” Appleton added. “Leadership in information technology is a cornerstone of our national strategy for economic growth, an improving standard of living, and national security.
“The actions we take today to ensure continued U.S. leadership will determine the quality of life enjoyed by our children and grandchildren,” Appleton concluded.
Are you folks starting to see a pattern here yet? (I hope)
Pinging.
Pinging.
Pinging.
Time to start increasing the research budgets for the military, and increasing the budget for space exploration.
The technologies involved all contribute to military and space exploration applications, and civilian derivatives would soon follow.
Just funding research will get you nowhere if you're not funding research in a particular direction for a specific application.
Define the unattainable bounds as your goals, and then reach for them. Let the private sector take care fo funding pure research. Public funds should be directed at applicable science that pushes the bounds of what we know to be true without wasting money. Let the private sector do the risk taking, with the future contracts with the government as the carrot on the stick that drives them, should they discover something of use to the rest of us.
“Our current efforts are inadequate,” Appleton said. “Federal funding for R&D as a percentage of U.S. gross domestic product has been almost cut in half over the past 20 years. We must return to the investment levels of the mid-1980s in order to compete for leadership.”
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Yet more food for thought.
Are you folks starting to see a pattern here yet? (I hope)
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makes me think of President Ronald Reagan.
Go ahead and try again. ;-)
Thanks.....This is another way in which Ronald Reagan served this country so well, the likes of which we haven't seen since.
Decades in the past, the trends were spin off, then the budget had to crunch and go for the off-the-shelf which are called spin on. Will there be a come back of the trends of spin off once again?
“U.S. leadership in the nanoelectronics era is not guaranteed,” Barrett also said. “It will take a massive, coordinated U.S. research effort involving academia, industry, and state and federal governments to ensure that America continues to be the world leader in information technology."
If they are smart enough to succeed in those fields, they will be smart enough to realize that few of them are going to be well-paid -- and very unlikely to be well-paid compared to the amount of effort they put into the degree versus what they could do with other degrees requiring similar or less effort.
Right now most university funding goes to non-scientific areas. For every engineering student, we have 10 students in fields like sociology, poli-sci, mba's, anthropology, greco-roman studies, english lit, women's studies etc...
And for every dollar we are spending on training engineers, we are spending at least 10 dollars on the Ward Churchill types.
Meanwhile I've heard reports from Chinese insiders that they are launching a 'Manhatten Project', for nanotech.
"Just funding research will get you nowhere if you're not funding research in a particular direction for a specific application."
Hmmmm...sometimes theres a bit of serendipity involved in research...youre looking for A, and you find B...which leads you down a new path.
I support basic research in the Physical sciences, and also Astrophysical. Your research is always driven in a certain direction...by necessity...due to the nature of the scientific process itself.
If you mean to say that the research has to have a Commercial or Military application to be worthwhile...I wouldnt go that far. Coomercial always lags behind basic resaerch by years...sometimes decades.
One of the best examples of pure research that led to commercial applications was the original Bell Labs
"If they are smart enough to succeed in those fields, they will be smart enough to realize that few of them are going to be well-paid -- and very unlikely to be well-paid compared to the amount of effort they put into the degree versus what they could do with other degrees requiring similar or less effort."
Well in that case we might as well turn off the lights because America is screwed. If Americans are willing to let short term self-interest and greed take priority over the long-term welfare and security of our nation then we probably deserve what will come pass in that circumstance. For me personally, I would be more than happy to spend years of hard work in the university and then afterward take a low-paying job if I was able to find something that could be of help to my country in terms of its security and prosperity.
An army of MBA's did not put a man on the moon, an army of MBA's did not invent the atomic bomb, and an army of MBA's is not going to do sh*t to keep America at the forefront of technology.
"If they are smart enough to succeed in those fields, they will be smart enough to realize that few of them are going to be well-paid -- and very unlikely to be well-paid compared to the amount of effort they put into the degree versus what they could do with other degrees requiring similar or less effort."
Greed and laziness - that's what America's competitors are counting on.
What the article did not bring out plainly, is that both the PLA and, various defense labs in Russia, are putting lots of effort into nano war / nano weapon development. Meanwhile, NASA Ames not only has cut it way back, but they hire H1Bs from the PRC, Russia, and Slovakia to do the lab work. DOH!
You said.."Meanwhile, NASA Ames not only has cut it way back, but they hire H1Bs from the PRC, Russia, and Slovakia to do the lab work. DOH!"
All I can do is sit here and shake my head.
What will it take for people to get it?
RE: What will it take for people to get it?
Probably multiple nuclear warheads coming down and massive outbreaks of small pox.
You said.."Probably multiple nuclear warheads coming down and massive outbreaks of small pox."
That would do it.
Maybe people ought to stop their viewing of American Idol for a minute to consider...
We are in a competition with the rest of the world...just like American Idol...
They are not always nice, in fact they can be downright nasty...just like that British judge whose name I dont know.
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