Susumu Koike is holding court over lunch at the Kyoto, Japan, offices of Matsushita Semiconductor, the company he heads. Matsushita Semiconductor is a subsidiary of $62-billion-a-year Matsushita Electric Industrial, the world's second-largest consumer electronics manufacturer (behind Sony), whose product lines include Panasonic, Technics, and Quasar. A pugnacious 58-year-old engineer, Koike describes one of Matsushita's latest achievements this way: "Reconfigurable FeRAM is our Mount Everest."

Koike's metaphor refers to the company's broad goals for chips that use ferroelectric memory, a new technology that could help make a vast array of consumer electronics-from TVs to handheld computers to cell phones-more versatile and cheaper and, in some cases, faster and smaller. It should ultimately mean more multifunctional digital products, for less money.