Word: semiconductor
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...hired to manage a state-funded research institute, but shortly after his arrival, an influential technocrat, Li Kuo-ting, called Chang to his office and told him: "Think about how you want to start a company." The conversation led Chang, backed by state funding, to found Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), now the world's largest chip foundry and one of Taiwan's most prominent firms. That was just one part of the island's big push. Other electronics manufacturers - makers of notebook PCs, memory chips, LCD panels and other essential components - also set up shop, establishing Taiwan...
...example, when Austin's semiconductor industry started tanking in 2000, ACC quickly stripped down its chip-development courses and soon repurposed clean rooms for emerging green technologies. These days, it generally takes about six months of weekend classes to get qualified to be a solar installer, a job that can pay up to $16 an hour. But starting in August, a compressed weekday program - catering to the recently unemployed - will allow students to cram the same courses into just two months. To earn an associate degree focusing on renewable energy - enough prep for a job as a solar-installation-team...
Search is facing the same problem as the chip business. Intel (INTC) and AMD (AMD) make semiconductors that are so powerful, very few PC buyers can use all of their computational power. A lot of what the chips can do is wasted. Upgrading to a more powerful processor does not mean much to people who cannot tell the difference. That leaves a few corporations and people who play complex video games as the only discriminating buyers of PCs with ultra-powerful processors. Just three or four years ago, the difference between one generation of semiconductor and another meant something...
There's no doubt this public spending produced some results. The U.S. semiconductor firm AMD, for example, was planning to build a new plant in Ireland. In 1995, however, it switched to the Dresden area - once a high-tech region for the whole Soviet bloc - where it now employs about 2,000 people. Similarly, on the edge of Halle's Neustadt, in a brand-new technology center built on the site of the former Soviet army base, Katja Heppe pulls the claws of a snow crab out of a plastic bag. She's 29, a biotechnology researcher who specializes...
...humiliating blow for Intel, which has played a key role in developing chip technology for over four decades, and can now claim a staggering 80.5% market share in microprocessors. But it represents vindication for Intel's semiconductor rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which filed the original complaint in 2000. And it also underlines the power and authority of the Commission, which has now established itself as the world's most feared antitrust regulator...