Semiconductor technology is a form of nanotechnology. Manufacturing is done on the atomic and molecular scale and extremely advanced design and production processes are needed to develop these components of computers, smart phones, vehicles, and other advanced products.

Since the invention of the computer their components, and the computers themselves, have become smaller and smaller. Computers started out occupying entire rooms and smart phones are now so small that they can be carried in our pocket. Smart phones, tablets, and laptops all have processing power millions of times larger than that of the first computers and through the connection of these gadgets to the Internet, users have access to a large share of all the information that is made public in the world.

No generation before us has had access to this amount of information. Regardless of the area of interest, we can all find information that is of interest.

Computer technologies have become interwoven into the fabric of the modern world, and we are all dependent on the continuous development, because without it the development of all kinds of products and services would come to a halt and the global economy would break down as well.

We cannot break the intimate bond to technology, we can perhaps change it, decide on how to use technology in a better way, but we cannot deny the dependence. This means that more people need to learn about technology on different levels, because an increasing share of the population will be involved in its development and application.

Semiconductors were critical to tackling the Covid pandemic. This is undeniable, because the rapid switch to digital meetings, home schooling, and the increased use of a number of digital services would not have been possible without semiconductors.

It is inconceivable that we would have been able to work from home in the age of landline telephones and the fax machine. What’s more is that we would not have had either laptops or smart phones without the miniaturization that has been going on since the late 1940’s.

When Covid -19 struck society, computer technology had been developed for more than seventy years and countries had arrived at a situation where most people already had access to one or more devices at work and at home. This technology access in combination with a tech-savvy population formed the basis of one of the most important mitigation activities during the early phase of the Covid pandemic, digital meetings.

In other areas of modern life, we use smart phones to watch movies, listen to music, and read books. These are all very demanding computerized processes that are made possible by the extreme capabilities of smart phones and laptops.

Being able to compress information and programmes to nano-scale chips and run apps that can do all kinds of things from calculation to showing films and store very large volumes of information, could never have been done without nano-scale chips.

In modern computers, an increasing share of the functionality is built into the hardware, nano-scale semiconductors. On each chip, there are millions of nano-size transistors, and the skills of designing chips are becoming increasingly specialised, so that unique transistor designs are developed for different purposes.

I am told that in the current shortage of semiconductors companies with their own resources for chip design have fared better than companies that lack such competencies. BMW, a company with this type of resource, have been able to run their production without the frequent interruptions and shutdowns that car companies without these resources have experienced.

Now, many companies that previously have been programming standardised chips, realise that they need to build the resources for chip design in their own organizations. As they do this, however, many also realize that there are not so many people with this competence available to hire.

As hardware design in many areas starts to replace programming, many leading companies in many important industries need to build skills in chip design. The automotive industry only happens to be the front-runner in this development, but whitegoods companies, manufacturers of industrial equipment, and other producers of technically advanced products will need increasingly advanced and customized chips.

Over the next decade an increasing number of companies will need to build their own resources for semiconductor design, but in many countries, governments have reduced funding for research and university courses in this area.

Now, governments launch funding programmes with the aim of strengthening their countries’ positions in the semiconductor industry. The EU has launched the Chips Act, with funding of 45 billion euro, India has set aside 300 billion USD for the same purpose, and the US Government will spend 1000 billion dollars to boost development in their semiconductor industry. Some governments have not yet realized the need to support their industries in this way, perhaps because they think that their countries have no stake in this development, but this is certainly a big mistake!

The development in the semiconductor industry is rapidly moving towards smaller designs, the current trend is going from chips with a line width of 14 to 7 nanometre chips, and companies at the forefront of this development are developing technologies to take the leap to 3.5 nanometres, perhaps a decade into the future.

As already mentioned, another trend is that chip design is replacing programming.

These changes call for a dramatic increase in resources for both research and training of engineers and Doctors of Technology. The funding programmes already mentioned will come in handy to support this process. Countries that fail to jump on the bandwagon already in the next few years are likely to fall behind in this development, perhaps to never recover, and it is not only their position in the semiconductor race that will be lost. With a large share of modern industry being dependent on semiconductors, countries risk losing their foothold in industrial production overall.

Mats is the author of five internationally published books on technology development, sustainability, and global change. He focuses on the large-scale challenges that modern society is facing, such as the change to electromobility, the circular economy, digitisation and semiconductor development, and energy efficiency. His latest book is “The Blind Guardians of Ignorance — Covid -19, Sustainability, and Our Vulnerable Future” from 2020 and the first one of these was “Global Energy Transformation,” published in 2009.

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Swedish business and sustainability consultant, writing about opportunities and challenges in the transformation to a sustainable future.