What if Humanity forgot how to make CPUs? : solarpunk

[–] GreenShimada@lemmy.world 30 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Forgot? Have you seen what's needed to make CPUs? Clean Room Manufacturing is a fragile thing.

Developing countries often need a lot of help just getting to ISO Class 7, which is what's needed to safely make cough syrup.

Injectable drugs are ISO Class 5. CPU manufacturing is ISO Class 1 and 2. In some post-apocalyptic scenario, depending on the scenario, it would be decades or generations of work to get semiconductor manufacturing back. Even if you have an abandoned factory sitting right there. It would potentially be decades to get back to making anything safely injectable. Supply chains involved with specific parts and inputs. shudder

[–] tias@discuss.tchncs.de 19 points 1 week ago (2 children)

On the other hand, we don't need nanoscale transistors to achieve most of the usefulness of CPUs. Most of that high-tech performance is wasted on things of questionable usefulness for society. The C64 CPU had an 8 micrometer process that likely does not require ISO class 1 or 2.

[–] Beacon@fedia.io 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Heck, vacuum tubes can be used to make a computer, and they're relatively easy to make. Even further, purely mechanical computers exist, and they can do serious complex calculations

[–] GreenShimada@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You can make vacuum tubes all day. You can even make transistors and integrated circuits at home.

But the definition of "computer" here is a glorified calculator.

A TI-81, the graphing calculator from the 1980's, used a chip that had 8500 transistors. So if you're planning to, say, build a dam and need to know how thick the cement should be to account for the pressure from the volume of water when the lake is full - unless you want to do all that engineering calculus yourself (I promise, it sucks) then you might want some more advanced computational power. Sure, dams were built when this was all done by hand. Dams also collapsed and washed towns away sometimes. Something I haven't heard of happening in a while.

As nice as it is to think about going back to an analog world, things like knowing what the climate is doing, medical advancements, sharing video and images, etc. save lives and advance medicine. No one is making a COVID vaccine without sequencing the genome of a virus. Pacemakers, hearing aids, prosthetic limbs, cars with increased fuel efficiency, electric vehicles, solar panels - all perfectly good reasons to enjoy modern microprocessors.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

You're moving the goal post. You went from being able to manufacture CPUs in general to manufacturing modern CPUs that can replace current workloads.

Sure, we'd have to decrease reliance on them for a while, but we be able to manufacture some computers without really any delay, while we build back to modern capabilities.

[–] eleitl@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 week ago

To be fair, we can live fine without streaming video and bloated crapware. 1990s hardware is more than sufficient to keep essentials alive.

[–] GreenShimada@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago

I was thinking of modern CPUs the whole time and then people are trying to "What-if" their way into whatever they want it to be.

Fine, it's whatever you want it to be. We'll be making modern CPUs in a bucket next to the bucket where we recycle paper.

[–] GreenShimada@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

...you say as we both use machines that used a planet's worth of supply chains and resources to talk to each other.

[–] tias@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 1 week ago

I could post messages on FidoNet with my 8Mhz Atari ST in 1988 too

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 15 points 1 week ago (2 children)

No, it wouldn't. It'd take decades to get back to nano-scale modern CPUs, but not CPUs in general. The smaller the CPU the more it matters to be clean. If you could measure by atoms, then yeah, any stray atoms could matter. If you're measuring something that can be seen with the naked eye then you could probably do it in open air and not have an issue.

[–] GreenShimada@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's not just the manufacturing of that one thing that is under consideration. There's an entire supply chain that gets you to that point where you finally have the inputs needed to enter the lab and make the product. There's likewise a whole bunch of supply chain needed to get an ISO Class 5 clean room, which is what's needed for general microprocessors. Even if you're only talking about a clean work box on a bench top.

Who is mining the cobalt and aluminum and making the glass and plastic tools needed to stock the lab where you're making 1980's style microprocessors? Who is making a pure silicon ingot you'll slice to get a wafer? What will you use to slice the ingot for the wafer? How will you polish the wafer to microscopic levels of flatness? Who is making the oscilloscopes that test the processors to see if they work? Who is making the glass for the lenses for high-power microscopy you need to work? Where will you get the bulbs and needed for the photolithography stage? Where will you get the tiny tiny tiny wires that connect the pins to the chip? How will you purify and process refined silicon dioxide? Sure, the stuff is everywhere, but think through how you go from a piece of quartz on the ground to a material you need to layer on a wafer (where you gonna get the wafer??) and what machines and processes are needed for that. And on and on and on. One of those things missing means you can't move forward.

And depending on the scenario, each of those things needs to be local to you as well.

This is Carl Sagan "If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, first you need to invent the universe" level picking the process apart. Everything is connected, and we don't always appreciate how much things are inextricably tied to what we use on a daily basis.

My favorite example: This guy figured it out when thinking through a cheeseburger.

There's also a book from 2016 called "When the Trucks Stop Running" that is fearmongering oil industry hype, all about how important oil is to fueling heavy machinery. (Spoiler, it's not as important as they make it out to be) But the real lesson of the book is how many rarely seen or talked about corners of the supply chain are fundamental to keeping huge numbers of industries running, and how fragile many advanced technologies are to supply chain interruption.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The scenario above was not a total sociatal collapse scenario. It was just we forgot how to make CPUs. The rest of the supply chain would still exist.

[–] GreenShimada@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Right, and so I'm saying that forgetting how to make CPUs as a premise seems far-fetched when the actual fact of the matter than we can easily lose the ability to make CPUs with only a few significant supply chain losses. A total societal collapse isn't necessary. A single catastrophic natural disaster that only directly impacts one part of the world might be enough.

[–] Nexy@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 week ago

Actually, using intel as an example, any CPU that is not a I9 is a failed CPU. The I3, I5 and I7 are I9 with complete sections of the prossessor fucked up, doing CPUs are difficult also in perfect conditions.

[–] frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It may not be the most competitive fab on the market, but Hacker Fab is already within reach of a well-funded makerspace. I haven't read up on their cleanroom procedures, but I assume all the costs of that are included in their breakdown.

It doesn't necessarily need to be competitive with TSMC sub-3nm. CPUs at 1000nm can still be incredibly useful.

[–] GreenShimada@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

Yeah, but look at how much other stuff that is highly-manufactured goes into that process? It's not about just the end product, it's about the entire supply chain needed to get the stuff to make the 1 product.

[–] Nexy@slrpnk.net 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

https://permacomputing.net/Collapse_OS/

[–] shapesandstuff@feddit.org 5 points 1 week ago

So much interesting stuff on there, holy moly

[–] Natanox@chaos.social 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

@dillekant That's a dystopian scenario, not solarpunk…

[–] cerement@slrpnk.net 8 points 1 week ago

!permacomputing@slrpnk.net

[–] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 week ago

One of the reasons why a solarpunk way of thinking is so appealing to me is that it challenges me to think about what we could do to subvert a dystopian scenario and build something better. After all, climate change is going to cause tremendous upheaval, even if the world collectively stopped making things worse. It's a more humble way of thinking about a problem, because it isn't built on the idea that we can be masters of the world, but instead need to learn how to understand ourselves as intra-acting within ecosystems

[–] dillekant@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 week ago

Depends on if you believe that using biodegradable plastics on your chip packet is dystopia because ruffling it around sounds different.

[–] keepthepace@slrpnk.net 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

At one point we had a long back and forth with my cousin, a post-apo fan, about the credibility of various scenarios, various shortage, various technological regressions. My conclusion: if humanity loses the ability and the knowledge to make CPUs, then CPUs are not the first thing you will miss.

It would have meant that a generation-long obscurantist crusade would have purposefully destroyed that knowledge.

I don't see anything natural nor a human-made disaster that could durably erase all knowledge and industries on a global scale. You would need an intelligence geared at destroying knowledge specifically.

[–] bacon_pdp@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Well to forget, hundreds of books would need to be destroyed and hundreds of thousands of people killed.

And the work of Sam Zeelof showed that with a projector and some standard chemicals that we could resume 1978 lithography https://sam.zeloof.xyz/ and it would only take 2-3 smart people to get it to 300nm. At which point we would have 87% of current CPU performance in a higher energy envelope. (Think the first generation K8 processors in the 940 pin packages (80w, 3ghz))

So in effect, not much will happen.

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] bacon_pdp@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] bacon_pdp@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

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

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

What if we forgot capitalism and rewarding greedy self absorbed narcissists tho

[–] dillekant@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 week ago

That's why it's solarpunk.

[–] Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone 7 points 1 week ago

If CPUs go, things could get dark...

My bad, thats if we lose STCs.

[–] perestroika@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

In case humanity forgets about how to make CPUs, some folks would still remember how to make stateful relays, magnetic core memory, punch cards and pneumatic logic valves.

It would take a bit of time from there back to a CPU.

[–] shads@lemy.lol 5 points 1 week ago

I gotta admit my first thought while watching this was older CPUs, always had an affinity for the Motorola 68k family (see if you can guess my first computer).

But I also wonder how much we would be using those CPUs to provide control planes and interfaces for Industrial gear running 8051 variants. I imagine that a lot of those microcontrollers, which are already in use across a frightening amount of Industrial equipment will likely have enormously longer operational lifespans than the computers used to program them. Plus a cursory search shows I can buy hundreds of thousands of them without resorting to scavenging and repurposing.

Plus when suddenly everything in a DIL DIP package is seen as desirable again my soldering skills will only be seen as deficient not a heinous abomination.

[–] Malgas@beehaw.org 4 points 1 week ago

Dies the Fire, by S.M. Stirling.

[–] TacoButtPlug@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago

As a geriatric millennial I'd be ok with this

[–] SlartyBartFast@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago

The only CPU I can make is Cheese Pizza, YOU!

[–] solarpunkgirl@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I can't imagine hobbyist forgetting how to do lithography. But it's a lovely video. the electro migration stuff scares me

[–] dillekant@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 week ago

The "forgetting" isn't individuals forgetting, it's about institutional memory. Individually, there might be plenty of folks who can build chips, but they might live too far apart, or there's no money in it, or whatever other mechanism which causes things to be built and the technology to continue. There's a massive bootstrapping issue.

[–] jerkface@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Several people have hand-built 6502s.

[–] dillekant@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 week ago

That's why it's solarpunk. Slower computers which need different software.

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

First, this is a great video and a thought provoking topic. While she touched on it in the last 45 seconds, I think the timeline at +10Y and +15Y would have more vacuum tube solutions for simple "computing" electronics. I also think that the ideal of social media would be too hard for modern society to abandon, and we'd revert to prior technologies for electronic social communication like "party line" telephones and HAM radio, neither of which require advanced semiconductors.

Analog broadcast television (also tube driven) would make a comeback and be well in place by +15y after so much of the spectrum was freed up from lack of digital devices consuming it. Larger use of shortwave radio would come back too.

Lastly, I'm embracing her premise as "the technology to create new semiconductors disappears". Perhaps this is because the world's single source of quartz crucibles in North Carolina needed for high end semiconductor manufacturing exhausts its supply. or some other reason. With that though, it doesn't mean progress forward would stop. She touched on part of this in the last 60 seconds with video talking about groups trying to rediscover or restart semiconductor manufacturing, but she didn't explore an alternative advanced computing medium: light. Optical Computing exists today as laboratory experiments and are far inferior to general purpose semiconductor based computing, but if semiconductors are off the table optical computing starts looking very attractive. Consider however, that this technology is the basis for most quantum computing implementations today. So we wouldn't be starting from scratch technologically.

One note on automobiles too: I think many modern cars would be retrofit with simplier electronics to keep them on the road. Gone would be the days of advanced ECUs yeilding high performance and fuel efficient operation, but I'm betting much more simplified ECUs could be made with single mode operations that would make the car operational for general (and inefficient use). Mechanical timing would come back into play, fuel injection would be replaced with carburation again, and coilpacks with mechanical distributors.

I think I'd be okay with my Commodore 64 as my primary computing with a bit more evolved connectivity with something like Fidonet for global email communications to be maintained.

Still with my minor notes, I really enjoyed her idea and glad she did the video.

[–] BootLoop@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

How I see it would be a massive investment into what would be previously e-waste. Even super low end hardware can be used as servers if given a lightweight Linux installation. Just yesterday I took an old budget Android phone out of the closet and factory reset it, debloated it, and installed a web server on it just for fun. Obviously I have much faster machines so I don't need use it, but I could easily port forward my IP to it and host a website off of it if I needed to.

[–] Harbinger01173430@lemmy.world -1 points 1 week ago

Well, if we forgot how to make CPUs, can't we just repurpose or reprogram the GPUs, GPUs and npus to do a similar job until we remember how to make CPUs again?

Solarpunk