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The world is one bad decision away from a silicon Ice Age

theregister.com

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Re: The world is one bad decision away from a silicon Ice Age

#21

Post by AlotOfReading »

mcmoor wrote: post #18
Supermancho wrote: post #5

When nobody acted against Israel, China breathed a lot easier. I think the result affecting affordable CPUs will be the biggest concern for the next ~15 year window.

Now I wonder why Israel didn't built something TSMC-tier. It doesn't really seem out of their capability and it'll gain them a lot of advantages especially geopolitically.

Israel specialized in startups on the design side, and they absolutely dominate. Mellanox and annapurna labs come to mind. On the manufacturing side there's pretty much just Intel, which has 10nm node and beyond inside the borders and formerly owned mobileye. On the process side there's orbotech, which has a majority in their part of the market.

Other than Taiwan itself, it's hard to think of any "small" nations with a comparable density of semiconductor expertise.

Re: The world is one bad decision away from a silicon Ice Age

#22

Post by joelthelion »

> American doctrine here, as far as such a thing exists, is to reduce its fab yields to zero by using 2,000 lb kinetic contaminants via the B-2 bomber deposition process

What are these "kinetic contaminants"? Does anyone have more detail? I couldn't find anything.

Re: The world is one bad decision away from a silicon Ice Age

#23

Post by Doxin »

joelthelion wrote: post #22

> American doctrine here, as far as such a thing exists, is to reduce its fab yields to zero by using 2,000 lb kinetic contaminants via the B-2 bomber deposition process What are these "kinetic contaminants"? Does anyone have more detail? I couldn't find anything.

I can only imagine something like a graphite bomb[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite_bomb

Re: The world is one bad decision away from a silicon Ice Age

#24

Post by naishoya »

estimator7292 wrote: post #16
tim-tday wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car manufacturing grinds to a halt. Remember what happened to auto prices in 2022? 10x that. New appliances cannot be manufactured. What dos the absolute absence of new durable goods do to the economy? There’s no new iPhone for five years. No new electronic hardware at all. What does Apple stock do? Own any index funds? Those tank too. Rinse and repeat Thinking of it as “affordable pcs” is exactly wrong which is actu…

A dishwasher with a WiFi chipset is not a durable good. Nor is a fridge with a touchscreen, an oven with Bluetooth. You know what is durable? The simple and straightforward electromechanical mechanisms we used for three centuries before integrated circuits. One can find plentiful examples of midcentury and older appliances still in service without major maintenance. It's tough to find a modern appliance in service fo…

>The simple and straightforward electromechanical mechanisms we used for three centuries before integrated circuits

Lets see, 2026 minus 300 is 1726. No electronics, analog or digital back then at all. Not even gas powered streetlights.

Did you mean, three decades ago? That was 1996... so no, it was pretty much digitally controlled, even at the 'washing machine and toaster oven' level.

By 1976 Motorola and Advanced Semiconductor Materials were both in full production. Intel and Microchip Technologies, which was where the 'chips controlling appliances' movement really began as a spin-off from General Instrument's microelectronics division, were online by 1986.

Yes, much more can and should be done to improve and refine the wasteful consumerism treadmill that is central to US industry, but it is not a fundamental need to drive this improvement via cheering the loss and destruction of modern semiconductor manufacturing global capacity. Perhaps you are just repeating some misinformed "it will be better after we finish breaking everything" rhetoric. The rest of us need to do whatever we can to keep this uninformed point of view from 'catching' in yet another corner.

You are more than welcome go back to washing your own laundry in a wringer bucket and storing winter ice in a shed for summertime cooling. So, kindly run along, log off and dream about the good old days in the shade of a waning empire.

Re: The world is one bad decision away from a silicon Ice Age

#25

Post by lproven »

joelthelion wrote: post #22

> American doctrine here, as far as such a thing exists, is to reduce its fab yields to zero by using 2,000 lb kinetic contaminants via the B-2 bomber deposition process What are these "kinetic contaminants"? Does anyone have more detail? I couldn't find anything.

Hi there. Register writer here, and personal friend of the author of this piece.

It is a joke. You missed the joke.

What the sentence means is "America's policy is that if China takes over Taiwan, it will bomb TSMC's chip fabs."

The phrase "kinetic contaminant" means "big bombs". That's why he specified the model of bomber.

The B2 is the American "Stealth bomber".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_B-2_Spirit

No, it is not about graphite.

Re: The world is one bad decision away from a silicon Ice Age

#26

Post by lproven »

Doxin wrote: post #23
joelthelion wrote: post #22

> American doctrine here, as far as such a thing exists, is to reduce its fab yields to zero by using 2,000 lb kinetic contaminants via the B-2 bomber deposition process What are these "kinetic contaminants"? Does anyone have more detail? I couldn't find anything.

I can only imagine something like a graphite bomb[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite_bomb

No. It means bombs. It means bombing the fabs to stop them falling into Chinese hands.

Re: The world is one bad decision away from a silicon Ice Age

#27

Post by joelthelion »

Doxin wrote: post #23
joelthelion wrote: post #22

> American doctrine here, as far as such a thing exists, is to reduce its fab yields to zero by using 2,000 lb kinetic contaminants via the B-2 bomber deposition process What are these "kinetic contaminants"? Does anyone have more detail? I couldn't find anything.

I can only imagine something like a graphite bomb[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite_bomb

Thank you!

Re: The world is one bad decision away from a silicon Ice Age

#28

Post by joelthelion »

lproven wrote: post #25
joelthelion wrote: post #22

> American doctrine here, as far as such a thing exists, is to reduce its fab yields to zero by using 2,000 lb kinetic contaminants via the B-2 bomber deposition process What are these "kinetic contaminants"? Does anyone have more detail? I couldn't find anything.

Hi there. Register writer here, and personal friend of the author of this piece. It is a joke. You missed the joke. What the sentence means is "America's policy is that if China takes over Taiwan, it will bomb TSMC's chip fabs." The phrase "kinetic contaminant" means "big bombs". That's why he specified the model of bomber. The B2 is the American "Stealth bomber". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_B-2_Spirit No,…

Got it, thanks for the explanation! I thought he was talking about some dirty bomb delivered by he B2s

Re: The world is one bad decision away from a silicon Ice Age

#29

Post by lproven »

nehal3m wrote: post #7
mjhay wrote: post #4

If a hot war pops off over Taiwan, affordable CPUs are going to be a ways down the list of my concerns

Except everything that runs on electricity has a CPU nowadays; the world as it is cannot function without computing. Your bank, your (municipal) government, airplanes, ships, satellites, televisions, the cell network, cash registers, you get the picture. I realize the CPU's that requires won't implode on day one, but computing becoming unaffordable or even economically unfeasible will have disastrous knock on effects…

> Except everything that runs on electricity has a CPU nowadays

This is true but it totally misses the real point.

The point is that most "smart" devices could be perfectly functional and usable with a Z80 or a 6502 or some other simple 8-bit chip controlling them, if the code were kept very small and simple.

The bigger point is that we in the modern Western world don't do this, because we've got lazy and it's easier to stick in an Arm core and do it in very inefficient software. Such as something running in Javascript on an entire embedded Web browser, such as all electron apps, which embed Chromium.

Worse still, these days, quite possibly vibe coded so even the person who nominally wrote it doesn't know how it works.

There are 2 logical corollaries to this:

1. We can make computer-controlled devices without tiny fast 64-bit chips and GPUs, but we are ill-prepared for it. The world will be able to make chips without TSMC, but it will hurt, because we have got slack and lazy.

2. China can make its own chips now, and thanks to FOSS, China has state-of-the-art software stacks that the rest of the world developed it and gave to it for free. It has x86 chips, such as Zhaoxin, but it also has Loongson and so on, and GCC can generate code for them.

So China can make its own computers without the aid of the global chip market. But the rest of the world can't so easily.

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