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Automation is the only thing that will actually work in some situations now. Semiconductor manufacturing might be like a unicorn in terms of this paper. You ca
by bob1029 3y ago
Automation is the only thing that will actually work in some situations now.
Semiconductor manufacturing might be like a unicorn in terms of this paper. You can't really put humans into a factory without cratering the yield at 7nm and beyond. You see full-auto rates approaching 100% in the highest-end foundries. It is likely that all of the chips in all of your devices never saw any direct human contact until they arrived at Foxconn or wherever.
Achieving this level of automation requires an unbelievable amount of capital and extra human support. The irony definitely holds in this case. The amount of trouble created by the automation is exponentially beyond what any single human could cause. These factories generate event logs at a rate of 300+ megabytes/hour. No human team on earth could break shit that quickly.
- hobo_in_library 3y agoFun fact: in the early days of silicon wafer manufacturing (60s or 70s IIRC) they would randomly have yields crater for a few days each month. Eventually they discovered yields were tanking when their female employee was on her period. Source: The Big Scoree
- morkalork 3y agoWhy would yields be influenced by that?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jvanderbot 3y agoNo idea. Maybe she stayed home?
- hobo_in_library 3y agoAccording to the book they "found that during their menstrual periods female lab workers secreted extra oil in their hands, ruining wafers"
- YesThatTom2 3y agoRelated: one of the fake cancer cures that James Randi (“The Amazing Randi”) debunked didn’t have very good test results in December when a particular person would take vacation. She was very Christian and took the whole month off to prep for Christmas. She also felt that faking test data was ethical because in her heart of hearts she wanted the cure to work. When Randi showed that the data was faked in all months except when she was on vacation.
- teddyh 3y agoThat sounds remarkably similar to many urban legends.
- jacquesm 3y agoSource link or bs.
- hobo_in_library 3y agoDude, it was right there in my post https://www.amazon.com/Big-Score-Billion-Dollar-Silicon/dp/1953953166 https://www.amazon.com/Big-Score-Billion-Dollar-Silicon/dp/1...
- jacquesm 3y agoThat's not a source.
- dredmorbius 3y agoNo, it is a source. Not one that's immediately online per that link, though you can obtain it. You might also try: Open Library: <https://openlibrary.org/works/OL13358612W/The_big_score?edition=key%3A/books/OL21336636M https://openlibrary.org/works/OL13358612W/The_big_score?edit...> Library Genesis: <http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=96525CFC8A6A7C3132A80D439227110F http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=96525CFC8A6A7C3132A80D43...> A local library: <https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3Amalone+ti%3Athe+big+score+silicon+valley https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3Amalone+ti%3Athe+big+s...>
- 13of40 3y agoThe one I heard was that they had terrible yields until they figured out some guy was opening the packages in transit and hand counting the silicon wafers.
- jvm___ 3y agoI've read that the first person to touch a concrete cinder block is the person installing it.
- gumby 3y ago> It is likely that all of the chips in all of your devices never saw any direct human contact until they arrived at Foxconn or wherever. Bonding is not automated AFAIK.
- picture 3y agoCould you explain this a bit more? Do you mean wire bonding to package and/or silicon to interposer? Considering the number of bonds required and the extremely low cost of modern ICs, there's no way to manually bond them besides maybe precision stuff like the hand-trimmed Vishay resistors. The higher end modern chips are also BGA from silicon to interposer, or even directly WLCSP, so there's nothing for humans to do anyway.
- gumby 3y agoSorry, I spoke very poorly. I meant that between completing a wafer and chips arriving at foxconn many humans are involved. I didn't mean to imply that women were manually bonding wires like in the 1960s but it looked like that was what I was saying.