chips

A modern processor packs tens of billions of transistors onto a sliver of silicon. Here is how doped silicon becomes switches, switches become logic, and logic becomes a computer.

Taiwan held 92% of the world's most advanced chip capacity in a 2021 study, South Korea dominates memory, and one Dutch company makes the only EUV lithography machines. Who controls which layer of the chip supply chain, with sourced figures.

A modern chip is built from up to 100 patterned layers aligned at nanometer precision, inside cleanrooms and with machines that few companies can build. Here is why that is so hard, and why it costs so much.