How does a chip go from being an academic theory to a $10 billion R&D Project?
In: Technology
Lets say you own a large metal mug. In fact the whole world owns only large metal mugs. But you want a small metal mug with a rubber lid. How do you go about that?
You need to research if it is even theoretically possible to make mugs smaller. And figure out if the rubber is going to do anything to the mug, or the contents of the mug. Maybe you THINK you want a smaller mug, but a medium size mug would work fine. Is there even a market for the mug?
And if everything is pointing to “yes, you can have your mug” you’ll then need to figure out how to create the mug physically. If the whole world has only big mugs, you’ll need to create machines that will create the smaller parts. In order to do that, you’ll have to go back and research those machines….and is that going to cause the machines to fail faster or produce defects in the mugs? How do you fix those issues?
And those machines might have the need to create new machines to create THEM. So you research some more. You can see how this might create a chain of R&D….but then you find out the rubber can only be sourced from one type of tree (lets call it the small mug tree or SMT for short). The SMT can only produce 1lb of rubber a year, but you need 1000lbs. So you might have to buy more land to harvest the SMT. The locals hate you though so you have to jump through a bunch of permits and town meetings etc. You might even have to build a road and a small port to ship the rubber. That costs money and time.
If you want more information about the “connections” of all of these technologies I highly recommend James Burke’s “Connections” series. It takes a MUCH larger view on how something 500 years ago gives us space flight, but it gives you a better picture of what actually goes into creating something “new”. The cost of the chip is cheap, but the money has to flow to get to the point of being able to make it.
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