Chip war is branch non-fiction book detailing the history and geopolitical importance of semiconductors.
Insights
- Reliability in the manufacturing process became essential to scaling and production. Speed of iteration (Mooreâs law) marked the industry.
- The 1960s space race provided a willing customer for the early, expensive chips: NASA. NASA bought chips from Fairchild for the apollo program. The DoD bought chips from TI for the minuteman missiles.
- Russia/USSR A âcopy itâ strategy left the soviets perpetually behind the Americans and Silicon Valley due to the speed of iteration/Mooreâs law. The soviets would steal the chip designs but the complexity of the manufacturing process and know-how was not present leading to poor reliability.
Timeline
Early Years
| 1947 | Bardeen and Brattain create first germanium transistor validating transistor theories developed by Shockley |
| 1957 | Jay Lathrop applies for photolithography patent |
| 1957 | âTraitorous Eightâ found Fairchild Semiconductor |
| 1958 | Jack Kilby invents the integrated circuit |
| 1959 | Planar circuit invented at Fairchild by Noyce with the process developed by Hornei |
| 1965 | Moore coins Mooreâs law predicting that every year the number of transistors on a chip would double (for at least the next ten years). |
Chapter 11 :
The Sparrow III anti-aircraft missiles that U.S. fighters used in the skies over Vietnam relied on vacuum tubes that were hand-soldered. The humid climate of Southeast Asia, the force of takeoff and landings, and the rough-and-tumble of fighter combat caused regular failures. It was vastly easier to hit Moscow from Montana than it was to hit a truck with a bomb dropped by an F-4 flying at a couple thousand feet. A simple laser sensor and a couple of transistors had turned a weapon with a zero-for-638 hit ratio into a tool of precision destruction.