FREE HISTORY OF COMPUTING COMPANIES LESSON
1976 — No nation builds a chip alone
Japan, TSMC, ASML, Arm, and recursive specialization
No nation builds a chip alone
Japanese consortia accelerated memory development; TSMC separated chip design from neutral manufacturing; ASML specialized in lithography equipment; Arm licensed processor designs rather than fabricating chips. Modern semiconductors are a recursively modular global system. Specialization lowers entry barriers at one layer while concentrating irreplaceable capability, capital, and geopolitical risk at another.
Specialization makes a complex technology accessible by stabilizing interfaces, but it also creates narrow dependencies whose failure can stop the whole stack.
Institutional reconstruction
Trace a smartphone system-on-chip across architecture, design, EDA, fabrication, lithography, memory, packaging, and assembly. At each boundary, record interface, capital intensity, substitutability, and failure mode.
Trace the scarce resource, coordination mechanism, power boundary, and newly possible failure.