Shrinking the computer chip is one of humanity’s greatest scientific feats. It has enabled the processing power that has digitalised almost every aspect of our lives.
To understand how the latest chips work and where technological breakthroughs are being made, we need to travel beyond objects measured on familiar scales.
It’s a pet peeve of mine when people describe scientific progress as a miracle.
It’s not a miracle. It’s the result of a ton of work from many, many people. It’s also something that if you research it, you can probably understand it…at least on a basic level.
Semiconductor manufacturing is hard, but it’s something that humans are very good at, and we figured it out by ourselves.
Truly fascinating. How anyone even imagines the design of these is beyond me.
An Arthur C Clarke magic moment.
It’s a pretty precarious situation when so much of the functioning of societies around the world depends on these very few companies that can manufacture these chips. Especially when Taiwan is the hub of it all.
That’s why there is a huge push now to remedy it. The supply chain shutdown due to covid was the first shot across the bow and now China is massively ramping up its navy to take it. They want to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.
And is still way too much gated. Hopefully we get a process in the far future that can produce sub-10nm for a few 10000$ .
