Focus on Manufacturing

There was deep and widening concern about the economic health of the United States as the 1980s began. Oil embargoes of the previous decade had ignited two energy crises. Heavy industries such as steel and automaking had responded while their European and Japanese competitors grabbed market share. And the U.S. electronics industry was on the ropes, too, while such giants as SONY and Panasonic cornered the consumer market.

There were widespread fears that even the U.S. computer industry was in trouble. Japanese electronics firms had begun to dominate the market for memory chips and were expected to target microprocessors next. So great were the fears of foreign competition in the semiconductor industry that the Reagan Administration eventually took the unprecedented step of partially funding a consortium of U.S. chipmakers - including such heavyweights as IBM, Intel, Motorola and Texas Instruments - to do cooperative R&D on microchip manufacturing technologies. With Noyce at the helm, SEMATECH began operations in Austin, Texas, in July 1988.

Two other events of major significance for the electron-device field occurred during the early 1980s. In 1981 IBM began manufacturing and selling its personal computer, based on an open architecture that other firms were free to copy. And in 1984, the nationwide AT&T communications system was broken up by a judicial decree into a long-distance telephone carrier plus regional "Baby Bells." The competition stimulated by these events was to have a profound impact on the computer and telecommunications industries - with many small electronics companies successfully challenging the hegemony that the two behemoths had once enjoyed in their respective domains.

The principal goal of microchip manufacturing in Europe, Japan and the United States was to make the component parts of integrated circuits - transistors, capacitors and their interconnections - ever smaller and to pack them ever more densely on the chip surface. Such unrelenting miniaturization helps ensure that microchips offer ever-increasing computational power and do their appointed tasks at ever-greater speeds. As the 1980s began, semiconductor industry leaders championed the goal of very large-scale integration, in which the microchip features would have to become as small as a micron, or a millionth of a meter. By the mid-1980s, VLSI pioneers were beginning to breack this barrier and work toward the submicron scale.

Tremendous changes were then underway in world affairs, especially in Eastern Europe, where a decade of unrest that had begun with the Solidarity movement in Poland ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. With the long Cold War finally drawing to its close, major transformations were also occurring in the United States, which under President George Bush was beginning to shift resources out of the military-industrial complex and into the civilian economy. More and more, a U.S. company's success or failure would be determined by its performance in the commercial marketplace. Computer and telecommunications firms had responded aggressively to the competitive stimuli that were introduced during the 1980s and were now on much better footings as the decade ended. In particular, the U.S. microelectronics industry was back in excellent condition and growing steadily as the 1990s began.

Exercise 5

Answer the following questions.

1. What was the main concern of the U.S. at the beginning of 1980s?

2. Why was the American electronics industry considered to be in trouble?

3. What firms dominated the memory chip market?

4. How did the U.S. Government react to growing foreign competition?

5. What is SEMATECH?

6. What events stimulated competition among American computer and telecommunication companies?

7. Why is miniaturization the main aim of microchip industry?

8. What were the achievements of VLSI designers in 1980s?

9. What political events allowed the U.S. to invest much more in civilian economy?

10. How can you describe American microelectronics industry of the beginning of 1990s?

LESSON 6

Exercise 1

Translate the following words paying attention to word-building affixes.

Rejoin, joining, joint, joined, occurred, occurring, occurrence, improve, improving, improved, improvements, relentless, relent, relenting, approach, approachable, approaching, globe, global, globalise, globally, measure, measurement, measuring, measured, measurable, immeasurable, behave, behaviour, misbehave, impress, impression, impressive, impressively, impressionism, owe, own, owing, owner, owed, exist, existing, existed, existence.

Exercise 2.

Translate the following sentences paying attention to participles

1. Having sold over 100 million handsets, Ericsson has plenty to offer. 2.The problem is that Celeron microprocessor is a one-size-fits-all proposition, its architecture being more modular than that of the Pentium products it is displacing. 3. With product life cycles approaching a year or less, some microprocessors currently spend a good part of their lives being manufactured. 4.The system helps identify and manage requirements throughout the product’s life cycle, the goal being to understand what the customer wants and ensuring that the particular product meets those requirements. 5. Standards have always been a means of increasing reliability while decreasing cost and shortening time to market. 6. The active region developed by the group consists of seven-layer structure of GaAs separated by aluminum gallium arsenide repeated many times. 7. Now, scientists having been encouraged to continue researching molecular electronics phenomena, their work is expected to lead to a new golden age for electronics. 8. Ionic current flowing through the plug is then measured as a voltage appearing across a resistor. 9.The instrument described is an experimental cable tester used under real conditions when installing and maintaining private cable tv networks. 10.Two 741 op-amps are used as logarithmic amplifiers, the type having moderate thermal drift. 11. The enhanced version of Intel’s Speed-Step technology, included the processor, saves power by stepping the operating voltage and frequency up and down, matching the demands of the application running on the processor. 12. Three of the world’s top 10 chipmakers are now European, compared to just one a decade ago, according to IC Insights Inc., a market research group. 13. According to our sources, the capacitors made from the formula become unstable when charged, generating hydrogen gas, bursting and letting the electrolyte leak onto the circuit board. 14. Having been forced to face up to reality years ago, Europe’s chipmakers have come through 2001-02 better than most and now appear well positioned to capture a good part of the global semiconductor market, which is expected to grow 15 – 20 percent. 15. Signals traveling through fiber comprise a carrier wave and a modulation signal, two different wavelengths traveling at different speeds.

Exercise 3

Match Ukrainian translations to the following English phrases.

1. dramatic thaw	1. наукова фантастика
2. large part due to the impact	2. транзистор з одним електроном
3. strategic alliances	3. заводи з виготовлення напiвпровiдникiв
4. semiconductor foundries	4. неухильний розвиток
5. science fiction	5. великою мiрою завдяки впливу
6. single-electron transistor	6. широкосмуговий супутниковий зв’язок
7.broadband satellite communication	7. рiзке потеплiння
8. voice-and-data	8. стратегiчнa спiлка
9. relentless progress	9. голос та данi

Exercise 4

Pay attention to translation of the following phrases.

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