JB’s Circuit

According to a report by the AEA, the unemployment rate for computer scientist in 2006 was 2.5 percent, while for electrical engineers it was even lower at 1.9 percent. Effectively, those low unemployment numbers mean that the US technical community is full employed. Unfortunately, the US high-tech market continues to grow. So who will fill those future positions? Not US born students, who are leaving math and science courses by the droves. Nor will these future high-paying/high-growth jobs be filled by foreigners – at least, not in the US. This shortage of high-tech professionals is going to spell real trouble in the near future.

Quoting from the AEA report: “While we are encouraged by the pickup in tech employment, we are committed to the long term health of the industry, the economy, and our nation,” continued Archey. “We have some serious challenges ahead. Companies of all sizes continue to have problems recruiting highly qualified and educated individuals to work for them, whether those individuals are foreign or domestic. This was reflected in the 2.5 percent unemployment rate for computer scientists and the below 2 percent unemployment rate for engineers in 2006. This problem is twofold: 1) the lack of American kids enrolling in and graduating from math, science, and engineering programs and 2) a U.S. high-skilled visa system that is broken. This April, within two days of the start of taking applications, the U.S. government received 133,000 applications for 65,000 H-1B visas – those visas reserved for high skilled individuals. And this is for jobs starting in October of 2007.”

If the US is to maintain is current technological position in the global market, then we must get back to basics - like funding for math and science education at all school levels.

You decide which editor is the sage adviser and which is the misguided padawan. I’m the handsome one kneeling on the left, providing learned council to a good Jedi Knight. My trusted FPGA Dev e-letter editor - Jim Kobylecky - is kneeling on the right, next to the evil storm trooper. Feel free to make an unbiased decision.

BTW: This picture was taken at the sponsor event (Intel and Mentor) that publicly opened the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) “Star Wars - Where Science Meets Imagination” event.

Has anyone been following the purported Bell Labs cover-up of the pre-Shockley, Lilienfeld transistor? Speculation on a discussion thread on sci.engr.semiconductors (http://groups.google.com/group/sci.engr.semiconductors) suggests that Bell labs “… had avoided referencing Lilienfeld’s work in Shockley’s 1948 paper announcing that Lilienfeld’s FET transistors gave substantial gain.” The three Lilienfeld patents from the early 1930’s can bee seen at http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm.

Very interesting thread if you have the time to read all the postings. Of course, I’m assuming that today’s EDA designers even care about – or have ever seen – the commodities we call transistors. Cheers. — John

Hello world. Today’s marks the return of the blogs for Chip Design magazine. Did you miss us? Don’t answer that question. But we do hope that you’ll drop by from time to time to read the editor’s blogs on conferences, new technologies and insights about the dynamic and often mystifying world of chip design. Cheers. — JB