National Semiconductor's Halla Says Recovery On The Horizon

Halla, chairman, CEO and president of National Semiconductor, who is known in the industry for his optimistic views, said during a Wednesday afternoon keynote he expects a turnaround in technology by June, 2003. Halla said his projection relied on internal research, which was based on mathematic equations only a semiconductor manufacturing firm could decipher.

But Halla also presented some real-world events to back up his assertion.

Halla pointed to the railroad build-out in the 1800s as a parallel to the Internet bubble of the late 1990s. In the 1860s, he explained, a railroad network was built to move goods across the country and it was heralded as a revolution that changed the way people purchased goods and communicated.

But much of the consumption of goods delivered by the railroads was being consumed by the immigrants that were helping build it, he continued. Once those immigrants left, there was a glut of capacity, just as now there is a glut of bandwidth in the United States, he said.

The 19th century rail industry glut caused the price of railroad cars to fall and entrepreneurs started to find new users for these lower cost transportation vehicles. Among the new ideas was a refrigerated freight car to carry meat and a car used by the Montgomery Ward stores to ship catalogs to new customers. That imaginative use of low-cost products and services heralded another expansion, he said, and led to another economic boom time.

Just as cheap railroad cars prompted new uses for the delivery mechanism, Halla said cheap bandwidth and related technology products is bringing forth new products that will move the tech market into a upswing.

The real Internet boom hasn't even started, Halla contended; it's just on the horizon.

"We did not have a dot-com boom. We had a railroad boom," he said. "Now let the [real boom come upon us."

Wireless technologies will be one of the key driving forces of the next boom, said Halla. He predicted that wireless radios will be virtually free as silicon continues to shrink.

Halla showed off some examples of innovative uses of wireless technology from pills that can be swallowed and will transmit digital pictures of a person's intestinal track, to phones with built-in digital cameras, to wireless cameras used as security for oil and transportation companies.

He also touted National Semiconductor's concept design of a Geode Expended Office, a Web-pad-based device that runs a full version of Windows XP, and includes 802.11 and Bluetooth wireless connectivity built in.

These types of new technologies are proof positive, he said, that the technology industry is not at a maturing point, as many in the media have said.

"Is this a mature industry?" he asked. "Absolutely not. We as an industry have only invented a couple of killer products, the PC and the cell phone. We haven't even scratched the surface yet."