With the end of the Soviet Union, we have even seen an accelerating stream military technology, like night vision binoculars, trickling into the consumer market. Less well known is the trickle down effect of computer technology. It is the largest corporate clients that drive the creation of most new technologies. There are two reasons for this. First, technology products are typically most expensive when they first appear on the market, both because there is initially no competition for the product and because the manufacturing process has not yet been perfected.
Large corporations are typically the only customers able to afford the new technology.
Second, it becomes more difficult for a large corporation to grow as quickly as it used to. To continue to improve profitability, such companies look for ways to cut their expenses, and higher performance technology, despite its high price, often results in savings for these firms. As each technology becomes more commonplace it becomes less expensive, but eventually the large corporations that were its initial users abandon it in favor of something more advanced. We know of two promising companies taking advantage of the trickle down effect in networking technology. As its name implies, Broadcom develops technologies useful to high speed communications.