Technology

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The Industrial Revolution, now also known as the First Industrial Revolution, was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Europe and the United States, in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840.

This transition included going from hand production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes, the increasing use of steam power and water power, the development of machine tools and the rise of the mechanized factory system. The Industrial Revolution also led to an unprecedented rise in the rate of population growth.

The First Industrial Revolution

Mechanization of manufacturing with steam and water power.

The Second Industrial Revolution

Mass prodution assembly lines using electrical power.

The Third Industrial Revolution

Automated production using electronics, IT systems and robotics.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution

Autonomous decision making of cyber physical systems using machine learning and Big Data analysis, interoperability through IoT and cloud technologies.

It took the human kind eight generations of profound technological and societal changes, because the two always go hand in hand during industrial revolutions, since the second half of the 18th century with the start of the Industrial Revolution. With the turn of the 20th century a new generation is now living through the Fourth Industry Revolution.

While the focal point has been on manufacturing, with Germany leading the concept of Industry 4.0 in Europe, US branding the concept as the “Industrial Internet” and established the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition as far back as 2012, China, launching a major new initiative, dubbed “Made in China 2025”, to restructure and streamline key industrial sectors and raise their global competitiveness, or South Korea, introducing legislation to promote IT integration initiatives with key sectors, such as automotive and shipbuilding, the Fourth Industry Revolution will change the way we leave, work and spend time together for generations to come.

The scale of required connectivity in this Fourth Industrial Revolution is vastly different from just one decade ago. There are seven billion people on this planet, but just for the industrial Internet of Things, we will need to connect hundreds of billions of devices.

However, this fourth industrial revolution could be the first to deviate from the energy-greed trend, in terms of nonrenewable resources, because we have been integrating more and more possibilities to power our production processes with alternative resources. Tomorrow, factories 4.0 will be embedded in smart cities and powered by wind, sun and geothermal energy.

With technology rooted deeply in our everyday lives – for, or against it – its advancement is an irreversible process. As a responsible member of the Semiconductor community, CHIPAHEAD is devoted to collaborate with its partners to contribute to the development of technology toward the direction of efficiency and economy. We envision our engineering verification capability to contribute to high performance and low power electronic systems that will drive the Fourth Industrial Revolution.