Why did it take so long? How did they finally build it? And why have so few people noticed? Last year, Motorola managed to build a gallium arsenide device on a silicon substrate. A new era in the manufacturing of quantum devices will begin in the second half of this year when Motorola and other…
Colonel Edwin Drake was prepared to go quite a bit deeper when he turned on his steam engine in Crawford County, Pennsylvania, in 1859, but his drill struck oil at 69 feet.
In January 2000, a kilogram of tantalum cost $65. By the end of the year it was $550; triple the price of silver. (It has dropped back to the $60 range today.) What caused the spike? Surging sales of cell phones.
“It’s a great company,” one analyst told us. “Great people. String revenues. Nice cash position. A gold-plated customer list.: The company’s only problem, he volunteered, is that it’s “not a technology play.” Packaging semiconductors “isn’t rocket science,” so investors don’t get excited.
