Silicon Chips

25-07-23 00 / episode: 190

Script

"Silicon chips.

They are indeed remarkable little things.

These are the chips that power all our computers.

And when I say computers, I don't just mean your laptop and notebook computers or your desktop computers, there are silicon chips in just about all electronic devices these days.

They are, of course, in your smartphones, they are in your air conditioners, they're in your cars and they're in your fridges, they're in your handy telephone, silicon chips are everywhere and interestingly enough, we can't make enough of them.

Over the last three years, we had the COVID pandemic, everybody had to stay home.

And as a result, they started buying more electronic devices that meant that the electronic device makers made more and they bought more chips and rapidly they ran out of chips.

The market was designed to only make a certain amount and they couldn't meet the demand.

Now, it's a problem.

I think though, they're going to overcome the problem soon and then we'll have lots of chips.

They're also getting smaller and smaller.

Now, of course, the chip itself is getting smaller, but we're talking about the circuit inside the chip and that's important because when the chips get smaller, they get more powerful, you can put more circuits into the same space.

They also go faster.

So your computing goes faster.

That's important.

And they use less power and they use, they make less heat.

All of these things make it in, make it more efficient.

But they're coming to a limit with these silicon chips, they can't get much smaller after a while.

I'm not sure what the limit is.

but then again, they're not sure either.

They keep on overcoming the limit.

They keep on making it smaller than they thought they could before.

So who knows where it's gonna stop? But right now we might be looking at silicon chips that don't get much better soon and then we have to go to quantum computing and that's a topic for another day."