A Fierce New Era of World Competition
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A Fierce New Era of World Compétition Robert N. Noyce
It's a pleasure to be hère and an honor to speak at the Plenary Session of the MRS Fall Meeting. I'm delighted to hâve the chance to discuss some issues that I believe are of deep concern to ail of us engaged in technical or scientific endeavors. I'd like to start by giving you a brief update on Sematech. Then, I want to try to explain why I believe Sematech is important—and why you should think so as well. Establishment of Sematech I'm sure most of you recall, back in 1984, when Japanese firms began selling semiconductors in this country at less than cost. In fact, the price of some chips fell as much as 80% in a one-year span. That exercise cost U.S. semiconductor companies $2 billion. It cost Japanese industry $4 billion. When it was done, many U.S. manufacturers had abandoned the business—and Japan is now the world's leading supplier of semiconductors. It's worth pointing out that U.S. companies gave up the fight even though they had suffered losses only half as large as those in Japan. About the same rime, the Défense Science Board formed a task force to assess the U.S. military's growing dependence on advanced electronics. Given what had just happened to the U.S. semiconductor industiy, the armed forces were looking at the unsettling prospect of being dépendent on overseas suppliers for critical éléments of their weapons Systems. Thèse developments were brought to the attention of the U.S. Congress in February 1987 when the task force outlined the issues and suggested some solutions. The resuit was Sematech.. .a coopérative effort between the U.S. Défense Department and 14 members of the U.S. semiconductor industry. It was founded in 1987, charged with helping to restore American leadership in semiconductor manufacturing. And just since then, the task has become more difficult. There has been rapid and steady érosion among American suppliers of equipment and materials used in making semiconductors. If this vital infrastructure fails, Sematech will fail. So we are 4
moving forward as rapidly as possible. We occupied our site in Austin, Texas 19 months ago and immediately started work on a world-class clean room facility, where we will develop the tools and techniques to meet our goals. We built that clean room in just 32 weeks...and less than four months later—using American-made equipment and American processes—we finished our first memory chip, from raw silicon to finished wafer. That gave us the baseline we need to be about our business.
Sematech does not produce computer chips for sale—we produce knowledge, which we share with our members, who put it to work. Define, Develop, Demonstrate, Transfer The method we use for managing our projects can be summarized in four words: define, develop, demonstrate, and transfer. We hâve now defined our technical goals. We must be able to produce chips with 0.50 micron circuit widths by 1991 ...and 0.35 microns by 1993...if we are to reach parity with overseas competitors. The development process is under way now.
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