The Semi-Conducive Industry

The Semiconductor Industry is a paradox. Having worked in this industry for close to 7 years, I should know. Thanks to a dude called Gordon Moore, who, besides confining many of my friends at an institution called Intel, also coined the Moore’s Law. Plainly put, this law states that the average size of chips (semiconductor, though this may apply to the potato variety as well) halves every 18 months. What Jesus is to Christianity, Moore is to the Semiconductor industry. The Semicon Industry takes his word as gospel and spends on an average 20% of it’s revenue trying to reduce the size of chips and prove him right.

And therein lies the paradox. Customers of Semicon Companies expect the Semicon Cos to halve the cost of their chips every 18 months! And if the Semicon Cos don’t do it, their customers always have their competitor’s number on speed dial. So that puts these Semicon Cos in a situation where they actually spend more on research so that they can charge less to their customers and make less money! Talk about shooting yourself in the foot! The only way they can make any profits in this situation is to sell at least twice the number of chips. Unless we all figure how to either double our consumption or our population every 18 months, the Semiconductor Industry will be stuck with a case of a flooding of chips. Perhaps this also explains why this industry sees such a cyclical pattern of growth and downturns with the downturns lasting longer and deeper than the times of growth.

So is the future for anyone in the Semiconductor Industry doomed? Not at all. In my next post, I’ll discuss my thoughts on the business opportunities in the Semiconductor Industry. In fact, I’ll argue that it’s a great time to be in the Semicon space.

And so Mr. Moore, while we will thank you for your famous law, we thank you still for not making any further ones. For sometimes, it’s best to let those foolish entrepreneurs be ignorant about laws that go against what they’re trying to build…. that’s the only way they succeed.

How many engineers ...

A video clip to a party we had at our place to celebrate IIT Bombay's Diwali Dhamaka performance. Don't remember the exact date but sometime in late December. Kind of reminds me of the tongue-in-cheek question about how many engineers does it take to do something. In the case of opening a champagne bottle, well, all of us. But then, not all jobs are judged by how few people are needed to do it. For jobs like these, it will always be all of us. We know no other way. Go IIT-B!

Sher ka baap bandar!

I did not realize it when the picture was taken. Thanks to Binaisha for the smart remark! 

Jane Kahan Gaye Woh Din.

Got this poem from my friend from back during my school days. Jay Wagh and his twin brother, Vijay used to swim with me. When you are into competitive swimming, you virtually spend 1/3rd of your life in the pool. And the people you meet in these turbulent waters are the ones who become friends for life.

"How Lives change....?"

Here i am sitting in my room @ night...

Thinking hard about life
How it changed from a maverick college life to strict professional life......

How tiny pocket money changed to huge monthly paychecks
but then why it gives less happiness....

How a few local denim jeans changed to new branded wardrobe
but then why there are less people to use them

How a single plate of samosa changed to a full Pizza or burger
But then why there is less hunger.....

Here i am sitting in my room @ night...
Thinking hard about life
How it changed.....

How a bike always in reserve changed to bike always on
but then why there are less places to go on......

How a small coffee shop changed to cafe coffee day
but then why its feels like shop is far away.....

How a limited prepaid card changed to postpaid package
but then why there are less calls & more messages......


Here i am sitting in my room @ night...
Thinking hard about life
How it changed.....

How a general class journey changed to Flight journey
But then why there are less vacations for enjoyment....

How a old assembled desktop changed to new branded laptop
but then why there is less time to put it on..........

How a small bunch of friends changed to office mate
But then why we always feel lonely n miss those college frnz.....

Here i am sitting in my room @ night...
Thinking hard about life

How it changed..... How it changed........

With Lot of Change,
Regards,
jay

What Me Valentine?

A little limerick as I wait for Meg to join me for a movie. Earlier we were wondering how people spend so much on Valentine's Day when they had the rest of the year to prove their love...

Then it was a special day,

Now it's part of life's way.

Then I said with a dozen flowers,

Now,  it's us and the unsaid hours.

Then I said she's the world to me,

Now through her the world I see.

Then this day her love I sought,

Now we laugh at the world Valentine bought. 

String Theory

Updating on my last triathlon. This one was called the Pacific Grove Triathlon (http://results.eternaltiming.com/event/PGT2008). Here's a link to the pictures that Megha's uploaded on her site 

http://picasaweb.google.com/mshenoy/PacificGroveTriathlon#. 

This was an Olympic Distance Triathlon (1 Mile swim, 25 Miles Bike and 7.5 Miles Run). It is considered one of the most scenic triathlons since it is along the famous 17 Mile Drive. 

I love taking part in such distance events... the ones that make you wonder what in the world were you were thinking. Waking up at 4:30 am, driving down to the sea, plunging into the frigid Pacific before the sun comes out, biking with feet that are too numb from the cold to feel the pain and then running without quite knowing whether it is the sea water or your sweat that's got you all drenched... Triathlon, Sir, is a cruel sport! 

And yet, perhaps that's why one does it. It makes the finish line that much sweeter. 

As for me, I like to think that I learn something new each time. This time it was Kelps.

Monterey Bay, where we had the swim part of the triathlon, is the Mecca of Kelps, the trees of the sea. Think of them as these gigantic spinaches with just their noses sticking out of the water. And boy, this was one Kelpy sea! So much so that it was less of swimming and more of wading and plowing my way past these leafy vegetables. 

Not used to so much 'greenery', I struggled at first to swim past these plants.  I was trying to cut my way past them.  And that' s when I saw a fellow swimmer zoom past me. I realised that instead of fighting these plants, he was actually embracing them! He was using them as a bunch of strings, clutching them and then pulling against them to propel himself forward. In a way, he wasn't quite swimming at all. He had adapted his swimming style to pull his way out of the situation! 

I followed suit. Very soon, thanks to these Kelps, I had managed to 'pull' myself to the finish line  and ready to start my bike stretch. 

You know, almost always, it's in deep waters that one learns new ways to stay afloat. I had prided myself in being good at swimming in open water. And yet here, it just took an innocuous leafy vegetable to make me unlearn what I had learnt over two decades! We all have our share of these unexpected randomly floating Kelps... the strings attached to our ocean of life. We can fight 'em. Or we can learn to use 'em...  for sometimes, pulling the right strings might just help you get home faster.  

Circle of life

I’ve been thinking about professions. About the jobs people do. And about how the jobs are all connected to each other. I have been working in the semiconductor industry for quite a while now. And am amazed at the number of people and industries involved in building something like say the iPhone that eventually fits in your pocket. I work at a company that designs chips. Our designs are sent off to a fab in China that turns this design into millions of silicon chips. These chips are integrated with several other of their cousins by guys called OEMs or module vendors. In addition to these chips, which are perhaps worth a couple of dollars each, the OEMs also procure a bunch of 5 cent capacitors and wires from companies that build nothing else but that. The OEMs put this all together on a circuit board. This is then packaged in a bigger box with a “Made in XXX” sticker on it and sold in stores like Walmart and perhaps these days over the internet.

And then you have the ecosystem of software companies that develop all kinds of wonderful applications for the users on these products.

And then, if it is a mobile application, you have all these telecom carriers who come up with equally wonderful plans to make your wallet and head lighter to start using these applications.

Its humbling when you think about it, the role that one plays in building a small fit-in-your-palm sized product.

What intrigues me however, is where this chain ends. And that’s where I am beginning to realize that my industry is connected to a much larger ecosystem; perhaps is a small appendage to it. All the companies involved in the chain above were funded at some point by investment houses. And even for those that were funded and are perfectly operational, we see that they are still controlled by  a handful of private equity companies on Wall Street who can change its course at the drop of a few cents of investor confidence. (eg: The Icahn-Yahoo deal). It’s funny when you think about it; the distant and yet obvious connection a Wall Street banker has with a coder breaking his head over a computer program in the wee hours of dawn.

We all aspire to grow in our profession. To understand the big picture.

The question is how big is the paper that you are drawing the picture on.