Semiconductor | Most precious things in the current era.
There’s a cold war going on pretty much all over the world over semiconductors. Although it was invented in America, it has the largest production hub in Taiwan (TSMC retains its position as the largest chip foundry), Asia. And also in South Korea, and Japan playing a disproportionately large role in semiconductor manufacturing and production. China is trying hard to get in the race. Although China manufactures a large number of electronics products, it has to look to Taiwan or other countries for semiconductors. From just a few days back, there are plans to build semiconductor manufacturing facilities (Fabs) in India too. Microchips are planned to be manufactured here. The big fabs are a very expensive project. At present, let’s say that a typical fabs costs more than 100 billion dollars with maintenance cost each year approximate 20 billion USD. Due to geopolitical reasons, need to build such a factory in India. after Taiwan, Big tech giants of the world are working on it now.
On the other hand, according to many geopoliticians, there may be several problems in creating fabs in India. Skilled manpower, and large investments. The factory will cost more than $100 billion to manufacture semiconductors. Very complex and high technical procedure. This factory is not like any other electric or electronics factory. A major semiconductor company has an article that clearly states “How clean is clean”. That is, the highest cleaning method should be kept here. Let’s say if one of the hundred percent dust particles, enter inside this factory, then the machine will be damaged and all the microchips that have been made are likely to be damaged. . Simply put it need 10000 times cleaner air than the cleanest weather we have. That is, there should be completely zero dust. That is, moreover usually ten thousand dust particles in one cubic meter of air. But in this type of work, a maximum of 10 particles of dust of 100 to 200 nm size should be kept in the air per cubic meter.
As many semiconductor factories exist in the world, now let’s see how they work. And some countries are controllers of this semiconductor industry. The name of the US comes first. USA is the king of the semiconductor. America developed the first semiconductor design in 1950 and, and its copyright design, IP, protocol are all owned by America, which does not share the design with anyone else. In other words, this design has been reserved by a complete monopoly.
One more time if you remember. Just like mineral oil is our driving force, these microchips are now necessary for our every work, camera, television, PC ,mobile, car, AC, AI, Airplanes etc. and all electronic device without these chips. Basically, nothing can be done without these things to avoid this digital.
Thus, we are completely dependent on these microchips. Generally speaking, what does it do? Its main function is to control the current electricity. For example, a conductor is placed on one side, through which electricity is passing at a fast speed… on the other side, there is an insulator, whose job is to control the current speed. The material that lies between these two in thick spots is called a semiconductor. Semiconductors help to transport only a certain amount of electricity as per design. If a certain amount of current cannot be controlled, an interruption will occur and the semiconductor circuit will block the flow of electricity.
Semiconductor process is very complex and complicated, an example is given in the above description to make it simple. If we simply think about it, if this electric current is not controlled, then it can be seen that the sudden high current can bust or burn or destroy the device that I am using. That is why semiconductors have become very important to protect every electronic device.
Because America preserves its design IP, keeping America at number one, if I go to number two or the second important flex in the process of this semiconductor manufacturing process, then its name is silicon wafers.
Silicon wafers require very high-quality sand to be manufactured. It cannot be made with any ordinary sea or desert sand. This need to be very high-quality sand is taken to Japan. Japan has the most efficient industry to manufacture these silicon wafers. Japan manufactures very finely round wafers and sends them to a company in the Netherlands. Here too there is a monopoly of the Netherlands. ASML, this company has technology that manufactures wafers from Japan. Here the wafers are super thin and make room for the circuit board. On top of which the transistor will be placed later. And it’s built in such a way that more than a billion transistors can fit in one spot of silicon. The more transistors that can be placed, the more efficient the semiconductor. This process is called lithography. ASML, mainly produce this Lithography machine (fully monopoly), each machine cost 200–300 million USD. only five customers around the world can buy this machine-like SK Hynix,
Micron, Samsung, Intel and TSMC, last three are making up nearly 84.7% ASML Business. And rest is another foundry.
Other than this company in the Netherlands, there are only companies that do lithography machine even at the Covid-19 time there was huge shortage of chips but ASML hardworking, overcome the situations. Anyway, When the wafers are ready for transistor placement, they are transferred to the foundry company I mentioned earlier. The job of this foundry company is to precisely place the circuits on the paths or areas that the Dutch company has created on the silicon wafer, Micro tips are ready at the different foundry.
clearly seen that starting from America, it came to foundries or factories of different countries and finished the journey of microchips or semiconductors.
Now let’s look at the market. China is the largest market for semiconductors. About 60 percent of the world’s semiconductors are used by Chinese electronic manufacturing companies.
That’s why China always has a big eye on it. If China cannot produce these semiconductors on its own. Its dream of becoming a superpower will always fail and its electronic industry will have to work in dependence on others.
Even after using 60% of semiconductors, it will always be dependent on America and ASML , Netherlands .USA stopped sailing ASML EUV Lithography machine to china for the Geopolitical reason .
Taiwan’s semiconductor sector accounted for US$115 billion, around 20 percent of the global semiconductor industry. In sectors such as foundry operations, Taiwanese companies account for 50 percent of the world market, with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) the biggest player in the foundry market. significant surge in demand, with both Apple and Nvidia emerging as major players in the race for cutting-edge chip technology, pushing the boundaries of innovation. Samsung make his own by the way.
Again, if we come to the technical side. Then it can be seen that microchips are being developed, it is so small in size and so complex, for example, a semiconductor is much smaller in size than the fingertips of a hand. On top of that are billions of transistors. The distance from one transistor to another is measured in nanometers (NM). A nanometer is generally defined as one billionth of a meter called a nanometer. Now the shorter the length of this nanometer, the higher the power of the microchips. The shorter the distance, the more transistors can be set here. Again, the more transistors, the more powerful the semiconductor microchips. 5 nm used in the current iPhone Thirteen. And Apple is trying to reduce it even further to 3mm in future iPads.
KNN Linku
Writer, Columnist
knnlinku @ gmail.com
