Column: Darwin In Your Palm

Letter From Silicon Valley

Burlingame, Calif. -Talk about watching evolution in process.

A bevy of new devices are emerging, machines smaller than a laptop computer, bigger than a cellphone. Like variations of Darwin's finches, each of these is evolving its own specialty:

--Steve Jobs' iPhone will let you talk.

--"Mobile PCs," based on Intel's chips, will let you run the software written for PC on lightweight, portable machines.

--The "Foleo," Palm's new machine created by Palm Pilot and Treo inventor Jeff Hawkins, aims to be a "mobile companion" that sits somewhere between a PDA and a full-fledged laptop.

Each of these design efforts--and I'm sure there are scores more--are scratching away at the environment, trying to figure out what it will take to survive. What will consumers (and businesses) buy? At what price? With what usage caveats?

No one better channels consumers' longing to be cool than Steve Jobs and Apple. In the business world, Palm's Jeff Hawkins is Jobs' separated-at-birth twin: Twice before, Hawkins has proven that he can translate our hazy desires to break free of our desks into silicon and plastic.

(Full disclosure: This week, Elevation Partners, which owns a portion of Forbes, said it was investing in Palm. Fuller disclosure: Elevation didn't whisper a word about the deal to us before it was announced. Darn.)

But what gives me absolute confidence that something like these devices will exist are not just these electronic artists--but the armies of unrecognized design and manufacturing engineers who are steadily building the silicon chips that will power these emerging devices.

Take Intel: Executives there say that they believe the company's future lies with "system on chips," effectively special-purpose microprocessors tuned to carry out specific tasks.

Even more experienced in this area is Texas Instruments. I didn't include TI in my list at the top because TI's chips are used in such a diversity of cellphones and handheld machines. For a decade or so, Texas Instruments has been steadily building an entire ecosystem of design around its platforms. Constellations of companies in India, China and elsewhere are building special-purpose chips on top of TI's design architecture.

Bottom line: If you can dream it up, somebody can make a chip that will make it work.

Fundamental to this equation are the "foundries," the massive chip manufacturing facilities run by companies as diverse as Taiwan's TSMC, China's SMIC and Chartered, even IBM. Chip fabs have been around for decades, of course. But what's different now is the ease with which they can make literally hundreds of different products at once.

Enormously complex manufacturing software--go ahead, call it artificial intelligence software--mean that these factories can be programmed to stamp out very diverse designs. Relatively small batches of design suddenly have inherited many of the cost advantages that once blessed a single design.

Are you old enough to remember the heyday of Xerox PARC, when it was an incubator for astonishing ideas? The guiding design philosophy of those days, as I recall, was simple: Do away with a constraint. Pretend that a key--but expensive--component has become free. Pretend bandwidth is free. Pretend silicon is free.

Silicon chips are almost free. The limitation now is software. Jobs, Hawkins and for that matter, companies like Intel, must all be scrambling to figure out how to inspire software designers to write applications that will make their devices sing.

Prepare to see scores and scores of devices. That much is clear. The billion dollar question in the balance is one of evolution: Which one--or ones--will dominate?

I'm starting to morph this column into more of a blog-like conversation rather than a classic piece of reporting. Your comments are most welcome; you can send me a note at ecorcoran@forbes.com. If you do, please let me know if I can share your comments with readers.

http://www.forbes.com/2007/06/05/palm-foleo-iphone-tech-cz_ec_0605mobile.html?partner=yahootix

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