Over 650 scientists and engineers showed up for the bi-annual International Conference on silicon carbide (SiC) in October 1999. The techs were looking at the next big opportunity in Quantum Power – but irrational exuberance being what it was, Wall Street somehow got Power mixed up with Logic.
Analog Power? In a digital power report? Hard-wired analog power control circuits are dumb They aren’t programmable. Their primitive logic, such as it is, is fuzzy. But they are also blindingly fast, compact, frugal — and ubiquitous.
Every engineer and manager in the building can look out on the new production line. A glass wall runs down the middle of the building, separating cubicles on one side from clean mini-rooms and automated assembly systems on the other.
What Powercosm lessons emerge from California’s chaos? What deep technology insights can we glean from rolling blackouts and finger-pointing politicians? None at all, one is tempted to answer, and that’s pretty close to right.
Electricity is broadband power. A high-voltage electric line a few inches across conveys more power than the massive engine struts that link four giant turbines to the wings of a jumbo jet.
We are entering the century of the electron. Not the information century? The communications age? The bit era? Well, bits are electrons: small buckets of them in silicon capacitors, or propelled through metal wire, or (transformed into photons) oscillating through glass or air.
