How a chip is created

Computer chips are the basis of the digital world, they are big politics, for example when the USA wants to withhold state-of-the-art chips from China, and they are valuable, as billions in subsidies for plants in Magdeburg or elsewhere show. But what are chips? How do they work? For this elaborate longread with great graphic representations, the Financial Times took the trouble to literally go to the nano level and show the “miracle of modern chip manufacturing”. A great article that has something almost sublime about it, as it shows what the human species is capable of: using materials from the earth to create something almost invisible using many highly complex processes – which then becomes the underlying structure of the economy. This is basically required technical reading for the next economic (political) discussions about chips. Fascinating and beautifully done. Happy Easter.