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Ask HN: In the event of an apocalypse, how long until we could produce CPUs?

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Re: Ask HN: In the event of an apocalypse, how long until we could produce CPUs?

#41

Post by lm28469 »

Iulioh wrote: post #34
radicalbyte wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would obviously be possible, since we have CPUs now but once lived in caves. That's a big assumption. The modern world was built in easily accessible fossil fuels. We've used basically all of the easily accessible oil and a lot of the easily accessible coal. Without an easily accessible surplus it's hard to go from agriculture to modern society.

I'm curious on how easy would be to with solar with the knowledge we have now in material science

Impossible, you wouldn't have any of what's needed to build a solar panel. No rare earth, no plastics, &c. they're all byproducts of the virtually free fossil fuel we had at the begging of the industrial revolution. You could find oil oozing out of the ground in some places

Re: Ask HN: In the event of an apocalypse, how long until we could produce CPUs?

#42

Post by samwillis »

progbits wrote: post #35
Tade0 wrote: post #29

The first amplifying vacuum tube was patented in 1908 and you could produce a crude computer from that, even if terribly inefficient. I imagine civilisation would wind back to around the 18th century, because we would understand things like fertilizers, calculus and how to make steel, but could not immediately use that knowledge to produce steam trains, bicycles or saxophones. So, assuming an accelerated pace of deve…

One hurdle is that the easy to mine materials have already been mined. We have been using progressively more sophisticated methods of ore finding, mining and purification. Doing that the second time around would be harder. Though we can probably recover good quality materials from scraps.

Exactly, second time round it's going to be a civilisation built on recycling. It's crazy to think that by going slightly backwards the whole way forward would be so different.

Early civilisation was hunter-gatherers, scavenging for food and resources. Imagine a new civilisation where we scavenge the remnants of where we're are now. The progress forward would be very quick, but also so very different.

Re: Ask HN: In the event of an apocalypse, how long until we could produce CPUs?

#44

Post by LeoPanthera »

lm28469 wrote: post #41
Iulioh wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious on how easy would be to with solar with the knowledge we have now in material science

Impossible, you wouldn't have any of what's needed to build a solar panel. No rare earth, no plastics, &c. they're all byproducts of the virtually free fossil fuel we had at the begging of the industrial revolution. You could find oil oozing out of the ground in some places

A "solar panel" does not have to be a photovoltaic panel. A much simpler panel can heat water to use in a steam turbine.

Re: Ask HN: In the event of an apocalypse, how long until we could produce CPUs?

#45

Post by optimussupreme »

Most likely for 0 days, then no one would be able to for decades or centuries, because there will be other much more important priorities. There will be unaffected countries, but they won't do much because supply chain for advanced stuff intertwines the whole world. People would reuse again and again scrap parts and old computers, z80 cpu would outlive everything else. There will be all sorts of flee markets for things like that. I grown up in post soviet crash, I've seen a lot of stuff, local postapocalypse basically, and how people, economy, society adapt and behave in such circumstances.

Re: Ask HN: In the event of an apocalypse, how long until we could produce CPUs?

#46

Post by Ringz »

exe34 wrote: post #10

There's a book called the knowledge. I don't think it gives a specific answer, as it depends how soft the crash and what we have available to recover with. Not only does it take an enormous amount of knowledge to make all the machines that make the gadgets that make the chips, but to even have a society that can make and maintain those machines and the supply chain behind them may well require a large population and…

I also read the book. As far as I remember, it will be a relatively big problem to manage fields, to operate - for example - the „three-field system“* and to exploit the harvest properly.

* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-field_system

Re: Ask HN: In the event of an apocalypse, how long until we could produce CPUs?

#47

Post by er4hn »

radicalbyte wrote: post #25
Animats wrote: post #8

In the event of TSMC's fabs being destroyed by China attacking Taiwan, how long until we could produce modern CPUs?

As long as it takes ASML to ship the lithography machines to the US or Germany?

There's a lot more that goes into building CPUs than lithography machines. A lot of it also hard to replicate across spaces and may not even be possible to note. That's why Intel's strategy for making new manufacturing facilities is called "Copy Exactly" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_Exactly!)

Even if you have a mandate to build baby build, TSMC Arizona looks like they are taking around 3 years from groundbreaking in 2021 to being operational in 2024/2025 (src for groundbreaking: https://www.tsmc.com/static/abouttsmcaz/index.htm. src for operational: googled it). You could make an argument that some of this was delays due to government regulations around how the funds are spent, americans are slow to build etc etc. Cutting it in half is still ~1.5 years.

Re: Ask HN: In the event of an apocalypse, how long until we could produce CPUs?

#48

Post by lm28469 »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #44
lm28469 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impossible, you wouldn't have any of what's needed to build a solar panel. No rare earth, no plastics, &c. they're all byproducts of the virtually free fossil fuel we had at the begging of the industrial revolution. You could find oil oozing out of the ground in some places

A "solar panel" does not have to be a photovoltaic panel. A much simpler panel can heat water to use in a steam turbine.

We probably wouldn't even be able to source iron ore at that stage, let alone process it to make any kind of useful turbine, but let's say you make a working steam turbine from wood and clay, a DIY solar powered steam turbine is quite a few steps before modern CPU

Re: Ask HN: In the event of an apocalypse, how long until we could produce CPUs?

#49

Post by sshine »

Asimov’s Foundation tries to answer this by providing a range; if mankind concentrates its effort to document how to bootstrap civilisation, a thousand years. On the other hand, if mankind does not prepare and ignore the inevitable collapse of society, 30.000 years of darkness.

This refers to galactic civilisation. The interesting part is: it depends a lot on how much you pass over, anticipating the downfall.

There is a parallel to deploying software: how good are your instructions, if you can’t be there to fill in the blanks?

Re: Ask HN: In the event of an apocalypse, how long until we could produce CPUs?

#50

Post by komodus »

Ten years

Water wheels for a start, then dams, hydroelectric power and industrial revolution around the corner in just a year. Then ethanol/corn fueled engines and we'll be sailing/flying in no time. Trains will go electric right away instead of steam/diesel/gas. A small country with smart people and good leadership would easily build the first computer and nuclear bomb in less than a decade. From there, world domination.

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