How A Handful Of Chip Companies Came To Control The Fate Of The World
This article is a part of my Best Reads of the Month section on my website www.mikegorlon.com. Each month I pick one or two articles or blog posts that I find on the internet which I thought were really insightful, interesting or moving. Then I share them with you. You can view the previous month’s articles by going to: https://www.mikegorlon.com/best-reads-of-the-month
April 2021: How A Handful Of Chip Companies Came To Control The Fate Of The World
This month’s Best Read of the Month is from Brinton Johns and Jon Bathgate of NZS Capital who do an amazing job discussing the semiconductor industry and how it got to be so important to the world.
Almost every industry in the economy runs on computer chips in one way or another whether it is airlines, food delivery, health, military, transportation and agriculture.
Computer chips have become so important to the economy that if some of the biggest players in the chip market like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturer (TSMC), ASML, Lam Research, Cadence, Synopsis and KLA-Tencor were to cease operations then the global economy would very likely experience a huge setback in growth.
And here are some of the factors that could pose a risk to the semiconductor industry:
- Almost all of those computer chips are manufactured on an island (Taiwan) whose sovereignty is in dispute.
- One organization named ASML has a huge lead in photolithography*.
- Almost all memory (95%) is made by only three companies (Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron).
- It’s almost impossible to design a chip without using the software of only two companies — either Cadence or Synopsis.
I wrote up a summary of Brinton Johns and Jon Bathgate’s really interesting whitepaper on this topic that you can read here:
But I also recommending reading their great paper as well:
*Essential in adding lots of transistors on a wafer using extreme ultraviolent light.
