Newsgroups: comp.arch
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: In computing, late-bloomers are usually never-bloomers
Message-ID: <1989Dec2.234842.6548@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
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> <1TfOZ0#142gXX=eric@snark.uu.net>
Date: Sat, 2 Dec 89 23:48:42 GMT

In article <1TfOZ0#142gXX=eric@snark.uu.net> eric@snark.uu.net (Eric S. Raymond) writes:
>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.

The basic problem with GaAs is the killer-micro syndrome again:  it's not
that GaAs is all that bad, but that it is competing with silicon.  In the
time it took you to read the previous sentence, the world's semiconductor
industries spent several thousand dollars on improving silicon-based
technology.  Given that silicon is pretty good stuff, and seems to be
nowhere near any important fundamental limits, competing with this
juggernaut is almost impossibly difficult.  Competing technologies have
to be a *lot* better to make any headway at all.  GaAs just does not seem
to be sufficiently better to capture anything more than niche markets.
-- 
Mars can wait:  we've barely   |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
started exploring the Moon.    | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu


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