Microchips’ optical future
As the United States seeks to reinvigorate its job market and move past economic recession, MIT News examines manufacturing’s role in the country's economic future through this series on work at the Institute around manufacturing.Computer chips are one area where the United States still enjoys a significant manufacturing lead over the rest of the world. In 2011, five of the top 10 chipmakers by revenue were U.S. companies, and Intel, the largest of them by a wide margin, has seven manufacturing facilities in the United States, versus only three overseas.The most recent of those to open, however, is in China, and while that may have been a strategic rather than economic decision — an attempt to gain leverage in the Chinese computer market — both the Chinese and Indian governments have invested heavily in their countries’ chip-making capacities. In order to maintain its manufacturing edge, the United States will need...