hi hi!
today i saw a video showing the size of a transistor and started wondering how so much stuff fits in a tiny piece of silicon?
so i decided to explain to u how this magic (aka engineering) works behind the pc/phone ur using rn, and why the whole world depends on a tiny island.
1. the size of absurd
a modern processor has billions of transistors. billions! (o_O)
they are switches that turn on and off (0 and 1) billions of times per second.
and the size is 3 nanometers. thats smaller than a virus, comparable to the diameter of a dna strand. its ridiculously tiny!
2. photolithography: drawing with light
how do they manufacture this? with tweezers? of course not! lol
the process is called photolithography.
- the wafer: everything starts with a super pure silicon slice.
- the light: a giant machine (that costs hundreds of millions) fires extreme ultraviolet light (euv).
- the sculpture: the light passes through a mask and "burns" the circuit design into the silicon, layer by layer.
its made in rooms cleaner than hospitals, bc a single dust grain would destroy the whole chip.
3. the shounen tournament of chips
heres where geopolitics gets tense. each country has a role in this arc:
- taiwan (tsmc): the supreme prof. they manufacture 90% of the worlds advanced chips (apple, nvidia, amd). if taiwan stops, the global economy collapses.
- usa (designers): the brains. companies like nvidia and apple design the chips, but send tsmc to manufacture them.
- europe (asml): the "legendary blacksmith". based in the netherlands and the ONLY company in the world that knows how to make the euv lithography machine. they are untouchable. (⌐■_■)
- china: the blocked rival. they want to manufacture cutting edge chips, but suffer us sanctions and cant buy asml machines. theyre trying the hard way.
- brazil: we focus on the "backend" (packaging and testing). were a few decades behind in wafer manufacturing itself... (T_T)
4. the future (angstroms?)
in the next 5 years, tech will evolve from nanometers (nm) to angstroms (a). gonna be so powerful for running heavy ais!
but with wars and the world dividing into blocks, i think electronics are gonna get more expensive and scarce. so take good care of ur gpus!
ᕙ( •̀ ᗜ •́ )ᕗ