Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Boulette and
Speaker 1: I am an editor here in how stuff works dot Com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me cracking up at my goofiness is
Speaker 1: senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Seriously, guys, if you could hear
Speaker 1: our pre show and post shows, you would you would
Speaker 1: just you would think that the goofy stuff we do
Speaker 1: during the show is nothing in embarrasson nothing. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: turn this episode off with a little oh listener mail.
Speaker 1: This listener mail comes from Jacob a k. A. Booger,
Speaker 1: and Jacob gave himself that name. I'm catching up to
Speaker 1: the present day podcasts and them on USB versus FireWire,
Speaker 1: and I still haven't heard you guys mentioned a m
Speaker 1: D yet. Please talk about them since I think they're
Speaker 1: better than Intel in more than a few ways. Thanks
Speaker 1: Jacob Booger, Well Booger, we thought we'd talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about kind of microchips in general and how they're made. Um,
Speaker 1: we don't tend to to break things down to company
Speaker 1: by company. But of course Intel on a m D
Speaker 1: are both known for their microchip architecture. Yeah they uh.
Speaker 1: For the uninitiated, these two are pretty much the big
Speaker 1: guys in the computer segments like the personal computer. Intel
Speaker 1: an m D are wrestling back and forth with one
Speaker 1: another on a day to day basis. Now, there are
Speaker 1: lots and lots and lots and lots of other companies
Speaker 1: who make microprocessors of different kinds. Right, Let's let's be fair. Yes,
Speaker 1: when you say wrestling, Intel's kind of the enormous sumo
Speaker 1: wrestler and a m D is like the luchador. Yes,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't necessarily mean that in this case the
Speaker 1: luchador is you know, a lesser. Oh no, no no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying by market share, okay, yes, by market share, yes,
Speaker 1: until has the the lion's share of the market. Um.
Speaker 1: But there there are many many other microprocessor manufacturers out there, um,
Speaker 1: you know, some of whom are limiting their their work
Speaker 1: to one or you know, one or two different products.
Speaker 1: You can find microprocessors and just about everything anything that
Speaker 1: that's electronic these days, because we've come to roll eye
Speaker 1: on them. Yeah, we also had another listener asked us
Speaker 1: about microchips, and I would like to apologize to that
Speaker 1: listener because I could not find your email and or tweet. Um,
Speaker 1: I know that you sent it to me. And so
Speaker 1: we wanted and this listener wanted to know what microchips were,
Speaker 1: and you know, what they did and how they were made.
Speaker 1: And so we were going to kind of talk about
Speaker 1: a little bit of of what they do, but not
Speaker 1: a whole lot because we've talked about it before. But uh,
Speaker 1: a microchip. You know, when you hear that term, you
Speaker 1: might think, well, what the heck is that. Technically it's
Speaker 1: an integrated circuit. Yes, that's what a microchip is. And
Speaker 1: so if you remember when we talked about the basics
Speaker 1: of electronics and electronic theory, a circuit is a pathway
Speaker 1: for electrons to flow through, Yes, and of course the
Speaker 1: flow of electrons we know better as electricity. At least
Speaker 1: that's the current definition. Oh my gosh, I totally forgot
Speaker 1: that we went down that road last time. Alright, So, yes,
Speaker 1: a circuit is a pathway for electricity. Integrated circuit is
Speaker 1: a special kind of circuit. Now, let's let's I guess
Speaker 1: you want to are we gonna take the way back
Speaker 1: machine here, or you want to just talk about the past. Oh,
Speaker 1: we could just talk about the past, all right. So
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody gassed up the way back, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, well, right, yeah, I I noticed the last
Speaker 1: time I was pulling the cord, it wasn't really it
Speaker 1: wasn't really starting up the way you would expect it to.
Speaker 1: So anyway, back in the day, the day being a
Speaker 1: long time ago. Uh, circuits were much larger than they
Speaker 1: are today. Um, they you could actually see each of
Speaker 1: the discrete elements pretty clearly because it was all on
Speaker 1: a much larger scale. And we're going all the way
Speaker 1: back to vacuum tubes here talking about So vacuum tubes
Speaker 1: acted the way transistors do. Now, so let's let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about what exactly they did. The whole
Speaker 1: purpose of it was to control the flow of electricity.
Speaker 1: It would be to allow electricity to flow through that
Speaker 1: part of the circuit, and you could even use it
Speaker 1: to amplify the electricity if you needed to. Okay, you're
Speaker 1: just staring at me now. I wasn't planning on talking
Speaker 1: about vacuum tubes, so I didn't at any rate, Uh,
Speaker 1: The problem with vacuum tubes is they were really big
Speaker 1: and they produced a lot of heat. They do produce
Speaker 1: a lot of heat. I can tell you that right now.
Speaker 1: I have a a beaten up old amplifier that uses
Speaker 1: vacuum tubes. And not only do they produce a lot
Speaker 1: of heat, they're really heavy and unwieldy because they take
Speaker 1: up a lot of space. Yes, so those are all problems, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you've got it, produces a lot of heat,
Speaker 1: takes up a lot of space, and they're really heavy.
Speaker 1: So the early computers were these enormous machines that generated
Speaker 1: uh so much heat that it was hard to be
Speaker 1: in the same room as them. Um, of course, it's
Speaker 1: hard to be in the same room anyway, because they
Speaker 1: pretty much took up an entire room. Well, but it
Speaker 1: this way. You're not going to see a vacuum tube
Speaker 1: powered iPod anytime soon because they take up a lot
Speaker 1: of space, right, So you can't put that in your pocket, Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: you can't that. And and in fact, the development of
Speaker 1: the semiconductor was what led to you know, transistor radios,
Speaker 1: and that's when we started getting a lot of portable
Speaker 1: electronics because it was possible to to throw a portable
Speaker 1: radio in your pocket instead of you know, having to
Speaker 1: deal with the one that was plugged in you know,
Speaker 1: at home, on on the desk, right, the one that
Speaker 1: was almost the same size as the desk it was
Speaker 1: on the Yeah. So, so vacuum tubes were limiting us
Speaker 1: quite a bit, uh because of their size, because they
Speaker 1: would also burn out, and if one burnt out, that
Speaker 1: meant that your whole system was no longer working and
Speaker 1: you would have to replace the burnt out tube. So
Speaker 1: we needed to find something that was smaller, generated less heat,
Speaker 1: was more reliable, and that ended up being the transistor. Now, uh,
Speaker 1: that was invented back in It would still be quite
Speaker 1: a while before we got transistors small enough to put
Speaker 1: them on like a circuit board. The earliest transistors were
Speaker 1: actually pretty large. Um. And then even then, you're still
Speaker 1: talking about a bunch of discrete elements that you wired
Speaker 1: together to create a circuit. Yeah right, So yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you've done this, you might have a physics classes
Speaker 1: you've done where you've created an electric circuit this way,
Speaker 1: where you know, you're using wires to connect various elements
Speaker 1: together and then you hook it up to a battery.
Speaker 1: So if you haven't, you should because it's a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. It's a good learning experience. But that's an aside, right,
Speaker 1: so the sorry, yeah, I know, now I'm throwing off
Speaker 1: down like okay with notes notes, So let's talk about
Speaker 1: the complex circuits here. Um, there was an issue called
Speaker 1: the tyranny of numbers. The tyranny of numbers? Have you
Speaker 1: heard about this? Wasn't that a mystery novel? Uh? No? Not? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm gonna say no, it could be true.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna write it if there wasn't one. Right, now,
Speaker 1: here's the here's the definition. Advanced circuits contained so many
Speaker 1: components and connections they were virtually impossible to build. This
Speaker 1: problem was known as the tyranny of number burrs. So that,
Speaker 1: in other words, we get to a point where we
Speaker 1: can build circuits, right, but in order to build them
Speaker 1: at the complexity that we need, the tools we have
Speaker 1: are two crude, right, using it, building it by hand.
Speaker 1: It's just there's no way you can have the level
Speaker 1: of precision you need in order to build a circuit
Speaker 1: that's small. What could possibly be the solution to the
Speaker 1: tyranny of numbers problem? Let's see I've mentioned it before already,
Speaker 1: the integrated circuit. Just say the integrated circuit. Okay, the
Speaker 1: integrated circuit. Very good. So in nineteen fifty eight, you've
Speaker 1: got Jack Kilby. Yes, and Kilby was working at Texas Instruments,
Speaker 1: one of those aforementioned companies that makes lots and lots
Speaker 1: of different kinds of microprocessors. That's correct. And Kilby at
Speaker 1: the time was brand new to the company. You know,
Speaker 1: he'd only been working there for a little while and
Speaker 1: had not earned any vacation yet. So there was a
Speaker 1: point where pretty much everyone went on vacation except for Kilby,
Speaker 1: and he was left there pondering the tyranny of numbers problem,
Speaker 1: and he came up with this idea. He thought, well,
Speaker 1: what if you were to build an entire circuit out
Speaker 1: of one piece of material, and you would essentially carve
Speaker 1: out the different elements that you would need out of
Speaker 1: that material, overlay it with some metal to be the connectors,
Speaker 1: and then you would have an entire circuit printed more
Speaker 1: or less on one single piece and you wouldn't have
Speaker 1: to build the individual elements. That was the idea behind
Speaker 1: the integrated circuit. I apologize, so Essentially he found a
Speaker 1: way to make the whole thing fit in a much
Speaker 1: more compact space. Right, and by using this method of
Speaker 1: carving away from a single elements a single chip, really
Speaker 1: you could make the different individual um parts of the
Speaker 1: circuit much much smaller than you could before. Um. Which
Speaker 1: is good because it has led to lots and lots
Speaker 1: of very very small devices. Well this is this is yeah,
Speaker 1: this is what eventually led up to Gordon Moore taking
Speaker 1: a look at the number of transistors uh that engineers
Speaker 1: were able to fit onto a single one inch diameter
Speaker 1: chip and say, look every at the time, I think
Speaker 1: it was every twelve months, they were doubling, although of
Speaker 1: course today we talked about it being every two years.
Speaker 1: Um Gordon, So Moore's law has slowed down over time,
Speaker 1: but it's still you're still talking about doubling over a
Speaker 1: set time limit, which is pretty amazing because you know,
Speaker 1: we're in the we're in the billions now. So um
Speaker 1: so how well, first of all, we I guess we
Speaker 1: should talk about the material they use to build these chips.
Speaker 1: Its silicon. Yes, it's not just silicon, it's extremely pure
Speaker 1: silicon YEP. As a matter of fact, when I was
Speaker 1: doing research on this. I found a video by a
Speaker 1: different part of our company. The Science Channel did a
Speaker 1: piece on silicon and it's it's um really fascinating what
Speaker 1: they do because they have to to melt down lumps
Speaker 1: of the material to to get you know, basically to
Speaker 1: reform it in the shape that they need for microprocessors.
Speaker 1: But it has to be extremely pure, so they have
Speaker 1: to clear out the chamber chamber with argonne gas to
Speaker 1: make sure that there's no air in there at all,
Speaker 1: melted down and then uh, they create essentially what looks
Speaker 1: like a giant silicon pencil. Yeah, it's a big cylinder
Speaker 1: cylinder of silicon, and then they put the cylinder through Um, well,
Speaker 1: they use they use a very fine wire to cut wafers. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's water thin, Yes it is. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: it's it's just a few millimeters thick each each layer,
Speaker 1: right and and um, so there they cut these these
Speaker 1: slices off and each slice becomes its own the owner,
Speaker 1: its own silicon wafer that you used to imprint uh,
Speaker 1: circuitry onto and you could end up using one wafer
Speaker 1: to produce dozens and dozens of chips. Yes, it's a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, every once in a while you'll see
Speaker 1: a picture in the news of some dignitary visiting a
Speaker 1: computer plant and they'll hold up a what looks like
Speaker 1: a giant disk and you're going, wait a minute, that's
Speaker 1: way too big to fit in my computer. Well, yes,
Speaker 1: this is. This is a cross section of that giant
Speaker 1: cylinder imprinted with in general and one the ones I've seen.
Speaker 1: When they show where they're holding it up there, you
Speaker 1: can see that there's something etched on on the silicon. Well,
Speaker 1: those are all the different individual chips or what would
Speaker 1: become chips if they were you know, uncontaminated by whoever
Speaker 1: it is holding it up right at the at the
Speaker 1: end of the process, once everything's been printed, you you
Speaker 1: chop that wafer into the various, uh, actual individual chips.
Speaker 1: Shop I mean you actually use a very fine saw.
Speaker 1: It's a diamond saw as a matter of fact, that
Speaker 1: they used to cut the uh, the slice of silicon
Speaker 1: up into lots and lots of little chips. But we've
Speaker 1: we've left out stuff all right, So well, the process
Speaker 1: is known as photolithography, and it's been in use for
Speaker 1: several years several by several, I mean many, it's actually
Speaker 1: kind of a it's really a neat neat idea. All right,
Speaker 1: so let's let's start with you've got your your silicon
Speaker 1: um also, well, well we'll go ahead and say where
Speaker 1: the stuff takes place, because we're talking about elements on
Speaker 1: these chips that are just a few nnometers in width.
Speaker 1: So any kind of impurity, any mode of dust that
Speaker 1: got on this thing is going to ruin it. A
Speaker 1: mode of dust would be enormous compared to one of
Speaker 1: the transistors on these chips. Exactly. Yeah, so you can't
Speaker 1: have any sort of of dust in there. Well, think
Speaker 1: about your environment for a second. Uh, just the dust
Speaker 1: in the air alone in your environment right now, unless
Speaker 1: you're in a clean room, is gonna be way too
Speaker 1: much to ever try and produce. Use a microchip, ye,
Speaker 1: so at least one that will function. Right, And we're humans.
Speaker 1: We give off lots of lots of dust. Dead skin
Speaker 1: cells have tons of dust every day if you look
Speaker 1: at the entire human population, literally tons of dust. So
Speaker 1: the these clean rooms can't have that. They don't have
Speaker 1: the luxury of being able to have that sort of
Speaker 1: dust flying around. So in order to prevent it, they
Speaker 1: have massive air conditioning systems that circulate the air in
Speaker 1: these these clean rooms. These clean rooms can be enormous,
Speaker 1: by the way, like the size of a warehouse, but
Speaker 1: in most of them, the air conditioning system is so
Speaker 1: powerful that it can completely circulate all the air in
Speaker 1: that room under ten minutes. It's pretty impressive. And uh,
Speaker 1: this is where Intel's famous bunny suit campaign came from.
Speaker 1: Back in the sadly, not the kind of bunny suit
Speaker 1: I was thinking. No, no, the bunny and the bunny
Speaker 1: suits are actually they they look like they're in some
Speaker 1: sort of high tech firefighting gear because their suits that
Speaker 1: they wear where they have hoods over their heads with
Speaker 1: a visor in them, and this basically keeps dust out
Speaker 1: of the air by you know if you see in
Speaker 1: the humans. But yeah, it keeps it inside the suit.
Speaker 1: The humans then they can't shed inside the clean rooms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I remember in that video you were referencing, they
Speaker 1: actually talk about how the air in these rooms is
Speaker 1: cleaner than the air you'll find in hospitals. That doesn't
Speaker 1: surprise because of the way, the speed and the filters
Speaker 1: that they use. So we've got this this uh environment
Speaker 1: that is it's not dust free because you're never gonna
Speaker 1: get that unless you're in a complete vacuum. Um. But
Speaker 1: it's about as limited as you possibly can be and
Speaker 1: still be on on earth. Uh. Now, let's talk about
Speaker 1: the actual process of photolithography. Yeah, but as we get
Speaker 1: into this, you're gonna see that we have improved on
Speaker 1: Dr Kilby's process. I'm assuming he is a doctor. I
Speaker 1: didn't see that part on the engineer at any rate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: on Kilby's process for creating microprocessor micro microchips. Because this
Speaker 1: is a very very sophisticated way of doing it. Right.
Speaker 1: So you start with your your pure silicon uh wafer, Yes,
Speaker 1: that you have sliced off of the the whole uh cylinder.
Speaker 1: Then the next thing you need to do is you
Speaker 1: need to uh create a mask. Now, the mask is
Speaker 1: and this is not in all forms of lithography, but
Speaker 1: we'll get into that. The mask is essentially a pattern. Yes, right,
Speaker 1: it's the pattern. It's what the chip is supposed to
Speaker 1: look like at the end. If you if you've ever
Speaker 1: worked in photography and uh with film, not with with
Speaker 1: the with the digital camera, and you are trying to
Speaker 1: make part of the picture a little darker when you're
Speaker 1: developing it, you would hold up something basically to block
Speaker 1: the light from getting to that part of the uh,
Speaker 1: to the photosensitive paper. Well that's basically what the mask
Speaker 1: is is blocking light from a very high energy ultra
Speaker 1: violet source which is going to shine onto the silicon wafer. Uh,
Speaker 1: and the mask is blocking that. Now why would we
Speaker 1: do this, Well, it's because the silicon is not just
Speaker 1: silicon at that point. They have also overlaid on top
Speaker 1: of that a piece of uh, photosensitive film right right,
Speaker 1: So you've got this, You put the photos intoitive film
Speaker 1: on top of the wafer, and then you've got this uh,
Speaker 1: this mask that ah that ultraviolet light shines through. When
Speaker 1: the ultraviolet light contacts the wafer, like, there's gonna be
Speaker 1: some parts that the mask blocks in, some parts that
Speaker 1: the mask lets through, right right, So the parts where
Speaker 1: the mask let's through the light, the light hits the wafer.
Speaker 1: And when you when you are finished with this first
Speaker 1: process and you wash the film uh away, the it
Speaker 1: takes anything that that the light has contacted gets essentially
Speaker 1: carved away. Well, basically what happens is that the high
Speaker 1: energy ultraviolet light causes that film to break up, you
Speaker 1: know it, Uh, the film doesn't react to the light
Speaker 1: very well. So that's the point. They wash it with
Speaker 1: water and that washes away the broken away bits, but
Speaker 1: you still have that protective film on the places where
Speaker 1: the light didn't touch because of the mask. Well right, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I worded it incorrectly. Well no, no, no, I was
Speaker 1: just clarifying. And then um, they once they rinse that away,
Speaker 1: they bake it. Then they use a process called etching,
Speaker 1: in which they use chemicals to dissolve the remaining protective film.
Speaker 1: Uh to Basically, you know, now you have just the
Speaker 1: etched wafer of silicon, right, so are film there and
Speaker 1: and also and also the stuff that was no longer
Speaker 1: covered by the film which had been you know, the
Speaker 1: film got zapped away wherever the light touched it. Yes,
Speaker 1: that gets etched away. Yes, so that's where you've actually
Speaker 1: carved away the the material. What's left standing is the
Speaker 1: stuff that was not touched by the light. That's just
Speaker 1: one round. You may have to do this dozens of
Speaker 1: times before you have actually carved out all the elements
Speaker 1: on your your your circuit. So well, there's another part
Speaker 1: of the process to the doping part, in which they
Speaker 1: change the electrical properties of the silicon. Right, doping means
Speaker 1: that you are purposefully introducing impurities into the material in
Speaker 1: order to change it's it's um well, the way it
Speaker 1: what either conducts or insulates. I mean, that's that's what
Speaker 1: a semiconductor is. Under certain circumstances that can conduct electricity
Speaker 1: and others it does not, right, and where it can
Speaker 1: conduct some electric electricity, but a not at a rapid
Speaker 1: rate as rapid as it was maybe at just certain temperatures.
Speaker 1: So again, this all depends upon the impurities that you
Speaker 1: introduce into it. So at the base you have to
Speaker 1: have the pure system so that it doesn't conduct electricity
Speaker 1: at all. Otherwise you do you have a chip that's
Speaker 1: not gonna work. Again, the ultimate goal here is to
Speaker 1: be able to direct the flow of electrons in a
Speaker 1: very specific way, and of course if your entire chip
Speaker 1: does that, If it doesn't, it's it's not specific at
Speaker 1: that point, and so you'd have a broken chip. So um, they,
Speaker 1: as Jonathan pointed out a moment ago, they continue to
Speaker 1: do this layer by layer by layers, so that um,
Speaker 1: again you're taking up less space because you have layers
Speaker 1: of material on top of one another, which you know
Speaker 1: there it's no longer and no longer requires it to
Speaker 1: take up so much physical space because it's all basically
Speaker 1: sandwiched on top of one another. But then there's the
Speaker 1: the metallization process, right, so you've carved away everything that
Speaker 1: doesn't need to be there. It's kind of like a sculptor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it didn't carve everything away that doesn't look like a circuit.
Speaker 1: Very nice, it's essentially that's what how it works. I'm
Speaker 1: on board with that. But again it's on an incredibly
Speaker 1: tiny level. And the reason it can be so tiny,
Speaker 1: you know, we've talked about before that the nano scales
Speaker 1: so small that you cannot view it through a light microscope. Yes,
Speaker 1: well that's because they're not using the way they can
Speaker 1: get at a small as. They're not using visible light. Again,
Speaker 1: they're using ultra violet light. Yes, and in fact, Intel
Speaker 1: uses um is using a process called extreme ultra violet
Speaker 1: lithography in their latest processors, which are the ones that
Speaker 1: have like the thirty two nnometer transistors, which is crazy.
Speaker 1: I figured they were building microchips sliding downhill on a
Speaker 1: street luge and that's not extreme, not that extreme. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna be in the X games. But so
Speaker 1: the motalization, this is where you've built all these elements
Speaker 1: by carving away the stuff that doesn't belong, but you
Speaker 1: still have to connect them together, right, you know, this
Speaker 1: is normally where you would be building wires. Well, the
Speaker 1: way they build wires and uh in these transistor or
Speaker 1: in these uh these circuits, it's actually kind of similar
Speaker 1: to the process we just described, except what they do
Speaker 1: is they put a layer of metal UM on top
Speaker 1: of the wafer and then again you put the this uh,
Speaker 1: this UV sensitive photo resist on top of that metal,
Speaker 1: and you have another mask. This mask is going to
Speaker 1: block out all the places that where hiring actually blocks
Speaker 1: out the places where you do want wiring, right, so
Speaker 1: you want the places you want protected. Yeah, so it'll
Speaker 1: block it'll block light. Wherever it blocks light, that's where
Speaker 1: a wire is going to be. Wherever light comes through,
Speaker 1: that's gonna carve away this metal. So again you go
Speaker 1: through another process where you run it through the system.
Speaker 1: The light ends up hitting the certain the designated areas
Speaker 1: on the wafer UM and that ends up going to
Speaker 1: that's gonna end up breaking down the metal so that
Speaker 1: you are left with just the wires that you want
Speaker 1: you've carved away everything you don't want again, you may
Speaker 1: have to do this process several times because in order
Speaker 1: to get all the connections you need, Um, you may
Speaker 1: need to do several layers on wires up to I
Speaker 1: think five I think was the last I had read, right,
Speaker 1: But um, it's again very similar to the lithography process
Speaker 1: of actually carving out the chip itself. Yep, and uh
Speaker 1: see there. This is all very cool and it has
Speaker 1: led to a number of you know, all kinds of
Speaker 1: different chips that are getting smaller and smaller and allowing
Speaker 1: Moore's law to continue more or less, except you know,
Speaker 1: for the laws of physics, which makes things different difficults. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's already made things difficult because remember when
Speaker 1: I mentioned the extreme ultra violet lithography, Yes, I do
Speaker 1: ever mentioned I remember when you mentioned that, because it
Speaker 1: was just like three minutes ago or something, so here
Speaker 1: was here was a barrier they that Intel had to
Speaker 1: find a way. And I know that I'm probably ticking
Speaker 1: off our our listener who wanted to hear about a
Speaker 1: m D and not Intel. But um, Intel had a
Speaker 1: problem when they were going to switch to EUV and
Speaker 1: it's it's just one of those fundamental things. The wavelength
Speaker 1: that they are using, the eu V wavelength is at
Speaker 1: thirteen point foreign denomenas. Okay, at that size, that is
Speaker 1: so small that practically every material absorbs it. So if
Speaker 1: you were to shine it on anything, it's just gonna
Speaker 1: get absorbed. Doesn't necessarily work if you if you need
Speaker 1: it for lithography, they found that if they used the
Speaker 1: eu V in a vacuum and they used reflective surfaces
Speaker 1: instead of lenses to focus and direct this light, they
Speaker 1: could then use it in lithography. And there's also another
Speaker 1: form of lithography we can mention, which is the electron
Speaker 1: beam lithography. Yes, now, in this case, if you were
Speaker 1: to use electron beam lithography, you can get very very
Speaker 1: very precise and build these incredibly tiny structures um and
Speaker 1: you don't need a mask. You can just put it
Speaker 1: through a computer program and the computer program will direct
Speaker 1: the beam properly so that you don't necessarily you don't
Speaker 1: have to build the mask for the light to shine through. However,
Speaker 1: it's a much slower process than photolithography, so it's not
Speaker 1: really considered a viable alternative for the mass market right now.
Speaker 1: But you were talking about reaching the the physical limits
Speaker 1: of of size, which doesn't have anything to do with
Speaker 1: necessarily our manufacturing process. It has to do with very
Speaker 1: fundamental physical laws on the quantum level. Right, at a
Speaker 1: certain point those divider has been between the uh the
Speaker 1: pathways that electricity uh travel down. Once they get to
Speaker 1: a certain point, the electrons are going to be able
Speaker 1: to pass through them, and it's going to cause a
Speaker 1: serious problem. Yeah, it's called electron tunneling, and uh it's
Speaker 1: a really to read. To read a description of electron
Speaker 1: tunneling is really really bizarre because imagine that you come
Speaker 1: up to a wall. All right, You're standing on one
Speaker 1: side of the wall, you lean against the wall, and
Speaker 1: then suddenly you're on the other side of the wall.
Speaker 1: You didn't didn't necessarily pass through the wall. You just
Speaker 1: started on one side and you ended up on the other.
Speaker 1: That's kind of like electron tunneling. It doesn't actually move
Speaker 1: through the material. It's just it's so small. It the
Speaker 1: materials so thin, the electron access it acts like there's
Speaker 1: nothing there. It might as well not have been there
Speaker 1: in the first place. Right. So that's the problem is
Speaker 1: if you if you build these components UM too small,
Speaker 1: then the electrons are no longer controllable. And again, just
Speaker 1: like in the situation where I said, if the entire
Speaker 1: chip were to conduct electricity, it would not work the
Speaker 1: same sort of thing. Yeah, you can't direct the electrons
Speaker 1: if they can pass through everything, you know, So uh,
Speaker 1: in that case, we will have to look at alternatives
Speaker 1: to the transistor. UM. And there are lots of engineers
Speaker 1: working on this problem. Uh. You sometimes sometimes they find
Speaker 1: out by switching to a different material they can actually
Speaker 1: get a little smaller than they expected, which until found
Speaker 1: out when they switched from one kind of metal that
Speaker 1: they were using in their their chips to a different kind.
Speaker 1: But eventually we are going to hit that limit, and
Speaker 1: it's not going to be that long from now. Um.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that we won't find a new
Speaker 1: way to work around the problem. I'm I'm sure it
Speaker 1: won't be long before we don't know something anyway. So
Speaker 1: that's how microchips are made. We kind of talked about
Speaker 1: what they did, uh, And you know, there are several
Speaker 1: different companies that produced these. Like Pilette was saying, it's
Speaker 1: not just for computers, it's for all sorts of electronics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's funny because, um, you know, for a company
Speaker 1: with this long and story to pass is Texas Instruments has,
Speaker 1: for example, Um, you know that you just don't they
Speaker 1: don't make chips for computers that end up on people's
Speaker 1: desktops at least not anymore. Um. But yeah, a m
Speaker 1: D UH is one of those companies that has had
Speaker 1: a hard time getting a toe hold in the consumer
Speaker 1: desktop market. Um, partially due to you know, just the
Speaker 1: fact that they're they're you know, trying to get out
Speaker 1: the eight hundred town guerrilla or maybe eight hundred ton
Speaker 1: guerrilla in case of Intel, because Intel was one of
Speaker 1: the very very first UH chip manufacturers to make UH
Speaker 1: microprocessors for home and UH work computers. Yeah, they also
Speaker 1: made some very shrewd partnerships with various companies, which actually
Speaker 1: has has gained them a little trouble in the court
Speaker 1: systems for anti competitive behaviors. Yes, that's true, but that's
Speaker 1: a totally different story. Maybe one what maybe what we
Speaker 1: should do is put down on a podcast list at
Speaker 1: some point the story of Intel versus a m D.
Speaker 1: That would be fun, that would be that would be
Speaker 1: a good way to put it. That would be less
Speaker 1: technical and more kind of political. But it's it's an
Speaker 1: interesting story. But I have something else we can talk
Speaker 1: about very quickly. It's a little listener mail. This listener
Speaker 1: mail comes from Chris Now. Chris says, just by the way,
Speaker 1: it was directed not just to tech stuff, but the
Speaker 1: stuff you should know. You smell, and you started this war.
Speaker 1: Why would you ever be so unwise as to start
Speaker 1: a war with tech stuff. This is a war that
Speaker 1: you cannot win. This is a war you will not win.
Speaker 1: We expect your surrender to be handed to our leader,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland in the form of a sticky note with
Speaker 1: the words you win written in black sharpie. We expect
Speaker 1: your surrender soon. And then there's some French which I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna attempt to say because you pop off on say.
Speaker 1: But this is from Chris Now. Chris. It comes down
Speaker 1: to to this, Um, we're gonna We're gonn just shoot
Speaker 1: straight here. We like Josh and Chuck. They're nice guys.
Speaker 1: We even like stuff you should know. I listened to it.
Speaker 1: I'm a fan. They do good stuff. Occasionally they pull
Speaker 1: us on um right, So so our rivalry is mostly
Speaker 1: funny and the only reason I'm saying this now is
Speaker 1: I don't want it to spiral out of control because
Speaker 1: just the other day I noticed that Chuck was not
Speaker 1: his normal chip herself. And it turns out he's worried
Speaker 1: that people don't like him. I mean, earlier today I
Speaker 1: found him weeping in the corners, sucking his own thumb
Speaker 1: and someone with I know, well, I mean it's probably
Speaker 1: he probably wouldn't want me to share that, but his
Speaker 1: psyche is weak. People. I'm just saying they're not made
Speaker 1: of the stern stuff that Plat and I are made of.
Speaker 1: You know, we are like teflon. It just slides right
Speaker 1: off us. But Josh and Chuck they're like, well, they're
Speaker 1: like Teddy Bears, emotionally vulnerable teddy Bears. Yes, it's true.
Speaker 1: Thanks for writing, Chris. If any of you would like
Speaker 1: to write us, our address is tech Stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. And we have a cool fan
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Speaker 1: we're trying to build up a nice, strong community, have
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Speaker 1: we also have our own Twitter feed. Yep, we decided
Speaker 1: to UH to have a text stuff podcast twitter feed now,
Speaker 1: so instead of just following Jonathan and I individually, you
Speaker 1: can follow us together right. The handle, by the way
Speaker 1: is text Stuff h s W, So just go to
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Speaker 1: you'll find us there. You can also find UH both
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Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. So if you've been putting off tuning
Speaker 1: into some of the others because you just haven't had
Speaker 1: a reason, now you got a reason. They're right there. People, Yeah,
Speaker 1: check them out and Chris and I will talk to
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