As Joseph Jacobson is fond of pointing out, for all the gains in semiconductor chip performance over the past few decades, a typical integrated circuit-the brains behind your computer-is still far too expensive for most people on the planet. "Look at the way [a chip] is made," he says, punching the air with one hand while directing a PowerPoint presentation with the other. Fabricating a high-quality logic chip like Intel's Pentium processor, he points out, takes "two weeks, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Chip fabrication facilities like the ones that Intel has are a $1.6 billion tool. And there are very few people on the globe who can touch that tool."

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