Introduction

• To counter this threat, the U.S. barred Huawei from buying advanced computer chips made with U.S. technology.

<aside> 💰 China now spends more money each year importing chips than it spends on oil.

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• The rivalry between the United States and China may well be determined by computing power.
• TSMC replicated this process at a scale previously unparalleled in human history.
• Most of the world’s GDP is produced with devices that rely on semiconductors.
• Taiwan’s TSMC builds almost all the world’s most advanced processor chips.
• Shortages of even the simplest chips caused factory closures on the opposite side of the world.
• In the age of AI, it’s often said that data is the new oil. Yet the real limitation we face isn’t the availability of data but of processing power.

<aside> 📈 Chips from Taiwan provide 37 percent of the world’s new computing power each year.

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Part I: Cold War Chips

• Because vacuum tubes glowed like lightbulbs, they attracted insects, requiring regular “debugging” by their engineers.
• Shockley’s theories about semiconductor materials had been proven correct.
• Multiple transistors could be built into a single slab of silicon or germanium.
• Soon, the “integrated circuits” that Kilby and Noyce had developed would become known as “semiconductors” or, more simply, “chips.”
• The first big order for Noyce’s chips came from NASA, which in the 1960s had a vast budget to send astronauts to the moon.
• Within a year, TI’s shipments to the Air Force accounted for 60 percent of all dollars spent buying chips to date.
• Lathrop called the process photolithography—printing with light.
• TI therefore also began producing its own silicon wafers.
• Soon he was placed in charge of TI’s entire integrated circuit business.