Poll: The Worst-Ever Semiconductor Industry Decision

I'll pick a more recent event, namely the failure of the industry to prevent Qualcom from gaining such a stranglehold on cell phone IP.

I'll pick a more recent event, namely the failure of the industry to prevent Qualcom from gaining such a stranglehold on cell phone IP.

Here's one more for the list... how about the current fad for IDMs to go 'fab-lite' in the interests of 'increasing shareholder value' and/or 'to better compete with their fabless competitors'

In 1985 Doug Dunn and John Brothers of Plessey Semiconductors killed the development of an enhanced CMOS version of the then NMOS PIC family. The project was started as a joint venture with GI Microelectronics which was in the process of being spun out of General Instruments and eventually turned into Microchip. The fact that we had working silicon that was so fast it could outperform any of its existing rivals by an order of magnitude didn't trouble them in the slightest. They were just following the time honoured tradition at Plessey of snatching commercial defeat from the jaws of victory. In 1989 Microchip launched the PIC16C5x family, need I say more, Plessey ceased to exist a long time ago.

David,

you're much more of a student of history than I am, but I'm surprised to see Lord Weinstock not appearing at least once in any kind of top 10 list of semiconductor blunders and missed opportunities.

Also, when you're done with this one, how about a list of best-ever decisions...?

Cheers,
Paul.

The adoption of a ship from stock and debit system for franchised distributors.

the decision to sell Philips Semiconductors to private equity world was hardly a decision made by the semiconductor industry. For the selling party it was actually a pretty good deal. The whole private equity thing is obviously a sore point for many in semi world but there is more than a little selective memory here. I think that 'big company syndrome' effects created the environment that allowed for both Freescale's disentanglement from Motorola & NXP's from Philips to turn out as they did. There are plenty of other howlers committed entirely within semi world that should make us squirm. I recall Ferranti having world leadership in ULA's in the early 1980's, then they opted for the ISC acquisition....

Do the worst decisions affecting the semi industry have to come from within the industry? How about politics? Depending on where you come from your view of what is worst may vary, for example seeing first hand the decline of Silicon Glen over the past decade has sickened and saddened me, the catalyst I recall immediately preceeding the decline was the EU's decision to pull the plug on duty applied on imported DRAM. Within weeks of that decision there was a raft of announcements from Asian and US companies pulling the plug on EU investment, including Scotland. Then the run down and closures started, they haven't stopped, there's very little left! Sad.

There's such a great pool of talent here, good education system, good work ethic. If my kids decide to follow me into technology, where are they going to go?

The formation of GPS from GE, Plessey and Siemens - alluded to above. Scores of engineers in Plymouth on gardening leave while viable projects were being canned and drained.