semiconductors

The complete guide to technology in 2026: how the internet, semiconductors, and quantum computing work, AI hardware, cybersecurity, and what's coming next.

The microchip emerged from parallel breakthroughs by Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce. This guide explains the invention that made modern computing possible.

How three physicists at Bell Labs in 1947 built a device smaller than a paperclip that would become the foundation of every computer ever made.

How LEDs turn electricity into light using semiconductors, why they're 10x more efficient than bulbs, and the Nobel-winning blue LED story.

Demonstrated at Bell Labs in December 1947, the transistor became the building block of every digital device on earth.

A photon from the sun hits silicon, kicks out an electron, and creates electricity. This simple fact is reshaping civilization.

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.