3 ms·
Wafers come in batch sizes of a FOUP, these are the little sealed boxes you see the robots on the tracks moving around a semiconductor factory. One might only n
by sitkack 2y ago
Wafers come in batch sizes of a FOUP, these are the little sealed boxes you see the robots on the tracks moving around a semiconductor factory. One might only need one wafer of chips or less for a project, those other unused wafers go in storage after some testing. When the military needs spare parts, those wafers can be brought out of storage and diced and packaged (if we will even still do that in the future).
This technique is already done for things with long operational lifetimes. It would be nice if we made a distributed (geographically) wafer bank so that we will have a long supply of semiconductors, esp after a civilization scale catastrophe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOUP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOUP
- kennyloginz 2y agoThe analogy of a wafer bank to a seed bank is new to me. I would imagine the wafer bank is a bad idea, because they would just be playbooks that would lead to the collapse. So kinda pointless.
- realityking 2y agoInteresting. But why store the somewhat unwieldy wafer instead the packaged chip? I’d imagine that doesn’t add much cost but makes storage significantly simpler.
- adrian_b 2y agoStoring the wafers avoids paying the costs for packaging and testing in the case the chips will not be needed. Moreover, the packaged chips typically require a much larger volume for their storage than the wafers. A wafer may contain many thousands of chips. The wafers are normally stored in dry nitrogen, to avoid their chemical degradation during long term storage.