Топик: История развития компьютеров (Silicon Valley, its history the best companies)

Asset Management

Return on assets for the quarter was 10.5% compared with 9.8% in the comparable quarter last year. Inventory was 11.7% of revenue compared with 11.5% in last year's fourth fiscal quarter. Trade receivables were 13.1% of revenue compared with 14.1% in the prior year period. Net property, plant and equipment was 9.2% of revenue compared with 10.2% in the year-ago quarter.

Full-year Review

Net revenue increased 15% to $48.8 billion. Net revenue in the United States rose 14% to $21.6 billion, while revenue from outside the United States increased 16% to $27.2 billion.

Net earnings from continuing operations were $3.6 billion, an increase of 15%, compared with $3.1 billion in fiscal 1999. Net earnings per share were $1.73 on a diluted basis, up 16% from $1.49 last year.

Outlook for FY 2001

For the 2001 fiscal year ending Oct. 31, 2001, HP expects to achieve revenue growth in the range of 15 to 17%, compared to 15% in FY 2000. Gross margin percentage in FY 2001 is expected to be in the range of 27.5 to 28.5%, compared to 28.5% in FY 2000, with improvements beginning in the 2nd quarter. Total operating expenses in FY 2001 are expected to be approximately 10 to 12% above FY 2000. Tax rate is expected to remain constant at approximately 23%.

The forward-looking statements in this Outlook are based on current expectations and are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions described under the sub-heading "Forward-Looking Statements." Actual results may differ materially from the expectations expressed above. These statements do not include the potential impact of any mergers, acquisitions or other business combinations that may be completed after Oct. 31, 2000.

HP will be discussing its fourth quarter results and its 2001 outlook on a conference call today, beginning at 6 a.m. (PST). A live Webcast of the conference call will be available at http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/investor/quarters/2000/q4webcast.html. A replay of the Webcast will be available at the same Web site shortly after the call and will remain available through 4:30 p.m. PST on Nov. 22, 2000.

Hewlett-Packard was Silicon Valley's first large firm and due to its success one of the area's most admired electronics firms.

While HP was important for the initial growth of the area and at first was based on electronic devices, the actual Silicon Valley fever was launched in the mid-1950s with Shockley and Fairchild, and other semiconductor firms, and went on to the microelectronics revolution and the development of the first PCs in the mid-1970s, continuing till today.

Invention of the transistor

One major event was crucial for this whole development. It was the invention of the transistor that revolutionized the world of electronics.

By the 1940s, the switching units in computers were mechanical relays, which were then replaced by vacuum tubes. But these vacuum tubes soon turned out to have some critical disadvantages, which impeded the further progress in computing technology. In contrast, transistors were much better. They could perform everything the vacuum tubes did, but "required much less current, did not generate as much heat, and were much smaller") than vacuum tubes.

The use of vacuum tubes, which could not be made as small as transistors, had meant that the computers were very large and drew a lot of power. For example the famous American ENIAC, built in 1946 and consisting of more than 18,000 vacuum tubes, had a total weight of 30 tons, filled a whole room of 500 square meters and consumed 150 KW per hour. The breathtaking development in computers can be seen, when comparing the ENIAC with today's laptops which are portable with about 5 kg, are battery driven and run some 100,000 times faster.)

This development was launched by the transistor (short for "transfer resistance") invention in 1947 by William Shockley and his colleagues John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. This "major invention of the century") was made at the Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, which are the "R&D arm of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T).") And in 1956, the three scientists received the Nobel Prize in Physics for their invention that had "more significance than the mere obsolescence of another bit of technology.")

The transistor is a "switch - or, more precisely, an electronic "gate," opening and closing to allow the passage of current.") Transistors are solid-state and are based on semiconductors such as silicon. The crystals of these elements show properties, which are between those of conductors and insulators, so they are called semiconductors. The peculiarity of semiconductor crystals is that they can be made "to act as a conductor for electrical current passing through it in one direction") only, by adding impurities or "doping" them - for instance, "adding small amounts of boron of phosphorus.")

Shockley Semiconductor

In 1955, William Shockley, co-inventor of the transistor, decided to start his own company, Shockley Semiconductor, to build transistors, after leaving the Bell Labs. The new firm was seated in Palo Alto in Santa Clara County, California, where he had grown up. Shockley man aged to hire eight of the best scientists from the East Coast, who were attracted by his scientific reputation. These talented young men - "the cream of electronics research" - represented the "greatest collection of electronics genius ever assembled". Their names were: Julius Blank, Victor Grinich, Eugene Kleiner, Jean Hoerni, Jay Last, Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce and Sheldon Roberts.)

But however brilliant Shockley was, who was called a "marvelous intuitive problem solver" and a "tremendous generator of ideas" by Robert Noyce, it soon turned out that he was "hard as hell to work with", as his style was "oppressive" and he "didn't have trust and faith in other individuals.")

When Shockley refused the suggestions of his eight engineers who wanted to concentrate on silicon transistors, while their boss pursued research on four-layer diodes, they decided to quit and start their own firm in 1957.

Within several months Shockley had to shut down his firm, since he had lost his engineers, whom he called traitors and they are now known as "the Traitorous Eight".

Although Shockley was not very successful with his firm in Palo Alto, he "deserves credit for starting the entrepreneurial chain-reaction that launched the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley,") since he had brought together excellent scientists there like Robert Noyce without whom there might never have been a Silicon Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula at all. Or as M. Malone calls it, "Shockley put the last stone in place in the construction of Silicon Valley.")

The father of one of those young men who left Shockley had contacts to a New York investment firm, which sent a young executive named Arthur Rock to secure financing for their new enterprise. Rock asked a lot of companies, if they were interested in backing this project, but has not been successful so far. The concept of investing money in new technology ventures was largely unknown then, and indeed the term "venture capital" itself wouldn't be coined until 1965") - by Arthur Rock, who should become Silicon Valley's first and most famous venture capitalist later on.

Finally, due to Rock's efforts, the "Traitorous Eight" managed to obtain financial support from industrialist Sherman Fairchild to start Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957.

Fairchild Semiconductor was developed by Shockley's firm, and as the "still existing granddaddy of them all") has itself spawned scores of other companies in Silicon Valley: Most semiconductor firms' roots can be traced back to Fairchild. The most famous ones of them are National Semiconductor, Intel, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD); and many well-known Valley leaders have worked at Fairchild, e.g. Charlie Sporck (National Semiconductor), Jerry Sanders (AMD's founder), Jean Hoerni, and last but not least Robert Noyce, who is considered the "Mayor of Silicon Valley") due to his overwhelming success.

Robert Noyce was born in southwestern Iowa in 1927. His father was a preacher in the Congregational Church and thus was "perpetually on the move to new congregations, his family in tow.") When the Noyces decided to stay at the college town of Grinnell, Iowa, for a longer period of time after many years of moving, this place meant stability in young Bob's life and thus would become his first and only real home, which he would later regard as important for his eventual success.

After high school, Robert studied at Grinnell College. His physics professor had been in contact with John Bardeen (one of the three inventors of the transistor) and obtained two of the first transistors in 1948, which he presented his students, including Bob Noyce. This aroused young Robert's interest in semiconductors and transistors, which made him try to learn everything he could get about this fascinating field of solid-state physics.

Having graduated from Grinnell College he continued his studies at "the premier school of science on the East Coast, MIT,") where he met famous scientists like Shockley. He received his doctorate, and decided to work at Philco until 1955, when he was invited by William Shockley to join a new firm named "Shockley Semiconductor" in Santa Clara County - together with seven other splendid scientists.

When the so-called "Shockley Eight" started a new venture with Fairchild Semiconductor, Robert Noyce began "his own transformation from engineer to business manager:") He was chosen to lead the new company as he seemed the best to do this job.

Fairchild Semiconductor focused on building a marketable silicon transistor applying a new manufacturing process called "mesa". Despite being the smallest company in electronics business then, it attracted public attention, particularly in 1958, when "Big Blue" - as dominant IBM is nicknamed - ordered the "first-ever mesa silicon transistors") for memory drivers in its computers.

This order contributed to the early success of Fairchild Semiconductor, and indicated the beginning of a long relationship between IBM and Silicon Valley.

Importance of military funding

Before switching over to the events at Intel, the aspect of military funding is to be dealt with, since it has played an important role in the early days of Silicon Valley.

During World War II, after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor in 1942, a great deal of the U.S. military forces and of the military production was moved to California. Within a few years, California - formerly an agricultural state - became a booming industrial state and the military center of the USA.)

After the war, in the time of the Cold War and the arms race, the Korean conflict, the "missile gap" and the space program, the Pentagon kept ordering high-technology products from the armament factories in California. Many companies established R&D departments and production facilities in Santa Clara County near Stanford University, which provided them with bright engineers and scientists, and were largely supported by the Pentagon's demand for electronic high-tech products.

Examples for such firms are FMC, GTE, Varian Associates, Westinghouse, and finally Lockheed, which opened its R&D department in the Stanford Research Park in 1956, and started Lockheed Missiles and Space Company (LMSC) in Sunnyvale. Lockheed's move to Northern California was crucial for the developments in Santa Clara County; today the company is Silicon Valley's largest employer with more than 24,000 people.)

Military funding for high-tech products was responsible for the early growth of Silicon Valley in the 1950s and 1960s. The U.S. Department of Defense was the biggest buyer of these products, e.g. its purchases represented about 70 percent of the total production of ICs in 1965.)

While this share in chip demands has dropped to 8 percent today, the Pentagon remains the biggest supporter of new technologies and accounts for most of the purchases of the latest developments.

After the transistor and the integrated circuit, the invention of the microprocessor in the early 1970s represents the next step towards the modern way of computing, providing the basis for the subsequent personal computer revolution.

It was at Intel where the first microprocessor was designed - representing the key to modern personal computers. With its logic and memory chips, the company provides the basic components for microcomputers. Intel is regarded as Silicon Valley's flagship and its most successful semiconductor company, owing its worldwide leading role to a perpetually high spending on research and development (R&D).

Foundation in 1968

It all started in 1968, when Bob Noyce resigned as head of Fairchild Semiconductor taking along Gordon Moore and Andy Grove, to embark on a new venture. They had decided to leave the company, because they wanted "to regain the satisfaction of research and development in a small, growing company,") since Fairchild had become big with lots of bureaucracy work to be done. Gordon Moore had belonged to the famous Shockley Eight and was in charge of the R&D team at Fairchild. Andy Grove, a young Hungarian émigré, who had earned a doctorate in chemical engineering at U.C. Berkeley, had joined Fairchild in the early 1960s.

Intel (short for Integrated Electronics), a typical Fairchild spin-off, was financially backed by venture capital from Arthur Rock, who had been in contact with Noyce since 1957. The company was founded upon the idea of integrating many transistors on a chip of silicon, after Noyce had developed a new photochemical process. The three engineers initially focused on building the first semiconductor chips used for computer memory, which should replace the dominant memory storage technology at the time, called "magnetic core". Intel's task was to drive down the cost per bit by increasing the capacity of memory chips dramatically.

First products - Moore's Law

Within a year, Intel developed its first product - the 3101 Schottky bipolar 64-bit static random access memory (SRAM), which was followed soon after by the 1101. This chip (1101) was a 256-bit SRAM and had been developed on Intel's new "silicon gate metal -oxide semiconductor (MOS) process," which should become the "industry's process technology of choice.") With the first two products, the young company started with 12 employees and net revenues of $2,672 in 1968, had already gained the technological lead in the field of memory chips.

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 the "first merchant market LSI (large-scale integrated) DRAM," and received broad acceptance because it was superior to magnetic core memories. So, by the end of 1971, the 1103 became "the world's largest-selling semiconductor device" and provided the capital for Intel's early growth.)

Until today, semiconductors have "adhered to Moore's Law," which has been framed by the "cofounder of Fairchild and Intel" when the first commercial DRAMs appeared in the early 1970s. This law predicts that the price per bit (the smallest unit of memory) drops by 30 percent every year. It implies that you will receive 30 percent more power (speed/capacity) at the same price, or that the "price of a certain power is 30 percent less.")

Moore's Law applies to both memory chips and microprocessors, and shows the unprecedented rapid progress in microelectronics. This "astonishing ratio" has never occurred in "the history of manufacturing" before. Applied to automobiles, it means that "a Cadillac would have a top speed of 500 miles per hour, get two hundred miles to a gallon of gas and cost less than a dollar" - almost incredible.)

1971 was a crucial year at Intel. The company's revenues surpassed operating expenses for the first time, and the company went public, raising $6.8 million.

Moreover, the company introduced a new memory chip - the first erasable, programmable read only memory (EPROM). Invented by Intel's Dov Frohman, the new memory could store data permanently like already existing ROMs, but besides could be erased simply by a beam of ultraviolet light and be used again. The EPROM was initially viewed as a "prototyping device" for R&D. The invention of the microprocessor in the same year, however, showed the real significance of the EPROM, which could be used by original equipment manufacturer (OEM) customers (they build the end-products) to store microprocessor programs in a "flexible and low-cost way." The "unexpected synergy" between the EPROM and the microprocessor resulted in a growing market for both chips and contributed a great deal to Intel's early success.)

"Ted" Hoff's first microprocessor

The invention of the microprocessor marked a turning point in Intel's history. This development "changed not only the future of the company, but much of the industrial world.")

The story to this technological breakthrough began in 1969, when a Japanese calculator manufacturer called Busicomp asked Intel to design a set of chips for a family of programmable calculators. Marcian "Ted" Hoff, a young and "very bright ex-Stanford research associate") who had joined Intel as employee number 12, was charged with this project. However, he did not like the Japanese design calling for 12 custom chips - each of them was assigned a distinct task. Hoff thought designing so many different chip s would make the calculators as expensive as minicomputers such as DEC's PDP-8, although they could merely be used for calculation. His idea was to develop a four-chip set with a general-purpose logic device as its center, which could be programmed by inst ructions stored on a semiconductor memory chip. This was the theory behind the first microprocessor.

With the help of new employee Stan Mazor, Hoff perfected the design of what would be the 4004 arithmetic chip. After Busicomp had accepted Hoff's chip set, Frederico Faggin, one of the best chip design experts, who had been hired recently, began transforming the design into silicon. The 4004 microprocessor, a 4-bit chip (processes 4 bits - a string of four ones or zeroes - of information at a time), contained 2300 MOS transistors, and was as powerful as the legendary first electronic computer, ENIAC.

Soon after the first 4004s had been delivered to Busicomp, Intel realized the market potential of the chip, and successfully renegotiated with the Japanese to regain the exclusive rights, which had been sold to Busicomp.

In November 1971, Intel introduced the 4004 to the public in an Electronic News ad. It announced not just a new product, but "a new era of integrated electronics [...], a micro programmable computer on a chip.") The microprocessor is - as Gordon Moore call s it - "one of the most revolutionary products in the history of mankind,") and ranks as one of 12 milestones of American technology in a survey of U.S. News and World Report in 1982. This chip is the actual computer itself: It is the central processing u nit (CPU) - the computer's brains. The microprocessor made possible the microcomputer, which is "as big as it is only to accommodate us." For "we'd have a hard time getting information into or out of a microprocessor without a keyboard, a printer and a terminal," as Th.Mahon puts it.)

However significant Hoff's invention, nevertheless, it was hardly noticed in the public until early 1973. The microprocessor had its own instruction set and was to be programmed in order to execute specific tasks. So Ted Hoff had to inform the public and t he engineers about the capabilities of the new device and how to program it.

Cooperation with IBM in the 1980s

Intel's measures in the late 1970s as a reaction to increasing competition from other chip manufacturers paid off greatly and resulted in a remarkable technological lead against its competitors. The most significant consequence, which was a landmark in the company's development, was IBM's decision to rely on the Intel 8088 microprocessor for its PCs in 1980.

IBM (short for International Business Machines) has been the world's leading company in the big mainframe computers since the 1950s. Due to its dominance, it was often compared with a giant and referred to as "Big Blue." Surprisingly, it was not before 198 1 (the PC revolution had already been on for a few years) that IBM introduced its own Personal Computer.

Because of IBM's dominance and worldwide reputation, its PCs soon became industry standard and penetrated the office market: other established computer companies followed and introduced their own PCs - the so-called "clones" - which were compatible to IBM' s models. To maintain compatibility, all these manufacturers were forced to rely on Intel's microprocessors, which thus were bootstrapped to industry standard, too.

As well as for Intel, the CPU manufacturer, IBM's decision has been crucial for a company in the software field: Microsoft's (Redmond, Washington) MS-DOS was chosen as the IBM PC's operating system and became industry standard. It is essential to every IBM compatible PC. Microsoft, a small company in 1980, grew explosively, and is today's superior software giant.

At the beginning of the 1980s, IBM was concerned about Intel's ability to keep investing in R&D and therefore decided to support Intel by buying $250 million (=12%) of the company's stock. This endorsed Intel's position, and, in 1987, IBM sold the last of its shares in a strong Intel.

Intel today

Annual report 2000

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