The Rise and Peak of Japanese Semiconductors

Americans invented the video magnetic tape recorder. But it was the Japanese who brought it to the masses as the VCR. Throughout the 1980s, virtually every home VCR sold in America was made in Japan. Even the ones sold by American brands like RCA. How did Japan come to dominate a device they didn’t create? Today, we are going to look at the rise and reign of Japanese VCRs.

In the 1980s, Brazil had a large domestic computer industry. Dozens of Brazilian-owned companies - employing tens of thousands of Brazilians - producing tens of thousands of Brazilian PCs. In the 1970s, a small set of Brazilian government bureaucrats recognized the growing importance of the computer industry. And in a bold move, they reserved the most exciting part of that market exclusively for Brazilian firms. These protections helped develop an industry ... but only for so long. In this video, we are going to review the Brazilian computer industry.

After 20+ years of development, extreme ultraviolet lithography has become a commercial reality. As I write these words, multi-million dollar machines from ASML use EUV light to create impossibly small patterns in wafers.  This technological magic requires a powerful heart inside of it. And indeed, there is an amazing system driving ASML's $150 million lithography machine: The EUV Light Source.  In this video, we are going to look at the lasers firing pulses at tin droplets to create the powerful, 13.5 nanometer wavelength light for our latest, greatest microprocessors. 

I want to thank Alex Sludds of MIT for his help on this video: https://alexsludds.github.io/

Silicon is probably the single most studied element on earth. Over the past seventy years, people have researched more ways to cut it, etch it, grind it, clean it, crystallize it, polish it than almost anything else.  Engineers have done amazing things to turn this plentiful shiny rock into the century’s most impactful piece of technology. And the wafer industry needs some love for those achievements.  So in this video, we are going to talk about the decades of research and stunning engineering that have gone into creating today’s cutting-edge semiconductor wafers. 

When we last left Nvidia, the company had emerged victorious in the brutal graphics card Battle Royale throughout the 1990s.  Very impressive. But as the company entered the 2000s, they embarked on a journey to do more. Moving towards an entirely new kind of microprocessor - and the multi-billion dollar market it would unlock.    In this video, we are going to look at how Nvidia turned the humble graphics card into a platform that dominates one of tech’s most important fields: Artificial Intelligence. 

Water, water, everywhere and not a drop to drink. Humans need freshwater and getting enough of it is an ever-present challenge.  Yet the earth is covered in water! Over half of the planet is ocean! The problem of course is that you cannot drink it because it is too salty.  Desalination is the process of removing salts from salty sea and brackish water to produce freshwater. The goal is simple, but the technologies are complicated and energy intensive. And we often power these processes with oil.  Ideally, we do not want to burn any more fossil fuels to get this water. And that is why people sometimes want to use nuclear energy to power the whole process.

Japan's semiconductor story is unique in modern technology and business.  Coming out of World War II, the country rapidly gained competence in an emerging technology and became a global leader.  In this video, we look at the 30-year rise and peak of the Japanese semiconductor industry starting from the 1950s into the 1980s.

It is the purest water you will ever know. And every day, chip factories are sloshing their wafers with it. Ultrapure water or UPW is an industry term. A term that describes its product quite well. Water with purity requirements so strict, you're more likely to win the national lottery than to find a non-water molecule inside it.  Companies have contorted themselves into pretzels making ultrapure water. And the bar keep getting higher year after year. How pure can you possibly get? In this short video, we are going to look at how semiconductor companies make the world's purest water. 

In 2011, then-President Barack Obama visited a General Electric or GE facility in the town of Schenectady, New York. There, he mostly discussed wind turbine exports. But he also briefly mentioned an "advanced battery" business with great promise.  Obama was referring to a molten salt stationary battery technology branded as Durathon. GE CEO Jeff Immelt believed that it will become a billion dollar business.  But Durathon fell far short. In 2015, the company closed its battery manufacturing factory in New York after investing nearly $200 million. Nearly a hundred people lost their jobs.  In this video, we are going to look at General Electric's failed molten salt battery business venture.