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"Seeing
Around Corners" with the Help of Technology Transfer
Experts
By Carol Kallendorf, Ph.D. |
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Moore's Law just got harder. It ran into Rock's Law.
Gordon Moore articulated his famous law in the 1980s which
said that "the number of transistors on a chip doubles every
18 months," which has proven to be true. Now
scientists worry about hitting the brick wall of physics,
where Moore's Law reaches the end of physical law. But
there is another, perhaps greater limiter for the
semiconductor industry. Arthur Rock, |
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AMD's Athlon Chip, on
the Cutting Edge of
Today's Technology |
in what has come to be known as
Rock's Law, states that the cost of a semiconductor
fabrication plant doubles every four years. |
As of 2003, the price had already reached 3
billion U.S. dollars. In Rock's Law, expense trumps
science's ability to invent and develop.Meg Wilson, who
teaches in IC2’s Executive M.S. in Science and Technology
Commercialization, UT Austin, expresses similar
insights. There is enough technology in the pipeline
to dramatically revolutionize the fields of semiconductor,
nanotechnology, and biotechnology, Wilson says. But the pace of these
advances will be determined by the available funding from
both public and private sectors. The amounts of
capital needed to fund products of practical application are
so enormous that huge advances will be more |
| incremental than revolutionary.
This doesn't mean that progress will be slow. Dramatic
advances will be seen during the next few years, but they
won't necessarily happen on a quarterly basis to wow the consumer,
impress the board, the analysts, and the stockholders of
companies on the cutting edge.
Wilson, a former vice president of business
development for MCC, emphasizes that in order to
experience dramatic breakthrough in the semiconductor
industry,
science must cross the biological semiconductor line.
At this point, semi- |
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| conductor chips and biotechnology merge at a point
where no |
Meg Wilson, IC2 |
person has previously gone. Wilson
explains that scientists must be able to grow neurons and to
create a neuron saturated membrane. They must
integrate them, put them on a chip, and keep them
alive/active. If they are able to achieve this state,
they could achieve startling speed and switching capability.
Again, this technology will usher in a new era in computing.
Yet we're looking at a timeline--at best a
guesstimate--of seven to ten years. That
timeframe is very quick, as innovations usually go.
But it's not the kind of warp-speed we've become accustomed to.
For technology-hungry industry, it
seems like a long time.
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And What is Around the Corner with
Nanotechnology? And what if tools could be built an atom
at a time and be so small they could be injected into the
human body so that a dosage of medicine could be
administered always on time and in the right amount?
What if the surgeon's knife became obsolete, as tiny
bio-tools were injected into the human body to perform
medical procedures and then simply dissolve? We
will see the beginning of this revolution in the next few
years. And the revolution won't be confined to the life
sciences. Nanotechnology will also invade the factory
assembly line to |
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| become an integral part of manufacturing. The companies that will actually lead the revolution and
bring these products to market may be in existence today.
But they are having difficulty in getting the huge funding
necessary to bring the product to market. There is a
large amount of government and university funding, but nowhere near enough to commercialize these kinds of projects,
which are largely in the research and development stage.
Venture capital, burned by the speculation of the 90s, is
moving forward warily. Companies that might do an IPO
that would bring them large, broad investment lack two
things: products that are marketable now as well as a
present revenue stream.
What Really Is Around the Corner?
We've never seen so much around the corner, that is,
potentially. Envision the world 20 years from now.
There is supercomputing on a level we cannot now imagine, as
well as nanotechnology that has revolutionized medicine and
manufacturing. There are, in this world of two short
decades into the future, advanced stem cell applications
that are growing new organs, gene therapy that is curing
chronic diseases and conditions and obliterating birth
defects. There are dermadrugs that will
make anti-aging processes such as facelifts
possible from a bottle.
What's really around the corner has never depended more
strongly on the decisions that will be made in the
laboratory, in the executive offices, and at the
governmental level.
Funding the Future--Mistakes in Where We Put Resources
Can Cost Us
Because of the relatively long payoffs for the technology
we're looking at today and the gargantuan investments that
are necessary, the role of government in funding research
and development will determine what's around the corner.
We may have made serious errors in governmental investments
already. When congress killed the superconducting
supercollider in Waxahachie, Texas, it killed a lot of our
future in being pioneers in the subatomic, quantum field of
physics. More recently, the kind of research that
requires atom smashing has gone to Europe. The deal to
develop fusion, which would usher in an era of a limitless
supply of energy with little negative environmental impact,
has gone to France. The competition for public and private
investment dollars is, and will be, more intense than we
ever imagined as we move further into the 21st Century.
Will manned space travel siphon funds needed for more "real
world" technologies? Will the cost of homeland defense
and foreign military action hamstring investment in the
future?
Ultimately, what's around the corner will be our vision of
the future, and a vision of health and prosperity can win over
the vision of war, poverty, and doom. Thinking about
tomorrow is today's most important job.
About Meg Wilson. Meg Wilson teaches in
IC2’s Executive M.S. in Science and Technology
Commercialization, UT Austin; serves on NSF’s SBIR Advisory
Board and works on special IC2 projects. Meg was MCC’s VP
for Business Development; Coordinator of UT’s Center for
Technology Development and Transfer; Governor White's
Science and Technology Coordinator; and manager for Governor
Clements' Texas 2000 Long Range Planning Project. Meg has a
Masters from the LBJ School of Public Affairs and a BA in
Politics from Ithaca College. She is Immediate Past
President of the Technology Transfer Society and on the
Board of Tekstrategy Ltd., UK. |
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