> The VLSI Project is one of the most influential research projects in modern computer history. Its offspring include Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) Unix, the reduced instruction set computer (RISC) processor concept, many computer-aided design (CAD) tools still in use today, 32-bit graphics workstations, fabless manufacturing and design houses, and its own semiconductor fabrication plant (fab), MOSIS, starting in 1981.[2] A similar DARPA project partnering with industry, VHSIC had little or no impact.
Wow that's insane, I never knew that
How did these R&D operations get their start? The same as universities at the time: they were funded by private backers, often family, or the parent corporation of the R&D Lab (IBM Research, Bell Labs, General Electric, etc.).
It's Vannevar Bush who spearheaded the creation of the federal research funding system as we know it today, for the sake of the war effort: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush.
As a side effect, basic research is now mostly government funded, and the peer review system was created to ensure taxpayers were "getting their money's worth".
A more interesting question is: why did it work then, and could it work today? My (admittedly pessimistic) view is that life-changing innovations were a lot easier (read: cheaper) to create back then. Continual breakthroughs in materials science, transportation and communications technologies left a lot of "white space" to innovate in.
For my own curiosity, when did that transition occur?
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2025/02/nih-trump...
Harvard’s endowment, for example, already funds a little less than 40% of its budget, and should be able to continue doing so indefinitely. If you bump that to even, say, 50% there’s a good chance it won’t have any endowment (or funding stream!) at all in the year 2100.