Speaker: Chris Miller, Professor at the Fletcher School and author of "Chip War."
Initial misconception: Chips are easy to make; nuclear bombs are hard to make.
Reality: Nuclear weapon technology has not improved significantly since the 1960s, while chip manufacturing is complex and requires advanced techniques.
Importance of Chips
Chips are ubiquitous and essential in technology (phones, computers, AI).
Definition of a chip: A piece of silicon containing thousands to billions of transistors.
Transistors function by flipping circuits on or off to produce binary data (1s and 0s).
Historical Context
Before Transistors: Vacuum tubes were used, which were inefficient and attracted moths.
Transistor Invention: Made by William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Bratton at Bell Labs in the 1940s.
First Chips: Invented by Texas Instruments and Fairchild Semiconductor; allowed multiple transistors to be integrated onto a single semiconductor material.
Growth of the Chip Industry
Initial chips were for US government applications (space and defense).
Key Companies: Intel founded in 1969; focused on personal computer chips.
Gordon Moore's Law: Predicts the doubling of transistors per chip roughly every two years, leading to increased computing power.
Empirical support since the 1960s.
Comparison: If airplane speeds doubled as chips do, we'd exceed the speed of light.
Manufacturing Complexity
Modern chips are manufactured at the nanometer scale, smaller than bacteria and viruses.
Fab Facilities: These facilities have specialized machines costing $350 million each, employing highly precise technology.
Computing power has proliferated into everyday devices (e.g., dishwashers, refrigerators, cars).
Globalization of the Chip Industry
The chip industry relies on a global supply chain for materials, technology, and manufacturing.
Example: Smartphone chips are made in Taiwan but use materials and technologies from various countries (US, Japan, Netherlands).
Pandemic Effects on Chip Supply
Pandemic caused disruption in supply and demand dynamics.
Increased demand for personal electronics and reduced demand for cars led to chip shortages.
Chip shortages affected many industries, particularly automakers, leading to significant financial losses.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)
TSMC produces 90% of advanced processor chips globally.
Founded by Morris Chang in 1987, focused solely on manufacturing chips.
Major clients include Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and AMD; critical for the global tech economy.
Geopolitical Risks
China and Taiwan's tensions pose risks to global chip supply.
Disruptions in Taiwan could have catastrophic impacts on global economies.
US-China competition sees chips as central to technological supremacy.
US limiting AI chip sales to China to maintain an advantage.
AI Investment and Future Trends
Explosion of AI investments post-ChatGPT release; firms are investing billions in infrastructure.
Increased computing power needed for training AI systems leads to high chip demand.
Cost Reduction: Driving down AI deployment costs is crucial for widespread use.
Companies (e.g., Facebook, Microsoft, Google) are designing specialized chips for specific workloads.
Conclusion
Moore's Law is expected to continue, leading to even better and cheaper chips.
Anticipate significant increases in the number of chips in devices and their applications in various industries.