Comunicazione
Semiconductors vs. superconductors: One more case of the "sailing-ship effect"?
Filatrella G., Arima S., De Liso N.
Since superconductivity was discovered, expectations on its use have emerged. An attempted use was that of superconducting computers. In fact, IBM spent huge resources between 1965 and 1983 ---when the project was dropped--- trying to build a "Josephson computer". The project was abandoned because the incumbent semiconductor technology was being constantly developed. Superconductors' technology is now re-emerging at the core of quantum computers. The uneasy path from the lab to applications is often due to a mix of technical and economic factors. A difficulty in technological substitutions that sometimes emerges is due to the huge intentional improvement of the existing technology as a new one appears ---the intentional improvement being addressed as the "sailing-ship effect", named after the battle between the old sail and the new steam-engine technology to provide motion to ships. The sailing-ship effect is thus a mechanism that may prevent a new, superior, technology from substituting an old, less performing, one. In this talk, we apply the sailing-ship effect concept to study, in a mathematical-statistical way, the technological battle between semiconductors and superconductors.