Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cbmvax!snark!eric
From: eric@snark.uu.net (Eric S. Raymond)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: In computing, late-bloomers are usually never-bloomers
Message-ID: <1TfOZ0#142gXX=eric@snark.uu.net>
Date: 2 Dec 89 16:27:36 GMT
References: <24317@cup.portal.com> <480@dmk3b1.UUCP> <1989Nov28.104128.8045@hellgate.utah.edu> <1Tcfjq#9jMTbv=eric@snark.uu.net> <3511@convex.UUCP> <1933@eric.mpr.ca>
Lines: 30

In <1933@eric.mpr.ca> Michael Hui wrote:
> GaAs cannot be a dead end. It is used quite a bit in microwave circuits,
> and now you can get industry standard pin-out and function PALs from
> Gazelle in GaAs.

Of course GaAs is useful for microwave and DSP -- what I don't believe is
that it will ever become a mainstream commodity process like CMOS or NMOS
or even ECL. There will always be *some* customers willing to buy such
technology, generally DOD or other organizations with weak cost-control.

Perhaps I didn't make my reasoning clear enough. Given the usual development
timescale of digital electronics, I claim that if GaAs were really such a
smart idea it would *already* be rich.

GaAs is still poking around in niche markets umpteen years after the pioneers,
without ever having entered a regime of exponential capacity growth and
inverse-exponential price drop.

In this industry, technologies with such a profile are usually losers based
on a fundamental misreading either of engineering possibility or economics.
Niche markets and the enthusiasm of a few can keep them breathing stertorously
but they tend to end up having zero impact on the development of computing as
a whole.

Lisp machines. Forth machines. `Hybrid computing'. Thin-film memory. In 
software, APL...PL/1...Algol 68. Computing history is littered with the
corpses of these perpetually promising youngsters. Today, we have ADA and OS/2.
And tomorrow, I am nearly sure `commodity GaAs' will join this dismal list.
-- 
      Eric S. Raymond = eric@snark.uu.net    (mad mastermind of TMN-Netnews)


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