Coop's Corner

The 4004 microprocessor

(Credit: Intel)

(Editor's note, 10:25 p.m. PDT: The original headline on this blog was altered to remove the word "subatomic" because its usage may not have been appropriate.)

TEL AVIV, Israel--One of Intel's legendary chip developers says that the computer industry may no longer be able to infinitely shrink microprocessor die size.

And if anyone should know, it's Marcian E. "Ted" Hoff.

The designer behind the 4004 chip, Intel's first microprocessor, Hoff says that a technical end of the road may soon be within sight.

"We are approaching atomic dimensions," Hoff said, adding that "5 or 10 nanometers is as small as we can get. And I haven't seen much to change my mind."

Intel's most advanced chips are at 45 nanometers, while 32-nanometer technology should be out sometime next year. But Hoff, Intel's 12th employee, whose technology breakthrough helped create the microcomputer industry, cautioned that before long, "progress may slow or stop someday."

Ted Hoff

(Credit: Silicom Ventures)

This shouldn't come as a complete surprise. Hoff and other Intel officials have warned for years that they would eventually run up against a technical wall they might not be able to hurdle.

He said that development is getting much harder and that Intel is going to have to do some novel things to maintain the same technical momentum. Talking about previous generations of Intel microprocessors, Hoff said that "each one has been a variation of the previous ... Read more

TEL AVIV, Israel--For one of the most important venture capitalists in Israel, the nation's recent burst of entrepreneurial success isn't going to be good enough to guarantee a productive future.

Chemi Peres, founder of the Pitango Venture Capital partnership, doesn't mince words when he talks about a high-tech landscape that he had a big part in shaping. The way he sees it, Israel's start-up culture will likely take one of two directions.

Chemi Peres

"Some people think we are only meant to innovate, and that once we build something, the best strategy going forward is to sell that company," he said. "The other school of thought is that you have to focus on building significant companies. Otherwise, it will endanger the idea of Israel as a state of science and technology."

For much of the last decade, Israeli high-tech companies have excelled in innovations but then sold technologies to larger multinationals that took those products to customers. Although Israel has prospered by adopting a more technology-oriented focus, Peres believes the build-and-sell model won't suffice in a fast-changing global market where competition is likely to come from anywhere on the globe.

"We're living in a world which doesn't have a original market," he said, "so we have to think on a global basis from Day 1."

I spoke in more detail about the local high-tech scene with Peres, who was on hand for an investment summit here sponsored by Silicom Ventures.

Right now, what'... Read more

Marc Andreessen

(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET News.com)

The rumors have been floating around for a while, and now Mike Arrington is reporting that Marc Andreessen is going to join Facebook's board of directors. (Kara Swisher had the original news break back in May.)

Best known as the founder of Netscape, Andreessen these days is involved with Ning, which supplies a platform for "white label" social networks that you can brand as your own.

We'll try later to get more clarity about how all of this is supposed to shake out.

If the move indeed goes down, Facebook will pick up a plugged-in entrepreneur who can share war stories about the successes and mistakes that defined Netscape's relatively brief moment in the sun before Microsoft got serious about competing. The good news for Mark Zuckerberg is that Facebook doesn't (yet) face a rival on that scale.

TEL AVIV, Israel--He's the richest man in Israel. And at 82, Stef Wertheimer is far from calling it quits. Two years after selling 80 percent of his Iscar Metalworking to Warren Buffett for $4 billion, Wertheimer has an idea on how to bring peace to a region scarred by decades of strife.

His idea: jobs.

Stef Wertheimer

(Credit: Iscar)

More than two decades ago, Wertheimer built Tefen, an industrial park in an undeveloped and low-income region of the Galilee, offering employment both to Arabs and Jews. It worked out so well that he subsequently built three more industrial parks in Israel, as well as one in Turkey. The parks serve as incubators for manufacturing and export companies, which over the years, have spawned about 250 companies--one third of them in the high-technology field, according to Wertheimer.

At one point, Wertheimer was even ready to finance the construction of similar industrial parks in Jordan and the Gaza Strip. But those plans were sidelined indefinitely by the outbreak of the second intifada and the chill in Arab-Israeli relations.

Still, the way Wertheimer sees the future, it's only a matter of time before economics and self-interest ultimately trump ideological and religious differences, paving the way toward a final resolution between Israel and the Arabs. After receiving an award Sunday for his entrepreneurial work at an investment summit sponsored by Silicom Ventures, Wertheimer spoke with me in more detail about his ideas.

When you talk about start-ups and new technologies in Israel, ... Read more

As always, the "matzav" or the security situation, dominates discussions here. Just prior to my arrival, the Israeli cabinet OK'd a controversial prisoner swap with Hezbollah in return for two abducted Israeli soldiers believed to be dead.

Maybe it's the Israeli knack for compartmentalization, but the entrepreneurs and venture capitalists I've been meeting on this trip take the security question more in stride than do the outsiders. They continue to wax optimistic about prospects for the country's high-tech industry, particularly in the area of clean technology. And even though most would agree with Eric Benhamou's apercu that Israel is a 60-year-old start-up, one that's often overlooked strategic aims in favor of the tactical, the "return on investment" is enviable. In 1950, Israel had average annual gross domestic product of $3,500. Last year, it was $22,500.

As with previous years, the Internet continues to attract a lot of interest, but venture capitalist Chemi Peres told me that now life sciences and, especially, energy are the new, new growing areas.

"I think that

We got an earful from Yahoo insiders earlier Thursday on their plans post-reorg. Now, the $64,00 question is whether any of this is going to make a difference. All the while, Steve Ballmer's waiting in the wings with a big fat Microsoft checkbook, debating whether or not to make another stab at acquiring Yahoo's search business.

For Jerry Yang and Sue Decker, these are interesting times. And now that they have the team and the structure they say they want, the world will be watching for results. For a good rundown of the changes and what they might suggest, check out the interview I did with CNET News.com Editor in Chief Dan Farber.

The backlash against BitTorrent is only beginning. Mark Cuban and others have raised the idea of charging for upstream bandwidth usage. That's not a popular suggestion but when 5 percent of the people using the Internet are hogging up to 80 percent of its capacity because of P2P transfers, then there's going to be trouble in River City.

Happy to say that there may be a technology answer to the problem. Dr. Lawrence Roberts, who invented computing networking via data packets, gave a talk at the recently concluded Structure 08 conference. I chatted on today's Daily Debrief with Webware's Rafe Needleman, who covered Roberts' speech.

For the first time in several months, Jerry Yang can exhale. Though not for very long.

Now the countdown really begins. The long-term question: Will any of this effect substantive positive change? The short-term question: Will Steve Ballmer decide to return to the negotiating table. More about that in a moment.

The new management structure announced today by Yahoo may not please everyone--and don't expect cartwheels from Carl Icahn--but it relieves some of the immediate pressure on Yang and Sue Decker, who were being pressed by unhappy shareholders to shake things up.

The folks still out for executive scalps won't be mollified by what they'll predictably dismiss as a PR stunt. Well, yes, Yahoo is counting on the appearance of change. But that's only part of what's going on.

Even though there's still an awfully long to-do list, at least the Yahoo's two most senior leaders can rely on the new handpicked team to pull in the same direction. That wasn't so obvious during the last several months. After the string of high-profile resignations from the company, it was unclear how much strategy disagreements or simply burnout played in the sundry personnel departures. What Yang and Decker needed most of all was a team they could trust to buy into their vision for the company.

Mary Jo Foley's a smart cookie. Reading through a retrospective piece by former Microsoft coder Joel Spolsky, she was quick to spot this intriguing paragraph:

"Watching nonprogrammers trying to run software companies is like watching someone who doesn't know how to surf trying to surf. Even if he has great advisers standing on the shore telling him what to do, he still falls off the board again and again. The cult of the M.B.A. likes to believe that you can run organizations that do things that you don't understand. But often, you can't."

He recalled that Gates often was more familiar with the details of Microsoft's software projects than the people he appointed to take care of this stuff for him.

He didn't meddle in software if he trusted the people who were working on it, but you couldn't bullshit him for a minute because he was a programmer. A real, actual programmer.

Spolsky offers an insightful period retrospective, but I'm not sure his one-size-fits-all prescription really works. Gates may have "understood Variants and COM objects and IDispatch and why Automation is different than vtables" as Spolsky writes, but his technology chops didn't prevent Microsoft from committing severe errors. Let's not

As Yahoo continues to hammer out plans for a corporate reorganization, Steve Ballmer is still eying a possible search deal.

While Microsoft has "no interest" in buying all of Yahoo, top management is still contemplating whether to go back to Yahoo with a sweetened search deal, according to a person familiar with the company's thinking.

Ballmer: Will he or won't he?

(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET News.com)

Earlier this week, CNET News.com reported that several Yahoo board members remain open to discussing a possible sale of the company's search business to Microsoft.

The thinking inside the company is that the search agreement between Yahoo and Google will encounter antitrust objections. Under terms of the pact announced earlier this month, Google will supply Yahoo with some search ads. The sides have voluntarily held off putting the agreement into effect to let the Justice Department review the deal. (Wednesday afternoon, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang sent a letter to shareholders defending the arrangement.)

If Microsoft's management does give the green light to its negotiators, the feeling is that it would be easier to pursue a sweetened Yahoo deal with the current board and while Yang remains CEO. Yang has been under increasing pressure from disgruntled shareholders since the collapse of the Microsoft talks and the drop in Yahoo's share price.

Meanwhile, a source close to Yahoo said the company's main objections to the Microsoft proposal are its exclusivity and term. The source indicated that Yahoo ... Read more