Introduction

Some jobs are inherently risky. Choosing 40 forces that will shape the semiconductor industry is clearly one of them.

Delivering to an audience of fact-oriented electronics engineers what is necessarily a subjective piece of journalism is an effort that, by its nature, is bound to generate controversy-and maybe even calls of condemnation. We welcome both your bouquets and brickbats.

As journalists who track the daily changes in a rapidly evolving industry, we have no pretensions that our list of the top 40 is definitive, but that does not imply it is not instructive or useful. In this special issue commemorating the 40th anniversary of the integrated circuit, we wanted to place a marker in the ground, pointing to the people, companies and technologies we think will be the ones to watch for anyone with a stake in the still-young and dynamic world of electronics. Take this special issue as our heads-up at this historic moment in the evolution of semiconductors.

The fact is, that's what we do every day at Electronic Engineering Times. Every time we put a story on page, we are making an editorial statement about what technologies should be on your radar screen, what companies are pushing this industry forward and which people are driving the innovations that will take us to the next level. We aim to make our stories balanced and objective, but the act of journalism is an exercise of choice, applying a filter to the world.

You may not agree with all our choices. We don't expect you to. But we hope you find our Top 40 picks-which we list but have not tried to rank-will galvanize your own opinions about the way forward.

History has taught us the importance of taking risks. Indeed, 40 years ago, Jack Kilby went out on a limb with his work, which resulted in the integrated circuit. He shares his views on how we got to where we are today in an interview in this special issue.

Also in this issue is a story that looks at today's top risks-the ones involved in the uncertain move toward the much-hailed system-on-a-chip. In a series of interviews with senior-level executives throughout the industry-along with some outtakes from the feedback we received from our advisory board-we have crafted a picture of what we think those chief challenges are.

In a separate interview, another seminal thinker of the industry, Carver Mead, talks about what may seem like an absolutely fanciful future scenario, where lessons from biology are applied to the next generation of electronics devices. Wild as they sound, it may be just such mind-stretching ideas that are needed to pull us beyond the barriers we will confront in the future.

As Mead said, "We are really very rigid in the way we think today, and of course the reason is that we have been so darned successful, which is a characteristic of human enterprise: that the thing that made the last generation successful becomes the thing that holds us back from the next generation-every time, without fail. That was never more true than today. It was the right thing, but now it is holding us back. With the technologies we have today, we could do much, much, much, much more if we just got unstuck-paradigm-wise. And somebody will do it. I have great faith in our entrepreneurial spirit."

We share that faith and look forward to the privilege of writing about the many people, companies and technologies that will take the risks needed to drive us forward-whether they are on this year's Top 40 list or not.

Return to: IC @ 40