Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology
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Review : An epic account of the decades-long battle to control what has emerged as the world's most critical resource—microchip technology—with the United States and China increasingly in conflict. You may be surprised to learn that microchips are the new oil—the scarce resource on which the modern world depends. Today, military, economic, and geopolitical power are built on a foundation of computer chips. Virtually everything— from missiles to microwaves, smartphones to the stock market — runs on chips. Until recently, America designed and built the fastest chips and maintained its lead as the #1 superpower. Now, America's edge is slipping, undermined by competitors in Taiwan, Korea, Europe, and, above all, China. Today, as Chip War reveals, China, which spends more money each year importing chips than it spends importing oil, is pouring billions into a chip-building initiative to catch up to the US. At stake is America's military superiority and economic prosperity. Economic historian Chris Miller explains how the semiconductor came to play a critical role in modern life and how the U.S. become dominant in chip design and manufacturing and applied this technology to military systems. America's victory in the Cold War and its global military dominance stems from its ability to harness computing power more effectively than any other power. But here, too, China is catching up, with its chip-building ambitions and military modernization going hand in hand. America has let key components of the chip-building process slip out of its grasp, contributing not only to a worldwide chip shortage but also a new Cold War with a superpower adversary that is desperate to bridge the gap. Illuminating, timely, and fascinating, Chip War shows that, to make sense of the current state of politics, economics, and technology, we must first understand the vital role played by chips. Read more
Review : Apple just released its latest cell phone, powered by an A16 chip with 16 billion tiny transistors carved into its silicon in Taiwan using equipment made in the Netherlands. Back in 1961, Fairchild Semiconductor's cutting-edge chip had four transistors. The path between (Moore's Law) is paved with the contributions of manufacturing experts, supply chain specialists, marketing managers, electrical engineers, physicists and bold corporate leaders around the world. Automobiles now often include a thousand dollars worth of chips. America's production of steel, aluminum etc., along with subsequent products, largely determined WWII's outcome. The Gulf War and now Ukrainian War shows that chips identifying targets and maneuvering themselves have become today's key to victory, not volume of tanks etc. 'Chip Wars' takes readers first through Shockley's invention of the transistor, then Noyce/Kilby creating integrated circuits. Apollo 11 eventually landed and returned men to/from the moon with a computer weighing 70 lbs - a thousand times less than its ENIAC tube-filled predecessor. Prior to that even, Jay Lathrop developed photolithography, making possible the mass production of tiny transistors - with the help of China-born Morris Chang, Andy Grove etc. at TI. Shockley and, Kilby were awarded Nobel prizes, Noyce would have also won if he'd lived. Then Intel was founded - mostly by Shockley associates who tired of his abrasiveness, founded Fairchild, and then left to avoid a meddling owner who also refused to grant them stock options. Charlie Sporck, an efficiency expert was one of the group moving to Intel - after initiating the transfer of manufacturing and assembling to a much cheaper and harder-working non-union Asia (wages one-tenth of those in America). Intel's first microprocessor held 2,300 transistors with a line width of 10,000 nanometers. The author also covers the scene when Intel leaders decided to exit the computer memory business after it became dominated by the Japanese with lower costs and higher quality (U.S. failure rates were 4.5X that of the Japanese) - the first of several industry changes following Clayton Christenson's insights about how new competitors could take over an established line of business. Another key reporting focused on how the Russians originally focused on simply copying existing U.S. chip designs - without learning key manufacturing secrets --> minimal progress hampering them today. (Same with China - at first. China was also greatly hampered by its Cultural Revolution creating a dangerous environment for knowledge workers like Morris Chang - born in China who fled the chaos and developed excellent semiconductor skills at TI, then accepted a key position in Taiwan founding world-leading foundry TSMC. (The world would be far different now if instead China had recognized his value and lured his expertise/skills to work in China.) Another interesting story - how the accuracy of bombs used in Vietnam was greatly improved by adding fins, sensors and a few semiconductors. Also the moving from manual chip designs to the computer-created design of new chips. Eventually we get to China's current chip challenges - developing lithography machines (almost 500,000 parts, many with extreme precision), developing computer-assisted chip designs, and developing AI chips capable of massively parallel processing. The author contends doing so will take China many years - he may be correct, but on the other hand China is reportedly already making good progress in at least circumventing the need for advanced photolithography machines.
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