Dicken (2010) discusses in his book, in the last four decades the semiconductor has emerged as the dominant influence and has effected into all branches, and almost all of our daily life. But we are not usually aware of its existence. Dicken (2010) explains further when a number of transistors connected together on a single piece, so called an integrated circuit first introduced in 1950s for the computerized functional purposes, it had taken a whole roomful of valve computer. Then in early 1970s a very sophisticated microprocessor chip of silicon the size of a finger nail was created to replace the vast amount of computers to perform the same functions. Dicken (2010) then reviews, even though, the semiconductor is still a young industry but the growth of production has been astounding. In fact since 1980, the semiconductor industry is probably the fastest growing industry in the world. The global sales’ figures have shown an impressive growth from $bn 10 and $bn 210 in 1980 and 2004 respectively. The global market has been trebling every five years (Dicken, 2010).
In order to interpret the phenomenal of semiconductor industry there a numbers of reasons for the industry’s rapid growth. Firstly, according to Dicken (2010) the changing patterns of consumption has played the important part of the growth. Dicken (2010) argues although the semiconductors seem to be invisible and consumers do not actually go and search for semiconductors, most of consumers’ electronic equipment contain some level of semiconductor. This is because the electronic equipment need semiconductors in order to be able to perform variety of functions. The demand for better functions of the electronic equipment to make our daily life more comfortable is one of the main factors for the thriving of semiconductor industry.
Dicken (2010) illustrates further that the increasing demand in producing a better performance of the PCs (personal computers) is high. Hence the PCs