What a Long, Strange Trip it’s Been—and It’s a Long Way from Being Over

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes

Miller: That’s right [laughs].

Matties: You have lived a rich life, though, Harvey. You have done a lot, building Fabfile for many years. That was a passion and a labor of love and such an important tool that so many relied on.

Miller: It is even going to be more important when the merging of fabrication and assembly takes place.

Matties: If you were to start a business today, would it be circuit board manufacturing?

Miller: No, I don't think so.

Matties: You might pick assembly. I see a lot more assembly shops opening, because with a few pieces of equipment and 4,000 or 5,000 square feet, you could be an assembler.

Miller: We have to go back to Moore's Law. The basic proposition was that every two years it doubles the number of transistors. But the more important corollary was the reduction in cost from dollars per transistor to fractions of a cent. And the periodicity, every two years, represented the period for obsoleting all the electronics that are out there. Like Durant did with his model year, back in the ‘20s.

Matties: What do you think our technology will look like in 40 years?

Miller: You know, there are so many uncountables. If you look at what experts predict, like Peter Diamandis, who wrote a book called Abundance, there are a lot of things that are on the horizon and then so many things that are just unpredictable.

Let me give you an example of one of the unpredictable things that people don’t think about concerning the Internet of Things. One of those things is chickens. Nobody knows how many billions of chickens are around, but they have estimates. Let's say it is 10 billion. It is more than there are people, for sure. Every one of those chickens is a thing that will have an internet connection.

I was talking to a nurse at the hospital for a study I am in and I was pointing that out to her that they will be able to apprehend avian flu right away. Things like the health of the chicken. Farmers could think of all kinds of parameters in order to check up on it. I pointed out to her that they will not be using Facebook. And she came back and said, “No, they will use Twitter.” [laughs]  My rejoinder was they already had Twitter. But there are estimates of the number of cows, and the number of pigs, and they will all have Internet connections. Just think about the number of interconnections—that is the future.

Matties: When talking about the future of the industry itself, we know there is a course that it is on. Is the course to a new paradigm or is the industry just going to die away?

Miller: Of course not. There is no limit to human ingenuity. That is the important thing.

Matties: We abandoned manufacturing in America for low cost labor in China.

Miller: Searching for low cost labor is a transitional thing. Automation will open up a whole new way of doing things. The board industry has to be an example. The function of joining electronic components is not going to go away and printed wiring boards serve that function, so they are not going to go away. But the way they are made—that is subject to change.

Matties: It seems that we use a very costly and time-consuming process. A subtractive process. With the advent of inkjet printing, that seems to me like a tabletop manufacturing facility.

Miller: And now we are talking about 3D manufacturing of course—adding layers and programming the deposition. We have only seen the very beginnings of that, but that certainly is one direction.

Matties: Do you think that is something that is going to happen in the next 20 years or so?

Miller: Oh, I think so. I think they will be able to deposit dielectrics and patterns, additively. The history of additive and photo circuits didn’t work out because they didn’t have compatible chemistries, and once something gets in the mainstream it gets pretty hard to fight. Additive wasn't in the mainstream, but subtractive worked and they made it work. That is where the momentum was. The whole new approach to additive, like 3D manufacturing by selective deposition, where they can actually deposit patterns, might be the future.

Matties: It sure seems to make sense to me.

Miller: They have to be able to deposit patterns. As I suggested, joining fab and assembly is certainly one big process-saving step that will change the structure of the industry. But you know, we didn't even bring in photonics, which is another major direction. Vario-optics is doing some and TTM is doing some. That is certainly a large part of the future, and the players are different. It will take components that emit light.

Matties: It is changing on all fronts. We are going to have edible electronics for our pharmaceuticals, and things like that. The medical industry is one area we are going to see substantial change. The prosthetics that we are seeing and the electronics that are connecting to the mind are remarkable.

How do you view the association today?

Miller: It changes as the industry changes, but the IP started out in an environment where the actual fabrication was done by captives. It was really a group of independent shops fighting for the growth of the independent industry. Of course, the captives went away and that is no longer the differentiation.

Matties: Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you would like to share with our readers and the industry as a whole?

Miller: The changes we are talking about with the elimination of solder, embedding die, photonics, carbon-nano tubes, graphene and the replacement for silicon won't happen overnight. People will have time to adjust. They have a long way to go yet, but they will go.

Matties: Harvey, thank you so much for spending time with us today.

Miller: Thank you.

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