Silicon Valley has no specific boundaries. The name was coined by the press to reflect the intense concentration of semiconductor companies at the southern end of San Francisco Bay -one of the biggest natural bays in the world. It is usually recognized that it starts somewhere around highway 92 and continues to areas south of San Jose. From the first days of Fairchild Semiconductors, to today's Intel, AMD, Cypress, National Semiconductor, Analog Devices, Altera and many, many more. The semiconductor process uses silicon as a base ingredient, and, in turn, the computer and technology industries use semiconductor components to power all their designs. IBM, Fujitsu, Sony, NEC and many other foreign companies have semiconductor design operations in this area, as it is also home to the big EDA tool companies such as Cadence Systems, Synopsys, etc. HP, Apple, eBay, Yahoo, Google, Sun, Silicon Graphics, were all founded in Silicon Valley and are still headquartered here, along with software powerhouses Oracle, Symantec, Veritas and Adobe. Genentech and other biotech powerhouses are also based in the San Francisco Bay Area, but their stronghold is South San Francisco...which for purists mean they are not in Silicon Valley. |
