video still
Applied Materials
Applied Materials doesn’t make chips—it makes the machines that force atoms into place, one layer at a time.
Semiconductors
Sand, refined into the bottleneck of the world economy.
- 18
- in technology
- 9:54
- average
- 178 min
- in total
- 39
- across the network
All briefs
video still
ASML
ASML didn’t invent lithography—it weaponised integration, turning a crowded market into a single-point failure for global computing.
video still
Atari 2600
The Atari 2600 didn’t invent home gaming — it weaponised scarcity.
video still
Commodore 64
Custom silicon—not marketing—made the C64 dominant. Everything else was cost engineering.
video still
DDR4 SDRAM
DDR4 trades compatibility for capacity—and delivers on neither promise until 2014.
video still
DDR5 SDRAM
DDR5 doubles capacity and cuts voltage—but leaves latency untouched and bandwidth gains conditional on cooling and controller design.
video still
Flash memory
Fujio Masuoka
Flash memory is a block-erasable, non-volatile semiconductor memory invented by Fujio Masuoka at Toshiba in 1980. It builds on EEPROM but replaces byte-wise erasure with faster block-wise erasure — enabled by floating-gate transistor design. The name 'flash' was coined by colleague Shōji Ariizumi to reflect that speed. Masuoka and colleagues presented NOR flash in 1984 and NAND flash at the 1987 IEDM. Toshiba began marketing flash memory and commercially launched NAND flash — both in 1987. The first published implementation held only 8192 bytes but became the basis for larger-capacity versions. Flash does not support byte-level writes or in-place updates; erasure is all-or-nothing per block. It cannot replace RAM or true EEPROM where fine-grained modification is required. Flash changed how portable devices store firmware and user data, enabling compact, shock-resistant, low-power storage that scales without moving parts — a prerequisite for digital cameras, USB drives, SSDs and smartphones.
video still
GlobalFoundries
A foundry built to escape AMD’s balance sheet became a specialist anchor—just as the industry stopped chasing nanometres.
video still
Maxim Integrated
Maxim didn’t invent analog — it weaponised compatibility.
video still
NXP Semiconductors
NFC isn’t magic — it’s NXP’s tightly controlled radio handshake, built to replace plastic cards with chips you already carry.
video still
Semiconductor
Semiconductors are not magic — they’re doped crystals whose usefulness begins and ends at the p–n junction.
video still
Samsung Electronics
Samsung wasn’t born a chipmaker—it bought its way in, merged its way up, and declared its way to relevance.
video still
STMicroelectronics
Europe didn’t need another chipmaker — it needed a sovereign stack. ST built one, slowly, silently, and without hype.
video still
Texas Instruments
Calling 'Texas Instruments (1930)' an invention confuses corporate founding with technological creation — and erases 24 years of actual engineering.
video still
Integrated circuit
Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce · 1958
The integrated circuit emerged in two distinct forms: Kilby’s 1958 germanium prototype proved integration was possible but relied on external wires; Noyce’s 1959 silicon monolithic chip, built using the planar process and on-chip aluminium interconnects, enabled mass production. Modern ICs follow Noyce’s architecture — not Kilby’s — because scalability required eliminating manual wire bonding. The invention’s value lies not in its first demonstration, but in its first manufacturable form.
video still
Personal computer
There was no personal computer in 1957 — and claiming there was misleads everyone who needs to know when computing actually became personal.
video still
Thermistor
Samuel Ruben · 1833
The thermistor is a semiconductor resistor whose resistance changes strongly with temperature. Michael Faraday discovered its NTC behaviour in silver sulfide in 1833. Commercial production did not begin until the 1930s due to manufacturing difficulty and limited applications. Samuel Ruben invented a commercially viable version in 1930.
video still
Transistor
John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley · 1947
The point-contact transistor emerged not from theoretical prediction but from iterative experiment—first with silicon and distilled water, then germanium and anodised surfaces—after Shockley’s field-effect design failed. It delivered real amplification, but only at low frequencies, and revealed surface states as decisive in semiconductor behaviour. Its mechanism relied on hole injection, not field modulation. It changed electronics by enabling solid-state amplification, but did not deliver on the original FET promise.