What happens if we can't make another CPU...ever?What fails first? How long would datacenters last? Does the Internet start to fracture?Of course, it's a hy...
Pretty good Solarpunk prompt with some medium-hard sci-fi thrown in.
I think the bigger issue is all the parts that we make currently for the production environment of cpus that use cpus in their production now. The cleanroom and robotic parts and such that would have to be made in old fashion ways and the whole process of finer and finer components that meet very specific tolerances and such. Like how advanced of parts can we make before we need vaccum tubes or such to make some machines to automate to a level to get an advanced enough part to make and integrated circuit.
Well the precision these days is about mask alignment, wavelength and timing how long things etch or deposit.
We are currently making UV LEDs which will last for centuries (so no problem for wavelength at 200nm lithography), mask alignment uses techniques that are over 200 years old and atomic clocks are still readily available.
Im talking precision of things like the screws in the hvac system. Manufacturing relies on other manufacturing that relies in the first manufacturing type of thing. So like how good a clean room can we cobble together to make how decent a cpu today. I certainly know the clean rooms of the past allowed in much to high a size particle to be used with our latest chips today.
Oh, then we just use 1000:1 reduction techniques that are over 200 years old. We would only need a single long screw to bootstrap modern manufacturing without any other machine tools.
All the details required to get to 0.1mm precision can be found in this book series
I think the bigger issue is all the parts that we make currently for the production environment of cpus that use cpus in their production now. The cleanroom and robotic parts and such that would have to be made in old fashion ways and the whole process of finer and finer components that meet very specific tolerances and such. Like how advanced of parts can we make before we need vaccum tubes or such to make some machines to automate to a level to get an advanced enough part to make and integrated circuit.
Well the precision these days is about mask alignment, wavelength and timing how long things etch or deposit.
We are currently making UV LEDs which will last for centuries (so no problem for wavelength at 200nm lithography), mask alignment uses techniques that are over 200 years old and atomic clocks are still readily available.
So no
Im talking precision of things like the screws in the hvac system. Manufacturing relies on other manufacturing that relies in the first manufacturing type of thing. So like how good a clean room can we cobble together to make how decent a cpu today. I certainly know the clean rooms of the past allowed in much to high a size particle to be used with our latest chips today.
Oh, then we just use 1000:1 reduction techniques that are over 200 years old. We would only need a single long screw to bootstrap modern manufacturing without any other machine tools.
All the details required to get to 0.1mm precision can be found in this book series
https://gingerybookstore.com/cgi-bin/sc/ss_mb.cgi?storeid=*16153e19ea8a41b21745af4ef1&ss_parm=Af0dea9ffd8fbaed13277ab4d5944c393