It's unfair to point to one exponentially increasing technology and use that as an index for general technology.
On the other hand, it's interesting they choose to use the semiconductor industry as their example because progress is slowing in the semi industry due to the laws of physics with respect to standard CMOS and innovative rescues in either architectural form or through novel device physics are very unlikely due to industry's glacial pace and apparent allergies to innovation. A field that scorns young entrants is bound to die someday.
The fact that I can just within the last year buy a $200 256GB SD memory card to plug into my RPi in lieu of any need for other non-volatile storage, and that I can move all my primary servers and repos onto it, or indeed that the RPi exists and appears with significant speed bumps for essential constant size and price and mean power consumption, shows that lots of innovation is still happening and at a pace.
I've been in electronics and computing ~40Y, and worked with some moderately big iron on the way, eg in banking.
That iPhone has more oomph by orders of magnitude than an oil company's exploration division had not so many years ago. I worked there and looked after the machines.
> glacial pace and apparent allergies to innovation
Glacial pace? It followed an exponential, doubling the number of transistors every 10 months for 40 years. You would be hard-pressed to come up with another field with the same pace of innovation and progress. The amount of innovation they had to come up with to sustain that, is staggering.
> A field that scorns young entrants is bound to die someday.
Try to make a chip, you'll quickly realize that your challenges will be primarily non technical in nature. It wasn't always this way, the semi industry was once incredibly innovative and open to new ideas, and that helped drive exponential progress.
>Who will produce your chips then?
I meant "die" to mean stagnate as the common euphemism in tech.
> I studied microelectronics. I am aware of the technical challenges. Can you explain those challenges that are primarily non-technical?
We spent far more time buying EDA software, installing it, talking to foundries, getting the PDKs, signing NDAs, dealing with buggy EDA software, dealing with slow EDA response times, etc. than actually working on our chip.
>Things like Silicon-on-insulator, high-k dielectrics, finfets, extreme ultraviolet lithography are not innovative or new ideas?
I'm not saying they aren't, but I have noticed that the general level of openness, and following that, innovation and open-mindedness has dropped dramatically in the past decade or so, and I do have to say that the general semi industry has stayed generally innovative, and much of my criticism is directed towards the rest of the industry primarily. That being said, there is a major glacial pace.
Example of a real conversation I had with an engineer at one of the major (can't name the exact one) foundries about a device that's actually pretty close to reality:
Me: "Why don't you use this X device?"
Him: "Because it's still research"
Me: "Sure, but it's very promising, why aren't there at least any industrial research efforts to commercialize it?"
Him: "Because it's still research"
Me: -__-
SOI is innovative, but it's been held back by cost and the self-heating effect, both things that really aren't that much of a problem.
FinFETs were launched by a DARPA initiative.
High-k dielectrics I will say are the single most interesting (if not innovative) innovation in the last decade in the semi industry, although I have some bias there.
EUV is a feat to engineering no doubt, but again, my grievances aren't really focused in that area.
On the other hand, it's interesting they choose to use the semiconductor industry as their example because progress is slowing in the semi industry due to the laws of physics with respect to standard CMOS and innovative rescues in either architectural form or through novel device physics are very unlikely due to industry's glacial pace and apparent allergies to innovation. A field that scorns young entrants is bound to die someday.