Integrated Circuit Development

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[ 334413 ] = Semiconductor and related device manufacturing – Hybrid integrated circuits manufacturing

[ 334515 ] = Instrument manufacturing for measuring and testing electricity and electrical signals – Integrated-circuit testers manufacturing

[ 423690 ] = Other electronic parts and equipment merchant wholesalers – Circuits, integrated, merchant wholesalers

This highly technical environment involves state-of-the-art processes.  New scientific developments and practical applications development will be studied.  Integrated circuit (IC) manufacturers routinely produce products (“chips”) that contain billions of transistors (very large scale integration = VLSI), operate in the nano-meter range of measurements, and produce films only several molecules thick. 

Where this industry goes from here will determine the potentials of home networks and the abilities of intelligent computers.  In the future, other forms of digital products may replace IC technology altogether.  Several technologies may become common in home networks… Intel’s “Ivy Bridge” processor released in 2011 uses 3-D “Tri-Gate” transistors and 22 nanometer process technology with almost 3 billion of them on a single chip ( http://futuretimeline.net ). 

Other possible hard disk technologies:  Perpendicular recording (100-200 Gigabit per square inch);  patterned media; self-organized magnetic arrays; heat-assisted magnetic recording ( http://www.misrc.umn.edu/seminars/slides/2004/04232004_Seminar_Slides.pdf ).  Other possible memory technologies:  IBM’s Racetrack Memory chip (2011); graphene matrix technology (2008); and phase change memory (2007) ( http://technoleracy.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/computer-memory-advances-moore-law-safe-for-at-least-another-2-decades/ )