I have two kinds of friends in my life..passing clouds and guiding stars..This post is dedicated to one of my guiding stars , the Ever Loving Buddy (ELB) the one who gets punished secretly when he forgets to read my blog and more worse when he doesnt comment there.. I want to share something about him here on the occasion of him getting married soon.
I have to accept that I underestimated him initially.But with 4 yrs of our strong friendship (very strong infact at the rate of its survival over our fights),I now know that he is versatile and more important very modest except that he thinks he is the smartest,most handsome in his office.I was so surprised when he participated in Mr.Company competition , because ELB I know is a very shy guy and an introvert too ..still I remember his trembling hands when he talked to me first and then I was in complete awe when he grabbed the Mr.Company title..
Then the Cubicle decoration I was sure he’d win and he won too..I always loved visiting his cubicle ..waiting for someone to open the door and tag along them because me and ELB were working for different clients then..His cubicle can be easily identified as it is full of stuffed toys and you might mistake that for a day-care centre for kids.I even once tried to loot the stuffed tiger but ELB surprised me giving that as my birthday gift later .
He was one of the few I knew who climbed up the career ladder working hard. The Ever Loving Buddy (ELB) recently was asked to give an article about “semiconductors in daily life” to publish in his office newsletter.It is going to be a big hit.I was the least interested to read an article on Semi-conductors.But this is ELB’s.When I started reading ,it was very interesting,informative and it was in ELB’s typical witty style. Still the document which he wrote about me “just4u.doc”, which I treasure for my life is both humorous and emotional and is his best.
I never thought I would love an article about semi conductors because he wrote it..I never knew an article about semi-conductors can bring me to tears just because he wrote it .It is the happiness to know another talent about him and its also the pride.Snifff<Anyone there…tissue please..> I am sure his article will be the highlight of the newsletter..
Here is the article with all the rights reserved from ELB
It was a beautiful evening. I wanted to give a surprise gift to her - a recently launched mobile phone. She opened it and with excitement said “Do U C what I C?”. I said “Love”. “No Dumbo! It’s an IC QSC7230 in this handset, which has got more functionality in a single chip, It is a 45 nano meter(45nm) processor operating at 600MHz, with built in BlueTooth and FM. (That’s the problem of having a tech-savvy Girl Friend!!). Most of what she said was going out of my head, except for the word “nano” which I (being a car maniac) could easily relate with the low cost car which is to be launched soon. But she understood the big puzzle in my face and started explaining about the significance of semiconductors and IC’s (which I skipped during my academics, as Electronics subject viewed me as an Untouchable!!)
She started her lecture, “Semiconductor technology is an important invention of the past century. You can forget inventions like television, air conditioning, set-top boxes, the computer, the Internet and even your indispensable coffee maker, but not Semiconductors. Especially the transistors, the building block of the processors. Without the transistors, some say our servers would be three stories high, and laptops would be the size of a big wardrobe” (I hope she was referring to her wardrobe!!). “Our televisions would still use vacuum tubes, and our cars could not boast of controlling the engine by a 32 bit processor”.
“Neverthless to say, without the transistor, what would the digital economy look like? Would Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. have become giants? Would geeks have become cool with their gadgets? Would rich guys be driving BMWs? Probably not!!” (Yeah, she has a point about BMW!!).
Soon after we part, here words were lingering in my mind (no..no..not those usual three words, but about the role of Semiconductors in today’s world).
I paid a visit to my friend’s home. He has got a new model of LCD projector along with a hi-fi home theatre. He asked “Wanna see ‘Die Hard 4.0′?”. I responded pretty quickly with a “yes, please”. As soon as the movie was over, he started “This is a R2-D2 digital audio and video projector. This can project movies at 1024 x 768 XVGA resolution, powered by TI’s DLP technology.” (Oh no! not again). I asked “all because of the Semiconductors?”. He replied, with some thinking in his mind “Hmm..not exactly. Hold on..yeah the core is the in-built IC’s which has given this kind of product. You know what, not only this, there is still more. I heard that D-box has partnered with Blu-ray to offer a chair that moves with the action on the screen, vibrating when cars crash or explosions happen. This is a feature offered by 20th Century Fox, Disney, and Lions Gate on over 700 movies today” (Cooool!!). This time I know by myself - “this kind of excitement is caused by the development in the semiconductor industry”.
Interest and curiosity arose in me. I started gathering information about Semiconductors from the information pool - the internet. And here is what I found:
Sixty years ago the transistor was invented at Bell Labs, by William Shockley, igniting a series of changes and advances that would change the way people listen to their favorite music, communicate with their friends, do their jobs, pay their bills, educate themselves and buy everything from books to used toaster ovens (Thanks man!!)
The transistors were combined to form Integrated circuits. The manufacturing of these devices is very cost effective. The raw material is mere ’sand’ (read it as “Silica”). A metal or insulator is made as a semiconductor by doping it (Hereby we declare, we will not punish the semiconductor on ‘doping’ charges!!). Semiconductor ICs are fabricated in a layering process which includes these key process steps: printing the transistors by photolithography, Desposition of semicondutor material and etching the unwanted areas. These components are finally packaged in ceramic flat packs. And there you are doing multiple functionalities with these tiny tots. All these chips are combined to have what is called as SOC (System-On-Chip). A SOC typically consists of one or more processing units, multiple memories, multiple digital and analogue interfaces. (This is what might have combined the role of a digital camera, MP3 player, video playback, cellular phone, and what not, all in one, in my iphone)
The interesting part here is, the size of the chip depends upon the size of the gate width to form a transistor. The smaller the gate width, the smaller is the size of the chip. In 1965, Gordon Moore of Intel Corp’s said that the gate width will reduce to half every 18 months (Ok, in plain English, for people like me, Mr. Moore says that, “The number of transistors on a chip will double about every two years.”). Forty-two years later, Moore’s Law still holds true (Mr. Moore, you must have been a Nostradamus of this century!!). Recently, Intel has achieved 45nm (nano meter) gate width, resulting in a processor that holds 820 million transistors (here I’ve got the right meaning of “nano”). Phew!!
Lost in my thoughts, I was thinking, “Semiconductor devices inside pacemakers keep our hearts going. Computer chips run inside our cars, cell phones and even tiny, implantable RF (Radio Frequency) devices that help find lost pets. The PC and the Internet have been phenomena, but how usable and ubiquitous would they be without millions of tiny semiconductor devices running inside laptops, desktops and servers?”
Nanotechnology devices are injected into people’s bloodstreams to find and fix diseased cells or organs. Advancement in Semiconductor technology will allow cell phones to shrink down to devices that can easily be woven into the fabric of our clothing. These devices also should enable automatic language translation to be built into telephones so people easily can communicate with each other regardless of what languages they speak.”
So much to know, so little known!!!
After a long tiring day, I was about to enter in my dream world, only then this thought came into my mind …”We all leave footprints in the ‘Silica’, the question is, will we be a big heal, or a great soul.” (read it as “sand”)
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.She replied with lots of mischiefs in her eyes ” Ask V and he’ll confess “. I Couldn’t believe my luck ,I again screamed to the gang that V and C have some confessions to share with us.
This is the Dictionary.com word of the day
