Word: gallium
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...step too far. Not only does the 16-processor Cray-3 contain four times as many central calculating units as the Cray-2 (an increase that more than quadruples its complexity), but it relies on an as-yet-unproved technological advance: replacing silicon chips with faster ones made of gallium arsenide. Add to Cray's headaches the fact that his new computer is so compact that assembly by hand is difficult. Before production could begin, he would have to endow robots with the manipulative skills of a jeweler or watchmaker...
...corporations can do a lot on their own to become more nimble. One way is to stimulate employee innovation by providing entrepreneurial incentives. Under the IDEA program at Texas Instruments, workers who propose promising ideas are given the time and resources to test them. One result: the development of gallium arsenide, a material with the properties of silicon but able to withstand higher temperatures. Big companies just might find that the more opportunities they offer for employees to live out their entrepreneurial dreams while still on the payroll, the more rewards both will share...
Abrahamson said much of the research is basedon developing compact systems that will berelatively inexpensive compared to presenttechnology. He said that among the scientificbreakthroughs associated with the research is thedevelopment of "gallium arsonide" which willreplace silicon chips in the next generation ofcomputers
...experiments. This high frontier, as some visionaries call it, could be the arena of the next industrial revolution. The Center for Space Policy in Cambridge, Mass., predicts that by the year 2000 space industries could annually produce $27 billion in Pharmaceuticals to combat cancer and emphysema, $3.1 billion in gallium arsenide semiconductors for electronics, and $11.5 billion worth of incredibly pure glass for optical purposes...
OSHA does not have the resources to monitor industries for levels of arsenic, nor to research the long-term effects of worker exposure to low levels of airborne arsenic. And it is incapable of even establishing new safety standards. Even if OSHA did feel, finally, that gallium arsenic technology should be taken off the market, it would not have the power to do so. OSHA can only prescribe safety standards--it cannot out-law certain types of technology. Thus, barring a public outcry against the technology, production of chips seems destined to follow the inexorable and fatal growth pattern...