I SAW THE FACE OF GOD IN A CHIP FACTORY
WIRED|May 2023
INSIDE TSMC, THE MYSTERIOUS TAIWANESE COMPANY AT THE CENTER OF THE GLOBAL SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY.
VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
I SAW THE FACE OF GOD IN A CHIP FACTORY

[1] A QUINTILLION MINIATURE MASTERPIECES

I ARRIVE IN Taiwan brooding morbidly on the fate of democracy. My luggage is lost. This is my pilgrimage to the Sacred Mountain of Protection. The Sacred Mountain is reckoned to protect the whole island of Taiwan-and even, by the supremely pious, to protect democracy itself, the sprawling experiment in governance that has held moral and actual sway over the would-be free world for the better part of a century. The mountain is in fact an industrial park in Hsinchu, a coastal city southwest of Taipei. Its shrine bears an unassuming name: the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company..

By revenue, TSMC is the largest semiconductor company in the world. In 2020 it quietly joined the world's 10 most valuable companies. It's now bigger than Meta and Exxon. The company also has the world's biggest logic chip manufacturing capacity and produces, by one analysis, a staggering 92 percent of the world's most avant-garde chips-the ones inside the nuclear weapons, planes, submarines, and hypersonic missiles on which the international balance of hard power is predicated.

Perhaps more to the point, TSMC makes a third of all the world's silicon chips, notably the ones in iPhones and Macs. Every six months, just one of TSMC's 13 foundries-the redoubtable Fab 18 in Tainan-carves and etches a quintillion transistors for Apple. In the form of these miniature masterpieces, which sit atop microchips, the semiconductor industry churns out more objects in a year than have ever been produced in all the other factories in all the other industries in the history of the world.

Denne historien er fra May 2023-utgaven av WIRED.

Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.

Denne historien er fra May 2023-utgaven av WIRED.

Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.

FLERE HISTORIER FRA WIREDSe alt
Spin Cycle - To study tornadoes, it helps to wear a skirt (and rocket launchers).
WIRED

Spin Cycle - To study tornadoes, it helps to wear a skirt (and rocket launchers).

To study tornadoes, it helps to wear a skirt (and rocket launchers). When the Dominator is about to intercept a tornado, Timmer uses a two-prong system to anchor the vehicle. Air compressors lower the car so its thick rubber skirt nearly touches the ground, and spikes wedge 6 inches into the earth to firmly prevent the vehicle from liftoff. Timmer and ONeal have seen roughly 65 tornadoes in the past six months. It was a historic amount, ONeal says. A lot of meteorological setups are busts, but every day we drove out this year, we felt like we would see a tornado.

time-read
1 min  |
September - October 2024
Fantastic Plastic - a plastic bag might be the most overengineered object in history.
WIRED

Fantastic Plastic - a plastic bag might be the most overengineered object in history.

Stretchy seaweed. Reverse vending machines. QR-coded take-out boxes. To cure our addiction to disposable crap, we'll all need to get a little loony.

time-read
10+ mins  |
September - October 2024
Piece of Mind - This diagram maps 1 cubic millimeter of the brain-but its unprecedented clarity deepens the mysteries of cognition.
WIRED

Piece of Mind - This diagram maps 1 cubic millimeter of the brain-but its unprecedented clarity deepens the mysteries of cognition.

This diagram maps 1 cubic millimeter of the brain-but its unprecedented clarity deepens the mysteries of cognition. Although this image wouldn't look out of place on a gallery wall alongside other splashy works of abstract art, it represents something very real: a 1-cubic-millimeter chunk of a woman's brain, removed during a procedure to treat her for epilepsy. Researchers at Harvard University stained the sample with heavy metals, embedded it in resin, cut it into slices approximately 34 nanometers thick

time-read
1 min  |
September - October 2024
I Am Laura Kipnis-Bot, and I Will Make Reading Sexy and Tragic Again
WIRED

I Am Laura Kipnis-Bot, and I Will Make Reading Sexy and Tragic Again

WHEN A FLATTERING EMAIL ARRIVED inviting me to participate in an AI venture called Rebind that I'd later come to think will radically transform the entire way booklovers read books, I felt pretty sure it was a scam.

time-read
10+ mins  |
September - October 2024
DAMAGE CONTROL
WIRED

DAMAGE CONTROL

According to Léna Lazare, the 26-year-old face of the radical climate movement, they're also acts of joy.

time-read
10+ mins  |
September - October 2024
AN IMPERFECT STORM
WIRED

AN IMPERFECT STORM

CAN THE U.A.E. REALLY MAKE RAIN ON DEMAND OR IS IT SELLING VAPORWARE?

time-read
10+ mins  |
September - October 2024
THE HOLE IN THE MAP OF THE WORLD
WIRED

THE HOLE IN THE MAP OF THE WORLD

ON THE SURFACE, THERE'S NOTHING UNUSUAL ABOUT IT. JUST A SPOT OF OCEAN. BUT BENEATH THE WAVES LURKS SOMETHING INCREDIBLE: A MASSIVE WATERFALL. AND IN ITS MYSTERIOUS DEPTHS, THE FATE OF THE WORLD CHURNS.

time-read
10+ mins  |
September - October 2024
COOLER HEADS
WIRED

COOLER HEADS

The deadliest environmental threat to city dwellers worldwide isn't earthquakes, tornadoes, flooding, or fire. It's heat.

time-read
4 mins  |
September - October 2024
TERMINAL VELOCITY
WIRED

TERMINAL VELOCITY

IT WAS 2 AM at Denver International Airport, and Jared Murphy was only a few hours into a planned 17-hour layover.

time-read
3 mins  |
September - October 2024
THE ETERNAL TRUTH OF MARKDOWN
WIRED

THE ETERNAL TRUTH OF MARKDOWN

If the robots take over, we should at least speak their language.

time-read
4 mins  |
September - October 2024