Suchergebnisse

Gordon Moore designed Moore's Law as a multifunctional tool to drive process and product innovation, sell Fairchild's and Intel's microchips, and outcompete other semiconductor firms. Because Intel's ability to stay on Moore's Law depended upon other corporations developing materials and manufacturing equipment for exponential scaling, Moore and his closest associates heavily promoted Moore's Law in the microelectronics community. They also established the national and international technology roadmaps for semiconductors in order to set the direction and cadence of innovation in microelectronics at the national and, later, global scales. Moore's and his successors' relentless pursuit of Moore's Law and their deft management of the roadmaps significantly reinforced Intel's competitiveness and helped it to dominate semiconductor technology and industry until the mid-2010s.

In this article I examine corporative management practices in electronics firms in Boston and in Silicon Valley from the 1920s to the 1960s. Managers in several key firms developed these practices in response to political and professional ideologies and as a way to address the problems of hiring, using, and retaining a highly skilled work force. They did this independently of the welfare capitalism plans of corporations such as Eastman Kodak and before the guru theorists and work empowerment programs of the 1960s. The corporatist methods first developed in Boston and further refined in Silicon Valley later diffused to most U.S. firms in the software, computer, Internet, and biotechnology industries.

Les entreprises de semi-conducteurs ont développé plusieurs stratégies pour réduire les grandes incertitudes techniques auxquelles elles ont fait face depuis plus d'un demi-siècle. Ces incertitudes étaient à la fois cognitives, matérielles et prospectives. Pour gérer ces incertitudes, les entreprises de semi-conducteurs ont dans un premier temps cherché à trouver un bon équilibre entre recherche fondamentale et ingénierie par tâtonnements. Pour contrôler les incertitudes présentées par une nouvelle vague d'innovation technologique à partir de la fin des années 1960, les sociétés se sont regroupées géographiquement dans certains districts industriels comme la Silicon Valley. Cette stratégie n'ayant pas réduit les incertitudes prospectives, elles ont alors réalisé des innovations intellectuelles et organisationnelles de grande importance : la loi de Moore et les feuilles de route. La loi de Moore, c'est-à-dire l'observation et la règle selon lesquelles le nombre de transistors par circuit intégré doublait tous les deux ans, permettait de limiter l'incertitude prospective. Plus tard, les entreprises de semi-conducteurs institutionnalisèrent la loi de Moore avec les feuilles de route. Les feuilles de route guidaient le développement des technologies microélectroniques à l'échelle de l'industrie tout entière et aidaient les entreprises à coordonner leurs activités de recherche et de développement. Les stratégies utilisées par les entreprises de microélectronique pour gérer l'incertitude technique ont servi de modèles à d'autres industries comme la chimie, l'énergie, les biotechnologies, les nanotechnologies et les cellules photovoltaïques depuis une quinzaine d'années.

"In the first three and a half years of its existence, Fairchild Semiconductor developed, produced, and marketed the device that would become the fundamental building block of the digital world: the microchip. Founded in 1957 by eight former employees of the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, Fairchild created the model for a successful Silicon Valley start-up: intense activity with a common goal, close collaboration, and a quick path to the market (Fairchild's first device hit the market just ten months after the company's founding). Fairchild Semiconductor was one of the first companies financed by venture capital, and its success inspired the establishment of venture capital firms in the San Francisco Bay area. These firms would finance the explosive growth of Silicon Valley over the next several decades. This history of the early years of Fairchild Semiconductor examines the technological, business, and social dynamics behind its innovative products. The centerpiece of the book is a collection of documents, reproduced in facsimile, including the company's first prospectus; ideas, sketches, and plans for the company's products; and a notebook kept by co-founder Jay Last that records problems, schedules, and tasks discussed at weekly meetings. A historical overview, interpretive essays, and an introduction to semiconductor technology in the period accompany these primary documents"--P. [2] of dust cover