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The name Silicon Valley was coined in 1971 by Don C. Hoefler, editor of theMicroelectronics News, when he used this term in his magazine as the title for a series of articlesabout semiconductor industry in Santa Clara County. Silicon Valley saw the development of theintegrated circuit, the microprocessor, the personal computer and the video game and hasspawned a lot of high-tech products as pocket calculators, cordless telephones, lasers or digitalwatches.
Looking at our high-tech society in which the PC has become indispensable-both inbusinesses and at home, the crucial role of Silicon Valley as the birthplace of themicroelectronics and then the PC revolution has become even more evident.Silicon Valley is also seen as a place where many entrepreneurs backed by venturecapital have made the American Dream come true as “Overnight Millionaires”. This makesSilicon Valley a philosophy saying that everything which seems impossible is feasible and thatimprovements in the US society can take place. The mayor of San Jose Thomas Enery called itthe “economic and cultural frontier where successful entrepreneurship and venture capitalism,innovative work rules and open management styles provide the background for the mostprofound inquiry ever into the nature of intelligence” which might, together with“bioengineering and artificially intelligent software”, affect our evolution.
The revolutionaryinventions and developments, which have been made in this «Valley», affect the daily life and itis hard to imagine high-tech society without them.The story of the “Silicon Valley” starts with Stanford University, which has been offundamental importance in the rise of the electronics industry in Santa Clara County.In 1887, Leland Stanford, a wealthy railroad magnate who owned a large part of thePacific Railroad, decided to built a university and dedicate it to the memory of his son who diedvery young.
The university was opened in 1891 and became later one of the world’s greatestacademic institutions.Frederick Term who is known today as a godfather of the Silicon Valley changed theposition of this university fundamentally. After graduation from Stanford University he decidedto go east to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which was then the leadinguniversity in technology.
After receiving his doctorate in 1924 he turned to Palo Alto andbecame the head of the engineering department in 1937.Terman established strong cooperationbetween Stanford and the surrounding electronics industry to stop the brain drain among theuniversity graduates, as they could not find good jobs in California at that time. Due to hisprepaid leasing program Terman received more than $18 million. Thanks to him manycompanies endowed the university with gifts, which Terman used to hire qualified professorsfrom all over the USA. Thus, he created a mechanism, which increased the settlement of theelectronics industry.During World War II, after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor in 1942, a great deal of theUS military forces and of the military production was moved to California.
Within a few years,California became a booming industrial state and the military center of the USA. After WorldWar II, the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) was founded to provide the industry with moreskilled specialists and increase the number of companies in Santa Clara County. More firms among them Hewlett-Packard as one of the first residents - settled their departments in this park.During the Korean War the US government placed Stanford with a great deal of the projects,which made more and more electronics companies (among them IBM and Lockheed) openedR&D departments in Santa Clara County.
Military funding for high-tech products wasresponsible for the rapid growth of Silicon Valley. Such firms as FMC, GTE, Varian Associates,Westinghouse, and finally Lockheed opened their R&D departments in the Stanford ResearchPark and started Lockheed Missiles and Space Company (LMSC) in Sunnyvale. They were tobecome the core of the early explosive growth of Silicon Valley Lockheed’s (with 24,000Employees now) move to Northern California was crucial for the developments in Santa ClaraCounty.The invention of the microprocessor in the early 1970s represented the next step towardsthe modern way of computing, providing the basis for the subsequent personal computerrevolution .The first microprocessor was designed at Intel Corporation (Integrated Electronics)representing the key to modern personal computers.
With its logic and memory chips, thecompany started providing the basic components for microcomputers. Intel, the most successfulsemiconductor company is regarded as Silicon Valley’s flagship, owing its worldwide leadingrole to a perpetually high spending on research and development (R&D).The foundation of the corporation started in 1968 by Bob Noyce together with GordonMoore and Andy Grove. Their aim was to embark on a new venture and “to regain thesatisfaction of research and development”. After Bob Noyce had developed a new photochemicalprocess, the three engineers developed the ideas of integrating many transistors on a chip ofsilicon.
Initially they focused on building the first semiconductor chips used for computermemory, which could replace the dominant memory storage technology at the time, called“magnetic core”. The young company started with 12 employees and with the first two productsgained the technological lead in the field of memory chips.Within a year, Intel developed its first product - the 3101 Schottky bipolar 64-bit staticrandom access memory (SRAM), which was soon followed by the 1101.
This chip (1101) was a256-bit SRAM developed on Intel’s new “silicon gate metal-oxide semiconductor (MOS)process”.Intel’s first really successful product was the 1103 dynamic random access memory(DRAM), which was manufactured in the MOS process. Introduced in 1970, this chip was “firstmerchant market LSI (large-scale integrated) DRAM”, and received broad acceptance because itwas superior to magnetic core memories. So, by the end of 1971, the 1103 had become theworld’s largest-selling semiconductor device and provided the capital for Intel’s early growth.Until today, semiconductor has adhered to Moore’s Law, which has been framed by thecofounder of Fairchild and Intel when the first commercial DRAMs appeared in the early 1970s.This law predicts that the price per bit drops by 30% every year.
It implies that one will receive30 % more power (speed/capacity) at the same price. Moore’s Law, which could be applied toboth memory chips and microprocessors, showed the unprecedented rapid progress inmicroelectronics.Intel’s revenues surpassed operating expenses for the first time in 1971. This year thecompany introduced a new memory chip EPROM (“erasable, programmable read onlymemory”). Invented by Intel’s Dov Frohman, the new memory could store data permanentlybut besides could be erased simply by a beam of ultraviolet light and be used again.
Theinvention of the microprocessor marked a turning point in Intel’s history. It showed the realsignificance of the EPROM, which could be used by original equipment manufacturer customersto store microprocessor programs in a “flexible and low-cost way”. The unexpected synergybetween the EPROM and the microprocessor resulted in a growing market for both chips andcontributed a great deal to Intel’s early success.The story of further technological breakthrough began in 1969, when a Japanesecalculator manufacturer Busicomp asked Intel to design a set of chips for a family ofprogrammable calculators. Marcian Ted Hoff, a young and very bright ex-Stanford researchassociate who had joined Intel as employee number 12, was charged with this project.
However,Ted Hoff did not like the Japanese design calling for 12 customs chips - each of them wasassigned a distinct task. Hoff thought that designing so many different chips would make thecalculators very expensive. His idea was to develop a four-chip set with a general-purpose logicdevice as its center, which could be programmed by instructions stored on a semiconductormemory chip.
With the help of new employee Stan Mazor, Hoff perfected the design of whatwould be the 4004 arithmetic chip. After Busicomp had accepted Hoff’s chip set, FredericoFaggin, one of the best chip design experts, began transforming the design into silicon. The 4004microprocessor, a 4-bit chip (processes 4 bits - a string of four ones or zeroes-of information at atime), contained 2300 MOS transistors, and was as powerful as the legendary first electroniccomputer ENIAC.Soon after the first 4004s had been delivered, Intel realized the market potential of thechip, and successfully renegotiated with the Japanese to regain the exclusive rights, which hadbeen sold to Busicomp. In November 1971, Intel introduced the 4004 to the public in ElectronicNews ads.
They announced not just a new product, but also “a new era of integrated electronics”,a micro programmable computer on a chip. The microprocessor is - as Gordon Moore called it “one of the most revolutionary products in the history of mankind, and ranks as one of 12milestones of American technology in a survey of the US” (“News and World Report”, 1982).The introduction of a microprocessor made possible the creation of a microcomputer.Today, Intel supplies the computing and communications industries with chips, boardsand systems building blocks that are the “ingredients” of computers, servers, and networking andcommunications products.
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