Semiconductor Arms Race: The New Black Gold
Chippy-chip-chips, a very simple word to describe what is probably the single greatest interdisciplinary scientific and engineering accomplishment till date. These small things that seem like toys or actual potato chips are responsible for around, let’s see here… I would like you to just think what you are reading this post on. If you don’t mind, please open the app that records your screen time, or maybe tell me the last time you might have paid in cash, I guess if you deal in black money that shouldn’t be a problem, but for a poor student like me I have trouble thinking the last time I transacted using printed currency.
Figure 1: Basic overview of various manufacturing components
Reference: Semicon Talk on YouTube
Semiconductors dictate your life, around 50 percent of your
day is occupied by electronic devices because it is just so convenient. I would
like to eat something new, just order it, or if you feel creative enough, look
up a recipe. I need ingredients for the recipe, order it. I need to store the
excess, great here is a fridge, controlled by sensors and microcontrollers. I
want to reheat the food, microwave does it with a few buttons. Your stove does
not even require gas anymore; you can just get an electric one. How does the
stove heat up to the temperature we want it? A control system dictates the
amount of current flowing through the inductive coil, the same thing a gas
valve would do if it was gas powered.
This is just a small aspect of electronics, an aspect that
you are all familiar with so let us increase the scale. You call someone in
Delhi while sitting in Kolkata, your signal goes to a cell phone tower which
goes to a satellite which goes to a cell tower and finally the receiver. How
did that satellite get up there? Alright, how about the entire stock market now
working digitally, the old days of pipes with rolled up papers is long gone. Still
not convinced? Fine, let us forget the global communication network, the global
economy running digitally and even the amount of time you spend on an
electronic device. How about your job? Artificial intelligence is being touted
like an educational tool but it’s really out to get your living. Corporations
love slaves and AI cannot consent like you or me. It is the perfect employee.
No leaves, no bonuses, no family time, nothing human about it. Even manual jobs
are not safe because robotics are improving at a rapid pace, even dogs are not
safe from this rise.
Figure 2: The main companies working in this industry.
Reference: GenerativeValue
Like everything that was once a scientific marvel that was
brought in for good, we humans, being what we are, turned it into a weapon. A
pickaxe can really help in mining stone, but what if we sharpened it this way
and get a sword? Alfred Nobel made trinitrotoluene (TNT) to help in mining and
break rocks faster, people looked at this and thought: explosion = kill, time to
make a bomb. Now with semiconductors, guidance systems can be created for bombs
launched from one continent to another. These are called missiles. The advance
of technology always seems to run in parallel with the advent of new and more
efficient killing methods.
A common thread runs through all these technologies- that is, they
are all linked with silicon. Manufacturing of these devices is the absolute top
priority of every country and company who hopes to be a powerhouse on the global
stage. Here is the kicker, this field being so specialized means companies who
have already invested heavily into only one aspect can bare their teeth while
everyone else can only hope to play catch up. Most facets in large-scale, cutting-edge
manufacturing like equipment, raw materials, and manpower are low in number.
Figure 3: Basic overview of fabrication steps, it shows a very crude execution, for example: repeated testing and scanning for defects is omitted, etc.
Job postings keep popping up for experienced professionals
when there just are not many; freshers (like yours truly) require familiarity
with these tools that only the biggest of companies will provide. Small-scale
manufacturers are not willing to take the risk on some international student
(India is not big in manufacturing as of publishing date).
Talking about equipment now, there is a process in
fabrication called ‘Lithography’. You print a pattern on your silicon wafer
which allows you to dictate which areas need processing. The smaller the print,
the higher the number of devices leading to higher number of transistors, which
gives us more processing power. Smaller print means more powerful device. There
are a few companies working in this space: Canon and Nikon, yes, the camera
makers, are big in this space but they are nowhere near the level of expertise
displayed by Advanced Semiconductor Materials Lithography or ASML in short, a
Dutch company who has this one type of product in its portfolio. It has reached a point where it has full monopoly over printing the world’s
smallest feature size. Dear old Uncle Sam (USA) has banned the export of these
tools to China. This has made the Chinese develop their own machines and who
knows what they are capable of.
Various types of raw materials like substrates and gases are
concentrated (the puns just write themselves) in Japan. A substrate forms the foundation on which the device is made on. This is the base of a very tiny building. The gases form the precursors or the reactants for deposition of thin films. Thin films, as the name suggests, are very thin layers of materials on the substrate. These are highly pure;
contaminants are in parts per billion (ppb). Japan has invested highly into
advanced material research and it is going to pay off in spades now while we
sit on our high horse of being the IT capital. We don’t even have methods to
test any of these materials we bring into India, the closest labs with that
kind of sensitivity are located in Vietnam.
These are just a few bottlenecks that the industry faces. I
have not even touched on deposition tools, etching, clean room manufacturers,
photoresist makers, rare gases in addition to the regular ones, rare metals,
and even just ultrapure silicon. I have completely forgotten to mention packaging
and protective measure for end-use so please forgive me. The manpower required has to be skilled in Physics, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Computer Engineering, and much more to be able to work in such a capital intensive field.
AI is just one piece of the puzzle: power devices, memory,
analog devices, analog to digital converters, the list just goes on and all of
these are required to get a functional appliance. While these devices will not
need the same amount of expertise as cutting-edge processors, they are still a
crucial component in the overarching ecosystem.
Figure 4: Concentration of countries by manufacturing capability.
Reference: Consultancy.eu
This shortage of equipment and materials has led to
international ripples. If even a single cog faces a hiccup, the entire system
collapses. If one shipment faces delay then suddenly the world starts bleeding.
Japan has secured its foothold using brilliant oversight and foundries such as
TSMC have increased their stronghold internationally. Countries are heavily
investing in this sector because of security and military concerns from other
countries. Companies need to keep increasing production and operations to
increase the big number to an even bigger number. All of these activities require
the help of a sector that is currently facing a magnitude of difficulties of
its own.
Maybe you can think about all of this work that was put in
the next time you send a crappy WhatsApp forward to your friend.
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