Silicon Glen: the Scottish Electronics Cluster

Abstract

The evolution of the electronics industry in Scotland began in the 1940s with English defence companies moving North to avoid German bombing and then, in the early 1950s, U.S. multinationals chose to locate there to avoid high European tariffs. The foreign direct investment with the support of the Scottish Development Agency continued throughout the 70s and 80s until today the Electronics Cluster accounts for 45,300 employees. Main sectors within the Cluster consist of computers and peripherals, consumer electronics, semiconductor design and manufacturing, military and communications, telecommunications, industrial and medical/control and instrumentation, and software. These companies account for 20% of Scotland’s manufacturing output, 40% of Scotland’s exports, 35% of Western Europe’s personal computers, and 21 % of Western Europe’s semiconductor components. Continued success of the Electronics Cluster is dependent upon five variables: basic factor conditions; demand conditions of customer markets; related and supporting industries; firm strategy, structure and rivalry; and government support. Focusing more now on the semiconductor sector, the manufacturing companies represented are: Hughes; Motorola; National Semiconductor; NEC; Burr-Brown; Seagate Microelectronics; Fuji Electric; and Digital Equipment Corporation. The product portfolios of the companies represented cover memory chips, CISC and RISC microprocessors, ASICS, and gate arrays. The manufacturing technologies range from bipolar CMOS, single to triple level metal, single and double level polysilicon, and photolithography resolutions down to 0.5 microns. These technologies are supported by graduates from six Scottish semiconductor research universities. In addition, a local semiconductor manufacturing base has developed for ultra pure gases, masks and reticles, process control equipment and silicon wafers. It can be said that the semiconductor sector of the Scottish Electronics Cluster is healthy and capable of competing with the best in the world.