The word Silicon Valley was first coined by American journalist Don Hofler in 197 1 year. 10 from 19765438+65438 in the electronic news of Weekly Business as the title of a series of articles-Silicon Valley in America. The reason why there is the word "silicon" in the name is that most local enterprises are engaged in semiconductor and computer-related industrial activities made of high-purity silicon, and the "Valley" comes from Santa Clara Valley. At that time, Silicon Valley was a narrow strip at the southern tip of the San Francisco Bay Area, along10/expressway, from Palo Alto through Moutain View and Sunnyvale, and then through Campbell to the center of Silicon Valley and San Jose, the county capital of Santa Clara County. Later, with the participation of both sides of the San Francisco Bay, including fremont, Silicon Valley developed rapidly. The first decade was wrongly called "Silicon Valley" because of the reporter's spelling mistakes, because the word "Silicon Valley" has not been integrated into American culture (silica gel is a substance widely used for breast augmentation and plugging).
An important period of historical evolution 1. The basis of early radio and military technology
The San Francisco Bay Area has long been the research and development base of the US Navy. 1909, the first American radio station with fixed program time was born in San Jose. 1933, Sunnyvale Air Force Base (later renamed Murphy Airport) became the base of the US Navy airship. Some technology companies serving the navy began to appear around the base. After World War II, the Navy moved its business on the west coast to San Diego, Southern California, and the National Space Commission (the predecessor of NASA) used part of Murphy's field for space research. Companies serving space began to appear, including the later famous Lockheed Company.
2. Stanford Industrial Park
After World War II, the number of students returning from American universities increased dramatically. In order to meet the capital demand and provide employment opportunities for graduates, Stanford University adopted Frederick Terman's suggestion and opened an industrial park, allowing high-tech companies to rent their land as office space. Varian Associates was founded by Stanford graduates in 1960s and 1930s. Terman also provides venture capital for start-ups in civil technology. Hewlett-Packard Company is one of the most successful examples. 1In the mid-1990s, Kodak Company and General Electric Company also set up research institutions in the industrial park, and Stanford Industrial Park gradually became a technology center.
3. Silicon transistor
1956, the inventor of the transistor, William Shockley, established the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Mountain View, south of Stanford University. 1957, shockley decided to stop the research of silicon transistor. At that time, eight engineers left the company to set up Fairchild Semiconductor Company, which was called "Eight Inversions". Noyce and Moore in Eight Rebellions later founded Intel Corporation. Among those who worked for Fairchild, Spock later became the CEO of National Semiconductor Corporation, and another Saunders founded AMD.
4. Venture capital (venture capital)
Starting from 1972, the first venture capital was settled in Shashan Road (Sandstorm Road) next to Stanford, which greatly promoted the growth of Silicon Valley. 1980 Apple went public, which attracted more venture capital to flow to Silicon Valley. Dune has become synonymous with venture capital in Silicon Valley.
5. The rise of the software industry
In addition to the semiconductor industry, Silicon Valley is also famous for its software industry and Internet service industry. Xerox's research center in Palo Alto has made pioneering contributions in the fields of OOP (Object Oriented Programming), GUI (Graphical Interface), Ethernet and laser printer. Nowadays, many famous enterprises have benefited from Xerox's research. For example, Apple and Microsoft have used GUI in their respective operating systems, and Cisco was founded from the idea of freely transmitting many network protocols in Stanford campus network.
Historical stories have always been the working place of the US Navy, and the naval flight research base is also located here. Later, many technology companies built their stores around the naval research base. However, when the Navy moved most of its engineering projects on the west coast to San Diego, NASA took over the original engineering projects of the Navy, but most of the companies stayed. When new companies moved in, the area gradually became a gathering area for aerospace enterprises.
At that time, there were no civilian high-tech enterprises here. Although there are many good universities here, after graduation, students choose to go to the East Coast to look for job opportunities. Frederick Emmons Terman, a talented professor at Stanford University, discovered this, so he chose a lot of space in the school for real estate development and set up some projects to encourage students to develop their "venture capital" business locally. Under the guidance of Terman, his two students, william hewlett and david packard, spent $538 in a garage to set up Hewlett-Packard Company, a high-tech company that has nothing to do with NASA or the US Navy. This garage has now become a witness to the development of Silicon Valley, declared by California as the birthplace of Silicon Valley, and has become an important scenic spot.
195 1 year, Terman had a bigger idea, that is, to establish the first high-tech industrial park near the university-Stanford Research Park. Some smaller industrial buildings in the park are rented out to small technology companies at low rents. Today, these companies are important birthplaces of technology, but they were unknown at that time. In the early years, only a few companies settled here. Later, more and more companies applied the latest technology of the university and rented the land of the university. These land rents have become the economic source of Stanford University, which has made Stanford University prosper continuously. Terman decided in the 1950 s that the new infrastructure should be built on the principle of "valley".
William shockley, a famous Californian, moved here in this atmosphere. William's move is a milestone in the semiconductor industry. 1953 left Bell Laboratories due to disagreement with colleagues. After the divorce, he returned to California Institute of Technology, where he received his Bachelor of Science degree. 1956, he moved to Mountain View, California, close to his mother, and established Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory. Prior to this, the semiconductor industry was mainly concentrated in Boston in the eastern United States and Long Island in new york. For the development of the company, he specially recruited eight young people from the East, including Noyce, Gordon Moore, Spock and Raymond.
William shockley intends to design an element (called shockley diode) that can occupy the market instead of transistor. But when considering that the design is simpler than the "simple" transistor, he is confused. Stubborn by difficulties, Shockley became more and more paranoid. He demanded that employees be equipped with lie detectors and their salaries be announced. These things annoyed everyone. 1957, these eight outstanding young people collectively jumped ship with the support of the industrialist Sherman fairchild, and established fairchild Semiconductor Company. Fairchild, headquartered in new york, mainly deals in cameras.
Because Noyce invented integrated circuit technology, many transistors can be placed on a single crystal silicon wafer, which made Fairchild soar. 1965, Gordon Moore summed up the law that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubled every 18 months, which is also commonly known as "Moore's Law". Although this rule was only summarized from the data of 1960, it was still valid until the first few years of 2 1 century.
This kind of thing keeps happening, and out-of-control engineers keep setting up new companies. At the beginning of 1967, Spock, Raymond and others decided to leave Fairchild and set up their own national semiconductor company, headquartered in Santa Clara. 1968 the departure of Saunders, the marketing manager of Fairchild Company, led to the emergence of AMD in the world. In July of the same year, Noyce, Gordon Moore and Andy Grove left Fairchild to set up Intel Corporation. Today, Intel Corporation is the world's largest manufacturer of semiconductor integrated circuits, accounting for 80% of the market.
198 1 year is the beginning of Fairchild's nightmare. This year, the wafer factory in San Jose leaked toxic solution, so the company had to spend 654.38+02 million dollars to replace soil and monitor water quality. From then on, the company began to decline and eventually disappeared. However, people will never forget his contribution to the history of Silicon Valley and his great achievements in developing monocrystalline silicon wafers. Fairchild employees have established more than 100 companies in Silicon Valley and even the whole United States.
Location factors, natural environment, superior geographical position and beautiful environment; The climate is pleasant; Convenient transportation; Talent highlands are all over the world; Market stability; Innovative environment and innovative culture.
With the rapid development of microelectronics technology since the mid-1960s, universities based on Silicon Valley have gradually formed. It is characterized by relying on some world-renowned universities such as Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley, which have strong scientific research strength nearby, and based on high-tech small and medium-sized companies, it has large companies integrating technology and production such as Google, Facebook, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Apple, Cisco, Tesla, Oracle Bone Inscriptions and NVIDIA.
Universities located near Silicon Valley include:
Stanford University, Santa Clara University, San Jose State University, Carnegie Mellon University West Coast Campus The following universities are not in Silicon Valley, but they are very helpful as research resources and sources of new graduates:
University of California, Berkeley Davis University of California, Santa Cruz University, California State University (East Bay) and former California State University (Hayward) Industrial Features There are more than 65,438 large and small electronic industrial companies in Silicon Valley, and their semiconductor integrated circuits and computers account for about 1/3 and 1/6 in the United States. After 1980s, with the emergence of emerging technology research institutions in this area, such as biology, space, ocean, communication and energy materials, Silicon Valley has objectively become the cradle of American high technology. Silicon Valley has become synonymous with high-tech gathering areas all over the world. The industrial characteristics of Silicon Valley include:
● Employees have a high level of knowledge and skills, among which scientists and engineers account for a large proportion;
The growth rate is much faster than that of traditional industries, and it is constantly changing, and the product upgrading cycle is short;
● R&D expenses account for a high proportion of sales;
● Products are oriented to the world market.
● Spirit of Silicon Valley: Allow failed innovation, advocate competition, and be equal and open!
Natural and high-quality natural and social factors have made Silicon Valley the cradle of entrepreneurs, and high-tech entrepreneurship has flourished. Here are some of the hottest companies in Silicon Valley:
1.Crowdtilt: Help friends who have dinner to pay more conveniently.
2. Executives: Help solve odd jobs in start-ups.
3. Wayabul: It will change the way you travel.
4. Stripe: a new payment method for enterprises
5.Postmates: Let the courier arrive on the same day and become a reality.
6.Getaround: Just got a lot of financing.
7. parsing: making it easier to create new applications
8.Klout: people are still checking their Klout scores.
9.Yardsale: local online e-commerce
10. Path: Share and apply audio photos.
Present situation of Silicon Valley In 2006, there were 225,300 high-tech jobs in Silicon Valley. In terms of the density of high-tech employees, Silicon Valley ranks first in the United States, with 285.9 people per 1000 working in private enterprises engaged in high-tech industries. The average annual salary of high-tech jobs also ranks first in the United States, reaching $65,438+044,800. In 2008, the per capita GDP of Silicon Valley reached $83,000, ranking first in the United States. The GDP of Silicon Valley accounts for 5% of the total GDP of the United States, while the population is less than 1% of the whole country.
Silicon Valley is a gathering place for high-tech talents in the United States and talents in the information industry in the United States. In Silicon Valley, there are more than 6,543,800 scientific and technical personnel from all over the United States and around the world. Nearly a thousand academicians of the American Academy of Sciences have worked in Silicon Valley, and more than 30 scientists have won the Nobel Prize. Silicon Valley is a holy land for American youth and an arena and gold mine for international students. In Silicon Valley, general companies all implement the trinity management mechanism of scientific research, technology development, production and sales, and highly educated professional and technical personnel often account for more than 80% of the company's employees. Most of the scientific and technological personnel in Silicon Valley are outstanding people from all over the world. They not only have different mother tongues and skin colors, but also have different cultural backgrounds and customs, and their majors and specialties are also different. When such a group of scientific and technological experts get together, they are bound to be active in thinking, and it is easy for generate to spark innovation in mutual learning. The establishment and capital investment of high-tech companies in Silicon Valley are still in the ascendant, and it is also the region with the most concentrated talents in the world.
China Silicon Valley Shenzhen is recognized as "China Silicon Valley", and its urban development model refers to the San Francisco Bay Area (the real location of Silicon Valley). Shenzhen has set up Shenzhen Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone and Huaqiang North Business District, the first electronic street in China. Famous high-tech companies headquartered in Shenzhen include Huawei, ZTE, Tencent, BYD, DJI and EVOC. Famous research and education institutions in Shenzhen include Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen College, south university of science and technology of china, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen), Shenzhen University, Shenzhen National Supercomputing Center, etc.
Geographically, Zhongguancun refers to the area surrounded by China Academy of Sciences and neighboring Peking University and Tsinghua University. 1980, the first IT company in China was established here. Later, Zhongguancun became synonymous with China's high-tech industry, especially IT industry. In this region, science and technology, education, culture and high-tech industries are interrelated and infiltrated. Basic research, applied research and high-tech research are interrelated. International academic exchanges, business contacts and economic cooperation are becoming more and more frequent. Zhongguancun has obvious advantages and great potential in developing knowledge economy, and is known as "Silicon Valley".
In Zhongguancun, * * * 5,000 people have doctoral degrees, 25,000 people have master's degrees, and180,000 people have bachelor's degrees. There are more than 8,000 high-tech companies here, more than half of which are IT companies. In 20 12, Zhongguancun demonstration zone realized a total income of 2.5 trillion yuan, paid taxes of 654.38+05 billion yuan, employed 654.38+056 million people, earned profits of 654.38+07.3 billion yuan, exported 23 billion dollars, and spent more than 90 billion yuan on scientific and technological activities.
Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley, a city in southern India, the capital of Karnataka and the fifth largest city in India. 1947 After India's independence, Bangalore developed into a center of heavy industry. The successful establishment of Bangalore High-tech Company has made it the information technology center of India, commonly known as "Silicon Valley of India".