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It is only impressive coming from the consumer grade electronics. Microchips, capacitors, PCB's and other stuff like manufactured for defence have much wider a

It is only impressive coming from the consumer grade electronics. Microchips, capacitors, PCB's and other stuff like manufactured for defence have much wider and higher tolerances. One won't find the cutting edge 2 nm processes (depending on the specific area of defence, 200-300 µm would still be cutting edge today for them), materials used are different, plus all sorts of chemical and physical hardening is employed. Most of the time, the chips can't use the consumer grade cutting edge designs and processes as they have to withstand not just abuse but also stronger EM fields (in radar equipment) or EM pulses (e.g. a nuclear explosion). After electronics have been manufactured, they proceed onto the QA phase where chips are literally baked in ovens for a day or a few, then retrieved and tested. They may get irradiated, soaked for periods of time etc. Most people would call it abuse – from a civilian perspective. The surviving ones are deemed to have passed the QA and are used to make the actual equipment.

klyrs 2y ago
> 200-300 µm would still be cutting edge today for them Sorry, I think you're off by a few orders of magnitude, do you mean 200-300nm?
- inkyoto 2y ago
  No, I am not, although 200-300 µm is not a commonplace. Smaller processes result in chips either becoming very unstable or plainly kicking the bucket when exposed to strong electromagnetic fields and electromagnetic radiation. Radar equipment generates such strong EM radiation that is lethal to humans and to microelectronics no matter how well shielded the chips are. Then there are highly charged particles released during a nuclear explosion, so the electronics have to survive at least for some time at the battlefield. Chips produced for defence and military use some of the most conservative design and manufacturing processes, and even the analogue processes may still be used somewhere (I have not checked recently though).

klyrs 2y ago

> 200-300 µm would still be cutting edge today for them Sorry, I think you're off by a few orders of magnitude, do you mean 200-300nm?

inkyoto 2y ago
No, I am not, although 200-300 µm is not a commonplace. Smaller processes result in chips either becoming very unstable or plainly kicking the bucket when exposed to strong electromagnetic fields and electromagnetic radiation. Radar equipment generates such strong EM radiation that is lethal to humans and to microelectronics no matter how well shielded the chips are. Then there are highly charged particles released during a nuclear explosion, so the electronics have to survive at least for some time at the battlefield. Chips produced for defence and military use some of the most conservative design and manufacturing processes, and even the analogue processes may still be used somewhere (I have not checked recently though).