|
Silicon Glen is a nickname for the high tech sector of Scotland. It is applied to the Central Belt triangle between Dundee, Inverclyde and Edinburgh, which includes Fife, Glasgow and Stirling; although electronics facilities outside this area may also be included in the term. The term has been in use since the 1980s. It does not technically represent a ''glen'' as it covers a much wider area than just one valley. ==History== Silicon Glen had its origins in the electronics business with Ferranti establishing a plant in Edinburgh in 1943. NCR Corporation, Honeywell and Burroughs Corporation followed in the late 1940s with IBM being a very significant import when it opened a manufacturing facility in Greenock in 1953. Indeed, this was typical of much of the early days of Silicon Glen, which were dominated by electronics manufacturing for foreign companies much more than research and development or the establishment of home grown companies. The emphasis on electronics came about due to the decline in traditional Scottish heavy industries such as shipbuilding and mining. The government development agencies saw electronics manufacturing as being a positive replacement for people made redundant through heavy industry closures and the associated training and reskilling was relatively easy to achieve. Like the bedrock of Silicon Valley was in semiconductors, Silicon Glen also had a significant influence in semiconductor design and manufacturing starting in 1960 with Hughes Aircraft (now Raytheon) establishing its first facility outside the US in Glenrothes to manufacture germanium and silicon diodes. In 1965 Elliott Automation established a production facility in Glenrothes followed by a MOS research laboratory in 1967. This was followed in 1969 by the establishment of wafer fabs by General Instrument in Glenrothes, Motorola (now Freescale) in East Kilbride and National Semiconductor in Greenock. Signetics also opened a facility in Linlithgow in 1969. In 1970 Compugraphics〔http://www.cgi.co.uk〕 relocated from Aldershot to Glenrothes to provide photomask manufacturing for these companies. Other companies who developed semiconductor wafer fabrication or other manufacturing plants included SGS in Falkirk, NEC, Burr-Brown Corporation, IPS (then Seagate Technology) and Kymata (now Gemfire) in Livingston, CST in Glasgow and Micronas in Glenrothes. There were some other notable successes such as the large Sun Microsystems plant in Linlithgow and the Digital Equipment Corporation semiconductor manufacturing plant in South Queensferry where the pioneering 64-bit Alpha 21064 and its derivatives were made. Digital also opened an office in Livingston, developing their flagship VAX/VMS operating system. Rodime of Glenrothes pioneered the 3.5 inch hard disk drive in 1983 and spent subsequent years defending its patents against (and collecting royalties from) Seagate, Quantum, IBM and others. The manufacturing sector grew to such an extent that at its peak it produced approximately 30% of Europe's PCs, 80% of its workstations, 65% of its ATMs and a significant percentage of its integrated circuits.〔(Vaz, Keith (2001). ''Success of British companies in the rest of Europe'' )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Silicon Glen」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|