Taking the brakes off-are IC foundries in the industry's best interest?

Abstract

Following up last issue's editorial topic, GaAs evangelism, another prime driving factor for the IC industry is the need for more design freedom. Before any new technology can be taken up, there must be enough engineers out there versed in the methodology. This obvious statement begs the question: where does this knowledge come from? Most noticeably from the IC foundries who are, for the most part, keen to restrict the spread of this knowledge outside their “club” of users. Is this in the best interest of progress in the GaAs industry as a whole?