Silicon Valley

Technology trends may push Silicon Valley back to the future. Carver Mead, a pioneer in integrated circuits and a professor of computer science at the California Institute of Technology, notes there are now workstations that enable engineers to design, test and produce chips right on their desks, much the way an editor creates a newsletter on a Macintosh. As the time and cost of making a chip drop to a few days and a few hundred dollars, engineers may soon be free to let their imaginations soar without being penalized by expensive failures.

Mead predicts that inventors will be able to perfect powerful customized chips over a weekend at the office - spawning a new generation of garage start - ups and giving the U.S. a jump - start on its foreign rivals in getting new products to market faster. "We've got more garages with smart people", Mead observes. "We really thrive on anarchy."

And on Asians. Already, orientals and Asian - Americans constitute the majority of the engineering staffs at many Valley firms. And Chinese, Indian and Pakistani engineers are graduating in droves from California's colleges. As the heads of next - generation start - ups, these Asian innovators can draw on customs and languages to forge tighter links with key Pacific Rim markets.

For instance, Alex Au, a Stanford Ph.D. from Hong Kong, has set up a Taiwanese factory to challenge Japan's near lock on the memory - chip market. India - born N.Damodar Reddy's tiny California company reopened an AT&T chip plant in Kansas City last year to profit from the rapidly falling prices of chips. Before it becomes a retirement village, Silicon Valley may prove a classroom for building a global business.

技术的发展趋势有可能把硅谷重新推向未来。卡弗·米德——集成电路的一位先驱，加州理工学院的计算机教授——注意到，现在有些计算机工作站使工程技术人员可以在他们的办公桌上设计、试验和生产芯片，就像一位编辑在苹果机上编出一份时事通讯一样。由于制造一块芯片的时间已缩短至几天，费用也只有几百美元，因此，工程技术人员可能很快就可充分发挥他们的想象力而不会因失败而造成经济上的损失。

米德预言发明者可以在办公室用一个周末的时间生产出完美的、功能很强的、按客户需求设计的芯片——造就新一代从汽车间起家的技术人员，在把新产品推向市场方面使美国把它的外国对手们打个措手不及。“我们有更多的汽车间，而那里有许多聪明人，”米德说。“我们确实是靠这种无政府状态发展起来的。”

靠的是亚洲人。硅谷许多公司中工程技术人员的大多数是东方人和亚裔美国人。中国、印度和巴基斯坦的工程师一批批地从加州的大学毕业。作为新崛起一代的带头人，这些亚裔发明家可以凭借他们的习俗和语言上的优势与环太平洋地区的主要市场建立起更紧密的联系。

比如说，亚历克斯·奥，一位来自香港的斯坦福大学博士，已经在台湾建厂，对日本在内存条市场上近似垄断的局面提出了挑战。印度出生的N.达莫达·雷迪经营的一家加利福尼亚小公司去年重新启用了美国电话电报公司在堪萨斯城的一家芯片工厂，从迅速下跌的芯片价格中获利。在硅谷变成一个退休村之前，它很可能成为建立全球性企业的一个教学场地。