August - 2000 - issue > Openfile

The pages that follow are our first steps into our fourth year of publication. We truly thank you, our readers who are most responsible for making siliconindia become what it has today: an integrated media company with a global footprint, bringing together on one platform Indian business and technology professionals working around the world. We thank you for spreading the word, for providing valuable feedback, for interacting with us-in print, on the Web and at our very popular events. We thank all our advertisers for using siliconindia as an effective medium for reaching out to our large and powerful subscriber base. We eagerly look forward to continue to serve you with enhanced information, analysis, advice and services.
This issue also brings you our biannual content makeover. Change is critical to us; we will continually enhance content and presentation in print and on the Web in the next few months to make the content more accessible, useful and interactive. As always, we look forward to your feedback.When the transistor mutated from being an array of vacuum tubes to an array of gates on a silicon wafer, the computer revolution really got underway. Since then, semiconductors have found themselves in innumerable devices that are fueling the digital age, the information age, the Internet age, the wireless age-as well as any other ages that have been proclaimed in the last few decades. This issue's cover feature presents how the various segments that comprise the semiconductor space come together, and explains the precise dynamics of how this sector is affecting growth in all other high-tech sectors: computing and handheld devices, communications and wireless, as well as all types of embedded devices. We also present cutting-edge technologies in the area of chip design that will govern how much faster, cheaper and smaller all semiconductor devices can get. The semiconductors sector has always been one of the most exciting to write about, simply because of the tremendous changes it sees in short periods of time, and the fundamental way in which it drives progress in all technological sectors.

As part of this special anniversary issue, we also present to you a brief history of Indians in Silicon Valley. Although not too many people may recognize the name Narinder Singh Kapany, the fiber-optics pioneer was probably the first Indian to take a company public in the US, and he did it way back in 1965. Since then, Indians have gained a strong foothold in the Valley, especially in the 1990s. They are now poised for greater laurels.

As last year, this anniversary issue also kicks off our ramp-up to the siliconindia Annual Technology & Entrepreneurship Conference and Awards: the Mac Daddy of all technology events around the world that brings together hundreds of leading technology professionals, entrepreneurs, investors and analysts for two days of networking, idea exchange, negotiations and deal-making. The conference, which will be held on September 28 and 29, also features the annual siliconindia awards ceremony, details of which appear on page 54 of this issue. We look forward to seeing you there!

Yogesh Sharma
Editor-in-chief