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I didn't understand how crucial chip manufacturing is until reading the book "Chip War".. What an amazing book. This is probably one of the greatest, if not the

I didn't understand how crucial chip manufacturing is until reading the book "Chip War".. What an amazing book. This is probably one of the greatest, if not the greatest invention in the human history.

3abiton 2y ago
We have some sand to thank. Jokes aside, it is still mind boggling how most of the manufacturing is still dominated by very few companies, it's the perfect setup for WWIII
mrtksn 2y ago
When I was a kid I was into electronics and remember being very annoyed when I found out about this chip stuff. I was happily building analog circuits using the basic building blocks like transistors, capacitors and resistors and it gave me the satisfaction of having great control over everything and being able to "see in 3D" when I look at my circuit as I had full mental model over what's happening. Chips are really great of course but at the same time its completely magic in a bad way. It haven't clicked for me how it all works until I watched videos of people building CPU analogs in Minecraft or something. Just don't like the feeling of not having an idea of how this thing works just by looking at it.
- tuyiown 2y ago
  > Just don't like the feeling of not having an idea of how this thing works just by looking at it. I find it pretty funny that, since we're no equipped to sens electrical flows just by looking at it, it's more the visual / sensorial support for you mental model that helps you. E.g. you don't really have more information by seeing the circuit physically than looking at plans, it just that your brain finds it easier. But it's also pretty clear that having physical objects in the loop actually changes the brain thought process, so it's not just an affair of having the information at hand, how it's presented to our senses must imply changes.
  - mrtksn 2y ago
    That’s right, the analog circuit has clear topology which I can easily imagine what’s going on just by looking at it and sometimes by manipulating it. It’s simply more enjoyable to look at, like looking at mechanical watches or industrial machinery. Chips are kind of dull. Not to take anything away from their enormous utility and impact of course.
    - bgnn 2y ago
      Well, this us true for only the simple analog circuits. A modern analog front-end of a 5G modem or so is absolutely impossible to understand visually. Even the sub-blocks like the phase-locked-loop (PLL) or the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) are often vay too complex to grasp alone. But with a good hierarchy of the schematic one can divide each of these into sub-blocks and understand each of the sub-blocks. The whole is still too complex to understand fully, even for its designer. This causes a lot of simpe mistakes to happen like forgetting to connrct two nodes and not realizing till the silicon failing after the production...
      - TeMPOraL 2y ago
        Yes, but there is a certain magic feeling of power in knowing that you could, with a steady hand and a soldering iron with thin enough tip, meaningfully alter or repurpose the analog parts of the circuit. It's like the difference between a game whose logic is 90% Lua or Python scripts, included plaintext in the game directory, vs. one that's 100% compiled C++. One is susceptible to modding by a 12 year old kid armed with a notepad, or a 22 year old kid trying to make a flashy visualization of finite state machines to get a good grade on CS labs for little work[0]. The other is... still mutable, if you get into reverse engineering, and probably pay for (or pirate) SoftICE[1]. More importantly, one lets you learn how to make similar things, through looking and experimenting; the other doesn't[2]. -- [0] - Well, that involved Processing to show an animated diagram of a simple FSM, and Colobot with a flying Moon robot programmed with that FSM for the flashy vis, plus some half-assed IPC using text files... [1] - Ghirda wasn't a thing back then. [2] - See also "Show source" in browsers - used to be a great on-ramp to webdev and programming, back when JS was just a toy language.
textlapse 2y ago
Just the sheer number of companies and the complexity of the supply chain to produce a square inch of product most of which is tamed sand… is mind boggling. I don’t think there is quite another product made by humankind that matches the sheer number of humans/sqinch - even including rockets, space ships, and some hospital clean room equipment. Truly a golden era to be alive as a civilization to appreciate the height of human potential.
- m3kw9 2y ago
  Almost every current era is golden if you lived in that era, unless you look back. Tech is always improving every year, if it isn't tech, is laws and social structures.
  - Certhas 2y ago
    This is not true. The idea of constant progress is a relatively recent cultural invention. Prior to the great acceleration changes were slow enough that the world seemed static over a lifetime. If it wasn't, the changes were almost as likely to be negative as positive. It's also entirely possible that we are in a transitional period. That in hindsight the great acceleration will be the first half of a sigmoid function. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Acceleration https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Acceleration
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      Makes me think of something my high school physics teacher tried to drill into us: if you zoom in on an exponent enough, it looks like a straight line. Maybe we're transitioning between stages of a sigmoid. Or maybe we're still on an exponential trajectory, but on a timescale of one lifespan, the change still looks linear (if very fast).
  - lazide 2y ago
    Bahaha - plagues (black death, plague of justinian, many more)? conquered by mongols? targeted by crusades over centuries? Do you think the Natives in North America, South America, or Australia saw it as golden?
ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
Can a sufficiently determined person start a new fab in the west?
- aaronblohowiak 2y ago
  At what feature size? http://sam.zeloof.xyz/category/semiconductor/ http://sam.zeloof.xyz/category/semiconductor/
- bgnn 2y ago
  if they invest in educationg tens of thousands of engineers, yes, maybe in 20 years.

3abiton 2y ago

We have some sand to thank. Jokes aside, it is still mind boggling how most of the manufacturing is still dominated by very few companies, it's the perfect setup for WWIII

mrtksn 2y ago

When I was a kid I was into electronics and remember being very annoyed when I found out about this chip stuff. I was happily building analog circuits using the basic building blocks like transistors, capacitors and resistors and it gave me the satisfaction of having great control over everything and being able to "see in 3D" when I look at my circuit as I had full mental model over what's happening. Chips are really great of course but at the same time its completely magic in a bad way. It haven't clicked for me how it all works until I watched videos of people building CPU analogs in Minecraft or something. Just don't like the feeling of not having an idea of how this thing works just by looking at it.

tuyiown 2y ago
> Just don't like the feeling of not having an idea of how this thing works just by looking at it. I find it pretty funny that, since we're no equipped to sens electrical flows just by looking at it, it's more the visual / sensorial support for you mental model that helps you. E.g. you don't really have more information by seeing the circuit physically than looking at plans, it just that your brain finds it easier. But it's also pretty clear that having physical objects in the loop actually changes the brain thought process, so it's not just an affair of having the information at hand, how it's presented to our senses must imply changes.
- mrtksn 2y ago
  That’s right, the analog circuit has clear topology which I can easily imagine what’s going on just by looking at it and sometimes by manipulating it. It’s simply more enjoyable to look at, like looking at mechanical watches or industrial machinery. Chips are kind of dull. Not to take anything away from their enormous utility and impact of course.
  - bgnn 2y ago
    Well, this us true for only the simple analog circuits. A modern analog front-end of a 5G modem or so is absolutely impossible to understand visually. Even the sub-blocks like the phase-locked-loop (PLL) or the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) are often vay too complex to grasp alone. But with a good hierarchy of the schematic one can divide each of these into sub-blocks and understand each of the sub-blocks. The whole is still too complex to understand fully, even for its designer. This causes a lot of simpe mistakes to happen like forgetting to connrct two nodes and not realizing till the silicon failing after the production...
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      Yes, but there is a certain magic feeling of power in knowing that you could, with a steady hand and a soldering iron with thin enough tip, meaningfully alter or repurpose the analog parts of the circuit. It's like the difference between a game whose logic is 90% Lua or Python scripts, included plaintext in the game directory, vs. one that's 100% compiled C++. One is susceptible to modding by a 12 year old kid armed with a notepad, or a 22 year old kid trying to make a flashy visualization of finite state machines to get a good grade on CS labs for little work[0]. The other is... still mutable, if you get into reverse engineering, and probably pay for (or pirate) SoftICE[1]. More importantly, one lets you learn how to make similar things, through looking and experimenting; the other doesn't[2]. -- [0] - Well, that involved Processing to show an animated diagram of a simple FSM, and Colobot with a flying Moon robot programmed with that FSM for the flashy vis, plus some half-assed IPC using text files... [1] - Ghirda wasn't a thing back then. [2] - See also "Show source" in browsers - used to be a great on-ramp to webdev and programming, back when JS was just a toy language.

textlapse 2y ago

Just the sheer number of companies and the complexity of the supply chain to produce a square inch of product most of which is tamed sand… is mind boggling. I don’t think there is quite another product made by humankind that matches the sheer number of humans/sqinch - even including rockets, space ships, and some hospital clean room equipment. Truly a golden era to be alive as a civilization to appreciate the height of human potential.

m3kw9 2y ago
Almost every current era is golden if you lived in that era, unless you look back. Tech is always improving every year, if it isn't tech, is laws and social structures.
- Certhas 2y ago
  This is not true. The idea of constant progress is a relatively recent cultural invention. Prior to the great acceleration changes were slow enough that the world seemed static over a lifetime. If it wasn't, the changes were almost as likely to be negative as positive. It's also entirely possible that we are in a transitional period. That in hindsight the great acceleration will be the first half of a sigmoid function. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Acceleration https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Acceleration
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    Makes me think of something my high school physics teacher tried to drill into us: if you zoom in on an exponent enough, it looks like a straight line. Maybe we're transitioning between stages of a sigmoid. Or maybe we're still on an exponential trajectory, but on a timescale of one lifespan, the change still looks linear (if very fast).
- lazide 2y ago
  Bahaha - plagues (black death, plague of justinian, many more)? conquered by mongols? targeted by crusades over centuries? Do you think the Natives in North America, South America, or Australia saw it as golden?

ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago

Can a sufficiently determined person start a new fab in the west?

aaronblohowiak 2y ago
At what feature size? http://sam.zeloof.xyz/category/semiconductor/ http://sam.zeloof.xyz/category/semiconductor/
bgnn 2y ago
if they invest in educationg tens of thousands of engineers, yes, maybe in 20 years.