Is There a 2nd Phase?

By Michael Orshan

Last week the Sematech building in Austin was sold to investors. The Sematech story is interesting and critical for those in fairly new application such as tiny components are.

During the mid 1980’s, Austin was known as a state capital and military town. Town political leaders, educators from the University of Texas and businesses got together and made a unique decision. They put funds aside to make Austin one of the national leaders in semiconductors. This lead to a series of public-private entities. Even though public private existed before, these guys pushed the concept to the limit. When the US government needed a site to investigate semiconductor manufacturing best practices, Sematech was born and Austin received the organization.

Sematech went on to create various international organizations, local for Texas organizations and R&D as well as manufacturing. However, for Austin this organization created their boom. Dell, Compaq, IBM and others flocked there. Austin was spinning off new companies as never seen before. The UofTexas was heavily involved as various professors created unique ways of joining spin offs and using the school as an incubator. As semiconductors matured, the spin offs began to create software firms. Today, Austin is less focused on semiconductors, more on software and is doing okay.

Recently, Sematech decided it needed to move into nanotechnology. The federal government support was less of what it was years ago. After a bidding war, Albany, NY was selected as the next site called Sematech North. Now Sematech is moving their as the management and various organizations are becoming headquartered there. Albany is and will become more and more of a strength area in Nanotech.

What about Austin? In the mid-1980’s they made a decision to grow through advanced technology and did. Big companies came and new ones were born. When the semiconductor business slowed down, so did Austin. Still, you figure that they would do whatever it took to keep Sematch and the next generation of innovation. They didn’t though. Hey, business models change, technology changes and maybe those are part of the reasons they didn’t keep Sematech. New York and Texas money must be just as big, so I find it hard to believe money was the issue.

Let’s keep an eye on both areas, Albany and Austin. My prediction is that Albany begins a renaissance and while Austin maintains there current status. Austin owns the gaming business, Dell and IBM are there and some of those startups grew up quite nicely thank you.

However, I have to believe that Austin should have kept Sematech. Maybe we should keep on eye on what happens with the new owners of the Sematch buildings there too.

Extra: On a sad note, I’d like to give my condolences to the family of Dr. Richard Ewing of Texas A&M. Dr. Ewing was a long time research leader and Vice President for Research at A&M. This is particularly sad because his heart attack was the result of some political shenanigans at Texas A&M that obviously have spun out of control with Dr. Ewing’s death.