The Digital Era 2

6 The Chips Industry: Moore and Rock’s Laws

The electronic components industry predates the computer and connected objects industry that we commonly use. After the Second World War, the invention of the transistor (in 1947) preceded the development of printed circuits by several years. These innovations gave a very important boost to this industry, which essentially formed the technical base for digital services. This industrial production has changed over time: some large companies chose to integrate the design, and sometimes even the manufacture, of the components necessary for their own products (computers, telephones, weapons systems, automatisms, etc.); the facts did not always prove them right. Others deliberately specialized in the production of electronic chips; significant scale and scope effects enabled them to master the technical, commercial and financial risks inherent in this highly capitalized sector. Today’s leaders are among them.

This industry is quite original. It has two main branches: one mainly produces electronic memories and the other produces logic processors, which in turn give way to computers, digital telephones, game consoles and automatisms. The storage capacity of the memory chips and the computing speed of the processors increase according to an empirical law, which is attributed to Moore, one of the founders of the American company Intel which has been dominating this branch since the 1970s. Over the years, the technical progress of semiconductors ...