Fred Schindler
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Many of us enjoy watching and participating in sports. Team sports, amateur and professional, let us associate with a group—a surrogate tribe. I live in the Boston area, which we like to refer to as title town, and we are fanatical about our Red Sox, Bruins, Celtics, and Patriots. These teams play games that take the place of battles between tribes. We relish our victories against the “evil” teams representing New York. These games excite and energize us. In some ways, they are emotional substitutes for real battles. Occasionally, passions boil over and result in real violence on the field and off.
As I’m writing this, the 2022 World Cup just had its final match. Congratulations to Argentina! The World Cup and the Olympics provide a place for countries to compete. Here, too, we are energized and excited. Are these useful surrogates for war? Are they a relief valve that allows us to vent our resentments and express our pride? Or are they just tools to profit from our enthusiasm or distract us from more meaningful concerns?
There is tribalism in business too. Companies compete with each other. We compete in the marketplace; we compete for investors; and we compete for talent. Most companies want their employees to feel an affinity for the organization; to show some loyalty; and to see competitors as rivals. I’ve enjoyed challenging my local competitors to soccer (football), softball, and other matches. We are friendly competitors in the marketplace. Why not on the playing field, too?
Universities also compete with one another. They compete for research funding, for talent, and for prestige. Some also compete in sporting events, especially in the United States. There are rich and longstanding rivalries between universities. We seem to create tribalism everywhere we are.
So, of course, there is tribalism in microwave technology. I recall attending some exciting panel sessions in the 1990s. GaAs monolithic microwave integrated circuit technology had been primarily developed around the field-effect transistor (FET) since its inception. The FET had evolved into the pseudomorphic HEMT (pHEMT), which was by then showing impressive results as a power, low noise, and switch device. A more recent development had been the heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT). By the 1990s, a number of groups had demonstrated its capabilities as a microwave power device. The panel sessions were battles between advocates for the pHEMT and the HBT.
It was tribalism. I was in the pHEMT camp. I worked in an organization that had a strong FET heritage and was demonstrating some excellent pHEMT performance. The HBT camp was even more enthusiastic, representing an upstart device. In some ways, it was useful tension—we were energized to compete and develop ever better devices. But it was also a distraction.
With time, have we learned which device is better? It turns out they each have a place, and both continue to be developed and manufactured. The was no need to prove which device was best. Instead, what we should have done is determine what each device was best at doing—how to best apply each device.
Around the same time, there was a competition in the application space, between 2G mobile phone standards. In Europe, the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) had been adopted. It used time-division multiple access (TDMA). In the United States, a different TDMA standard was developed, Digital Advanced Mobile Phone System (D-AMPS). A code-division multiple access (CMDA) standard was introduced not long after. We had carriers providing 2G service with GSM, NADC/TDMA, and CDMA. There was a significant competition between the carriers and their standards. Tribal lines were drawn.
With time, it became clear that although CDMA is more difficult to implement, it provides far more efficient use of bandwidth. With the advancement of electronics being what it is, complexity is ever easier to achieve, so the added complexity of CDMA didn’t turn out to be a significant barrier. For microwave technologists, it meant we needed to develop linear amplifiers and work at improving efficiency. The 2G tribalism continued as 2.5G capabilities rolled out. Even though 3G and 4G were based on CDMA, it is only recently that schism has disappeared among mobile network operators as 2G access is phased out.
We see plenty of other controversies—Si versus GaAs; GaN on SiC versus GaN on Si; and the legitimacy of composite right/left-hand techniques, to name a few. Advocates for either side of these issues almost always cite data, figures of merit, calculations, and analysis—facts that are beyond reproach. But, of course, these are selective facts. People always reference the facts that support their side of the argument. Just as we can’t determine if HBT or pHEMT is a universally better technology, we can’t say if Si is universally better than GaAs. Yes, Si dominates, but for some applications, GaAs has advantages.
We see similar tribalism and selective use of data outside of science and technology. Facts used to be a given, but now, they are variables. Everyone seems to have their own facts. For the most part, we don’t have an issue with people making up their own facts in the microwave technology space. But we certainly have the selective use of facts.
Let’s go back to the HBT versus pHEMT controversy. Both sides presented their case, supported by hard data, physical characteristics, and inherent properties. There may have been some hyperbole, but for the most part, everyone spoke the truth. And, in the end, each device was superior for certain uses. We needed a broader perspective—it wasn’t about identifying the winner; it was identifying where each would win. Tribalism generates creative energy, but it also blinds us. Tribalism can be constructive, but it can also be counterproductive. Sometimes we need to take a step back and a deep breath.
Go Celtics!
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MMM.2022.3233476