Microchip Technology history

Williams, Eric, et al. “The 1.7 Kilogram Microchip: Energy and Material Use in the Production of Semiconductor Devices.” Environmental Science and Technology 36 (2002): 5,504–5,510.

In the summer of 2005, shortly after the terrorist attacks on the London, England, subway system, the British Parliament reopened the debate on national identity cards.

Despite concerns, in February 2006, the British Parliament passed the Identity Cards Act.

In 2007, the global semiconductor industry sold about $256 billion worth of microchips.

In April 2009, Microchip Technology announced the nanoWatt XLP Microcontrollers (With World’s Lowest Sleep Current). Microchip Technology had sold more than 6 billion microcontrollers as of 2009.

In April 2010, Microchip acquired Silicon Storage Technology (SST), and sold several SST flash memory assets to Greenliant Systems in May that year.

As of 2011, Microchip Technology ships over a billion processors every year.

In August 2012, Microchip acquired Standard Microsystems Corporation (SMSC). Among SMSC’s assets were those it had previously acquired from Symwave, a start-up that specialized in USB 3.0 chips, and two hi-fi wireless audio companies—Kleer Semiconductor and Wireless Audio IP BV.”

Today, 2017, the Intel Skylake processor contains around 1.75 billion transistors and has 400,000 times as much power as the 4004.

They agreed that alternative technologies, such as quantum computing or biology-based approaches, all have flaws, and that there is not yet any clear successor to pick up in 2020 where silicon leaves off.