>Hi Houston
>
>>>>I thought it was mediocre until I got to “Semiconductors didn't improve … performance by exhorting workers to do a better job, wash their hands more often or put in longer hours. It was accomplished by mechanizing a greater and greater portion of the process” – then I stopped reading.
>>>>
>>>>When we get to the first factual piece of text and it is just plain wrong I found I lost all motivation to continue reading.
>>>
>>>What was wrong with that statement? Aren't CPU's made by a photographic process? That means a machine is doing the work.
>>
>>VLSI has for decades been based on lithography. The statement above implies that all of the increased performance stems from automation and from automating "a greater and greater portion of the process". This is patently not the case. For a more enlightened view see:
>>
>>http://www.eetimes.com/special/special_issues/millennium/milestones/harriott.html
>
>I'm not following you. All I got from the original article was that mechanization / automation of the processes of developing software is necessary to increase productivity and quality. The statement at the top of this paragraph means that better semiconductors did not depend on more man-power, but on improving the production technology. Call that the result of more brain power. The article you posted says that smart people overcame problems to improve the production technology - optical lithography. So do you say that greater mechanization does not lead to better productivity and quality?

I am not disputing the fundamental premise of his article - that automating production (whenever possible) usually results in increased quality and more of whatever it is that is being produced - I am disputing his use of computing power as an analogy.

Let me use a different analogy to make my point clearer: If you increase the speed of a production line that makes cars, then you get even more cars, you do not get faster cars! Faster production lines and extending the automation out of fabrication and into the warehouse may smooth delivery but it does not make the CPU more powerful.


"better semiconductors did not depend on more man-power, but on improving the production technology" - I am finding it hard to believe that people cannot see the error in that statement. Think about it, just how much effort do you think IBM, Intel, AMD, etc. are putting into 'improving' the fabrication technology - the process is being constantly refined not extended - large scale end-to-end automation has been present since day one.