Semiconductor industry in Japan—past and present

This paper provides an overview of the Japanese semiconductor industry. In the first part, a history of the industry from the very beginning is described. Some unique features of the industry, like consumer orientation, vertical integration, and scale efficiency, are examined. In the second part, the present status of the industry is examined with some emphasis on very large-scale integrated devices and technologies. Nonsilicon technologies are described compared with those of silicon. A wide variety of devices and technologies are now being studied and developed, however, from the industry´s viewpoint, the main stream is and will continue to be with silicon. Among such devices, scaled CMOS and high-speed bipolar varieties are of special interest, due to their potential high performance as well as broad application.