While it was interesting to learn about the physical hardware and design of computers, I was more fascinated by the economic component of manufacturing chips. The Wikipedia article on Moore's Law indicates that as the size of transistors decrease, the manufacturing cost per unit increases. I was also surprised to learn that computer manufacturing is reliant enough on the petroleum industry to be significantly affected by its market performance. So, considering the increasing expense, what is the motivation to keep developing faster processing units? If the end user is in mind, why create denser chips which, although faster, are more likely to malfunction? There is also the fact that software and hardware development are not growing at the same rate. Is this industry as independent and aggressive as it seems? By that I mean do environmental, social, economic, and efficiency issues in anyway affect the industry and, if so, how? Because of the depletion of natural resources, are alternative materials being developed for production? I also wonder how much capitalism and competitive influence decisions. I would love to read a study, if there is one, about the relationship between economics and consumer demands in the technology industry. It’s kind of like asking which came first, the chicken or the egg? Do they build it because they want it or will they want it if it is built? If someone knows of a good article on this, let me know.
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I think you should think of it like the smaller the science in the chip, the more it cost because you need more specialized materials and people to work on the chips. Both people and materials that are specialized cost more money. These are high tech jobs and high tech jobs usually have degree requirements and that leads to higher costs. Research and Development is actually so very economic in so many ways its gets a little crazy. I took a lot of Econ classes in my UG program and we talked about R&D and Bioscience as things, for instance, that PA wants to bring to the state for these reasons a)brings educated people to the state and helps stops brain drain(which PA has), b) bring large amounts of money to the respective state in terms of taxes c) provides high quality jobs that usually have high quality benefits. So with all of these things I hope you can kind of understand why nanotech, which we are moving towards cost more money to produce. It is all important to note that Moore's LAw was concerned with the density of how many smaller chips could be made at the most economic cost. It was all about how many smaller chips you could make at the smallest cost!
You provide an excellent broader view here, looking at the wider effects and motives of current practices. I certainly don't think of gas prices every time I think of computer chips. Highly insightful!
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