Preface: A Cambrian explosion is happening in the world of chips
This corner is a read for anyone curious about what is happening right now in the world of semiconductors (chips), written to be enjoyable even for a complete newcomer. No specialist knowledge required. No code, no circuit diagrams. All you'll find here are analogies and a simple flow of "why this happens → so this follows." Relax your shoulders, and let's walk through it together, slowly.
A promise for this corner. Whenever a difficult term shows up, we break it down on the spot. "What's a CPU?" "What's an ISA?" — those plain questions are exactly the ones we treat with care. We will never leave you behind, not understanding. So it's fine if you know nothing at all right now.
P.1 Your day is already running on chips
You wake to your phone's alarm. You warm some milk in the microwave. You tap your card at the station gate. You open your laptop at the office. You press the brake in your car. You switch on the TV. — Behind every one of these, a tiny semiconductor chip is quietly at work. It's no exaggeration to say that our lives now, quite literally, run on chips.
And in the world of these unsung workhorses, a large change is underway that we don't normally see. Not a small change, either. It's an upheaval on the scale of a geological shift — one you'll want to compare to the "Cambrian explosion" in the history of life on Earth.
P.2 What was the "Cambrian explosion" that happened to life 500 million years ago?
Let's start with that "Cambrian explosion." Around 540 million years ago, in Earth's seas, there was a period in which the forms of life (the way bodies are built) are thought to have diversified all at once, over a very short span. Whereas earlier organisms were relatively simple, from around this point on — things with eyes, things with shells, things that were ancestors of the backbone — the variety of "body blueprints" is said to have increased explosively. Many of the "prototypes" of today's animals are said to have appeared together in this era.
※ Used here as an analogy. The causes and timing of the Cambrian explosion have several competing accounts, and it's a field where research continues to debate them. In this corner, we're not stepping into the fine points of those theories; we're borrowing the phrase for the image of the phenomenon: "in a certain era, the variety increases all at once."
P.3 The "same thing" is happening now in the world of chips
Why bring up the history of life at all? Because what's happening in the world of chips right now is exactly this "explosive diversification of kinds." What pulled the trigger was, as you'd guess, AI (artificial intelligence). AI spread explosively, and the whole world came wanting the chips that power its computation. As a result, in the world of chips, three "explosions" began to advance at the same time.
① The explosion of "kinds"
Alongside the all-purpose chip (the CPU) that has long been the lead, there are now AI-oriented "specialists" like the GPU and TPU, and further out, quantum chips that work on an entirely different principle, and even bio-chips that use living material. The "species" of chip itself is increasing all at once.
② The explosion of "who can design"
The "shared language" of chip design used to be a possession held by a handful of large companies. Then along came RISC-V, a shared language anyone can use free of charge. The base of people who can take on design is spreading across the world.
③ The explosion of "how they're made"
The transistor has changed shape from flat to three-dimensional, and in manufacturing, research into maskless methods — drawing directly without carving a "stamp (the master)" — is moving forward. Even the common sense of how to make them is beginning to shift.
Making a chip used to be a world closed off behind tens of millions of dollars in cost, the facilities of a giant company, and a handful of specialists. Those three walls — what kind to make, who can design, how to manufacture — are now wobbling at the same time. That's why it's an "explosion." This corner unravels these three explosions, one by one, with care.
P.4 How to walk through this corner
It's a long walk, but the route is clear. We go in the order of "first see how wide the world is, then descend into the story of the 'language,' and finally to 'how they're made' and 'the future.'" Let's spread out the map first.
The path through this corner (walkable with zero background, no code)
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Ch.1 What is a chip? = the ground floor (a swarm of switches)
|
Ch.2 The explosion of "brains" = CPU/GPU/TPU, quantum, bio (how wide the world is)
|
Ch.3 The instruction set (ISA) = the "invisible contract" between hardware and software
Ch.4 The language had owners = the x86 and ARM empires (why "opening it" is a turning point)
Ch.5 RISC-V = opened the "language" for free (* free ≠ open)
|
Ch.6 The transistor goes 3D = "2 nm" isn't a line width (unmasking the number)
Ch.7 A shift in how chips are made = drawing without carving a stamp (maskless)
|
Ch.8 The frontier = AI, and into the physical (robots, space)
|
Finale Toward a vast frontier = so we decided to try building one ourselves
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
* You can dip into any chapter. But if it's your first time, start from Chapter 1, in order.
P.5 Why make a read like this?
Finally, let me be honest about the writer's motive. For a long time, I covered technology and business as a journalist. And behind the successes and failures, I watched — again and again — how varied conditions, factors, intentions, environments, and calculations of gain and loss became tangled together, with the people involved advancing through choice after choice. So even as I watch this "explosion of chips," I have no doubt an extraordinary era has arrived — and at the same time, I don't intend to declare, hands-off, that a rosy future simply awaits. How can we make the most of these new conditions? — I keep that question close at hand.
And I also came to think this: whether we can truly make the most of the new environment is something you find out fastest by actually building a chip with your own hands and trying. So I built courses to make that possible. This corner is the map of the world that leads up to that "let's find out." If, by the time you finish reading, a small flame has been lit in you too — "maybe I'd like to dive into the world of chips myself" — that will be the best souvenir of this long walk.
Now, let's set off. The next chapter, Chapter 1, starts from the very ground floor. What kind of part is a "chip," really? What's happening inside your phone right now? Let's take a look together at the true nature of that "small board that computes."