Jim Morgan’s law: The number of transistors on a wafer doubles even faster than you think. Gordon Moore’s 18-month doubling rate refers to transistor density– the number of transistors per square inch of silicon wafer. But wafers grow too: 50 millimeters (mm) in diameter in 1970, 200mm a couple of years ago.
We first wrote about radio-frequency (RF) powerchips in November 2000 (Powering RF Photons) – the high powered silicon LDMOS chips that amplify “radio-frequency” (RF) currents to power levels of a hundred Watts or more. These high-frequency currents drive the antennas that punch out signals from million base stations to reach a billion cell phones, along…
A company whose technology we like a lot has seen fit to give itself a name — II-VI (IIVI) — that only inveterate techies can appreciate. Accordingly, we begin this month with a brief review of high school chemistry – there’s simply no other way to make sense of where II-VI came from or what…
The very notion of an electrically powered battlefield seems preposterous, at first blush. How can the power behind the toaster and the hair dryer propel an artillery shell, a fighter plane, or a rocket? Where will they plug in the tanks? The short answer: In the same place they plug in submarines and the rest…
Picture a vast parking lot filled with 10,000 Pontiacs — not little cars, but real wheels that your average American would be proud to drive. At exactly the same moment every single driver turns the ignition key, shifts into neutral, floors the accelerator, and 10,000 Pontiac engines go screaming up to the red line on…
Who would buy technology stocks in times like these? Read no further if you believe that America’s economic future resides in Treasuries, CDs, bonds, or gold under mattress. We don’t. Technology will remain the engine of economic growth, and the right technology companies will prosper again in the coming decade, just as they did in…
