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Who holds the secrets/documentation to the chip designs themselves? I reckon without the right experts, it would be very hard. Plus, Intel uses equipment from t
by bserge 6y ago
Who holds the secrets/documentation to the chip designs themselves? I reckon without the right experts, it would be very hard. Plus, Intel uses equipment from third parties, too.
It's like the Saturn V - the documentation/blueprints/etc was massive, secret, spread all over, making it basically impossible to recreate the rocket just by "following instructions", replacement stuff would have to be recreated from scratch.
- nl 6y agoChip fabrication has traditionally been a US strategic technology supported by US government investment in return for making sure there are complete supply chains available in the US or friendly nations (specifically Japan and Taiwan). The US has tightly controlled the export of advanced processes, which is why even TSMC isn't allowed to manufacture in China with processes below 22nm. I believe (Chinese based company) SIMC has a new 8nm process they developed themselves, but people have doubts about the yield. See https://warontherocks.com/2020/06/the-chip-wars-of-the-21st-century/ https://warontherocks.com/2020/06/the-chip-wars-of-the-21st-... for some details about this. What's more we are constantly building new plants and processes. This isn't like the Saturn V where the plans were mothballed. Sure, if you killed all semi-conductor engineers, and everyone at Intel and TSMC and Samsung I'm sure there would be problems. But realistically chip manufacture is one of the things I'd feel more confident about being able to recover.