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- THE FRIDAY LETTER -
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for friends and subscribers)
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| http://www.gilder.com/
| Issue 277.0/December 29, 2006
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HEADLINES:
- The Week / Law Number One of the
Telecosm
- Friday Feature / Wafer Stacking Success Long Overdue
- Friday Blogger Bonus / INVITE: Gilder NYC Speech on Jan. 4
- Readings /
|
George
Gilder’s technology investment advice continues to make money for
subscribers. |
The
Week /
Law Number One of the Telecosm
Excerpted from the January 2007 Gilder Technology Report,
available now on www.Gildertech.com.
George Gilder, December 21, 2006: The last time I saw Peter Drucker, he was keynoting
a Forbes conference in Seattle for CEOs. In the auditorium at the International
Trade Center next to the bay, they had wheeled out the great man to the middle
of the stage in a great fluffy easy chair. Close to 90 years old—at the end of
the previous century gazing toward the next—he was the numinous name and
Delphic presence at the conference. Everyone leaned forward to hear what he had
to say.
Then
a gasp shook the rows of CEOs. The conference management stood there stricken,
unable to move: “For the Love of Malcolm’s motorcycle…What is this?” The CEOs
sat popeyed.
The
hoary sage’s balding pate flopped back in the chair as if he had fallen
asleep…or worse.
Perhaps Forbes had erred in staking a major
conference on an aging guru seemingly well over the hill and in parlous health.
Then
his entire body fell forward. I was ready to run up to catch him if he should
tumble toward the crowd. But he somehow caught himself. His eyes opened, and he
looked out intently at the throng of CEOs. Everyone sighed with relief. He was
awake. He had their attention.
Drucker
growled: “I have just one thing to tell you today. Just one thing…”
Wow,
I said to myself, it better be good.
“Noone,”
he continued, “but noone in your
company, knows less about your
business than your See Eff Oh.”
Huh?
This
was the era of the heroic Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Scott Sullivan of
Worldcom, Andy Fastow of Enron, clever, inventive folk like that. You remember
them. Across the country, CFOs were in the saddle. CEOs would not move without
consulting them.
What
could Drucker have meant?
He
was stating law number one of the Telecosm.
Knowledge is about the past.
Entrepreneurship is about the future. CFOs deal with past numbers.
By the time they get them all parsed and pinned down, the numbers are often
wrong. In effect, CFOs are trying to steer companies by peering into the
rearview mirror. Past numbers do not have anything much to do with future
numbers. As Ken Fisher puts it in his new book The Only Three Questions That Count, “Stock prices [and by
extension other business numbers] are not serially correlated.”
Moreover,
CFOs tend to focus on internal problems. But most internal problems cannot be
solved internally. Determining business outcomes are decisions made by
customers and investors and both are outside the company and not directly
managed by the company. Their views can change in an instant, casting all the
existing numbers into oblivion. To reach customers and investors takes outside
vision and leadership, not internal problem solving.
Tech
companies should not try to solve problems. Solving problems sounds good, but
it is a loser. You end up feeding your failures, starving your strengths and
achieving costly mediocrity. Don’t solve problems—that’s the CFO’s forte and
pitfall. Pursue opportunities…
To learn the nine remaining laws of the Telecosm and which companies they
benefit, logon with your subscriber ID at www.Gildertech.com.
|
The Friday Letter Book of the Month By Ken Fisher, with Jennifer Chou, Lara Hoffmans and
James Cramer (Forward)
|
Friday Feature / Wafer Stacking Success Long Overdue
Nick Tredennick, 12/22/06: In the Jan. 2007 GTR it says,
"Unless you are sure that the chips are free of defects, you cannot stack
them in a module."
I don't agree with this. One advantage of stacking chips is to increase yield
of the final product. With hundreds of thousands of vertical vias, there's no
shortage of interconnect. Add a little
logic to each chip so that when they are stacked, the aggregate is more fault-tolerant
than the original. Imagine, for example stacking a few extra memory modules.
When the device boots, it need only aggregate enough chips to create the
desired number of memory bits (extras or defective chips simply don't
participate).
If a processor is being stacked with memory chips, the manufacturer could stack
an extra processor and extra memory chips. Instead of the final system being
lowered to the product of individual yields, the yield increases due to the
processor and memory redundancy.
George Gilder, 12/22/06: Thanks, Nick,
and Merry Christmas. I agree that one of the great benefits of stacking and
other three-dimensional techniques is to open up entirely new design
disciplines, which lead to more robust and adaptable systems. Is it actually
happening anywhere already?
Nick Tredennick, 12/22/06: I don't know of
any great commercial success in wafer stacking. Tezzaron (www.tezzaron.com) has been
working on this for five or six years (it was once Tachyon Semiconductor) and
there are several universities and large companies working on wafer stacking.
Unfortunately, it hasn't made much commercial headway. I'm still confident that
it will, but I can't say when as I think it is already long overdue. The cost
to do wafer stacking has to be cheaper than shrinking transistors to the next
level. Economics will eventually force the answer. Wafer stacking is also a way
to build compact microelectromechanical systems (MEMS).
That should happen for cell phones. One issue here is that the mechanical
layers want to be face-up on the top layer, which makes thinning the wafer more
difficult than if the wafers can be stacked face-to-face.
Merry Christmas to you George, to the staff, and to all GTR subscribers.
To read more posts by Gilder Technology Report editors, George Gilder
and Nick Tredennick, logon to the GTR subscriber-only message board at www.Gildertech.com.
|
The Gildertech Blog, http://blog.gildertech.com/ | Logon now to see what’s new. for FREE
audio downloads of select speakers and panel sessions. |
Friday Blogger Bonus / INVITE: Gilder NYC Speech on Jan. 4
Vic
Niederhoffer and Laurel Kenner: George Gilder, editor of the Gilder Technology Report, will be
our Junto guest on Thursday, January 4th. His topic is “Supply Side Investing.”
As usual we will meet at the General Society Library, 20 West 44th Street —
between 5th & 6th avenues in midtown Manhattan. We will chat, socialize and
discuss beginning at 7 pm, and Gilder will start at 8 pm. Admission is free
and you can bring as many people as you like.
More Information:
http://www.nycjunto.com/library/2007/01/index.htm
Check out Vic and Laurel’s Daily Speculations blog:
http://dailyspeculations.com/junto/junto.htm
__________________________________________
Readings /
Beijing Duck
http://www.andykessler.com/
Gilder expects
E.Z. surprises at LanOptics, Top Picks 2007
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2006/12/26/top-picks-2007-gilder-expects-e-z-surprises-at-lanoptics/
Gilder agrees with IPI on Social Security
http://www.policybytes.org/blog/PolicyBytes.nsf/dx/gilder-agrees-with-ipi-on-social-security.htm
Forbes Sneak Peek 2007
http://www.forbes.com/2006/12/09/2007-predictions-sneakpeek_cx_pm_sp07_land.html
Winners and Losers
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/526178/
MEMS: Yesterday To Tomorrow At Analog Devices
http://www.eetimes.com/news/design/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196702401
Report:
Earthquake-damaged Asian Networks Will Be Slow To Recover
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196702429
Apple
Faked Options Grant Documents, Reports Say
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196702403
Sowell:
Poor Thinking
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTE1MWVhZGQxMjlhMjNlYzk5ZTU3M2JjOWY4NzE5NTU=
Goldilocks
vs Gold
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NGMyZWQzZTc1OTIxZmE1YWQ2ZTg4NGZhMThhZmJhZjU=
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