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Two elements of 'Silicon' remain vibrant in Silicon Valley, even if the Fabs are all gone: First, the Design software and the design itself is still largely in

Two elements of 'Silicon' remain vibrant in Silicon Valley, even if the Fabs are all gone: First, the Design software and the design itself is still largely in place here. Companies like Cadence, Synopsis, Intel, nVidia, AMD, and many other chip firms still draw on Silicon Valley's work force to design the most complex chips. Second, the equipment that is capable of fabricating the most complex chips is almost exclusively developed here. Companies like Applied Materials, Lam Research, and KLA-Tencor make the machines that perform mind boggling feats of physics and chemistry[0]. Those companies are currently dominating 3 of the 5 top spots for revenues globally. One of the other 5 is in the Netherlands (ASML), the other in Japan (Tokyo Electron). So the actual fabs (along with their Superfund legacy) are gone. But the Silicon innovators are still here and thriving. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G8wXQGEBrA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G8wXQGEBrA

derefr 9y ago
Sure, design happens in SV, but "design" is something you can do on a laptop (well, as long as you have a beefy box somewhere else on the network to run the layout step.) It's similar to how NYC is the capitol of fashion design: yes, a lot of designers have congregated there, but any individual designer can still do their job anywhere else in the world without much hindrance. That's not like how SV used to be: before automated layout, design and fabrication were forced to be vertically integrated—you needed a real fab to iterate your design against. So the designers needed to stay where the fabs were, and the fabs would get built where the designers were. Uncoupling the two means that the fabs can go where it's cheap, and IC design is now just another kind of whiteboard-driven engineering, rather than a kind of monastic ritual performed within a warehouse-sized machine.

derefr 9y ago

Sure, design happens in SV, but "design" is something you can do on a laptop (well, as long as you have a beefy box somewhere else on the network to run the layout step.) It's similar to how NYC is the capitol of fashion design: yes, a lot of designers have congregated there, but any individual designer can still do their job anywhere else in the world without much hindrance. That's not like how SV used to be: before automated layout, design and fabrication were forced to be vertically integrated—you needed a real fab to iterate your design against. So the designers needed to stay where the fabs were, and the fabs would get built where the designers were. Uncoupling the two means that the fabs can go where it's cheap, and IC design is now just another kind of whiteboard-driven engineering, rather than a kind of monastic ritual performed within a warehouse-sized machine.