Welcome to the REAL New Millennium
01/01/2001
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A few of us still believe that the new millennium really began this New Year's Day rather than a year earlier. There was not much to be done about the confusion of the media and the populace — especially with the Eiffel Tower in full eruption and the biggest, shiniest ball ever falling in Times Square — except to celebrate along with everybody else.
But it does give us another chance for a broad look at the potential shifts in direction that may affect our industry as the century calendar flips over.
What's needed is a deeper look at Moore's Law, the guiding force behind the most successful growth industry in history. Moore's Law is basically an economic engine. Shrinking features in half every 18 months means that cost/function drops proportionately. Of course the cost of equipment to accomplish the shrink has also been rising at an increasing rate, and to counterbalance this the industry depends on such strategies as shifts in wafer sizes, increasing productivity, and better yields to lower manufacturing costs so that chip costs can keep falling. This has led to a steady succession of new uses for semiconductors, with new uses defining even bigger total markets, much like the expanding ripples from a rock thrown into the water.
Actually, rising chip capabilities along with lower cost/function induces growth in two ways. Current areas of application broaden, so existing markets become multifaceted. Also, entirely new markets emerge. At the end of the last century, we were seeing a much wider range of options in personal computers, for example. One direction was toward a box designed primarily to explore the Net, simple and cheap. The other was toward more capable systems incorporating video, audio, and very fast processing capabilities for complex programs and to speed up sophisticated Net downloads.
In addition, however, we are seeing the rise of Internet appliances (IAs) and a wide range of personal digital assistants (PDAs). Movies may soon be downloaded from the Net and stored, either locally or at an accessible server, instead of being rented from a video store. Wireless internet access is creating entire new categories of products and services, and we are only in the early phases of the emergence of these market segments.
Market broadening will take place in thousands of other categories as well, as very capable chips become affordable. We are seeing the first robotic dog, dolls that chat semi-intelligently with youngsters, and a huge market splash for an animated talking fish on the wall, for some random examples. The robotic dog is likely to evolve into a menagerie of robotic creatures, animals, birds, and spiders, dinosaurs, and visitors from space. The talking fish is likely to be followed by lizards with Brooklyn accents, grandma clocks that make wisecracks every hour, and a wide variety of other automated kitsch.
Radio-controlled devices of all kinds are likely to appear, like mini-racers for complex obstacle courses with separate cars dealing with hazards as well as each other. Animated sports figures might be designed for games like baseball, football, and hockey, with control computers to allow the user to devise strategies, control the action, keep statistics, etc. Greeting cards may have multiple places to push to get different Irish ditties, love ballads or bawdy songs.
Wireless control might also gain wider use in more practical devices, such as vacuums, mowers, and perhaps even automated window washers.
Entirely new markets are also emerging. One area where this is likely to become significant is in devices to help save energy, and to control new energy sources and the devices that will be dependent on them. During this new century, it will become increasingly important to optimize the use of dwindling reserves of fossil fuels, as well as to find new energy sources such as fuel cells, wind and tide machines, and so on.
Engineers can plot the optimum efficiency of the speed of an auto engine depending on the torque and vehicle speed, for example, but only now are we beginning to use chips to move toward following those idealized efficiency curves. More efficient appliances and devices, in industry and commerce as well as for consumers, will proliferate in the future both through market forces and government mandate. As we become more dependent on automated, intelligent chip-based systems, other chips will allow us to operate with less wasted energy.
The need to conserve power in battery-operated devices is pushing designers and chipmakers to learn how to operate more conservatively. This knowledge will spread throughout the electronics world as energy saving becomes a higher priority everywhere.
This preview is only for the early part of the new millennium, well before we have communities on Mars and the moon, and send space probes far out into the cosmos. All of these future dreams will depend on continuing progress in our chipmaking skills, so don't stop now! Happy New Year.
Robert Haavind
Editor in Chief