Microlithography dynamics

This work focuses on historical and modern geography-related analysis of semiconductor industry (specifically microlithography) and its role in Information Technology (IT). Following Professor's J.D.Sachs terminology, it would be highly desirable "to distinguish the growth effects of the various [in my case, related to IT, VB] components of economic policy". Structurally, thesis offers an analysis of the latest business cases (partially from the author's experiences with semiconductor equipment makers, Integrated Circuits (IC) makers, and "agglomeration economies" such as in Europe, Asia and Silicon Valley). I explore the connection of the current microlithography status and its perspectives with the patterns of economy's macrobehavior. I scrutinize hypothesis that, with silicon technology becoming a commodity, the slowdown in introducing new generations of products, based on new integrated circuits' functionality, is critical for semiconductor's industry consistent growth. In its current stage (with microlithography stagnation) the solid-state based IC technology provides only marginal functionality improvements between so called "new" generations and has somewhat limited potential to do so in a future. In summary, the transition processes of growth in the industry reaching the status of being mature are not very encouraging and definitely raise the question: "What happens if the IC industry will start to fail supporting the GDP growth rate established and sustained by the Information Technology ?" I hope that proposed analysis will help to understand better the unjustifiable expectations from the technology, which may lead to distorted policies of capital investment if coupled with illusions of unlimited economy expansion. The economic Long Wave Game was redesigned and developed for PC version to create a platform for possible future research in this area. Looking broader I suggest that the ultra-densification of space implemented in the technology of microlithography is the underlying material reason for the IT & space-infened time transformation and consequent social arrhythmia. Finally, I consider it as important that new kind of teams with defining notion of partnership and shared best practices are operationally decisive for an effective organization in the IT environment.

Department dc:contributor.department

Sloan School of Management.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2000

Author dc:creator

• Boksha, Victor Vladimir, 1960-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Simon Johnson.

• Sloan School of Management.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/9288

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/9288