Chip Shortage vs Nano Machining with Light

Image from https://youtu.be/CFsn1CUyXWs

ASML is the leading supplier of advanced deep UV or EUV, stepper machine maker, with more than 50 versions of their machine, they eventually overtook Nikon & Canon. ASML also the leading equipment supplier for TSMC they kept pushing Moores law so that smaller IC features could be realized with each new generation of highly complex machine, hosting dozens of processors & billions of lines of code. 

Global Chip Shortage vs New Car Production Debacle

Automakers require the use of integrated circuits or IC in modern automobiles in small integrated passive cooling modules that government functions like activations of the air bags or advanced driver assist features such as ESC electronic stability control. Common in dash navigation systems also require GPU acceleration to pump the GIS or graphical information system cartography POI rich information into a high brightness screen (sunlight readable) in dashboard information system for drivers of the latest technology enhanced rolling data center automobiles or cars or trucks or SUV's, including & especially chip heavy & popular vehicles like the Tesla Model 3. 

Smartphone, tablets, laptops, GPU's used for gaming & bitcoin random X mining & a myriad of other integrated chip applications where demands for such products accelerated by the COVID19 induced need for at home videoconference applications to work from home or attend school from home. Social media & media streaming YouTube or Netflix or Hulu or to even bandwidth & high speed internet used on Amazon or Ebay or Alibaba & more. We are talking about banking online, online educations platforms, all matter of E-commerce & more. Chip demand driven by multiple factors & from many different sectors, but information technology where its at! 

Nano Machining 

Lithography about using light to etch tiny nanoscale features into a wafer of special high purity material to make an integrated circuit. The electrical engineering of these chips nothing short of amazing. The way they are made also amazing. Integrated chips like CPU or GPU or SOC are some of the most complex devices mass produced ever. Add in solid state drives & computer memory production, demand outstripped supply in way that will probably not recover until 2024 or later. 

Chip Making Machines

Supply chain bottlenecks are something of a complex situations. The EUV machines made by ASML takes months to build, then more time to take down, ship the parts, assemble the parts & then calibrate the machine & train the staff where its going to be operated on how to use & trouble shoot the machine. We are talking about many billions in cash between companies. It is a big business with big players with deep pockets & huge markets with lots of customers & all but almost guaranteed future business so long a solar flare does not brick everything electrical in a big way. 

Offline Data More Secure

Today I had to setup my CPL license & it involved ink printing my fingers, a paper check, a paper application, a paper copy of my drivers licenses, all mailed in a paper envelop- specialized information, the high security version off line, impervious to hacking or malware or other exploitation. Paper documentation often the safest data method because it hard to access online or purely offline & that makes paper based things like real cash or checks intrinsically safe from online attacks at multiple levels as long as the information kept offline or on closely secured data storage systems, which are also often offline, requiring USB keys or other intermediary devices to move the data manually. 

The Power of Knowledge, How Information & Technology Made the Modern World

A book by Jeremy Black, the current one in my reading rotation or reading list. Did I ever mention on this blog that I love reading books, printed ones, offline, in addition to online wikipedia! I was the founder & leader of the Book Eater Syndicate at the UW Bothell during my college times. I loved how books could connect you to the minds of other people through their writings & still do! Reading is a special thing that combines your hands & eyes & brain & enables language to impart knowledge & possible even new skills (to then practice) with How To books about a wide range of topics including the popular " X topic for Dummies " series of books! Lamar Burtons "reading rainbow" was a big inspiration to me as a child, a fidgety child who had trouble sitting still & reading during my primary 8-12 years, before that I was able to sit & read for hours easily & after those ages I was also able to read for hours on end, which was instrumental to making it through the UW with a science degree in Environmental Science! 

Chip Designers & Engineers 

If you go to Intel in Hillsborough Oregon to one of their large "Fab" you will, if on a permitted special access tour, note that the employees are wearing plastic "bunny" suits, hair & face covers & boot covers & that they take air showers before entering the Fab, where computer chips are made using differing kinds of lithography or applied electro-chemical materials science engineering - more than 100 stages of chemical processes & light photon machining of photoresist polymers or photopolymers just like the ones used in 3D resin printing (functionally) but where ion bombardment, copper vapor deposition & lots of other specialized stage processing technologies are applied to build up layers of transistors & interconnections & then finally bonding connections to the chip package which later allows that chip set to be installed on a mainboard or logic board! The people designing this stuff works in teams of 5-12 people, in groups of teams of 8-10, under at least 3 layers of management by other engineers + lawyers & office staff & other jobs requires to market & sell the products in many countries etc. Lots of reading goes into making the technical documentation for its proofing & production into multiple language, the source material too jargon heavy or complicated to be intelligible to other people who must read & understand the documentation to design systems that can utilize the chipsets functions effectively. Without reading none of this would even be possible! Without out light, reading would be impossible, on print, or on screens. Without machining most modern life would be unimaginable by todays standards worldwide! 

Image via YouTube via ASML