The semiconductor industry, born around 1960, is a collection of companies that design and manufacture semiconductor devices. Despite being a cyclical sector, one never ceases to be amazed at the exponential conjecture called Moore’s Law  (named after Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore) [1], which states that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years.

This exponential improvement provides massive economies of scale to the industry resulting in the rapid decline of computing costs to the consumers. The end result is the ubiquitous impact of digital electronics in all segments of the world economy, producing a force of technological and social change. Because of its staggering rate of price-performance improvement, changes in the market and innovation occur extremely rapidly. One major consequence of this rapid change is that established market strongholds can be displaced very quickly.