Silicon valley

硅谷

What does the computer industry thrive on apart from anarchy?

Technology trends may push Silicon Valley back to the future. Carver Mead, a pioneer in integrated circuits and a professor of computer science at the California Institute of Technology, notes there are now work-stations that enable engineers to design, test and produce chips right on their desks, much the way an editor creates a newsletter on a Macintosh. As the time and cost of making a chip drop to a few days and a few hundred dollars, engineers may soon be free to let their imaginations soar without being penalized by expensive failures. Mead predicts that inventors will be able to perfect powerful customized chips over a weekend at the office -- spawning a new generation of garage start-ups and giving the U.S. a jump on its foreign rivals in getting new products to market fast. 'We're got more garages with smart people,' Mead observes. 'We really thrive on anarchy.'

And on Asians. Already, orientals and Asian Americans constitute the majority of the engineering staffs at many Valley firms. And Chinese, Korean, Filipino and Indian engineers are graduating in droves from California's colleges. As the heads of next-generation start-ups, these Asian innovators can draw on customs and languages to forge righter links with crucial Pacific Rim markets. For instance, Alex Au, a Stanford Ph. D. from Hong Kong, has set up a Taiwan factory to challenge Japan's near lock on the memory-chip market. India-born N.Damodar Reddy's tiny California company reopened an AT & T chip plant in Kansas City last spring with financing from the state of Missouri. Before it becomes a retirement village, Silicon Valley may prove a classroom for building a global business.

技術(shù)的發(fā)展趨勢有可能把硅谷重新推向未來�？ǜ�.米德 -- 集成電路的一位先驅(qū)，加州理工學(xué)院的計算機教授 -- 注意到，現(xiàn)在有些計算機工作站使工程技術(shù)人員可以在他們的辦公桌上設(shè)計、試驗和生產(chǎn)芯片，就像一位編輯在蘋果機上編出一份時事通訊一樣。由于制造一塊芯片的時間已縮短至幾天，費用也只有幾百美元，因此，工程技術(shù)人員可能很塊就可充分發(fā)揮他們的想像力，而不會因失敗而造成經(jīng)濟上的損失。米德預(yù)言發(fā)明者可以在辦公室用一個周末的時間生產(chǎn)了完美的、功能很強的、按客戶需求設(shè)計的芯片 -- 造就新一代從汽車間起家的技術(shù)人員，在把產(chǎn)品推向市場方面使美國把它的外國對手們打個措手不及。 “我們有更多的汽車間，那里有許多聰明人，”米德說。“我們確實是靠這種無政府狀態(tài)發(fā)展起來的。” 靠的是亞洲人。硅谷許多公司中工程技術(shù)人員的大多數(shù)是東方人和亞裔美國人。中國、韓國、菲律賓和印度的工程師一批批地從加州的大學(xué)畢業(yè)。作為新掘起一代的帶頭人，亞裔發(fā)明家可以憑借他們在習(xí)慣和語言上的優(yōu)勢，與關(guān)鍵的太平洋沿岸市場建立起更加牢固的聯(lián)系。比如說，亞歷克斯.奧，一位來自香港的斯坦福大學(xué)博士，已經(jīng)在臺灣建廠，對日本在內(nèi)存條市場上近似壟斷的局面提出了挑戰(zhàn)。印度出生的N.達莫達.雷迪經(jīng)營的小小的加州公司在堪薩斯城重新啟用了美國電話電報公司的一家芯片工廠，并從密蘇里州獲取了財政上的支持。在硅谷變成一個退休村之前，它很可能成為建立全球商業(yè)的一個教學(xué)場地。