TechPulse 360

Jay Last is one of the traitorous eight who left Shockley Semiconductor to create Fairchild Semiconductor and the first ever integrated circuit

What will the next 50-years bring to the semiconductor industry?

Well, hard to find a better person to answer that question than Jay Last, one of the responsible for the past 50-years of semiconductor innovation.

Last worked at Fairchild Semiconductor with fellow Silicon Valley pioneers Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce (who then went on to found Intel), where he developed the world’s first integrated circuit chip, 50 years ago!

“The last century can be looked upon as the century of physics. The century we’re in now, proved to be the century of biology. Interconnections of electronics with human biological processes will expand with all sorts of new products that we can not yet imagine, which will require arrays of devices at very low prices,” said Last during a panel on “The Planar Integrated Circuit: Building the Future at Fairchild Semiconductor” at the Computer History Museum late Friday.

In order words, the future of the semiconductor industry will come from discoveries and investments in nanotechnology and its intersection with bio-technology. Exciting programme!

Follows is a video taken at the Computer History Museum of Last’s comments on how he and his team created Fairchild Semiconductor and the first integrated circuit, in 3 parts.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

This entry was posted on Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 3:48 pm and is filed under chips, hardware, news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.