Seminconductors Powering Our World

What do computers, phones, microwave ovens, MRI machines, satellites, and printers have in common? Their functions are regulated by semiconductors.

- Ong Xiang Hong

Semiconductors have transformed our lives. They form the heart of various kinds of electronic devices, including diodes, transistors, and integrated circuits. The modern computing revolution was built on the back of semiconductors, due to their compactness, reliability, power efficiency, and low cost. These wafers of silicon make up the core of every computer and smartphone. Turning the second most abundant element in the Earth’s crust (after oxygen) into these chips is nothing less than a minor miracle. Every step in the process of transforming sand into semiconductor is a carefully orchestrated sequence of photolithographic etching and chemical processing. Semiconductor fabrication facilities are known as foundries, with much of the process taking place in an automated, hermetically sealed environment.

Needless to say, there is plenty of money to be made in semiconductor fabrication. But competition in the semiconductor industry is cutthroat, and profit margins are razor-thin. In 1965, Intel CEO Gordon Moore posited Moore’s Law—which states that processing power on a microchip doubles about every two years, while the cost is halved. In other words, the industry lives and dies by a simple creed: smaller, faster and cheaper.

The benefit of being tiny is pretty simple—finer lines mean more transistors can be packed onto the same chip. The more transistors on a chip, the faster it can do its work. Thanks in large part to fierce competition and to new technologies that lower the cost of production per chip, within a matter of months, the price of a new chip can fall 50 per cent.