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58 EE|Times EUROPE

The Roots of Silicon Valley, Part 1: Founders, Legend, Legacy

laid them carefully on the table. “Each of us The capital was divided into 1,325 shares, the following year, but by then, time had been
should sign every bill,” he said. “These dollar with each member of the California Group of lost and competitors were already close to
bills covered with signatures would be our eight receiving 100 shares, 225 shares going developing integrated circuits. In April 1960,
contracts with each other.” to Hayden Stone & Co., and the remaining Beckman sold the unprofitable Shockley Labs
In August of that year, in a final throw 300 shares held in reserve. Fairchild provided to the Clevite Company, based in Waltham,
of the funding dice, Rock and Coyle met a loan of US$1.38 million and, to secure the Massachusetts, bringing his association with
with inventor and businessman Sherman loan, the eight gave Fairchild the voting rights the semiconductor industry to an end.
Fairchild, founder of Fairchild Aircraft and on their shares with the option of buying them On July 23, 1961, Shockley was seriously
Fairchild Camera and Instrument Co. The son back at a fixed total price of US$3 million. injured in a car crash and, after recovery,
of a wealthy entrepreneurial father who had left the company and returned to teaching
made his fortune as an early investor in IBM, THE ‘TRAITOROUS EIGHT’ at Stanford. Four years later, Clevite was
Fairchild was a bright and equally entrepre- The eight left Shockley on Sept. 18, 1957, and acquired by ITT. In 1969, ITT decided to move
neurial engineer who had amassed a small Fairchild Semiconductor was born. While the lab to West Palm Beach, Florida, where
fortune during World War II selling cameras there is no documentary evidence, the group it had an already-established semiconductor
for reconnaissance planes. Given that he had quickly became known as the “Traitorous plant. When the staff refused to move, the lab
already developed an interest in semiconduc- Eight.” Shockley never understood the reasons ceased to exist. ■
tors, Fairchild sent Rock to meet his deputy, for their defection, considering it a betrayal,
Richard Hodgson. Risking his reputation, and allegedly never again spoke to Noyce or Malcolm Penn is the founder and CEO of
Hodgson accepted Rock’s offer. Within weeks, the others. Future Horizons. This article was originally
paperwork and funding for the new company, With the help of a new team, Shockley published on EE Times and may be viewed at
Fairchild Semiconductor, had been completed. brought his own diode to mass production bit.ly/3GevfAn.

EE TIMES 50TH ANNIVERSARY
The Roots of Silicon Valley, Part 2:

Planar Technology, The Fairchildren

By Malcolm Penn, Future Horizons
Part 2 of this three-part series looks at the evolution of planar technology; the “family
tree” of semiconductor startups that evolved from Fairchild (the “Fairchildren”),
including Intel; and the competition with Texas Instruments.

to be among the top semiconductor industry leaders, spurred on by
the successful development of the silicon planar transistor.
Transistors, however, were already presenting a new challenge,
dubbed the “tyranny of numbers.” If you wanted to make a simple
flip-flop, it needed four transistors. About 10 wires were needed to
connect them. Interconnecting two flip-flops required not only twice
the number of transistors and wires but also four or five additional
wires to connect the two devices. So four transistors needed 10 wires,
eight needed 25, and 16 needed 60 to 70 wires. In other words, as the
transistor count increased linearly, the number of connections grew
exponentially, whereby the exponential was greater than one but less
than two.
While transistors were relatively easy to mass-produce, connections
were much more difficult, as wires had to be soldered by hand and
took up a lot of space. The industry’s desire to build bigger and more
complex systems was stymied by the difficulty in wiring everything
together. To this point, few had paid much attention to wiring, but
Fairchild Semiconductor founders, 1957 connections would soon become a potential showstopper, driving the
(Source: Computer History Museum) need for the integrated circuit.

PLANAR TECHNOLOGY
FAIRCHILD SEMICONDUCTORS In 1958, Jack Kilby of rival semiconductor company Texas Instruments
Founded in intrigue, Fairchild set up shop on 844 E. Charleston Rd., demonstrated the ability to integrate a pair of transistors on a semicon-
on the border between Mountain View and Palo Alto, and went on to ductor substrate. Kilby’s transistors were wire-bonded, however, leaving
record a long history of innovation, producing some of the most signifi- the connection problem unresolved. That problem was solved by Bob
cant technologies of the second half of the 20th century. It quickly grew Noyce, with the help of Jean Hoerni (who provided the technique) and

MARCH 2022 | www.eetimes.eu