Silicon Glen

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Silicon Glen is a nickname for the high tech sector of Scotland. The name is applied to the Central Belt triangle between Dundee, Inverclyde, and Edinburgh, and includes Fife, Glasgow and Stirling; although electronics facilities outwith this central area may also be included in the term. It does not represent a glen as it covers a much wider area than just one valley (perhaps strath would be a more accurate adjective), however the name was probably based upon "Silicon Valley" and has been in use in Scotland since the 1980s.

1 History
2 Today
3 Notable companies
4 Universities
5 External links
6 See also

[edit] History

Silicon Glen had its origins in the electronics business with IBM being one of the first companies to set up 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 software 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 establishing its first facility outside the US in Glenrothes to manufacture germanium and silicon diodes. In 1966 Elliott Automation established a production facilty 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 in East Kilbride and National Semiconductor in Greenock. Other companies who developed semiconductor wafer fabrication or other manufacturing plants included NEC, Burr-Brown Corporation, IPS (then Seagate) 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 processor was made. Digital also started an office in Livingston developing their flagship VAX/VMS operating system.
Rodime of Glenrothes pioneered the 3.5" hard disk drive in 1983 and spent subsequent years defending its patents against (and collecting royalties from) Seagate, Quantum, IBM and others.
It was estimated that the manufacturing sector produced approximately 30% of Europe's PCs, 80% of its Workstations, and 65% of its ATMs.

[edit] Today

The heavy dependency on electronics manufacturing hit Silicon Glen hard after the collapse of the hi-tech economy in 2000. Viasystems, National Semiconductor, Motorola and Chunghwa all laid off substantial numbers of employees or closed factories completely. The effects of the Viasystems closure are still felt in the Scottish Borders today. Digital sold their Alpha facility to Motorola who eventually closed it down. Motorola also closed their factory in Bathgate and the substantial NEC plant in Livingston was also closed.

However, there are many promising signs as well as a recognition that diversification away from electronics and manufacturing produces a more balanced and stronger economy. There is also more of an interest in encouraging home grown talent.

In order to diversify away from electronics and manufacturing, the development agencies now see Global Services as being a potential area of growth, but there is also substantial interest in the software development industry, including Rockstar North, developers of the market leading Grand Theft Auto series. There is also a dynamic and fast growing electronics design and development industry, based around links between the very strong universities and indigenous companies like Wolfson, Linn, Nallatech and Axeon, and projects like the Alba Campus. The software sector has also notably attracted Amazon.com to set up a software development centre in Edinburgh, the first such centre outside the US. There remains a significant presence of global players like National Semiconductor, IBM and Freescale. The move from a primarily manufacturing dominated region to a wealth creation one has been successful as demonstrated in a report from UBS Wealth Management in 2006 showing Scotland with more venture backed companies per capita than any other UK region.
In addition to the indigenous companies, Silicon Glen continues to have quite a significant semiconductor design community of inward investment companies including Atmel, Freescale, National Semiconductor, Semtech, Micrel, Analog Devices, Allegro Microsystems, Micro Linear, ST Microelectronics and Raytheon. Overall, Scotland has 1,000 companies in electronics employing 74,000 people.