3 ms·
> Humans in fabs are taken out of the loop as much as possible. This. We are talking about Atom scale here. I have as much admiration for skilled mechanics a
by rhelz 3y ago
> Humans in fabs are taken out of the loop as much as possible.
This. We are talking about Atom scale here. I have as much admiration for skilled mechanics as the next guy. I heard about a lathe operator at Patek Phillip who could turn an arbor to within 1 micron precision, just by listening to the pitch the cutting tool made when trimming it down.
And when chip features were on the micron scale, humans in the loop made sense. But chip feature are ten thousand times smaller than that now--4 orders of magnitude. Anything that doesn't need a Ph.D. in solid state physics to do is going to be automated.
- cogman10 3y agoI'm probably revealing exactly which fab, but one issue the fab had is when it was built it was placed fairly close to the interstate. That did no matter when they were at something like 500nm. However, as they slowly pulled the node size down they started noticing random errors within their chips. It took a while to track it down but it turns out semi trucks driving past the interstate were causing defects in the chips. They ended up installing shock absorbers everywhere to counteract this problem.
- tyingq 3y agoThere are still, though, lots of working fabs at much larger process sizes. And some for things that won't ever modernize to a smaller one. Like parts that handle lots of power, or chips for RF purposes, etc.