Stirring things up in the US chip industry
Published: 10 Jul 2006 14:45 BST
George Scalise wouldn't mind making fewer trips to China.
The president of the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) recently visited the country to learn more about how it is encouraging the development of its own chip industry. He and his staff came away impressed with the gleaming new universities and research facilities that are springing up in various parts of China.
The SIA, a consortium of US chip companies, is trying to bring some of that buzz back to the US. The US share of worldwide chip production has fallen to 15 percent of the world's total, which isn't enough to sustain a "critical mass" of educational opportunities, design breakthroughs and overall competitiveness, according to Scalise.
The group would like to see that number increase to 30 percent over the next few years. But it doesn't believe that will happen unless the US Government increases funding for maths and science education and research in grade schools and universities; allows more foreign workers to come to the US; and reforms tax policies to give US companies a better chance of competing against heavy government subsidies in other countries. Scalise and a group of SIA representatives recently visited San Francisco, where they talked to ZDNet UK’s sister site, CNET News, about their proposals for encouraging more domestic chip production.
Q: How will your proposals for increased educational resources and tax policies and so on increase the incentives for chip companies to build in the US?
A: You've got to see the total picture, and then I think it comes together and makes a lot of sense. The thing that will make the investment come back, is there is a consequence of those components. You have the trained students; you have the technology coming out of universities; and those students can then go and exercise it. We already have a capital structure in this country that allows good ideas and good people to get investment money, and you also have the trained students from foreign lands that are coming over here. Finally, you also have a competitive investment climate that says I made the investment in California, or if I make it in China or Ireland, I can come out with roughly the same cost structure and therefore be successful against my competition.
This is all about choosing to compete. If you ever get to the point where you are viewing this thing as corporate welfare or industrial policy or things of that nature, then you have missed the whole argument.
This is all about choosing to compete. If you ever get to the point where you are viewing this thing as corporate welfare or industrial policy or things of that nature then you have missed the whole argument. It is only about what it will take to compete in this new global economy, and these are the three things in the technology world. When I came along, we didn't worry about what China or Japan or Europe is doing. They didn't really make any difference. They didn't matter. Today, they matter and therefore you cannot ignore them.
So there are two things you need to do today. One is strengthen the areas where we are really good: university research programmes, rule of law, intellectual property protection, venture capital capability, financial institutions, and so on. But then you also have to look at what the competition is doing and what can they do to derail you, because they are getting good at some of these other things, but they are also doing some things in addition to that that we are not doing.
Are you going to be able to resist making the choice (to invest overseas) even if the conditions in the US improve?
If (former Intel chief executive) Craig Barrett was sitting here — and I hate to put myself in his shoes — but he was talking not too long ago about caring about the industry as a chief executive and a chairman of a semiconductor company, and the decisions he'd have to make with that hat on were not necessarily the decisions he'd want to make if he were wearing the grandfather hat or the, you know, the family hat or the American taxpayer hat.
Sometimes those decisions are at odds, but I believe...
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