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it's pretty hard to imagine a world without microchips they're not just in tech like your phone and your computer they're in pretty much every electronic you'll encounter today refrigerators washing machines strings of led lights electric toothbrushes cars and so much more they used to be so easy to get they cost only about a dollar each but right now they're going for as much as 150 bucks a pop because there is a huge shortage a shortage that isn't entirely due to the covet 19 pandemic so why are these microchips so useful and so in demand well their moore's law made real tens of billions of transistors packed into a space about as big as your pinky fingernail and a transistor is essentially a tiny electrical switch
that lets electrons flow when open or stops them when closed these transistors are layered over and around one another on a wafer of silicon to create a network that functions together as a circuit the pattern of electrons flowing through these gates plus sensors and other stuff allow you to communicate with the device but these chips are getting smaller and smaller packed with more and more processing power when we're talking about tens of billions of transistors in the space of a few nanometers the manufacturing becomes hugely complicated and time consuming we're talking clean rooms with air 10 000 times more filtered than normal room air etching the transistors on with super precise lasers so a facility capable of producing chips like this costs tens of
billions of dollars to get up and running so it's just a little tough and during the kobe 19 pandemic many of these invaluable chip factories had to close along with the rest of the world but the demand for chips didn't slow down in fact it exploded as devices became our main way of continuing to work entertaining ourselves and connecting with one another with this mismatch of supply and demand chips have become more and more precious but it's not just the facilities that have been affected these chips and the materials used to make them also have to be shipped all over the world as ports struggle with staff shortages and the bottleneck of goods caused by shutdowns getting things from one place to another
takes a lot longer and is more expensive than it used to be but the world's chip shortage can't only be blamed on the pandemic this has been brewing for a while chip manufacturing is dominated by just a few companies in just a few countries like tsmc a taiwanese chip manufacturer makes 92 of the world's most sophisticated chips 60 of the chips used in cars worldwide and 30 of the simpler chips used in everyday items now the us develops and sells the most chips overall but the vast majority of the world's advanced chip manufacturing happens either in taiwan or south korea so shortages have occurred in the past when these places have been hit by natural disasters so it was a precarious infrastructure in the first place
and the number of these manufacturing facilities hasn't grown as fast as our digital landscape has with the launch of 5g technology more demand for smarter devices more use of cloud computing the move to electric cars all of this added on to how expensive and difficult chip factories are to build and you have the perfect storm for a shortage and then kobit 19 hit the impacts of all of this are being felt across all kinds of industries auto companies are rolling out millions less cars in 2022 some products from companies like apple and playstation are going to be delayed and consumers may see less variety on shelves longer wait times between clicking order and the item actually arriving plus potentially larger price tags
now if you're not in the market for this newer tech you're still out of luck older chip technology is actually the hardest to come by the industry has been so busy investing in the super complex and fancy chip manufacturing that older equipment has fallen by the wayside making it harder to keep up with demand for the chips that go in simpler devices and it's not just consumer tech that's spilling the squeeze either some of the world's premier scientific institutions have also had to delay the launch of the most powerful super computers to date because of chip shortages and experts think it's gonna be a while before the industry works through the backlog of orders that's piled up like things might be
back to normal in chip world by early but this is optimistic some experts say it's unrealistic to expect production to catch back up to demand before 2030. as countries feel the pinch they're thinking more about investing in domestic chip production so that outside forces don't have as much impact on the market more factories in more countries with more capabilities are on their way but like we've said the science and tech required is not quick and easy to implement so hence the 20 30 prediction in the meantime the factories that are able to produce them are gonna be slowly chipping away at the orders that are still flooding in if you want more on moore's law and computer chips then check out this video
here and keep coming back to seeger for all of your semiconductor news if you have another tech topic you want to see us cover leave us a comment down below and as always don't forget to subscribe and thanks for watching i'll see you next time
