Chips Got Cheaper. The Factories Got Insane.
Moore's Law vs Rock's Law, to scale: the cost of a transistor fell ~10,000,000x while the leading-edge chip fab climbed from ~$14M (1966) past $20B — the chips fall BECAUSE the factory rose.
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Used For
Credit
Source
01Silicon wafer macro (hook + thumbnail)
Peellden12-inch silicon wafer.jpg / CC BY-SA 3.0
03Early chip fab, 1981
Intel Free PressCarolyn Jen in Intel Fab 5 1981.jpg / CC BY-SA 2.0
04EUV lithography tool
Lawrence Livermore National LaboratoryExtreme ultraviolet lithography tool.jpg / Public domain
06Taiwan island silhouette (recolored derivative)
Bemoeial2Taiwan-blank-map.png / Public domain
Data sources & references
01Fab-cost anchors — Gordon Moore, SPIE 1995, "Lithography and the Future of Moore's Law"; Construction Physics, "How to Build a $20 Billion Semiconductor Fab"
02Cost per transistor — IEEE Spectrum (early ~$1 discrete); Construction Physics (~66 billionths of a dollar, AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D)
03EUV tool prices — ASML filings; Tom's Hardware; Yole
04Leading-edge player count — IBS via Semiconductor Engineering