Components for the first iPhone. Bluetooth. USBs.

A lot of technology that's driving commerce and making lives more fun and efficient has roots in the Lehigh Valley.

It all started 75 years ago, on a production line in Allentown.

The world’s first mass production of transistors, the forerunner of semiconductors, occurred in 1951 at Western Electric, a division of Bell Labs.

Today, Lehigh Valley continues to be a hub of technological innovation, fueled by talent that was drawn here by Western Electric and its successors.

More than 1,100 people are employed at 35 Lehigh Valley semiconductor and related technology businesses, including global brands Broadcom, Cisco, Coherent, Intel, and Nokia (previously Infinera), and smaller companies such as AAYUNA and iDEAL Semiconductor.

Those companies are developing, producing, and assembling semiconductors that are relied on by not only Google, Microsoft, AT&T, and Verizon, but Meta, AWS, Netflix, and the Department of Defense, among others.

"Long before smartphones, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence, the technological revolution began with a transistor produced in the Lehigh Valley. Seventy-five years later, Lehigh Valley remains at the forefront of innovation, with companies developing and manufacturing the semiconductor technologies that power the modern world,” said Kristin Cahayla-Hoffman, Vice President of Business Development & Attraction at Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation (LVEDC).

Here’s a look at some of the key players in Lehigh Valley’s technology ecosystem.

Broadcom 

Broadcom operates a wafer fabrication facility in Upper Macungie Township that develops and manufactures indium phosphide semiconductor lasers and detectors for fiber-optic networks and data centers. Those technologies are key to recent developments in artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Coherent 

Coherent is a global leader in silicon carbide (SiC) materials and devices that are critical to the rapidly growing power electronics market used in electric vehicles, renewable energy systems, and grid infrastructure.

In response to this rapidly growing global demand, Coherent is expanding its facility in Palmer Township, dedicated to producing these state-of-the-art SiC materials. These materials are then utilized in the manufacture of highly efficient power electronics, with automotive EV’s being the largest market.

iDeal Semiconductor

iDEAL, located at Ben Franklin TechVentures in Bethlehem, has developed “SuperQ™,” a technology at the atomic scale that dramatically improves energy efficiency. It is applicable to all types of semiconductors and works by opening more room on the devices for conduction, reducing resistance and energy loss.

Intel

Intel engineers based in Lehigh Valley design semiconductor devices that are fabricated at other Intel facilities and packaged abroad. These chips are used in cell towers and networks all over the world. 

Nokia 

Nokia designs, manufactures, packages, assembles, and tests optoelectronic packages and modules built around its unique optical, compound semiconductor photonic integrated circuits. 

Chips produced in the company’s California-based fabrication plant are sent to its 60,000 square-foot advanced testing and packaging facility in Upper Macungie Township. There, those chips are tested for quality and then assembled into modules to be inserted into optical transport equipment used for networking, cloud connectivity, and data center interconnect services. 

Lehigh Valley’s Innovation

Lehigh Valley’s history of technological innovation was celebrated at LVEDC’s Fall Signature Event in November 2023.

“It is amazing that so much innovation that surrounds us in our daily lives has been created here in Lehigh Valley,” Jill Bennett, Vice President, Xeon® & Networking Engineering Director, Network & Edge Group at Intel®, said in her keynote address (read her full remarks here).

Read about the Fall Signature Event here and watch highlights here.