All Consuming

Microchips

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Episode notes

It’s not an understatement to say that microchips are now everywhere - from phone chargers to our beloved pets, there’s probably a microchip embedded within. But who invented them and how do they dictate computing power? Amit Katwala and Charlotte Stavrou dig their hands into a bowl of microchips for this episode of All Consuming. They meet Ken Shirriff, a former engineer at Google, who explains the crucial role of transistors in microchips, which are tiny switches etched into the silicon wafer. When the first microchip was invented in the 1950s there were just three transistors, but some microchips can now contain billions. Over the decades, this has hugely increased computing power and changed our daily lives. But microchip fabrication plants - called ‘fabs’ to those in the industry - require large volumes of water. Amit and Charlotte speak to Anurag Bajpayee, the co-founder of a company that recycles water at microchip manufacturing plants and Dr Yu Shu, a researcher at Oxford University, who is working on a novel method of creating microchips which are less harmful to the environment. We end our tour of the world of microchips with a visit to the University of Sussex quantum lab where they’ve recently had a breakthrough in quantum microchips, which could change the world in a way that we can’t yet compute. Producer: Emily Uchida Finch A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4