<<  <  >  >>

Page 12

The concept is obvious and simple, but the mathematical algorithms and special-purpose

computers required to implement it are decidedly not. The leader in video compression

technology is C-Cube Microsystems Inc., a quarterbillion-dollar Silicon Valley start-up

company, which has received an Emmy for its contribution to the television industry.

C-Cube is the largest and most technologically potent company in a new industry that will

reshape picture transmission not only in television but also in computers and on the

Internet.

Alex Balkanski, a brilliant mathematician and businessman, is C-Cube's CEO. I am

a member of its Board of Directors. Despite C-Cube's leading technology, becoming a

successful business in the video compression market has been a struggle. Changing the

way pictures are transmitted in a government-regulated market is a prolonged task. The

venture-funded company lost money for years while waiting for its technology to take off.

Shortly after C-Cube started making a profit, we were shocked to find out that the gov-

ernment had funded one of our competitors. An ATP grant went to LSI Logic

Corporation, one of America's top 10 semiconductor companies, to help fund their effort

in video compression.9

Spending for No Benefit: Gallium Arsenide Wafers in Space

Gallium Arsenide (GaAs, pronounced "gas") is a semiconductor 5 to 10 times

faster than silicon. GaAs chips are used to transmit data at very high speed on the

so-called electronic data superhighway. GaAs chips are capable of transmitting and

receiving signals on a single fiber-optic cable at the rate of 10 billion bits per second, fast

enough to transmit 250,000 typed pages of information per second.

The Space Vacuum Epitaxy Center is billed as "a NASA center for the commercial

development of space." It is funded to grow GaAs wafers on space shuttle flights using a

process called epitaxy. NASA's Wake Shield was designed to grow GaAs crystals behind

a shield sweeping through space some 30 miles away from the contaminants surrounding

the space shuttle. The theory: the vacuum in space is much better than the vacuum earth-

bound equipment can provide, thus offering the potential to grow more perfect crystals in

space.10

The Wake Shield became one primary objective of five NASA missions. No one at

SVEC would say exactly what the cost of the space wafer experiments was, but a

ball-park estimate is $200 million per flight, shared among several experiments. The

management of the Wake Shield claimed that although the initial wafers would be

astronomically expensive, later production of GaAs wafers in space would cost only

$10,000 per wafer, an amount declared to be commercially viable. Congress bought off

on SVEC, and at least two missions have been flown.