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Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology
An epic account of the decades-long battle to control what has emerged as the world's most critical resource—microchip technology—with the United States and China increasingly in conflict.
You may be surprised to learn that microchips are the new oil—the scarce resource on which the modern world depends. Today, military, economic, and geopolitical power are built on a foundation of computer chips. Virtually everything— from missiles to microwaves, smartphones to the stock market — runs on chips. Until recently, America designed and built the fastest chips and maintained its lead as the #1 superpower. Now, America's edge is slipping, undermined by competitors in Taiwan, Korea, Europe, and, above all, China. Today, as Chip War reveals, China, which spends more money each year importing chips than it spends importing oil, is pouring billions into a chip-building initiative to catch up to the US. At stake is America's military superiority and economic prosperity.
Economic historian Chris Miller explains how the semiconductor came to play a critical role in modern life and how the U.S. become dominant in chip design and manufacturing and applied this technology to military systems. America's victory in the Cold War and its global military dominance stems from its ability to harness computing power more effectively than any other power. But here, too, China is catching up, with its chip-building ambitions and military modernization going hand in hand. America has let key components of the chip-building process slip out of its grasp, contributing not only to a worldwide chip shortage but also a new Cold War with a superpower adversary that is desperate to bridge the gap.
Illuminating, timely, and fascinating, Chip War shows that, to make sense of the current state of politics, economics, and technology, we must first understand the vital role played by chips.
You may be surprised to learn that microchips are the new oil—the scarce resource on which the modern world depends. Today, military, economic, and geopolitical power are built on a foundation of computer chips. Virtually everything— from missiles to microwaves, smartphones to the stock market — runs on chips. Until recently, America designed and built the fastest chips and maintained its lead as the #1 superpower. Now, America's edge is slipping, undermined by competitors in Taiwan, Korea, Europe, and, above all, China. Today, as Chip War reveals, China, which spends more money each year importing chips than it spends importing oil, is pouring billions into a chip-building initiative to catch up to the US. At stake is America's military superiority and economic prosperity.
Economic historian Chris Miller explains how the semiconductor came to play a critical role in modern life and how the U.S. become dominant in chip design and manufacturing and applied this technology to military systems. America's victory in the Cold War and its global military dominance stems from its ability to harness computing power more effectively than any other power. But here, too, China is catching up, with its chip-building ambitions and military modernization going hand in hand. America has let key components of the chip-building process slip out of its grasp, contributing not only to a worldwide chip shortage but also a new Cold War with a superpower adversary that is desperate to bridge the gap.
Illuminating, timely, and fascinating, Chip War shows that, to make sense of the current state of politics, economics, and technology, we must first understand the vital role played by chips.
464 pages, Hardcover
First published October 4, 2022
About the author
Chris Miller
175 books321 followersChris Miller teaches International History at Fletcher School at Tufts University. He is also Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and Eurasia Research Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. (Source: Amazon.com)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,007 reviews
November 28, 2022
I was completely engaged while reading this, because I worked at Texas Instruments, and subsequently at Silicon Valley-based companies for over 30 years. Almost half the book is devoted to the history of the semiconductor industry, and as one who has spent the vast majority of his adult life involved in the tech industry, I found this part fascinating. I did not know that Taiwan's TSMC was founded by an American, Morris Chang, who had been passed over for CEO at Texas Instruments. I had somehow missed the fact that Bob Noyce, of Fairchild Semiconductor fame, also founded Intel. I was not aware of the Dutch company, ASML, and the phenomenal machines it builds to etch ultra-fine silicon chips. Part of my ignorance is explained by the fact that I long ago left the engineering side of tech to enter supply chain management, but I felt a little sheepish nonetheless, not knowing some of the facts about the industry. My other excuse is that I've been on the assembly / integration side of things from the start, not on the semiconductor foundry / fab side.
The book explains the various types of chips, from memory to analog to RF to logic to processors to GPU's, and the various architectures like X86, ARM, and RISC. Chris Miller does an excellent job describing just how amazingly difficult it is to manufacture high-end chips, and how few companies and countries can actually do it. The EUV etching machine manufactured by ASML to create these high-end chips is arguably the most complex machine tool ever created by humans. No other company can successfully build them, and only a few, like TSMC, Intel, Samsung and a handful of others can successfully use them to fabricate silicon wafers. Notably, none of those companies are in China. The only places high end silicon can be successfully manufactured is Taiwan, Korea, Japan, USA, Singapore, and a few places in Western Europe. But over 40% of new computing capacity comes from TSMC in Taiwan, and that's a problem.
A big reason the Ukrainians are defeating the Russians is because they are using Western "smart" weapons which are full of semiconductors - think Javelin anti-tank missiles, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, and Harpoon anti-ship missiles, not to mention drones. The technological advantage of the US military is huge, but many of the chips used in US weapons are made (the silicon, anyway) in Taiwan. More than 90% of chips are designed in the US or UK, but the majority are manufactured in other countries, mostly Taiwan. This is a large national security problem for the US, given China's public policy to "re-integrate" Taiwan.
Given the strategic nature of high-end computing systems and the need for chips in almost everything, from cars to iPhones to washing machines, it was high time the US got a little bit serious about an industrial policy to encourage US chip makers to manufacture at least some of the silicon wafers for key devices in the US via the CHIPS Act. The bad news is, it takes 4-5 years to get a wafer fab up and running, so we won't see the benefits too soon. We'll just have to hope China does not invade Taiwan before 2027 or so, and I really hope the Pentagon is releasing lots of orders to replace all the weapons being used in Ukraine, because Taiwan also needs as many anti-ship, anti-aircraft, and anti-tank weapons as they can stockpile.
Chip War is an excellent overview of where we are and where we're going with regard to semiconductors, and the reality is we are going to need more and more (and hopefully better and better) each year. At least some of the highest-end chips need to be manufactured in the US if we want to a) be safe from blackmail or attack by China, and b) retain our current edge in high tech.
The book explains the various types of chips, from memory to analog to RF to logic to processors to GPU's, and the various architectures like X86, ARM, and RISC. Chris Miller does an excellent job describing just how amazingly difficult it is to manufacture high-end chips, and how few companies and countries can actually do it. The EUV etching machine manufactured by ASML to create these high-end chips is arguably the most complex machine tool ever created by humans. No other company can successfully build them, and only a few, like TSMC, Intel, Samsung and a handful of others can successfully use them to fabricate silicon wafers. Notably, none of those companies are in China. The only places high end silicon can be successfully manufactured is Taiwan, Korea, Japan, USA, Singapore, and a few places in Western Europe. But over 40% of new computing capacity comes from TSMC in Taiwan, and that's a problem.
A big reason the Ukrainians are defeating the Russians is because they are using Western "smart" weapons which are full of semiconductors - think Javelin anti-tank missiles, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, and Harpoon anti-ship missiles, not to mention drones. The technological advantage of the US military is huge, but many of the chips used in US weapons are made (the silicon, anyway) in Taiwan. More than 90% of chips are designed in the US or UK, but the majority are manufactured in other countries, mostly Taiwan. This is a large national security problem for the US, given China's public policy to "re-integrate" Taiwan.
Given the strategic nature of high-end computing systems and the need for chips in almost everything, from cars to iPhones to washing machines, it was high time the US got a little bit serious about an industrial policy to encourage US chip makers to manufacture at least some of the silicon wafers for key devices in the US via the CHIPS Act. The bad news is, it takes 4-5 years to get a wafer fab up and running, so we won't see the benefits too soon. We'll just have to hope China does not invade Taiwan before 2027 or so, and I really hope the Pentagon is releasing lots of orders to replace all the weapons being used in Ukraine, because Taiwan also needs as many anti-ship, anti-aircraft, and anti-tank weapons as they can stockpile.
Chip War is an excellent overview of where we are and where we're going with regard to semiconductors, and the reality is we are going to need more and more (and hopefully better and better) each year. At least some of the highest-end chips need to be manufactured in the US if we want to a) be safe from blackmail or attack by China, and b) retain our current edge in high tech.
February 7, 2023
A sweeping and very engaging read on the computer chips that underpin the modern day economy. Fascinating reading and deeply unsettling how many choke points exist in this key supply chain
Over one quantilion (1 with 18 zeroes behind it) transistors were produced by TSMC in 2020
More thoughts to follow but I very much understand how this book won the FT non-fiction book of the year award!
Fascinating reading and incredibly interesting how dependent on chips our modern day economy is.
6 Feb ‘23 update: need to write a review but this book helped me so much in writing about the supply chain value capture
Over one quantilion (1 with 18 zeroes behind it) transistors were produced by TSMC in 2020
More thoughts to follow but I very much understand how this book won the FT non-fiction book of the year award!
Fascinating reading and incredibly interesting how dependent on chips our modern day economy is.
6 Feb ‘23 update: need to write a review but this book helped me so much in writing about the supply chain value capture
October 23, 2022
Chip War is an outstanding history of the microchips from their invention up until just about the current moment (hopefully the eventual paperback edition will add some context on the significant recent U.S. policy shift on chips). It is written in a relatively easy and entertaining style that makes it easy to digest what is clearly a work of substantial depth of reporting and history. The book covers the global nature of microchips—the rise and fall of the fortunes of different companies and countries, the evolving division of labor in chip production, the ways in which government policy have been integral to developments at various stages but have also failed. Overall it serves an excellent primer on the different types of chips, their different uses and the ways in which their global supply chains operate. It also accomplishes much more with a diagnosis of the current moment and recommendations for the future.
Some of the parts were completely new to me—like the Soviet and then Russian efforts to develop their own microchip industries. Other parts added substantial depth to aspects of the microchip ecosystem we have today, like the origins of the ASML as the only supplier of high-tech and the ways in which TSMC became the only fab for the most high tech chips. One part that was not new to me, but I appreciated because so many people get it wrong, is that he emphasizes that the chip shortage in 2021 and 2022 was largely the result of dramatically increased demand for chips for consumer electronics rather than some worsening of supply—in fact he depicts the efforts China took to keep chip factories running even when everything else shut down due to the pandemic.
Chris Miller does not spend much time discussing the underlying science and engineering except insofar as it is necessary to understand the economics. The description of the cost and scientific/engineering breakthroughs needed for Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography needed to make even smaller transistors was especially vivid.
Much of the book is about the interplay of civilian and military considerations in the development of chips. Initially the military was the primary consumer of them, buying something like 90 percent (I believe, did not recheck the number). A big breakthrough was putting them in Minutemen II missiles which increased their accuracy enough to mean they could more effectively take out Russian missiles. Over time, however, consumer uses grew while military fell—not to something like 2 percent of total chip production. Moreover it is way too expensive for the military to do its own fabrication and in many cases even its own design, investments that are not just costly but would be obsolescent in a few years time. The increased reliance on consumer demand was a strength of Western and Asian allied innovation, consumer electronics in Japan played a role that the Soviet Union with its largely military industry could never match.
The main purpose of all of this history and analysis is to understand the current moment, particularly the vulnerability of the global economy to anything that happened to TSMC (a massive earthquake or a Chinese invasion/blockade), the United States impressive position as a global chokepoint for many of the most important technologies but lack of anything resembling self reliance, and China’s struggle to overcome its huge deficit in technology and relatively unimportant role in both the global supply chain and producing for its own needs. While I mostly agree with the author’s diagnosis and policy advocacy at times he was a bit overly simplistic and editorial in his judgments of the Obama administration, the battles within the Trump administration and where policy is now. Some of that read less like history and more like an oped written in the heat of the moment.
Overall, Chip War is a fabulous guide to the global economy, appreciating one of the major security challenges facing the United States, and formulating a better understanding for handling it going forward. As an up-to-the-moment guide it leaves the reader excited to read the sequel—does Moore’s Law still hold? What happens to Intel? Does China start making higher-tech chips? Does Taiwan stay peaceful? I look forward to watching all of this play out in real time—and it might play out slightly better if policymakers and the public are better informed by reading this book.
Some of the parts were completely new to me—like the Soviet and then Russian efforts to develop their own microchip industries. Other parts added substantial depth to aspects of the microchip ecosystem we have today, like the origins of the ASML as the only supplier of high-tech and the ways in which TSMC became the only fab for the most high tech chips. One part that was not new to me, but I appreciated because so many people get it wrong, is that he emphasizes that the chip shortage in 2021 and 2022 was largely the result of dramatically increased demand for chips for consumer electronics rather than some worsening of supply—in fact he depicts the efforts China took to keep chip factories running even when everything else shut down due to the pandemic.
Chris Miller does not spend much time discussing the underlying science and engineering except insofar as it is necessary to understand the economics. The description of the cost and scientific/engineering breakthroughs needed for Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography needed to make even smaller transistors was especially vivid.
Much of the book is about the interplay of civilian and military considerations in the development of chips. Initially the military was the primary consumer of them, buying something like 90 percent (I believe, did not recheck the number). A big breakthrough was putting them in Minutemen II missiles which increased their accuracy enough to mean they could more effectively take out Russian missiles. Over time, however, consumer uses grew while military fell—not to something like 2 percent of total chip production. Moreover it is way too expensive for the military to do its own fabrication and in many cases even its own design, investments that are not just costly but would be obsolescent in a few years time. The increased reliance on consumer demand was a strength of Western and Asian allied innovation, consumer electronics in Japan played a role that the Soviet Union with its largely military industry could never match.
The main purpose of all of this history and analysis is to understand the current moment, particularly the vulnerability of the global economy to anything that happened to TSMC (a massive earthquake or a Chinese invasion/blockade), the United States impressive position as a global chokepoint for many of the most important technologies but lack of anything resembling self reliance, and China’s struggle to overcome its huge deficit in technology and relatively unimportant role in both the global supply chain and producing for its own needs. While I mostly agree with the author’s diagnosis and policy advocacy at times he was a bit overly simplistic and editorial in his judgments of the Obama administration, the battles within the Trump administration and where policy is now. Some of that read less like history and more like an oped written in the heat of the moment.
Overall, Chip War is a fabulous guide to the global economy, appreciating one of the major security challenges facing the United States, and formulating a better understanding for handling it going forward. As an up-to-the-moment guide it leaves the reader excited to read the sequel—does Moore’s Law still hold? What happens to Intel? Does China start making higher-tech chips? Does Taiwan stay peaceful? I look forward to watching all of this play out in real time—and it might play out slightly better if policymakers and the public are better informed by reading this book.
October 8, 2022
I write this review a few days after the book's publication and the day after the US announced a sweeping set of restrictions on US tools sold to any advanced Chinese semiconductor chip manufacturer. There could not have been a more forceful endorsement of the relevance of any book.
Chip War is more than topical. It presents a highly readable history of the industry. While refreshingly unbiased in many arguments, the book sheds light on the thinking pervasive amongst US policymakers. In a world where most software (from the search to finance to consumer use related) is relatively easily replicable, most policymakers feel that the non-duplicable part of the technology industry is what one can do on a silicon wafer. The US believes that it is the leader in this segment - along with a few others who are a part of its influence sphere - and should use not just innovations but also other political tools to retain supremacy.
The author is clear in drawing his lessons from a chronological set of main events and personalities that built the industry in the West. The following are some of the questions not asked in the book but worth thinking about based on the same historical facts.
a. If one looks at the market caps of upstream chip manufacturers as a percentage of the total technology industry capitalization over time, semi-companies do not seem to hold as much monopoly power or importance in the eyes of investors as believed in many other circles
b. While the book mentions a good number of early innovators by name from the earliest decades, there has been almost no named scientist in the last twenty-five years (this is eons in the tech industry). There are several potential reasons behind here: narratives and tales surrounding innovators are far more common in the United States than in Eastern nations. Also, innovation stories are more relatable when they are easier to understand - most semiconductor manufacturing innovations for the last thirty years are in detail and not in broad subjects like transistor or UV lithography. And lastly, the latest tech innovations are team- and resource-based rather than individual-driven.
c. Semiconductor manufacturing knowledge is highly diffused. Many in the US may feel that the knowledge is all American because of the work of the earliest giants, but this is no different from if Europe were to seek credit for early innovations in internal combustion engines or nuclear theories. Even if some of the knowledge had been previously stolen, the most critical parts of advanced manufacturing now are not all necessarily in the US. The rise of the likes of TSMC and Samsung Electronics, along with the inability of American companies to keep pace, are proof. The diffusion of the know-how happened quite early as reflected in the dominance of the Japanese - well described in the book - in the 1980s.
d. Nobody has been able to maintain dominance in this space for long. The book is littered with the tale of well-known names that led the space for a few short years. From Fairchild, Texas Instruments, through Motorola, Nikon, and now Intel, one can name a couple of dozen companies that seemingly had an unbeatable innovation lead only to see someone else take over. Is semiconductor manufacturing so challenging to master that a lot of money and an army of engineers cannot solve it without being a part of an existing establishment?
e. One wonders if the military establishment needs instruments created by the most advanced fabs of this year? It is clear that most rival superpowers of the world have access to technologies of a few years ago - say 2014/5 - even if they are blocked on the latest fabs. If, in the worst case, either the US or China does not have access to the latest processes of - say - TSMC, how bad is that truly?
f. Irrespective of whether semis are indeed the new oil or not (some of the questions posed above suggest that the industry might not be as critical or unique as made out to be), perceptions are going to keep them at the center in global geopolitics. The industry makes Taiwan far more pivotal for both US and China in their rivalry. The developments are likely to make China more committed to self-sufficiency in semis. It might not be as difficult as presumed, even if they remain somewhat behind compared to the cutting edge.
g. There is a tendency amongst some US nationalists (at times in the book too) to look down upon others' progress. If they see an advanced fab in a foreign land, they feel it is because of a transfer of technology or worse, or because of the low cost of debt (never mind the low cost of equity funding in the US), subsidization, government policies, etc. A lot of this is true, but even more accurate is the rapid, unheralded, vast number of innovations - as reflected in the patents filed - in these Asian countries.
Even fifty years on, Chip War is about a fast-changing industry. It is about the world's most politically colored industry also. The book will surely become dated soon, but the sections on the early days will be helpful for any reader who wants to learn how the industry evolved in its first few phases.
Chip War is more than topical. It presents a highly readable history of the industry. While refreshingly unbiased in many arguments, the book sheds light on the thinking pervasive amongst US policymakers. In a world where most software (from the search to finance to consumer use related) is relatively easily replicable, most policymakers feel that the non-duplicable part of the technology industry is what one can do on a silicon wafer. The US believes that it is the leader in this segment - along with a few others who are a part of its influence sphere - and should use not just innovations but also other political tools to retain supremacy.
The author is clear in drawing his lessons from a chronological set of main events and personalities that built the industry in the West. The following are some of the questions not asked in the book but worth thinking about based on the same historical facts.
a. If one looks at the market caps of upstream chip manufacturers as a percentage of the total technology industry capitalization over time, semi-companies do not seem to hold as much monopoly power or importance in the eyes of investors as believed in many other circles
b. While the book mentions a good number of early innovators by name from the earliest decades, there has been almost no named scientist in the last twenty-five years (this is eons in the tech industry). There are several potential reasons behind here: narratives and tales surrounding innovators are far more common in the United States than in Eastern nations. Also, innovation stories are more relatable when they are easier to understand - most semiconductor manufacturing innovations for the last thirty years are in detail and not in broad subjects like transistor or UV lithography. And lastly, the latest tech innovations are team- and resource-based rather than individual-driven.
c. Semiconductor manufacturing knowledge is highly diffused. Many in the US may feel that the knowledge is all American because of the work of the earliest giants, but this is no different from if Europe were to seek credit for early innovations in internal combustion engines or nuclear theories. Even if some of the knowledge had been previously stolen, the most critical parts of advanced manufacturing now are not all necessarily in the US. The rise of the likes of TSMC and Samsung Electronics, along with the inability of American companies to keep pace, are proof. The diffusion of the know-how happened quite early as reflected in the dominance of the Japanese - well described in the book - in the 1980s.
d. Nobody has been able to maintain dominance in this space for long. The book is littered with the tale of well-known names that led the space for a few short years. From Fairchild, Texas Instruments, through Motorola, Nikon, and now Intel, one can name a couple of dozen companies that seemingly had an unbeatable innovation lead only to see someone else take over. Is semiconductor manufacturing so challenging to master that a lot of money and an army of engineers cannot solve it without being a part of an existing establishment?
e. One wonders if the military establishment needs instruments created by the most advanced fabs of this year? It is clear that most rival superpowers of the world have access to technologies of a few years ago - say 2014/5 - even if they are blocked on the latest fabs. If, in the worst case, either the US or China does not have access to the latest processes of - say - TSMC, how bad is that truly?
f. Irrespective of whether semis are indeed the new oil or not (some of the questions posed above suggest that the industry might not be as critical or unique as made out to be), perceptions are going to keep them at the center in global geopolitics. The industry makes Taiwan far more pivotal for both US and China in their rivalry. The developments are likely to make China more committed to self-sufficiency in semis. It might not be as difficult as presumed, even if they remain somewhat behind compared to the cutting edge.
g. There is a tendency amongst some US nationalists (at times in the book too) to look down upon others' progress. If they see an advanced fab in a foreign land, they feel it is because of a transfer of technology or worse, or because of the low cost of debt (never mind the low cost of equity funding in the US), subsidization, government policies, etc. A lot of this is true, but even more accurate is the rapid, unheralded, vast number of innovations - as reflected in the patents filed - in these Asian countries.
Even fifty years on, Chip War is about a fast-changing industry. It is about the world's most politically colored industry also. The book will surely become dated soon, but the sections on the early days will be helpful for any reader who wants to learn how the industry evolved in its first few phases.
April 1, 2023
Image: An ASML advanced lithography machine which patterns millions of microscopic transistors, each much smaller than a human cell, onto chips using extreme ultraviolet light. Source
Chip:
noun "a small piece of semiconducting material, usually silicon, with millions or billions of microscopic transistors carved into it." Also known as a semiconductor or integrated circuit
In the summer of '21, I went with my partner to the local Toyota dealership to purchase a new car. I expected her to drive off the lot with one, just as I had done in the past when purchasing new vehicles. It was her first "new" vehicle and we were both thrilled for her to get it....
......only to be told at the dealership that she would have to wait until one was made! What?!
The car she picked was a popular one, including the color. Why weren't there several shiny, new ones on the lot, waiting to be adopted?
We had noticed when we pulled in how few cars there were and that most of them looked used, but didn't pay too much attention to it.
Now the dealer told her it would probably be 3-4 weeks until she could drive home with "Bianca". He opened his computer and found one of her model and color, hybridized. He then "purchased" it for her, telling her the date it would be built, 3 1/2 weeks hence.
So weird, I thought. Why are they doing it this way now?!
When I asked the dealer, he mumbled something about there not being enough chips and cars need "a chip" (*ha, haa!!). He didn't elaborate when I asked further questions; I don't think he knew more than that.
If only I'd had this book then, I would have understood.
Wow, did I learn a lot from it. My head is reeling with all the new information. Those five stars I gave it? They aren't enough. The best books for me are the ones in which I learn new things and this one? I think my brain needs an upgrade with a better memory chip and processing unit to store and make sense of it all.
Author Chris Miller relates the history of computing and how the chip, especially the general processing unit (GPU), revolutionized computers and brought about those ubiquitous and ever more powerful handheld ones most of us can't live without.
Many of the terms were new to me, most I'd heard but only had a fuzzy idea of what they meant. I did a heck of a lot of highlighting in this book (thank goodness for chips and tablets to read on; had I done this to the library's copy, I might be out of a job).
There is a lot of tech science and a lot of geopolitics. You can't have one without the other when it comes to modern technology.
The author traces the history of chips, and discusses the various people who made breakthroughs in their design and production, making ever smaller and more powerful chips. Sixty years ago, a cutting edge chip had a mere FOUR transistors. Today they have 11.8 billion.
Look at your phone. It most likely has 10 or more chips. Each of those chips have 11.8 billion transistors. I'm not a math whiz but I can say without a calculator that that's a hell of a lot of transistors.
Mr Miller also discusses the history of various tech companies, such as Samsung (started out as a dried fish and vegetables company!), Qualcomm, Intel, and TSMC.
Taiwan now leads the world in chip production, especially high end chips. Taiwan "produces 11 percent of the world’s memory chips. More important, it fabricates 37 percent of the world’s logic chips."
Because of that, "China’s ruling party has no higher goal than asserting control over Taiwan". It may be a small country, but Taiwan has become a very important one. The chips produced in its TSMC manufacturing company cannot currently be built anywhere else in the world.
China"now spends more money each year importing chips than it spends on oil" and "is devoting its best minds and billions of dollars to developing its own semiconductor technology in a bid to free itself from America’s chip choke. If Beijing succeeds, it will remake the global economy and reset the balance of military power."
I did not realize how these tiny bits of silicon run our modern world, how reliant we are upon them, and how both the US and China (among other countries) are desperate to control their production.
I found all of this utterly fascinating. The way chips are made is incredible and I was thrilled to learn about it. And the way these tiny chips affect everything in our lives, including our ability to drive off the lot with a new car, is incredible.
I started making a list of all the items in my home which have chips in order to figure out how many chips we "own". However, as that list grew and grew, I realized I didn't need to look up how many chips each of those products have to know that there are at least hundreds of them in our home. And many more outside in the driveway.
To anyone wanting to learn more about chips, how they're made or the importance of them to governments around the world (including why Russia hasn't been able to overtake Ukraine), I highly recommend this book.
*That "ha, haa" when the dealer said cars need "a chip"? There are often over a thousand chips in modern cars. Not one. 1,000!
January 21, 2023
This book starts with the invention of the transistor and follows with how its existence inspired entrepreneurs, investors, and politicians. All through this story the book keeps making reference to Moore's Law as if it was preordained scripture. As the transistors improved and manufacturing techniques improved the centers of activity spread through locations such as Silicon Valley, Texas, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and other Southeast Asian nations. The frantic scramble of the Soviets to keep up with the West by copying the technology is also described.
And then we arrived at the situation we have today where China, wanting very much to be independent from western sources, is looking across the Taiwan Straight with envious eyes to where the world's most advanced transistor manufacturing is located.
The following quote from the book summaries the unique and potentially unstable nature of computer chip manufacturing.
This book made me aware of what the chip manufacturers have managed to do. I didn't realized before reading this book that they are putting parts together that are smaller than a virus. For comparison, the COVID virus is 125 nanometers in diameter. The electrical connectors between each transistor in the logic processor chip of an "Apple A15" iPhone is 5 nanometers wide. This allows that phone to contain 15,000,000,000 transistors in a chip that's less than 1/2 inch square. And all those transistors are wired together in a design so complicated that only AI programing can come up with a workable arrangement.
I've placed my own personal astonishment of chip manufacturing in the following
And then we arrived at the situation we have today where China, wanting very much to be independent from western sources, is looking across the Taiwan Straight with envious eyes to where the world's most advanced transistor manufacturing is located.
The following quote from the book summaries the unique and potentially unstable nature of computer chip manufacturing.
No other facet of the economy is so dependent on so few firms. Chips from Taiwan provide 37 percent of the world's new computing power each year. Two Korean companies produce 44 percent of the world's memory chips. The Dutch company AML builds 100 percent of the world's extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, without which cutting-edge chips are simply impossible to make. OPEC's 40 percent share of world oil production looks unimpressive by comparison. The global network of companies that annually produces a trillion chips at nanometer scale is a triumph of efficiency. It's also a staggering vulnerability. The disruptions of the pandemic provide just a glimpse of what a single well-placed earthquake could do to the global economy. (p.xxv)The above quote references the seismic instability of the region. The proximity of China seems even more ominous. The book devotes significant attention to China's use of its significant funds and large potential customer market to leverage business deals that will result in locating the most advance technology in their own country.
This book made me aware of what the chip manufacturers have managed to do. I didn't realized before reading this book that they are putting parts together that are smaller than a virus. For comparison, the COVID virus is 125 nanometers in diameter. The electrical connectors between each transistor in the logic processor chip of an "Apple A15" iPhone is 5 nanometers wide. This allows that phone to contain 15,000,000,000 transistors in a chip that's less than 1/2 inch square. And all those transistors are wired together in a design so complicated that only AI programing can come up with a workable arrangement.
I've placed my own personal astonishment of chip manufacturing in the following
December 24, 2022
Impressive. Very detailed, with both historical context and current situation assessment.
Personally, I had a bunch of questions I've failed to get answered so far, and here's where "Chip War" has helped - I believe my understanding of the situation has improved significantly. It doesn't make me more comfortable (as the global geo-political situation is tense), but at least the foreign policies make more sense.
Strongly recommended for anyone interested in XXI tech, politics, or both. There's a big chance it may get outdated quite quickly, so grab it while it's still hot.
Personally, I had a bunch of questions I've failed to get answered so far, and here's where "Chip War" has helped - I believe my understanding of the situation has improved significantly. It doesn't make me more comfortable (as the global geo-political situation is tense), but at least the foreign policies make more sense.
Strongly recommended for anyone interested in XXI tech, politics, or both. There's a big chance it may get outdated quite quickly, so grab it while it's still hot.
May 23, 2023
This book has some good information (which has been addressed by other reviewers) but it also has some blatantly obvious bias.. there's more than a little "Ra-Ra America and Capitalism is the best", sinophobia directed heavily at China for doing... the same kind of things that the US does. The author sneers at Chinese govt subsidies funding chip manufacturers in that country but is fine with US companies getting govt funding for research or from the pentagon. He also laments the USA's "defeat in Vietnam" with an "if only our bombs had been better at killing North Vietnamese people" passage. bottom line: not without educational value but it's shown through a glaringly Pro-US, Pro-Capitalism and Pro-Militarism lens.
November 11, 2023
I found Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology, a history of the semiconductor industry, unexpectedly fascinating. Although written in a journalistic style it is dense with information, which reminded me of Daniel Yergin's The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. I think it's an important book for understanding how technology has shifted the loci of economic power across the world in the past sixty years. Although written from an American perspective, it offers a lot of insight into how chip manufacture became concentrated in a handful of East Asian companies.
The early history of how semiconductors were invented really emphasises how deeply entwined computing was with wars and the military-industrial complex. It was interesting to learn about the USSR's attempts to keep up with American chip technology during the Cold War, always struggling with quality control when using the requisite advanced manufacturing techniques. Also notable in the historical chapters is the fact that, 'It was mostly men who designed the earliest semiconductors, and mostly women who assembled them'. There is a depressing theme of searching the globe for the cheapest skilled labour and consistently resisting attempts to unionise:
I did not previously realise the importance of chips in weapons and found the chapters on this topic quite chilling. The automation of weaponry continues to increase, yet the concentration of the chip industry also creates military vulnerabilities. Apparently Russia is currently suffering a severe shortage due to Ukraine War sanctions, so is reduced to using chips from domestic appliances in weapons.
Part VIII of the book concerns China's recent rise as a chip manufacturer. An infographic notes that China produces 15% of all chips, mostly low-tech, but the industry is expanding rapidly with heavy government support. The detailed discussion of Huawei begs the question posed in Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China's Extraordinary Rise: what in China isn't a sovereign wealth fund? Can any large Chinese company be considered otherwise? I found Miller's explanation of the conflict between the US and China over chip intellectual property and security during the Obama and Trump presidencies useful. It was covered in the media quite superficially, so I hadn't really grasped what was going on:
Miller projects the disastrous impact on the entire global economy if Taiwan's TSMC chip factories were put out of action in a war with China. This would not be in the interests of China, or anyone else really, but is a real risk if armed conflict were to break out between China and the US. The structure of the chip industry almost looks like a globally-distributed series of natural monopolies for different chip types, which means interdependence and limited competition awkwardly coexist:
Over the decades chips have become more and more expensive and complex to manufacture as, 'each generation of technological improvement made fabs more expensive'. The equipment now used to make advanced semiconductors is mindblowingly complicated, costs two hundred million dollars to build, and requires tens of thousands of components sourced from around the world: 'ASML's EUV lithography tool is the most expensive mass-produced machine tool in history'. Intel alone invested $4 BILLION in developing this machine. The only way to get a passable return on such outlandish sums is to manufacture and sell humungous quantities of chips.
These economies of scale based on vast investments in equipment have led to an extraordinary concentration of the market, with profound geopolitical implications. What a fascinating unintended consequence of globalised capitalism these monopolies are! Despite lack of immediate competition, the industry is trapped in an endless race to cram more transistors on each chip using more and more expensive machines, and for what? So that surveillance capitalism can gather yet more personal data and generative so-called AI can fill the internet with sludge? It was useful to gain understanding of the hardware side of Silicon Valley, which gets much less attention than software and online platforms in the technology books I've read to date.
I found Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology a very thought-provoking reminder that daily life in 2023 depends upon a myriad of miniscule semiconductors that I had not previously considered the provenance of. Miller conveys an impressive quantity of information in an accessible style, providing considerable insight into the peculiarities of these lynchpins in the global economy.
The early history of how semiconductors were invented really emphasises how deeply entwined computing was with wars and the military-industrial complex. It was interesting to learn about the USSR's attempts to keep up with American chip technology during the Cold War, always struggling with quality control when using the requisite advanced manufacturing techniques. Also notable in the historical chapters is the fact that, 'It was mostly men who designed the earliest semiconductors, and mostly women who assembled them'. There is a depressing theme of searching the globe for the cheapest skilled labour and consistently resisting attempts to unionise:
Semiconductors recast the economies and politics of America's friends in the region. Cities that had been breeding grounds for political radicalism were transformed by diligent assembly line workers, happy to trade unemployment or subsistence farming for better paying jobs in factories. By the early 1980s, the electronics industry accounted for 7 percent of Singapore's GNP and a quarter of its manufacturing jobs. Of electronics production, 60 percent was semiconductor devices, and much of the rest was goods that couldn't work without semiconductors. In Hong Kong, electronic manufacturing created more jobs than any industry except textiles.
I did not previously realise the importance of chips in weapons and found the chapters on this topic quite chilling. The automation of weaponry continues to increase, yet the concentration of the chip industry also creates military vulnerabilities. Apparently Russia is currently suffering a severe shortage due to Ukraine War sanctions, so is reduced to using chips from domestic appliances in weapons.
Part VIII of the book concerns China's recent rise as a chip manufacturer. An infographic notes that China produces 15% of all chips, mostly low-tech, but the industry is expanding rapidly with heavy government support. The detailed discussion of Huawei begs the question posed in Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China's Extraordinary Rise: what in China isn't a sovereign wealth fund? Can any large Chinese company be considered otherwise? I found Miller's explanation of the conflict between the US and China over chip intellectual property and security during the Obama and Trump presidencies useful. It was covered in the media quite superficially, so I hadn't really grasped what was going on:
In Washington and in the chip industry, almost everyone had drunk their own kool-aid about globalisation. Newspapers and academics alike reported that globalisation was in fact 'global', that technological diffusion was unstoppable, that other countries' advancing technological capabilities were in the US interest, and that even if they weren't, nothing could halt technological progress. [...] However, 'globalisation' of chip fabrication hadn't occurred; 'Taiwanisation' had. Technology hadn't diffused. It was monopolised by a handful of irreplaceable companies.
Miller projects the disastrous impact on the entire global economy if Taiwan's TSMC chip factories were put out of action in a war with China. This would not be in the interests of China, or anyone else really, but is a real risk if armed conflict were to break out between China and the US. The structure of the chip industry almost looks like a globally-distributed series of natural monopolies for different chip types, which means interdependence and limited competition awkwardly coexist:
However, the messages coming from the chip industry weren't any more coherent than the contradictory leaks from the Trump White House. Publicly, semiconductor CEOs and their lobbyists urged the new administration to work with China and encourage it to comply with trade agreements. Privately, they admitted this strategy was hopeless and feared that state-supported Chinese competitors would grab market share at their expense. The entire chip industry depended on sales to China - be it chipmakers like Intel, fabless designers like Qualcomm, or equipment manufacturers like Applied Materials. One US semiconductor executive wryly summed things up to a White House official: "Our fundamental problem is that our number one customer is our number one competitor".
Over the decades chips have become more and more expensive and complex to manufacture as, 'each generation of technological improvement made fabs more expensive'. The equipment now used to make advanced semiconductors is mindblowingly complicated, costs two hundred million dollars to build, and requires tens of thousands of components sourced from around the world: 'ASML's EUV lithography tool is the most expensive mass-produced machine tool in history'. Intel alone invested $4 BILLION in developing this machine. The only way to get a passable return on such outlandish sums is to manufacture and sell humungous quantities of chips.
These economies of scale based on vast investments in equipment have led to an extraordinary concentration of the market, with profound geopolitical implications. What a fascinating unintended consequence of globalised capitalism these monopolies are! Despite lack of immediate competition, the industry is trapped in an endless race to cram more transistors on each chip using more and more expensive machines, and for what? So that surveillance capitalism can gather yet more personal data and generative so-called AI can fill the internet with sludge? It was useful to gain understanding of the hardware side of Silicon Valley, which gets much less attention than software and online platforms in the technology books I've read to date.
I found Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology a very thought-provoking reminder that daily life in 2023 depends upon a myriad of miniscule semiconductors that I had not previously considered the provenance of. Miller conveys an impressive quantity of information in an accessible style, providing considerable insight into the peculiarities of these lynchpins in the global economy.
January 2, 2023
Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology, by Chris Miller, is an interesting book that examines the semiconductor in history and through supply chain economics and geopolitics. The semiconductor/microchip is a fascinating piece of technology that utilizes silicon and the control of the flow of electrons to create gateways and switches. The book follows the development of this technology in the 1950's, through the era of Moore's Law, and into the modern world. The tech was developed in the United States in the post World War II era, first used in early computers, and heavily funded by the US government, especially the Department of Defense. Chips were especially useful in guiding missiles and munitions. As chips began to be crafted smaller and smaller, and with more and more processors, the technique of lithography for grafting and creating very tiny parts became important. Lithography is the use of light to "etch" into materials, and allows for the construction of molds for chips that are barely bigger than a few atoms.
The book follows the development of company's like Texas Instruments, Intel, Samsung, TMSC, Huawei, and more, as the chip industry began to develop. Essentially, the US industry has historically dominated the chip market, but as costs went up to keep up with Moore's Law, American businesses sought cheap labour overseas to manufacture and fabricate chips. The company's that did so looked originally to Japan, and the companies that did not, and tried to manufacture in house, died out. Japan began to surpass the US in semiconductor fabrication, due to targeted industrial policy from the Japanese government, and US industrialists cried fowl, and asked for their own government protection, ironically. The US government has always been a big driver of chip development, and agreed readily. In the interest of protecting their profit margins, firms also began to look at alternatives to the Japanese fabrication market, and then began to exploit cheaper markets in South Korea. Through smart government policy, Samsung emerged. Rinse and repat to Taiwan, with TSMC. TSMC was interesting as they were one of the first firms to make microchips to order, that could be customized to suit the needs of whichever company required them. In the era of smart phones and internet of things technology, they currently reign supreme. Now we find ourselves in the modern world. Taiwan has a large market share of chip fabrication on the global market. South Korea and Japan are also up there. China is the next logical step for US companies to exploit cheap labour, but there is a thorny issue of geopolitical competition to consider. China, through its Made in China 2025 initiative, is seeking to manufacture much of its technology domestically. Huawei was its attempt to export domestically built technologies, such as 5G network hardware, overseas, and it was successful for a time. The US and allies are concerned about the security and competitive aspects of such a move, and with many Chinese SOE's funding Huawei and similar companies, this is no surprise and probably warranted.
The issue is the vulnerability that US corporations have built into supply networks. To avoid fair market competition with the Japanese, they have built fabrication supply chains, or supported them, right next door to their biggest geopolitical rival in the modern world. Seems naïve in hindsight, but the reality of the situation is that the US government may not have fully realized how strategic the chip industry was. There was lots of money to be made, for sure, but in the interest of globalization and "move fast, break things" that defined the 2010's foreign policy initiatives in the technological sphere, this made perfect sense. However, the vulnerability becomes clear when China sabre rattles Taiwan. If supply is cut, the US may need to re-shore domestic production and fabrication of chips, and this may take years. The consumer electronics market would be disrupted, and anyone with a smart phone can imagine what may happen to our day to day lives. More immediately concerning is the impact on the US military. With the advent of "intelligization" strategies (building in smart and AI systems to military structures), chips are more important than ever. They are used to guide missiles, sure, but also to build in predictive maintenance routines, to track and disrupt movement of enemy soldiers and VIP's, to disrupt and engage in communications, and so much more. If the ability to supply these systems goes dark, even temporarily, that spells trouble for the US to be able to maintain military capacity.
It is not all doom and gloom for the states however. China suffers from a similar issue. China does not yet have the capability or capacity to develop and manufacture chips domestically, although this gap is becoming increasingly smaller. China may not have to consider the same market forces the US does, but I would argue they probably do at some level, and due to the overly-bureaucratic nature of local investment and venture capital in China, which seemingly stifles innovation, this may prove a challenge. The US suffers a similar issue with innovation in the modern world, in comparison to the industry shaking innovations they tabled in the past. This is because of the monolithic nature of the existing tech firms in the states, moreso than any existing government policy, although I would argue that a lack of policy is technically government policy, and it may have been crafted at some level to be like this. Miller worries about the implications of the vulnerability of semiconductor supply chains, and governments are increasingly waking up to the dangers.
A war in Taiwan may have devastating impacts on global electronics, many of which we rely on heavily in the modern world to gather information, communicate, and operate our daily lives. It is interesting to think about the impacts of this, and how deeply this technology interacts with the operations of daily life. This was a fascinating book, and easily an important one to read in the context of the current situation between the US and China. Quite a timely book, and recommended to those interested in the history of consumer and military semiconductors, and the geopolitics of the electronics industry.
The book follows the development of company's like Texas Instruments, Intel, Samsung, TMSC, Huawei, and more, as the chip industry began to develop. Essentially, the US industry has historically dominated the chip market, but as costs went up to keep up with Moore's Law, American businesses sought cheap labour overseas to manufacture and fabricate chips. The company's that did so looked originally to Japan, and the companies that did not, and tried to manufacture in house, died out. Japan began to surpass the US in semiconductor fabrication, due to targeted industrial policy from the Japanese government, and US industrialists cried fowl, and asked for their own government protection, ironically. The US government has always been a big driver of chip development, and agreed readily. In the interest of protecting their profit margins, firms also began to look at alternatives to the Japanese fabrication market, and then began to exploit cheaper markets in South Korea. Through smart government policy, Samsung emerged. Rinse and repat to Taiwan, with TSMC. TSMC was interesting as they were one of the first firms to make microchips to order, that could be customized to suit the needs of whichever company required them. In the era of smart phones and internet of things technology, they currently reign supreme. Now we find ourselves in the modern world. Taiwan has a large market share of chip fabrication on the global market. South Korea and Japan are also up there. China is the next logical step for US companies to exploit cheap labour, but there is a thorny issue of geopolitical competition to consider. China, through its Made in China 2025 initiative, is seeking to manufacture much of its technology domestically. Huawei was its attempt to export domestically built technologies, such as 5G network hardware, overseas, and it was successful for a time. The US and allies are concerned about the security and competitive aspects of such a move, and with many Chinese SOE's funding Huawei and similar companies, this is no surprise and probably warranted.
The issue is the vulnerability that US corporations have built into supply networks. To avoid fair market competition with the Japanese, they have built fabrication supply chains, or supported them, right next door to their biggest geopolitical rival in the modern world. Seems naïve in hindsight, but the reality of the situation is that the US government may not have fully realized how strategic the chip industry was. There was lots of money to be made, for sure, but in the interest of globalization and "move fast, break things" that defined the 2010's foreign policy initiatives in the technological sphere, this made perfect sense. However, the vulnerability becomes clear when China sabre rattles Taiwan. If supply is cut, the US may need to re-shore domestic production and fabrication of chips, and this may take years. The consumer electronics market would be disrupted, and anyone with a smart phone can imagine what may happen to our day to day lives. More immediately concerning is the impact on the US military. With the advent of "intelligization" strategies (building in smart and AI systems to military structures), chips are more important than ever. They are used to guide missiles, sure, but also to build in predictive maintenance routines, to track and disrupt movement of enemy soldiers and VIP's, to disrupt and engage in communications, and so much more. If the ability to supply these systems goes dark, even temporarily, that spells trouble for the US to be able to maintain military capacity.
It is not all doom and gloom for the states however. China suffers from a similar issue. China does not yet have the capability or capacity to develop and manufacture chips domestically, although this gap is becoming increasingly smaller. China may not have to consider the same market forces the US does, but I would argue they probably do at some level, and due to the overly-bureaucratic nature of local investment and venture capital in China, which seemingly stifles innovation, this may prove a challenge. The US suffers a similar issue with innovation in the modern world, in comparison to the industry shaking innovations they tabled in the past. This is because of the monolithic nature of the existing tech firms in the states, moreso than any existing government policy, although I would argue that a lack of policy is technically government policy, and it may have been crafted at some level to be like this. Miller worries about the implications of the vulnerability of semiconductor supply chains, and governments are increasingly waking up to the dangers.
A war in Taiwan may have devastating impacts on global electronics, many of which we rely on heavily in the modern world to gather information, communicate, and operate our daily lives. It is interesting to think about the impacts of this, and how deeply this technology interacts with the operations of daily life. This was a fascinating book, and easily an important one to read in the context of the current situation between the US and China. Quite a timely book, and recommended to those interested in the history of consumer and military semiconductors, and the geopolitics of the electronics industry.
June 11, 2023
Glad to be done with this one.
I learned a bit from this book about chips and the semiconductor industry (i think), but the story is so poorly told that the mind just glazes over after awhile.
One gets the sense Miller didnt really know how to organise all his information, his dramatis personae, nor his settings, so what emerges is an interminable conveyor belt of barely-coherent technical jargon, indistinguishable characters, and their origin stories. There chapters don't converge, nor is there a clear overarching narrative. The reader is just forced to endure page after page of painfully bland description, spiced with a few choice phrases.
The narrative also flits between the USA, China, South Korea and Taiwan - but there is in the end no distinct sense of place other than the author slapping a label onto the chapter.
The net result of this highly descriptive, but uninspired and repetitive prose, is that I end up not really caring about the story at all. Yes, I KNOW now how chips are important to the modern world, but the writing makes me not really CARE at all. Which is kind of disappointing given how much potential this story has.
Maybe the content would have done better in the hands of a more experienced storyteller, and maybe I was expecting something a little more along the lines of Nicole Perlroth's "This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends". A disappointingly bland read.
I learned a bit from this book about chips and the semiconductor industry (i think), but the story is so poorly told that the mind just glazes over after awhile.
One gets the sense Miller didnt really know how to organise all his information, his dramatis personae, nor his settings, so what emerges is an interminable conveyor belt of barely-coherent technical jargon, indistinguishable characters, and their origin stories. There chapters don't converge, nor is there a clear overarching narrative. The reader is just forced to endure page after page of painfully bland description, spiced with a few choice phrases.
The narrative also flits between the USA, China, South Korea and Taiwan - but there is in the end no distinct sense of place other than the author slapping a label onto the chapter.
The net result of this highly descriptive, but uninspired and repetitive prose, is that I end up not really caring about the story at all. Yes, I KNOW now how chips are important to the modern world, but the writing makes me not really CARE at all. Which is kind of disappointing given how much potential this story has.
Maybe the content would have done better in the hands of a more experienced storyteller, and maybe I was expecting something a little more along the lines of Nicole Perlroth's "This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends". A disappointingly bland read.
November 11, 2022
This is a book for people from outside of the domain, there is quite good stuff for them, I would bet they would hear some critical companies first time in their life. Otherwise, it's mostly disappointing by not having enough details more than a Wikipedia page of Intel. It's also full of repetitions and has an unnecessarily non-linear/complex timeline.
May 26, 2023
Great read, got an interesting point of view on few things.
March 10, 2023
ماذا تعرف عن الرقائق الإلكترونية المدمجة؟
لقد ظهر هذا الابتكار قبل ٧٠ عام، كشطحة ابتكارية من عالم أمريكي -وآخر بريطاني لكن لا أحد يحبه-، تبنته شركة أمريكية، تفرعت عنها عدة شركات أمريكية. منها (إنتل) التي نعرفها جيداً.
إن قصة الرقيقة الإلكترونية هي قصة أميركية جداً. ويروي هذا الكتاب العلاقة بين الرجال -ليس بينهم امرأة واحدة- الذين جعلوا من هذه الرقيقة منتجاً استراتيجياً يكاد يوازي النفط أهمية.
وبالرغم من أن التطبيقات الأولى لذلك الاختراع الاميركي كانت عسكرية بدافع من هزيمة ڤيتنام المنكرة، إلا ان ظهور الپي سي غير المعادلة تماماً. صارت الشريحة مطلباً شعبياً كثيف الإنتاج، لأجل اللابتوب، ولأجل الكاميرا الديجيتال، والسيارات والغسالات والساعات الحديثة. كل جيل من الرقائق أعقد تصميماً ويحوي ضعف عدد الترانزستورات. ثم لما ظهرت الهواتف الذكية، زاطت الأمور تماماً!
في خضم ذلك كله، وخلال العقود السبعة الماضية حصلت عدة تطورات:
١- خرجت الأمور عن السيطرة الاميركية. دخل اليابانيون والكوريون والتايوانيون وشركة واحدة هولندية على الخط وصاروا لاعبين مؤثرين. هؤلاء هم من يتحكمون بحياتنا التقنية اليوم وبدونهم فلن يظهر الجيل التالي من الآيفون.
٢- الأمريكيون غير سعداء بهذا الاعتماد على الآخرين وإن كانوا "حلفاء"، لأن الإلكترونيات تظل مكوناً أساسياً في المنتجات العسكرية من الدرونات الموجهة حتى نفاثات الجيل الخامس.
٣- دخلت الصين اللعبة قبل ٣٠ عام. هي ما تزال متأخرة عن أمريكا، لكنها لن تكل أو تمل حتى تسيطر على السوق، وهذا باب توتر كبير بينها وبين الأميركان والتايوانيين والكوريين واليابانيين.
كتاب لطيف عن التقنية والسياسة والعلاقة بينهما. قد يكون حافلاً بالتفاصيل التقنية لكنني استمتعت به لأني درست هندسة الحاسبات في الجامعة 😊.
لقد ظهر هذا الابتكار قبل ٧٠ عام، كشطحة ابتكارية من عالم أمريكي -وآخر بريطاني لكن لا أحد يحبه-، تبنته شركة أمريكية، تفرعت عنها عدة شركات أمريكية. منها (إنتل) التي نعرفها جيداً.
إن قصة الرقيقة الإلكترونية هي قصة أميركية جداً. ويروي هذا الكتاب العلاقة بين الرجال -ليس بينهم امرأة واحدة- الذين جعلوا من هذه الرقيقة منتجاً استراتيجياً يكاد يوازي النفط أهمية.
وبالرغم من أن التطبيقات الأولى لذلك الاختراع الاميركي كانت عسكرية بدافع من هزيمة ڤيتنام المنكرة، إلا ان ظهور الپي سي غير المعادلة تماماً. صارت الشريحة مطلباً شعبياً كثيف الإنتاج، لأجل اللابتوب، ولأجل الكاميرا الديجيتال، والسيارات والغسالات والساعات الحديثة. كل جيل من الرقائق أعقد تصميماً ويحوي ضعف عدد الترانزستورات. ثم لما ظهرت الهواتف الذكية، زاطت الأمور تماماً!
في خضم ذلك كله، وخلال العقود السبعة الماضية حصلت عدة تطورات:
١- خرجت الأمور عن السيطرة الاميركية. دخل اليابانيون والكوريون والتايوانيون وشركة واحدة هولندية على الخط وصاروا لاعبين مؤثرين. هؤلاء هم من يتحكمون بحياتنا التقنية اليوم وبدونهم فلن يظهر الجيل التالي من الآيفون.
٢- الأمريكيون غير سعداء بهذا الاعتماد على الآخرين وإن كانوا "حلفاء"، لأن الإلكترونيات تظل مكوناً أساسياً في المنتجات العسكرية من الدرونات الموجهة حتى نفاثات الجيل الخامس.
٣- دخلت الصين اللعبة قبل ٣٠ عام. هي ما تزال متأخرة عن أمريكا، لكنها لن تكل أو تمل حتى تسيطر على السوق، وهذا باب توتر كبير بينها وبين الأميركان والتايوانيين والكوريين واليابانيين.
كتاب لطيف عن التقنية والسياسة والعلاقة بينهما. قد يكون حافلاً بالتفاصيل التقنية لكنني استمتعت به لأني درست هندسة الحاسبات في الجامعة 😊.
August 8, 2023
A perfectly competent and often tedious account of the core technology that runs our world. As an electrical engineering student in college I actually find semiconductors really cool on a technological level. My two semiconductor courses (one general, one on photovoltaic cells) were some of my favorite classes that I took. So I found the early chapters that described the invention and manufacturing of the technology really exciting, even though some of those innovations were literally things like union busting.
As you’d expect from a professor from the Tufts Fletcher School of Imperialism and War Crimes, there’s some truly crazy assertions leftover from the last Cold War (how can you say that Jewish Andy Grove had it worse in Soviet-controlled Hungary than when the Nazis were literally committing the Holocaust?) as well as unchallenged assumptions from our new Cold War (Maoism is inherently opposed to semiconductor technology because it isn't “proletarian enough” compared to factories?). The book is also ripe with unaddressed double-standards. Why should we criticize China’s heavy investment in their tech sector when the US did the same thing in the 60s-80s, when the Pentagon shoveled billions into the chip industry for the express purpose of improving missile accuracy? Why should we be alarmed when the Chinese army performs military exercises when the US military’s budget is three times larger, with over 1000 overseas bases, many of them surrounding China?
There’s also a lot of mask-off realism the paints our current conflict in the stark terms that decision makers actually think in. Chief among them is the fact that measures like banning Huawei have nothing to do with actual cybersecurity risk, but rather a calculated move to cripple China’s burgeoning chip industry. The Chinese government decided to take that on the chin instead of escalating. Would the US do the same if the roles were reversed?
Here’s what it all comes down to: infinite growth in technology, exemplified by Moore’s “Law” that the number of semiconductors produced in a single chip has to increase exponentially every few years, has lead to both complex, worldwide, intertwined supply chains, which naturally resulted in monopolies and cartels as capitalism always does, whose international character does not supersede geopolitical rivalries as globalism promised it would; and to an overproduction of electronics without a purpose, necessitating corporations making up bullshit applications like the “Internet of Things” that nobody needs. Within a few decades the American government will bring us into a war with China where millions will die or be displaced, just to ensure that we have computer chips in our toasters and toilets, harvesting our data to sell to advertisers so we can get better personalized Instagram ads.
As you’d expect from a professor from the Tufts Fletcher School of Imperialism and War Crimes, there’s some truly crazy assertions leftover from the last Cold War (how can you say that Jewish Andy Grove had it worse in Soviet-controlled Hungary than when the Nazis were literally committing the Holocaust?) as well as unchallenged assumptions from our new Cold War (Maoism is inherently opposed to semiconductor technology because it isn't “proletarian enough” compared to factories?). The book is also ripe with unaddressed double-standards. Why should we criticize China’s heavy investment in their tech sector when the US did the same thing in the 60s-80s, when the Pentagon shoveled billions into the chip industry for the express purpose of improving missile accuracy? Why should we be alarmed when the Chinese army performs military exercises when the US military’s budget is three times larger, with over 1000 overseas bases, many of them surrounding China?
There’s also a lot of mask-off realism the paints our current conflict in the stark terms that decision makers actually think in. Chief among them is the fact that measures like banning Huawei have nothing to do with actual cybersecurity risk, but rather a calculated move to cripple China’s burgeoning chip industry. The Chinese government decided to take that on the chin instead of escalating. Would the US do the same if the roles were reversed?
Here’s what it all comes down to: infinite growth in technology, exemplified by Moore’s “Law” that the number of semiconductors produced in a single chip has to increase exponentially every few years, has lead to both complex, worldwide, intertwined supply chains, which naturally resulted in monopolies and cartels as capitalism always does, whose international character does not supersede geopolitical rivalries as globalism promised it would; and to an overproduction of electronics without a purpose, necessitating corporations making up bullshit applications like the “Internet of Things” that nobody needs. Within a few decades the American government will bring us into a war with China where millions will die or be displaced, just to ensure that we have computer chips in our toasters and toilets, harvesting our data to sell to advertisers so we can get better personalized Instagram ads.
March 4, 2023
Sensational book about the history of the chip industry and the current technological and trade conflict between the US and China. The book traces the history of the chip all the way from the 1940s with its pioneers hailing from China, Japan, Korea and the US.
It explains how the US became a global tech super-power from the 1950s to the 1970s with tech companies such as Texas Instruments, Fairchild Computing or Intel, how they transferred their knowledge and know-how to their Asian allies in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, how they were challenged by Japan in the 1980s, how they created a symbiotic relationship with Taiwan in the 1990s and how they are once again challenged today by China today.
Other than the impressive pace of innovation the book explains how the key to the modern chip production is the fabless model. In this model US companies designs microchips but contract out their production to factories in Asia. This is what led to the current bottleneck where pretty much the whole world is dependent on a single company in Taiwan (TSMC that produces the chips) and a single company in Netherlands (ASML that produces the photolitography machines that are actually used to produce the chips).
One of the best books I have read a in recent times, 5 out of 5. It is the perfect primer to understand the chip industry, its history and also today's landscape.
It explains how the US became a global tech super-power from the 1950s to the 1970s with tech companies such as Texas Instruments, Fairchild Computing or Intel, how they transferred their knowledge and know-how to their Asian allies in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, how they were challenged by Japan in the 1980s, how they created a symbiotic relationship with Taiwan in the 1990s and how they are once again challenged today by China today.
Other than the impressive pace of innovation the book explains how the key to the modern chip production is the fabless model. In this model US companies designs microchips but contract out their production to factories in Asia. This is what led to the current bottleneck where pretty much the whole world is dependent on a single company in Taiwan (TSMC that produces the chips) and a single company in Netherlands (ASML that produces the photolitography machines that are actually used to produce the chips).
One of the best books I have read a in recent times, 5 out of 5. It is the perfect primer to understand the chip industry, its history and also today's landscape.
January 29, 2024
What a well-written, well-researched and gripping book! It captures my attention from the first page, leads me through the history of the semiconductor industry and the evolution of the technology, and provides me with understanding of various players in the field and the related geopolitics.
The semiconductors (chips) are the new oil. It’s surprising how many choke points exist in such a key industry to our global economy.
The overall tone is neutral and professional. I can not agree more on the Taiwan Dilemma. No one knows what will happen next. Should the war break out, nobody will benefit from it, but this fact won’t stop certain players from trying.
Highly recommended.
The semiconductors (chips) are the new oil. It’s surprising how many choke points exist in such a key industry to our global economy.
The overall tone is neutral and professional. I can not agree more on the Taiwan Dilemma. No one knows what will happen next. Should the war break out, nobody will benefit from it, but this fact won’t stop certain players from trying.
Highly recommended.
March 21, 2024
Having worked as a circuit designer for over 7 years, this book was super exciting for me! It gave me a very different perspective of whole industry and its significance on the world stage, its place in the history and future. Day-to-day life as an electronics engineer doesn’t seem to be as dramatic or impactful as to the aggregative story of all such innovators over decades. It was pretty cool to realise that I have worked with both the pioneering companies of this technology, and to connect the dots about certain product development plans and certain decisions from leadership teams, which didn’t make much sense before without this much broader overview presented in the book.
The story of all these disruptive & unparalleled tech giants and their visionaries is truly inspiring. Also, the role of politics, geography & military in the development of semicon industry was something that blew my mind! A good idea is not enough - it has to be supported by a number of other factors, which have nothing to do with engineering, to make its success feasible. Another amazing thing was how well the author demonstrated the inter-dependence and complexity that goes into creating a chip. I have been part of only the design cycle which involves creating the product concept, designing circuits and sending the chip for manufacturing which itself is a tedious and meticulous process but the fact remains that this is just one part of a big web that is involved in actually getting a usable product in consumer’s hand.
Although the book felt repetitive sometimes, the facts & ideas remain entertaining enough. Overall, great read. Definitely recommended!
The story of all these disruptive & unparalleled tech giants and their visionaries is truly inspiring. Also, the role of politics, geography & military in the development of semicon industry was something that blew my mind! A good idea is not enough - it has to be supported by a number of other factors, which have nothing to do with engineering, to make its success feasible. Another amazing thing was how well the author demonstrated the inter-dependence and complexity that goes into creating a chip. I have been part of only the design cycle which involves creating the product concept, designing circuits and sending the chip for manufacturing which itself is a tedious and meticulous process but the fact remains that this is just one part of a big web that is involved in actually getting a usable product in consumer’s hand.
Although the book felt repetitive sometimes, the facts & ideas remain entertaining enough. Overall, great read. Definitely recommended!
Read
November 8, 202320023-11-08 I finished this last week. Hoping to pull my notes/highlights together soon to write a decent review.
2023-10-26 Started this about a week ago - very captivating. The author is a very good writer. The subject is of great interest to me, since I followed the progress of the microprocessor firms, their products and the overall market pretty closely in publications ranging from: PC Magazine, "InfoWorld" "PC News, to Forbes, ASAP, Wall St. Journal and others from the early 80s till the early 2000s. PLUS, I actually lived in Silicon Valley (San Jose) from 1995-2021, and worked and interacted with a fair number of high-tech firms (some chip designers included) and friends and associates during most of that time.
The author has so far done a great job on many of the topics, explaining them quite clearly, despite some of them being pretty technical and/or controversial.
However, some of the topics, as well at the title and major theme of the book is a very big problem.
The use of the term "war" as an analogy to real war, where people are shot, blown-up, taken hostage, captured, maimed, etc. for business practices, is a very bad one. It leads people to misconstrue what is really going on and blurs the very real lines of difference. Sure, it may sell extra books... but is that a good-enough reason? Not in my value system.
Since I am only about 2/3 through the book, I plan to come back to add more to this review when I do finish, and then have time to sort through my notes and highlights, of which I have already made very many. Just this morning, I started "sharing" some of my notes/highlights on Goodreads, so perhaps you have seen some already.
2023-10-26 Started this about a week ago - very captivating. The author is a very good writer. The subject is of great interest to me, since I followed the progress of the microprocessor firms, their products and the overall market pretty closely in publications ranging from: PC Magazine, "InfoWorld" "PC News, to Forbes, ASAP, Wall St. Journal and others from the early 80s till the early 2000s. PLUS, I actually lived in Silicon Valley (San Jose) from 1995-2021, and worked and interacted with a fair number of high-tech firms (some chip designers included) and friends and associates during most of that time.
The author has so far done a great job on many of the topics, explaining them quite clearly, despite some of them being pretty technical and/or controversial.
However, some of the topics, as well at the title and major theme of the book is a very big problem.
The use of the term "war" as an analogy to real war, where people are shot, blown-up, taken hostage, captured, maimed, etc. for business practices, is a very bad one. It leads people to misconstrue what is really going on and blurs the very real lines of difference. Sure, it may sell extra books... but is that a good-enough reason? Not in my value system.
Since I am only about 2/3 through the book, I plan to come back to add more to this review when I do finish, and then have time to sort through my notes and highlights, of which I have already made very many. Just this morning, I started "sharing" some of my notes/highlights on Goodreads, so perhaps you have seen some already.
November 20, 2022
Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.
-- Andy Grove
Chip War is a marvelous history book about the semiconductor industry from the USA's point of view. As someone who works with information technology, I was somewhat familiar with the main twists and turns, but I still found the text illuminating and fun to consume. I can easily recommend the book to anyone who's even a little bit interested in the topic!
-- Andy Grove
Chip War is a marvelous history book about the semiconductor industry from the USA's point of view. As someone who works with information technology, I was somewhat familiar with the main twists and turns, but I still found the text illuminating and fun to consume. I can easily recommend the book to anyone who's even a little bit interested in the topic!
August 31, 2023
Best book I've read this year.
Smooth and concise story line all the way from historical backstory on semiconductors coming about, to the geopolitical implications of chip manufacturing from US-China standoff in Taiwan to Russia's military troubles after attacking Ukraine.
Smooth and concise story line all the way from historical backstory on semiconductors coming about, to the geopolitical implications of chip manufacturing from US-China standoff in Taiwan to Russia's military troubles after attacking Ukraine.
June 19, 2023
A lot of narrative, story-telling, and ideology. Very weak in actual content and arguments. Also the author has zero knowledge about the science of chips and semiconductors. He learned everything about international politics by reading the New York Times. This book reads like a history essay written by a high school kid, carelessly copying and pasting from ChatGPT. Reminds me of Yuval Noah Harari's "Sapiens"- such books try to tackle ambitious topics with a severe lack of expertise, and of course they fail miserably. Such ambitious but shallow books are often good candidates for making the "New York Times Bestseller" list.
March 28, 2024
Someone asked for a review in the comments. So I'll post here for posterity.
So my thoughts on this book: I did not quite like the quite shallow style of tech journalism. A lot many cliches, not enough information, and far too much focus on personalities. Its a good coffee table book for normies, but if you are looking to dip your toes in investing in this industry, you would certainly need something more dense.
My thoughts on the state and direction of the industry: I think America and its parasite elite are certainly tearing their collective hair out over China's economic rise. They will for sure try to have trade barriers.
Coming to trade barriers, I don't think any of this is going to work. It made Americans buy inferior and expensive America made cars over much better Japanese ones. And the same shall apply to electronics.
To truly bring autarky to the electronics industry, some American firm will have to compete with TSMC. But my case is that I believe it is fundamentally impossible. You focus far too much on financialization, bad HR practices, and a society that is not built for running generational firms. What do I mean?
Modern fab equipments that TSMC employs are not machines that you can just fire and forget. You (as an engineer) have to closely monitor the functioning, adjust the parameters based on your intuition, and try over and over until you get the desired result. It is an art, rather than a set of fixed formulas. Now if Americans were to try this, they would fail because people change their jobs far too often especially in the tech industry. You as an employee, monkey branch for the best bucks. You as an employer, play financial games to raise stock price. This is obviously not going to work.
One positive of this book is that it has a chapter on Soviet tech industry, and I think you are going to see that very soon here in America ;-)
So my thoughts on this book: I did not quite like the quite shallow style of tech journalism. A lot many cliches, not enough information, and far too much focus on personalities. Its a good coffee table book for normies, but if you are looking to dip your toes in investing in this industry, you would certainly need something more dense.
My thoughts on the state and direction of the industry: I think America and its parasite elite are certainly tearing their collective hair out over China's economic rise. They will for sure try to have trade barriers.
Coming to trade barriers, I don't think any of this is going to work. It made Americans buy inferior and expensive America made cars over much better Japanese ones. And the same shall apply to electronics.
To truly bring autarky to the electronics industry, some American firm will have to compete with TSMC. But my case is that I believe it is fundamentally impossible. You focus far too much on financialization, bad HR practices, and a society that is not built for running generational firms. What do I mean?
Modern fab equipments that TSMC employs are not machines that you can just fire and forget. You (as an engineer) have to closely monitor the functioning, adjust the parameters based on your intuition, and try over and over until you get the desired result. It is an art, rather than a set of fixed formulas. Now if Americans were to try this, they would fail because people change their jobs far too often especially in the tech industry. You as an employee, monkey branch for the best bucks. You as an employer, play financial games to raise stock price. This is obviously not going to work.
One positive of this book is that it has a chapter on Soviet tech industry, and I think you are going to see that very soon here in America ;-)
January 2, 2023
Outstanding !
First 40% of this book is literally the history of the microchip, starting with the first transistor in late 50's designed by Shockley, then mass produced in emerging companies like Texas Instruments and Fairchild initially for the Pentagon's guided missles used in Vietnam war then for general use.
We then hit the 60-70's when America outsources its production to Japan and loses its grip on memory chip DRAM technology.
3 engineers leave Fairchild and create Intel.
In the 80's Intel loses market share to Japan which learned to integrate chips in consumer electronics (radios , walkman) via companies like Sony and Sharp.
Late 80's Intel gambles and leaves DRAM market and together with IBM and Bill Gates MSFT devise an alliance around IBM computers , running Windows OS , powered by Intel's x86 microchip architecture. This will dominate the next 30 years.
We also get to see how the smartphone arena changed the balance of pwoer from USA to Taiwan and how Intel refused to produce custom chips for the emerging Apple , thus throwing away a huge opportunity for divestment.
We get to understand the different types of chips (memory , logic and analog) and who specializes in what as well as the complex procedures required to.build a chip (design, production and assembly) and learn why everything now is centered around Taiwan's TSMC behemoth.
The transistor lessons are above par , as well as the complex machinery needed to build it nowadays via the process of litography , and why only Netherlands's ASML can do it (using no less then 460k parts ) including high precision lasers from Germany's Trumpf which in turn uses Carl Zeiss optics.
There are so many things explained regarding transistors , cpu's , memory , supply chains , the companies that design ,produce and consume (Intel, AMD, Nvidia, ARM, Micron , Huawei , Samsung , Apple) , world gonverments, USA trade war with China and the banning of Huawei....
This book is literally a compact enciclopedia involving topics such as history , electronics , science , politics , warfare and everything that has to do with microchips which is the new world's gold standard.
Besides developers , and electronic nerds, people into tech and not only will find this book mind blowing !
First 40% of this book is literally the history of the microchip, starting with the first transistor in late 50's designed by Shockley, then mass produced in emerging companies like Texas Instruments and Fairchild initially for the Pentagon's guided missles used in Vietnam war then for general use.
We then hit the 60-70's when America outsources its production to Japan and loses its grip on memory chip DRAM technology.
3 engineers leave Fairchild and create Intel.
In the 80's Intel loses market share to Japan which learned to integrate chips in consumer electronics (radios , walkman) via companies like Sony and Sharp.
Late 80's Intel gambles and leaves DRAM market and together with IBM and Bill Gates MSFT devise an alliance around IBM computers , running Windows OS , powered by Intel's x86 microchip architecture. This will dominate the next 30 years.
We also get to see how the smartphone arena changed the balance of pwoer from USA to Taiwan and how Intel refused to produce custom chips for the emerging Apple , thus throwing away a huge opportunity for divestment.
We get to understand the different types of chips (memory , logic and analog) and who specializes in what as well as the complex procedures required to.build a chip (design, production and assembly) and learn why everything now is centered around Taiwan's TSMC behemoth.
The transistor lessons are above par , as well as the complex machinery needed to build it nowadays via the process of litography , and why only Netherlands's ASML can do it (using no less then 460k parts ) including high precision lasers from Germany's Trumpf which in turn uses Carl Zeiss optics.
There are so many things explained regarding transistors , cpu's , memory , supply chains , the companies that design ,produce and consume (Intel, AMD, Nvidia, ARM, Micron , Huawei , Samsung , Apple) , world gonverments, USA trade war with China and the banning of Huawei....
This book is literally a compact enciclopedia involving topics such as history , electronics , science , politics , warfare and everything that has to do with microchips which is the new world's gold standard.
Besides developers , and electronic nerds, people into tech and not only will find this book mind blowing !
November 30, 2023
This was a recent pick for our book club. It was an eye opener for me, in that I knew next to nothing about chip technology, and how many of the devices I currently use wouldn't be possible without chips. This book outlines the history of chip development and how important it is for global economies. Worth reading.
December 4, 2022
Puiki ir kontekstuali. Aišku, verslo istorijų vystymasis yra mano silpnybė, bet šita puikiai sudėliota nuo "adomo ir ievos" ir sujungti geopolitiniai įvykiai, politika ir verslo sprendimai: nuo pat XX a. amžiaus vidurio, kai procesoriai atsirado iki pat pandemijos ir karo prieš Ukrainą.
February 7, 2023
The Value of Innovation: Review of Chris Miller’s Chip War
What do we think of when we think of technology? Our imagination often conjures images of mobile applications, digital payments and buzzwords like Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things and BlockChain. While the superstructure like digital public goods and mobile applications are clearly perceptible we seldom realise that the proverbial base of all technological intervention are pieces of hardware commonly referred to as the ‘chip’ that encapsulate its computing power. ‘Chip War’ is a masterful exploration of the history of computing in the backdrop of intense geopolitical competition and entrepreneurial innovation.
The umbilical cord between research and innovation
If I were to summarise the first part of Miller’s excellent manuscript borrowing from John Maynard Keynes I would say that actions of successful innovators, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any theoretical influences, are usually slaves of some brilliant scientist. Miller’s expansive analysis begins by unravelling the solid theoretical foundation of the modern semiconductor industry. The birth of the most important product of the 21st century was in part due to the extraordinary genius of physicists like William Shockley (inventor of the transistor), Jack Kilby, Robert Noyce (inventors of the integrated circuit) and Jay Lathorp (early pioneer of photolithography, the technique used to carve transistors onto a semiconductor) and in part due to the mutually beneficial partnership between industry and the government. What is remarkable about this part of the history of computing is not just the fertile mind of individuals but also the qualities of the institutions that fostered such scientific innovation. All early breakthroughs related to chip making were a product of institutions like the Bell Laboratories, Texas Instruments and Fairchild Semiconductors. The inventions that preceded the computing revolution are stark reminders of the fact that true and sustainable innovation is steeped deeply in painstaking research and not shortcuts & quick fixes that pass off as innovation closer home (especially within the government). The fact that semiconductors today are key to a vast array of consumer goods like toys, mobile phones, computers as well as some of the world’s most advanced technological systems like guided missile systems and supercomputers is a testament to the climate of innovation and research sheltered and advanced by government and private enterprise alike in post war United States. In sharp contrast to the environment of cutting edge innovation and free thinking in the United States was the stolid Soviet war machine whose inability to keep up with research played a major part in its ultimate rout in the Cold War. The out of its depth military industrial complex of the Soviet Union resorted to blind copying of western chip designs, a tactic that worked well for early cold war weapons technology but failed miserably in the face of a cutthroat race for ever smaller transistors.
The value of entrepreneurship
While it was the inspired brilliance of scientists that developed the first integrated circuits and photolithography techniques it took the prescient entrepreneurial vision of stalwarts like Gordon Moore, Andy Grove, Paul Haggerty and Morris Chang to harness nascent inventions into full blown profitable businesses. The book shows that there are no permanent winners and losers in the race among nation-states. The United States served as the cradle of key developments in semiconductor technology but was very soon overtaken by countries like Japan, South Korea and later Taiwan in the capacity to manufacture at scale and quality as American companies were happy to go ‘fabless’ in search of greater profitability. The book is an ode to the economic concept of comparative advantage and illustrates beautifully how the supply chain of chip manufacturing utilises comparative capabilities of the western hemisphere. Companies based in US/UK (Intel, Qualcomm, Nvidia, TI, ARM) lead in innovation and design while Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and United Microelectronics Corporation (Taiwan), Samsung (South Korea) and Japan are the biggest manufacturers, ASML a Dutch company on the other hand monopolises the supply of latest EUV lithography based equipment that make it possible for foundries to cram more and more transistors on pieces of semiconducting material.
The long shadow of the great game
The metaphorical war for greater computing power is as much about geopolitics as it is about innovation and entrepreneurship. Miller cites the views of old cold war hands like Gorbachev and Ogarkov to emphatically surmise that the cold war was won not on the back of nuclear warheads, the Soviet Union had a surfeit of, but computing power in which it lagged far behind the US. The Semiconductor industry in the US received dollops of help from government funded programs such as DARPA, Minuteman II missile project as well as NASA’s space missions. The struggle for semiconductor supremacy was also one of the most important subplots of the US-Japan manufacturing rivalry of the 80s and 90s. Japan however seems to have fallen behind the PC revolution since the long economic slowdown it is yet to recover from. The greatest beneficiary of the geopolitical game however has been Taiwan. The doyens of Taiwanese leadership decided very early on that the US could hesitate in defending Taiwan militarily against Chinese aggression but it would be more inclined to protect the interests of companies like Texas Instruments. With the twin objectives of economic growth and control over an important choke point of global trade, Taiwan took a series of steps to bolster the semiconductor manufacturing industry on its shores. The result of Taiwan’s visionary leadership is for all to see, Taiwan is not only the leading manufacturer of computer chips but has also been able to reasonably secure its defence interests on the back of its semiconductor dominance. The 21st century is delicately poised for a grand game of one upmanship between China and the US. China has been successful in cornering huge fractions of the world’s manufacturing capacity however its ability to design and manufacture high quality computer chips still leaves a lot to be desired. The Chinese leadership is acutely aware that the sustenance of its military as well as economic heft depends on its ability to be independent in semiconductor manufacturing. The US has, albeit with some delay, realised that running faster than China is not a solution and it needs to constrain China’s rise as a peer competitor. The chip war between the United States and China has all the ingredients to be the 21st century’s Great Game.
The Indian perspective
From an Indian perspective what was most striking to me was the fantastic environment that the US society enables for its innovators and entrepreneurs. While there is no dearth of genius in our country, lack of an enabling system stifles creativity. Innovation is conflated with quick fixes and visible wins. I read the book with a muffled expectation of finding out where India stood in this war of grand strategy and to my disappointment India just found two mentions in the entire tome. The first was a passing mention of manufacturing of some Apple products moving to India and the second was with respect to China’s ability to dominate the Himalayan border. That the leading strategic game in global politics does not have India as a major player should be a matter of grave concern for our geostrategic as well as scientific community. The Production Linked Incentive Scheme launched by the Government of India in the hope of spurring growth of semiconductor manufacturing is a timely step in the right direction but sustained and concerted efforts are needed for India to capture important choke points in the supply chain of computer chips.
As an Indian, Chip War reads like a love letter to the American way of life. It is a celebration of the depth and maturity of the US government, business & institutions and above all its power to attract the best and brightest from across the globe.
Further Reading
1. https://newsroom.intel.com/wp-content...
2. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/08/bo...
3. https://www.economist.com/culture/202...
4. https://www.ft.com/content/7539dcab-f...
5. https://www.thehindu.com/news/nationa...
What do we think of when we think of technology? Our imagination often conjures images of mobile applications, digital payments and buzzwords like Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things and BlockChain. While the superstructure like digital public goods and mobile applications are clearly perceptible we seldom realise that the proverbial base of all technological intervention are pieces of hardware commonly referred to as the ‘chip’ that encapsulate its computing power. ‘Chip War’ is a masterful exploration of the history of computing in the backdrop of intense geopolitical competition and entrepreneurial innovation.
The umbilical cord between research and innovation
If I were to summarise the first part of Miller’s excellent manuscript borrowing from John Maynard Keynes I would say that actions of successful innovators, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any theoretical influences, are usually slaves of some brilliant scientist. Miller’s expansive analysis begins by unravelling the solid theoretical foundation of the modern semiconductor industry. The birth of the most important product of the 21st century was in part due to the extraordinary genius of physicists like William Shockley (inventor of the transistor), Jack Kilby, Robert Noyce (inventors of the integrated circuit) and Jay Lathorp (early pioneer of photolithography, the technique used to carve transistors onto a semiconductor) and in part due to the mutually beneficial partnership between industry and the government. What is remarkable about this part of the history of computing is not just the fertile mind of individuals but also the qualities of the institutions that fostered such scientific innovation. All early breakthroughs related to chip making were a product of institutions like the Bell Laboratories, Texas Instruments and Fairchild Semiconductors. The inventions that preceded the computing revolution are stark reminders of the fact that true and sustainable innovation is steeped deeply in painstaking research and not shortcuts & quick fixes that pass off as innovation closer home (especially within the government). The fact that semiconductors today are key to a vast array of consumer goods like toys, mobile phones, computers as well as some of the world’s most advanced technological systems like guided missile systems and supercomputers is a testament to the climate of innovation and research sheltered and advanced by government and private enterprise alike in post war United States. In sharp contrast to the environment of cutting edge innovation and free thinking in the United States was the stolid Soviet war machine whose inability to keep up with research played a major part in its ultimate rout in the Cold War. The out of its depth military industrial complex of the Soviet Union resorted to blind copying of western chip designs, a tactic that worked well for early cold war weapons technology but failed miserably in the face of a cutthroat race for ever smaller transistors.
The value of entrepreneurship
While it was the inspired brilliance of scientists that developed the first integrated circuits and photolithography techniques it took the prescient entrepreneurial vision of stalwarts like Gordon Moore, Andy Grove, Paul Haggerty and Morris Chang to harness nascent inventions into full blown profitable businesses. The book shows that there are no permanent winners and losers in the race among nation-states. The United States served as the cradle of key developments in semiconductor technology but was very soon overtaken by countries like Japan, South Korea and later Taiwan in the capacity to manufacture at scale and quality as American companies were happy to go ‘fabless’ in search of greater profitability. The book is an ode to the economic concept of comparative advantage and illustrates beautifully how the supply chain of chip manufacturing utilises comparative capabilities of the western hemisphere. Companies based in US/UK (Intel, Qualcomm, Nvidia, TI, ARM) lead in innovation and design while Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and United Microelectronics Corporation (Taiwan), Samsung (South Korea) and Japan are the biggest manufacturers, ASML a Dutch company on the other hand monopolises the supply of latest EUV lithography based equipment that make it possible for foundries to cram more and more transistors on pieces of semiconducting material.
The long shadow of the great game
The metaphorical war for greater computing power is as much about geopolitics as it is about innovation and entrepreneurship. Miller cites the views of old cold war hands like Gorbachev and Ogarkov to emphatically surmise that the cold war was won not on the back of nuclear warheads, the Soviet Union had a surfeit of, but computing power in which it lagged far behind the US. The Semiconductor industry in the US received dollops of help from government funded programs such as DARPA, Minuteman II missile project as well as NASA’s space missions. The struggle for semiconductor supremacy was also one of the most important subplots of the US-Japan manufacturing rivalry of the 80s and 90s. Japan however seems to have fallen behind the PC revolution since the long economic slowdown it is yet to recover from. The greatest beneficiary of the geopolitical game however has been Taiwan. The doyens of Taiwanese leadership decided very early on that the US could hesitate in defending Taiwan militarily against Chinese aggression but it would be more inclined to protect the interests of companies like Texas Instruments. With the twin objectives of economic growth and control over an important choke point of global trade, Taiwan took a series of steps to bolster the semiconductor manufacturing industry on its shores. The result of Taiwan’s visionary leadership is for all to see, Taiwan is not only the leading manufacturer of computer chips but has also been able to reasonably secure its defence interests on the back of its semiconductor dominance. The 21st century is delicately poised for a grand game of one upmanship between China and the US. China has been successful in cornering huge fractions of the world’s manufacturing capacity however its ability to design and manufacture high quality computer chips still leaves a lot to be desired. The Chinese leadership is acutely aware that the sustenance of its military as well as economic heft depends on its ability to be independent in semiconductor manufacturing. The US has, albeit with some delay, realised that running faster than China is not a solution and it needs to constrain China’s rise as a peer competitor. The chip war between the United States and China has all the ingredients to be the 21st century’s Great Game.
The Indian perspective
From an Indian perspective what was most striking to me was the fantastic environment that the US society enables for its innovators and entrepreneurs. While there is no dearth of genius in our country, lack of an enabling system stifles creativity. Innovation is conflated with quick fixes and visible wins. I read the book with a muffled expectation of finding out where India stood in this war of grand strategy and to my disappointment India just found two mentions in the entire tome. The first was a passing mention of manufacturing of some Apple products moving to India and the second was with respect to China’s ability to dominate the Himalayan border. That the leading strategic game in global politics does not have India as a major player should be a matter of grave concern for our geostrategic as well as scientific community. The Production Linked Incentive Scheme launched by the Government of India in the hope of spurring growth of semiconductor manufacturing is a timely step in the right direction but sustained and concerted efforts are needed for India to capture important choke points in the supply chain of computer chips.
As an Indian, Chip War reads like a love letter to the American way of life. It is a celebration of the depth and maturity of the US government, business & institutions and above all its power to attract the best and brightest from across the globe.
Further Reading
1. https://newsroom.intel.com/wp-content...
2. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/08/bo...
3. https://www.economist.com/culture/202...
4. https://www.ft.com/content/7539dcab-f...
5. https://www.thehindu.com/news/nationa...
March 12, 2024
Die kritischste Technologie der Welt 📱
In „Der Chip Krieg. Wie die USA und China um die technologische Vorherrschaft auf der Welt kämpfen“ zeichnet der US-Amerikanische Wirtschaftshistoriker Chris Miller nach, wie Computerchips zu der global kritischsten Technologie werden konnte. Hierbei steht zunächst das Silicon Valley im Vordergrund, in deren Umfeld Computerchips erfunden & massiv weiterentwickelt wurden. Computerchips wurden auf Basis des Mooreschen Gesetz immer leistungsfähiger und kleiner. Parallel stieg durch die Digitalisierung der Gesellschaft der Chip-Bedarf massiv an, so dass heute in so gut wie jedem technischen Gerät Halbleiter verbaut sind. Aufgrund des beliebten Fabricationless-Ansatzes im Silicon Valley verlagerte sich die eigentliche Herstellung von Halbleitern jedoch zunehmend nach Asien, wodurch TSMC in Taiwan zum bedeutendsten Chiphersteller der Welt aufstieg. Das bedeutet auch, dass die Chip-Abhängigkeit Europas gen Asien als massiv eingestuft werden muss. In Deutschland geht kein Auto vom Produktionsband ohne zuvor Halbleiter verbaut zu bekommen. Käme es zu Störungen in den Lieferketten, wie bspw. im Falle der strengen Anti-Corona-Policies oder eines militärischen Angriffs auf Taiwan, so würde die deutsche Wirtschaft hiervon arg in Mitleidenschaft gezogen werden.
Auf den 440 Seiten gelingt es Miller sehr gut, die wirtschafts- und technikgeschichtlichen Hintergründe zum Aufstieg der Halbleiter zu beleuchten. Dem gegenüber stehen die geopolitischen Implikationen, anders als Buchtitel & Untertitel suggerieren, jedoch klar im Hintergrund. Sie spielen vor allem im letzten Drittel des Buches eine Rolle – für mich zugleich der beste Buch-Abschnitt. Ich denke in dieser Hinsicht hätte „Der Chip Krieg“ noch stärker ausfallen können, denn es ist ja gerade die strategische Bedeutung der Halbleiterindustrie, die den Welthandel wieder stärker politisiert und Wirtschaftspolitik zunehmend nach geopolitischen Kriterien ausrichtet. Vor diesem Hintergrund halte ich „Der Chip Krieg“ für ein gutes Buch – allerdings für keines der allerhöchsten Kategorie, auch wenn man das von einem „Economist Book of the year“ vielleicht hätte erwarten können
Review auf Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/C4aEgknNSuc
In „Der Chip Krieg. Wie die USA und China um die technologische Vorherrschaft auf der Welt kämpfen“ zeichnet der US-Amerikanische Wirtschaftshistoriker Chris Miller nach, wie Computerchips zu der global kritischsten Technologie werden konnte. Hierbei steht zunächst das Silicon Valley im Vordergrund, in deren Umfeld Computerchips erfunden & massiv weiterentwickelt wurden. Computerchips wurden auf Basis des Mooreschen Gesetz immer leistungsfähiger und kleiner. Parallel stieg durch die Digitalisierung der Gesellschaft der Chip-Bedarf massiv an, so dass heute in so gut wie jedem technischen Gerät Halbleiter verbaut sind. Aufgrund des beliebten Fabricationless-Ansatzes im Silicon Valley verlagerte sich die eigentliche Herstellung von Halbleitern jedoch zunehmend nach Asien, wodurch TSMC in Taiwan zum bedeutendsten Chiphersteller der Welt aufstieg. Das bedeutet auch, dass die Chip-Abhängigkeit Europas gen Asien als massiv eingestuft werden muss. In Deutschland geht kein Auto vom Produktionsband ohne zuvor Halbleiter verbaut zu bekommen. Käme es zu Störungen in den Lieferketten, wie bspw. im Falle der strengen Anti-Corona-Policies oder eines militärischen Angriffs auf Taiwan, so würde die deutsche Wirtschaft hiervon arg in Mitleidenschaft gezogen werden.
Auf den 440 Seiten gelingt es Miller sehr gut, die wirtschafts- und technikgeschichtlichen Hintergründe zum Aufstieg der Halbleiter zu beleuchten. Dem gegenüber stehen die geopolitischen Implikationen, anders als Buchtitel & Untertitel suggerieren, jedoch klar im Hintergrund. Sie spielen vor allem im letzten Drittel des Buches eine Rolle – für mich zugleich der beste Buch-Abschnitt. Ich denke in dieser Hinsicht hätte „Der Chip Krieg“ noch stärker ausfallen können, denn es ist ja gerade die strategische Bedeutung der Halbleiterindustrie, die den Welthandel wieder stärker politisiert und Wirtschaftspolitik zunehmend nach geopolitischen Kriterien ausrichtet. Vor diesem Hintergrund halte ich „Der Chip Krieg“ für ein gutes Buch – allerdings für keines der allerhöchsten Kategorie, auch wenn man das von einem „Economist Book of the year“ vielleicht hätte erwarten können
Review auf Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/C4aEgknNSuc
April 27, 2023
We live in the Silicon age. Microprocessors are so pervasive that we no longer even count how many we have around us. And we have hundreds around us at any given moment.
This is an excellent sense making book. 200 odd pages that give you a very crisp understanding of how this industry came to be and how it shapes the world today.
Well written and well researched. I highly recommend you read this.
This is an excellent sense making book. 200 odd pages that give you a very crisp understanding of how this industry came to be and how it shapes the world today.
Well written and well researched. I highly recommend you read this.
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