The first time I heard the word Fairchild, I don’t know why I was particularly impressed. Fairchild, what a beautiful name, with fairy words, should be especially awesome. I don’t know why, Fairchild will remind me of Tong Hu, Tong Hu and Shajia in saint seiya, the two favorite Gold Saints of Old wu.
At that time, the old wu also took care of the management of the company’s components and materials. First of all, he had to be familiar with all kinds of components, including the names of semiconductor manufacturers.
At a lunch time, I talked to my predecessors about Fairchild Semiconductor, and I realized that this is not just a company named Niu X, but a real Niu X, which occupies an important position in the history of Silicon Valley. More than half of the semiconductor companies in Silicon Valley are from this company.
Old wu is going to write a code today to commemorate the semiconductor company of Niu X and the famous Eight Rebellions.
Silicon Valley (English: Silicon Valley) is another name of Santa Clara Valley in California, USA, which is located in the north of California and the south of the San Francisco Bay Area. The main part of Silicon Valley is located in county of santa clara at the southern tip of San Francisco Peninsula, which is mainly a valley about 25 miles long from Palo Alto, a subordinate city of the county, to San Jose, the county capital. And the total scope generally includes the southwest San Francisco Bay Area.
When Silicon Valley was still called Santa Clara, there were not many civilian technology companies here. Therefore, when a large number of high flyers graduated from nearby Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley, they all chose to leave and flocked to new york to seek development opportunities. Until Professor Frederick Terman of Stanford discovered this and chose a large open space in the school to encourage students to develop their careers locally. And his two students, William Hewlett and David Packard, founded Hewlett-Packard in a garage with $538.
In 1951, Terman had a bigger idea, that is, the establishment of Stanford Research Park, which was the first high-tech industrial park near the university. Some smaller industrial buildings in the park are rented to small technology companies at low rents. Today, these companies are important birthplaces of technology, but they were not known at that time. In the first few years, only a few companies settled here. Later, more and more companies applied the latest technology of the university, and at the same time rented the land of the university. These land rents became the economic source of Stanford University, which made Stanford University flourish continuously. Terman decided in the 1950s that new infrastructure should be built on the principle of "valley".
It is in this atmosphere that william shockley, a famous Californian, moved here. William’s move can be called a milestone in the semiconductor industry. He left Bell Laboratories in 1953 due to differences with colleagues. After the divorce, he returned to California Institute of Technology, where he received his bachelor’s degree in science. In 1956, he moved to Mountain View, California, which is close to his mother, to establish Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory. Prior to this period, the rudimentary semiconductor industry was mainly concentrated in Boston in the eastern United States and Long Island in new york. For the development of the company, he specially called eight young people from the east: N. Noyce, R.Moore, J.Blank, E.Kliner, J.Hoerni, J. Last and S.Boberts. They are all under the age of 30, in their prime of life, have achieved something in learning and are at the peak of their creativity. Among them, there are people who have received double doctorates, engineers from big companies, and researchers and professors from famous universities. This is an unprecedented gathering of talents in the western United States.
William shockley intends to design a component (now known as shockley diode) that can replace the transistor to occupy the market. But he was puzzled when considering the problem that the design was simpler than the "simple" transistor. Stubborn by difficulties, shockley became more and more paranoid. He demanded that the staff be given a lie detector and their salaries be announced. These things annoyed everyone. In 1957, those eight outstanding young people collectively jumped ship and founded Fairchild Semiconductor Company with the support of an industrialist Sherman Freichchild. Fairchild Company is headquartered in new york and mainly deals in cameras. Then, these eight geniuses were called "Eight Rebellions" by shockley.
Eight Rebellions found a photographic equipment company located in new york, USA to support their business. The name of this company is Fairchild, which is transliterated as fairchild, but it is usually translated as Fairchild. Fairchild Photography Equipment Company was formerly an aerial photography company founded by S. Fairchild)1920. Fairchild is not only an entrepreneur, but also an inventor. His inventions are mainly in the aviation field, including sealed cabin aircraft, folding wings and so on. Because the products were very popular, he split the company into two parts in 1936. Among them, Fairchild Photography Equipment Company produced cameras and electronic equipment.
When Eight Rebels asked him for cooperation, Mr. fairchild, who was over 60 years old, only provided a seed fund of $3,600, asking them to develop and produce commercial semiconductor devices and enjoy the purchase privilege for two years. As a result, the enterprise founded by "Eight Rebellions" was officially named Fairchild Semiconductor Company, and Noyce was the first of the Fairchild.
In October, 1957, Fairchild Semiconductor Company still rented a cabin in Charleston Road, Maowang Mountain, Silicon Valley, which was almost far from shockley Laboratory and Hewlett-Packard Company’s garage. "Fairchild" are talking about making a double diffusion transistor to replace the traditional germanium material with silicon, which has not been completed in their laboratory in shockley but is not valued by shockley. Fairchild photographic equipment company promised to provide financial resources, totaling 1.5 million US dollars. Noyce divided the work for his partners, and Herney and Moore were responsible for studying the new diffusion technology, while he himself specialized in plane photography with Raster.
In January 1958, IBM gave them the first order, ordering 100 silicon transistors for the memory of the company’s computer. By the end of 1958, the "Eight Rebellions" small company had 500,000 sales and 100 employees, and relied on the advantages of technological innovation to become the fastest growing company in Silicon Valley.
Fairchild Semiconductor Co., Ltd. has developed rapidly under the careful planning of Noyce, and at the same time, a set of plane processing technology for manufacturing transistors has become increasingly mature. Henny, a talented scientist, is the best among the "fairies". He squeezes the oxide layer on the silicon surface to the maximum like magic. Fairchild’s method of manufacturing transistors is also different. First, they diffuse impurities with semiconductor properties onto high-purity silicon wafers. However, the transistor structure is drawn on the mask, reduced by photo-plate making, developed on the oxide layer on the surface of silicon wafers, and then the unnecessary parts are removed by photolithography.
Diffusion, masking, photography, lithography … The whole process is called plane processing technology, which marks a great leap in the mass production of silicon transistors, and it seems to open a wonderful door for the "fairies" to see a bottomless abyss: if you can make a transistor by this method, why can’t you make dozens, hundreds or even thousands of them?
In February 1959, Noyce was shocked by the news that J.kilby, an engineer of Texas Instruments Company (TI), applied for the first patent of integrated circuit invention. He immediately called the "Eight Rebels" to discuss countermeasures. Kilby’s difficult problems in TI company, such as twice diffusion on silicon wafer and interconnection of wires, are the specialty of Fairchild Semiconductor Company. Noyce suggested that the method of depositing metal by evaporation can be used instead of hot welding wires, which is the best way to solve the interconnection of components. Fairchild semiconductor company began to catch up. On July 30, 1959, they also applied for a patent with the United States Patent Office. In order to compete for the invention right of integrated circuits, the two companies began a protracted dispute. In 1966, kilby and Noyce were awarded the Ballantine Medal by Franklin Institution, kilby was praised as "the inventor of the first integrated circuit" and Noyce was praised as "the person who put forward the theory of integrated circuits suitable for industrial production". In 1969, the final judgment of the court was issued, and the integrated circuit was actually recognized as a simultaneous invention in law.
In 1960, Fairchild Semiconductor Company achieved further development and success. Because the invention of the integrated circuit made it famous, the parent company, fairchild Photographic Equipment Company, decided to buy its shares for $3 million, and each of the Eight Rebels owned shares worth $250,000. In 1964, Dr. Moore, one of the founders of Fairchild Semiconductor Company, published a strange law in a short space of three pages. Moore’s genius predicted that the number of transistors that can be integrated on integrated circuits will increase steadily at the rate of doubling every 18 months, and this momentum will be maintained in the next few decades. This prediction made by Moore was proved by the later development of integrated circuits, and kept its validity for a long time. It was known as Moore’s Law and became the first law of the emerging electronic computer industry.
Fairchild Semiconductor entered its golden age in the 1960s. By 1967, the company’s turnover was close to $200 million, which was astronomical at that time. However, it was also during this period that the Fairchild Company began to gestate a crisis. The general manager of the parent company keeps shifting profits to the East Coast to support the profitability of fairchild Photographic Equipment Company. Seeing the unfairness of the parent company, Henny, Roberts and Claire in "Eight Rebellions" first left in anger and set up A Nelko Company. It is said that Henny later founded as many as 12 new companies. Subsequently, Glass, another member of "Eight Rebellions", also took several people away from Fairchild to establish Signay Tix Semiconductor Company. Since then, a large number of talent elites have poured into Fairchild, and they have left to start their own businesses.
As the image of Apple’s Steve Jobs said: "Fairchild Semiconductor Company is like a mature dandelion. When you blow it, the seeds of this entrepreneurial spirit will fly everywhere with the wind. Among the founders of Fairchild Semiconductor, the more famous ones are C.Sporck and J. Jerry Sanders. Spock was once the general manager of Fairchild Semiconductor Company, and after leaving in 1967, he went to National Semiconductor Company (NSC) as CEO. He carried out drastic reforms and moved NSC from Connecticut to Silicon Valley, making it grow rapidly from a loss-making enterprise to the sixth largest semiconductor manufacturer in the world. Saunders is the sales director of Fairchild Semiconductor Company. In 1969, he founded Advanced Micro Instruments Company (AMD) with seven Fairchild employees, which is now the microprocessor manufacturer second only to Intel.
In 1968, Noyce and Moore, the last two "Eight Rebellions", also left Fairchild Company with A. Grove to start their own business. The company they founded was the famous Intel.
It seems that it is necessary to promote the spirit of "defection" of "Eight Rebellions", and groups of "fairies" have made their way out, setting off a huge entrepreneurial craze. In this regard, the famous bestseller Silicon Valley Fever published in the early 1980s wrote: "About half of the 70 semiconductor companies in Silicon Valley are direct or indirect descendants of Fairchild. Working for Fairchild is the way to enter the semiconductor industry all over Silicon Valley. At a conference of semiconductor engineers held in Sunnyvale in 1969, less than 24 of the 400 participants had never worked in Fairchild. In this sense, it is no exaggeration to say that Fairchild Semiconductor is the cradle of talents in Silicon Valley.
The brain drain is the "gospel" of the development of Silicon Valley, but it is a disaster for Fairchild Semiconductor. From 1965 to 1968, the company’s sales continued to decline, less than $120 million, and there was no profit for two consecutive years. People clearly realize that it is no longer a "miracle created by naughty children".
In order to find someone to take Noyce’s job, Sherman fairchild invited Dr. Lester Hogan from Motorola with the highest salary in the history of Silicon Valley-$1 million for three years and $600,000 in stock, so as to show his "thirst for talent" attitude. Hogan is not an incompetent general manager. He once brought a great turn for Motorola. During his six years in power, Fairchild did his best to triple the company’s sales. However, the soul of Fairchild Semiconductor has already left, and it is only a matter of time before it collapses. In 1974, Hogan, unable to return to heaven, handed over the power to corrigan, 36, but his successor quickly dropped the company from the second place to the sixth place in the semiconductor industry within two or three years.
In the late 1970s, corrigan finally found that the best way to save Fairchild Semiconductor Company was to sell it. After many twists and turns, he finally chose a Shi Lamu Berg company with $2.1 billion in assets, even though it is a French company and an oil service company. In the summer of 1979, Fairchild Semiconductor Company, once the best enterprise in the United States, was taken over by French foreign investors, with a price of 350 million US dollars, which caused a great sensation both inside and outside Silicon Valley.
It seems that foreign capital can’t inject vitality into the declining Fairchild Semiconductor. Although Shi Lamu Berg Company recruited a group of talents to study artificial intelligence, which could have enabled Fairchild to quickly enter the field of robot production, they didn’t do so. In fact, after continuing to lose money, Fairchild was resold to another American company with one third of the original price. The buyer was the National Semiconductor Corporation (NSC) managed by the former Fairchild general manager Spock, and Fairchild’s semiconductor brand once died. In 1996, the National Semiconductor Company moved the original Fairchild headquarters to Maine, and restored the old name of Fairchild Semiconductor. However, the "cradle of talents in Silicon Valley" with 6,500 employees had to withdraw from Silicon Valley.
As a "myth" supporting the rise of Silicon Valley, Fairchild Semiconductor Company has gone through a glorious and tortuous course. Success and failure are all caused by talents. As the saying goes, "success is also Xiao He, and failure is also Xiao He".