Derek Cheung
3-2016 @ ITIF
[email protected]
Outline
Brief history
From a technology and business point of view
Focus on Communication and Information
Lessons learned
Concluding thoughts
Early History (1000 BC to 1800 AD)
Amber ~1,000 BC Magnet ~600 BC Compass ~220 BC
William Gilbert Leyden Jar Benjamin Franklin Alessandro Volta
1600 (Elektron) 1745 1752 1800
200+ Years of Cumulative Innovation & Invention
I) Electromagnetics (1800~1900)
Battery, Electromagnet, EM theory
Telegraph, Telephone, Wireless Telegraph
Motor, Generator, Transformer
Tram, subway, elevator, pump, lighting, refrigerator
Volta’s battery ---------------------------------------------------
(1800) II) Vacuum Electronics (1900~1950)
Electron beam, Vacuum Triode
X-Ray, Radio, Television, Radar, Computer
-----------------------------------------------------
III) Semiconductor Electronics (1950~ Present)
Transistor, Silicon chips, LCD, Fiber-Optics
Inter-play of Building blocks of Information Age
Technology
Smartphone
Application
(2007)
Science
The First “Electrical” Industry: Telegraph (1844)
Cooke (GB) & Morse (US) both filed patent in 1837
Cooke built first working system in 1839
Morse demonstrated the Baltimore-Washington link in 1844
$30K funding from US Congress
Morse system grew rapidly through licensing/franchising
Became de facto “standard” due to its simplicity
Cross Atlantic cable in 1858 ushered in global communication
The Innovation & Invention (Innovention) Model
Building Blocks
Existing Technologies
Market / Application
Product New Enablers
&
Service Invent
Features Creative Master Mind
Performance
Cost Innovate
Innovention: The Apple Examples
Building Block Technologies
Chips, CRT/LCD, battery, memory
System SW, Algorithms, Apps…..
Market
The Enablers
GUI / Mouse (Mac)
Products
1.8” drive (iPod)
Touch Screen (iPhone)
Features
Performance
Cost Master Mind
(Innovator)
The Innovention of Telegraph
Building Blocks
Wires
Battery
Switch
Electromagnet
“Killer App”
(Railroad dispatch)
New Enablers
Telegraph Morse Code (Alfred Vail?)
Relay (Joseph. Henry)
Morse
(Digital)
The Accidental invention: Telephone (1876)
Building Blocks Gray Bell
Wires
Battery
Switch
Electromagnet
Telegraph
New Enablers
Telephone
Harmonic Telegraph concept
Ted Vail Voice/Current Transducers
Analog
Wireless Telegraphy (1896)
A classic case of building a new business from science
Building Blocks
Coherer (Valve)
Morse Code
Kite
Shrewd market focus New Enablers
Maxwell
Wireless
Telegraphy
Herz
Marconi
Technology Bottlenecks @ End of 19 th Century
How to
Build a coast-to-coast long distance telephone system?
Transmit voice and music over wireless signals?
Switch telephone calls quickly over a large network?
Vary volume of phonograph playback?
The Dream Solution was to have a:
>> High sensitivity amplifier and a fast switch
“The Answer is here!” --- Vacuum Triode
The Edison Effect (1882)
The Flaming valve (vacuum diode) (1904)
Lee De Forest’s 3rd electrode (1906)
“Out-of-Box” thinking
A monumental, yet obscure historical event
The triode is an amplifier and a switch
Explosion of Innoventions Enabled by Triode
Armstrong’s oscillator circuit
NYC-SF Phone Line
1914 (Repeaters)
Radio 1915
Television 1927
Refined and Mass
Produced by AT&T
Radar 1939 Computer 1946
(Watson-Watt)
First Digital Computer: ENIAC (1946)
• Mauchly, Eckert (Atanasoff, von Neumann)
• US Army funded @ U. of Penn (~$0.5M)
• ENIAC
• 17,468 triodes, 5,000,000 soldering joints
• 160 KW power
• >60,000 pounds
• >5,000 operations per second
• MTF ~ 36 seconds
• Precursor to other computers (Colossus*)
Colossus (1941) Flowers
The Holy Grail:
A Replacement for Vacuum Triode?
Mervin Kelly & Bell Labs
Kelly’s vision
Kelly’s action
?
=
Kelly Braun (1874) Point contact rectifier Vacuum diode rectifier
The ultimate building block: Transistor (1947)
• > 10 years (1937-1948)
• Brilliant individuals
• Multidisciplinary teams
• Triumph for physics & chemistry
Schottky Shockley Brattain Bardeen Teal Pfann
Launching a New Industry
AT&T ‘s decision to license the technology (1954)
Licensees:
IBM, GE, Westinghouse, Philco, Raytheon, RCA, Sylvania..
TI, Motorola, TTK,….
Early impact:
Improved existing products
Enabled new products
The Birth of Silicon Valley
- Shockley’s home coming (1955)
- Nation-wide talent recruitment
- Spreading the seed
- The folklore of Shockley and the Traitorous Eight
- The unique Fairchild Spin-off Phenomenon
Aggregation of Transistors on a Chip ~1960
Kilby (TI) & Noyce (Fairchild)
Early days of Chip market
Skepticism on cost, reliability
Aerospace & Defense funding nurtured the young industry
Recognizing the advantages of scaling down chip features
Performance , Unit Cost
Moore’s Law & Its Impact
-- 50 years of exponential growth
Transistors on a chip 2x in every ~18-24 months
Drives other technologies, e.g. LCD, hard discs.
>> A major driving force for economic growth
Examples
Intel 4004 CPU (1971) vs ENIAC (1946)
Noyce flip-flop (1961) to Intel Xenon (2015)
4 to 5.5 billion transistors
Multi-functions: Systems-on-a-Chip (SoC)
4004 (1971) Xenon (‘2015) Qualcomm
0.3 x 0.4 cm Snapdragon (2016)
How will Innovention evolve?
Building Blocks Continuous incremental
Powerful improvements (Industry)
Versatile
Available
New Markets / Applications
Major
Inventions
(???)
New capabilities > New features
Innovators >10X in cost/perf. improvements
(Industry, VC…)
On Major Inventions
All from individual minds; sometimes as teams.
Different styles (separate talk)
The geniuses
The dot-connectors (association)
The tinkerers (serendipity)
The one-track minders (extreme conviction)
Challenge is to
Create the right environment
Develop the right metrics to measure success
Outside of ROI paradigm
Deal with invention-to-commercialization gap
Lessons from Bell Labs & Fairchild
Bell Labs (1930-1970’s) Fairchild (1960’s)
Accomplishments Role
• Transistors, solar cells, lasers Cradle of IC technology
• Information theory, DSP, “C”, Unix Failed as a business
• Cellular, satellite, digital network But key to the success of US
Reasons for success semiconductor industry
Prestige Reason for impact
Critical mass Top quality technologists
Stable funding Entrepreneurial culture
Domain focus “Loosely” managed
Dynamic turn-over
“Non-competing”
Create labs for discovery research in
Dispersion of knowledge
health, biotech, energy, environment ?
Concluding thoughts
200+ years of cumulative innovations & inventions
One of the greatest achievements by Human Race
The inter-play of science-technology-application
Convoluted, Non-linear, and Dynamic; all essential
Moore’s law coming to an end
What is next? Anticipate a “New norm”.
(http://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2016-03-
12/after-moores-law)
