While working at SpotX, I had the opportunity to visit our server cage at one of Equinix's Amsterdam data centres.
Walking the floor, I felt heat emanating from servers, heard the rush of exhaust fans, and smelled the flinty aroma of electrical components. It was a sensory experience that ignited my deep curiosity about the hardware that powers our digital universe. I just finished a fascinating book, "Chip War" by Chris Miller, which covered the history of this age-defining technology with macroscopic impact despite its microscopic size.
With his expertise in international affairs, Chris Miller elevates this from a mere tech narrative into a compelling geopolitical thriller. The book presents a comprehensive history, starting with the early days of the "traitorous eight" from Fairchild Semiconductor and coming up to 2022, our current "chip wars" involving countries like the U.S., China, and Taiwan. Miller's storytelling is compelling, weaving together complex technical details with geopolitical tensions. It's not just about transistors and circuits; it's about culture, control, and power.
Reading the book reveals the mind-bogglingly narrow supply chain that underpins our digital universe. It's staggering to realize that ASML in the Netherlands is the only company worldwide to produce and maintain the machines that carve nano-scale transistors into the world's most sophisticated chips. These extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, composed of nearly 500k components, depend on a light source manufactured by a single company in Berkeley. Their precision is crazy, carving features onto silicon wafers that are 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair and about two and half times the circumference of a strand of DNA. Then, when it comes to assembling and testing the highest-end chips at scale, the world can only rely on two chip fabricators: Samsung in South Korea and TSMC in Taiwan. Any hiccup in this supply chain triggers global shocks, impacting everything from the smartphone in your pocket to data centres training the sophisticated models underpinning AI-driven drug discovery.
In conclusion, "Chip War" is an absolute must-read for anyone who, like me, is captivated by the transformative potential of artificial intelligence. As we marvel at AI's potential, it is easy to forget the fragile global supply chain that makes it all possible. This book reveals the geopolitical and technological structures that enable the sophisticated chips that power our AI models to exist. Check it out!