The Register (London, Nov. 19) -- The general chair of the SC13 supercomputing conference thinks the semiconducting industry has reached a tipping point more radical – and uncertain – than it has gone through in decades. “We’ve reached the end of a technological era where we had a very stable technology,” says Bill Gropp, a professor of computer science at Illinois. “We’re about to get back to where we were about 25 years ago, when the technology suddenly changed on us.”