Henry Samueli, for whom our School of Engineering and Applied Science is named, gave a luncheon talk at UC Irvine for the conference Communications 2025 on October 17, 2012. He is co-founder and Chairman of the Board of Broadcom (which makes communication chips), and Chief Technology Officer. (He also graduated from the same high school that I did, Fairfax High, in Los Angeles.) He is also a great philanthropist, including to UCLA and UC Irvine.
He said that the United States leads the world in R & D investments, at $400 billion out of $1,000 billion worldwide. This is 2.8% of GDP. Since the conference is a joint collaboration with Tel Aviv University, he pointed out that Israel invests 4.2% in R & D.
Henry’s first industrial work was with TRW. When he formed Broadcom, they looked for communications experts, which they found in the military communications and broadband experience in Southern California. They then went to Silicon Valley, the East Coast, and Israel. They have 700 employees in 10 associated companies in Israel that they acquired. They also recruited in India.
Broadcom spends 25% in R & D, mostly in the development part. This is the fourth largest percentage in the world for companies. It amounts to $2 billion a year. They are looking for developing usable applications in two to three years time. They give unrestricted funds to 40 Universities around the world to do the long term research part from the Samueli Foundation. They have 10,000 employees, including 1,000 interns.
Discussing communications in the future, he pointed out that in 20 to 25 years we may come to an end of Moore’s law where processors double in speed every two years. (With parallel processors, better algorithms, and broadband communications to respond like Siri, I don’t see that this will be a problem.) We will have smarter phones and move to voice communications like Siri as the primary user interface. Wallets will disappear in five years, perhaps with secure processors. Bio-metrical ID methods will be used to start up phones like heart rate uniqueness or retinal scans. Cars are already secured by key fobs that require passwords. We can also store family pictures in cell phones instead of wallets. Phones will have sensors for monitoring our health. They will also do environmental sensing. Self driving autos will also exist, using sensors and GPS.
Some one estimated that computers will be smarter than people in 2045. What will be our value then? The computers will also be self designing for better computers.
The US is engaged in an innovation economy. In education, everybody is now connected all the time with tremendous intellectual resources. In academia, face time is important and leads to better learning. How should teaching adapt to the presence of online resources to make both most valuable?
There were some questions as to whether you could have a computer programmed to have feelings? Could a computer act as if it had a soul? What goes on in the brain?
The lunch was also good — fish with salsa.
