Silicon

PHILADELPHIA - Diamond, the king of all minerals, now comes in another form - one that is far easier and cheaper than either mining real diamonds or making synthetics. The new diamond is still the world's hardest substance, able to cut through concrete, stone and marble. But it has slightly different heat conductivity and other properties, said Drexel University materials engineer Yuri Gogotsi, who headed a team with the University of Illinois that announced the invention in a recent issue of the journal Nature.

Here's Phil Kuekes's recipe for building the computer of the future: Take a glass tumbler, pour in a few jiggers of exotic chemicals, shake it like a Martini, and voila!"

TWO SCORE YEARS AGO, A YOUNG SILICON Valley executive observed in the pages of an industry journal that the integrated circuit eventually would become cheap enough to be embedded in our daily lives. The term "Silicon Valley" hadn't yet been coined (that wouldn't happen until 1971). Integrated circuits, or chips, were so expensive they were considered suitable only for multimillion-dollar projects, like Apollo moon missions. The home computer wouldn't appear for nearly 20 years. Yet Gordon E. Moore, then the research and development director of Fairchild Semiconductor, which he had co-founded, foresaw in 1965 that silicon chips were going to plummet in price.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Silicon Valley's storied financier, Frank P. Quattrone, won a deal from prosecutors in a New York courtroom yesterday that means an end to his legal troubles, clearing the way for him to return to the investment banking career that had made him one of Wall Street's most powerful technology bankers. The deal represents vindication for a man who once faced an 18-month prison term for his conviction, later set aside, for obstruction of justice, as well as a "lifetime ban" from working in the securities industry.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Five years after walking away from his successful investment banking career to defend himself against criminal charges stemming from the collapse of Internet stocks, Frank P. Quattrone is returning to the role he most relishes: as a counselor to high-tech companies. The news came about seven months after a federal judge approved a request by prosecutors to dismiss all remaining charges against Quattrone, formally clearing the way for his return to Wall Street. "The opera is over," he said at the time, referring to the travails of his conviction - later reversed - on charges of hindering a government investigation into initial public offerings at Credit Suisse.

When Vivek Subramanian was a graduate student at Stanford University in the mid-1990s, he didn't have a big food budget. So he paid close attention to the expiration dates on the items in his refrigerator. "You know, even if food had expired, I'd still eat it," he recalled. "Expiration dates are pretty conservative." Now an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, Subramanian, 30, found his academic calling by pondering a high-tech way to track food freshness.

NEW YORK -- The price of oil remains high, and with it shares of solar energy stocks. In the nine months since it became apparent that Hurricane Katrina would pummel the Gulf Coast, solar energy stocks have soared on expectations that alternative energy would attract more business. Since Aug. 22, a week before Katrina touched land, shares in solar panel-maker Energy Conversion Devices Inc. are up 68 percent. Evergreen Solar Inc., another solar panel manufacturer, has increased more than 90 percent, even after its shares slid in March when its main silicon provider terminated a supply contract.

IT TAKES A LONG TIME to build a monument, even in the Information Age. Just ask the people at Tide Point, who for the past two years have been hard at work on the 400,000-square-foot, 15-acre technology park which is being touted as the crown jewel in Mayor Martin O'Malley's "Digital Harbor." The Digital Harbor is an ambitious plan that includes a push to attract high-tech firms to former industrial buildings ringing the harbor. The mayor has asked for $300 million in state money to build roads, parks and waterfront boardwalks to attract Internet-related businesses to the city's waterfront.

Ponder the odd relationship between computer maker Hewlett-Packard and semiconductor fabricator Weitek.The growth of specialist "fabs" like Weitek soared in the 1980s, when huge semiconductor firms and computer companies began to focus on designing integrated circuits (ICs), while shipping out a great deal of their capital-intensive manufacturing.But Weitek also developed leading-edge design skills. In an odd twist, it designed some exotic engineering ICs for Hewlett-Packard; then Weitek fabricated its special designs in HP's advanced manufacturing facility, previously closed to outsiders.

Bookham Technology PLC, the British maker of fiber-optic components that has its North American headquarters in Howard County, said yesterday that its fourth-quarter net loss widened to $17.3 million, or 14 cents per diluted share. The net loss for the corresponding quarter of 1999 was $6.7 million. Revenue for the company surged to $17.1 million for the quarter that ended Dec. 31, up 454 percent from the same quarter in 1999, and 49 percent from the previous three-month period. The company, which went public in April, makes components that help information flow along fiber-optic networks.