At Kodiak we now have a weekly, non-compulsory assembly referred to as Lunch & Be taught, the place someone within the firm talks about one thing they know effectively.
Normally the subject is expounded to, however not strictly part of, Kodiak and autonomous trucking. And, often, the format is for the session chief to play a video and add some feedback. That’s so much simpler than arising with an hour-long lecture from scratch.
This week, we realized about silicon chips, together with why chips have been briefly provide in automotive trade.
We watched a sequence of movies, together with this video by TechAltar: “Why making chips is so laborious.”
The video highlights 5 areas required for chips:
- Instruction Set Structure
- Chip Design
- Fabrication
- Gear & Software program
- Packaging
Of these, fabrication looks like the toughest, as a result of huge capital investments required for fabrication tools.
The entire video is nice and price a watch.
A bonus query someone requested in our session, that isn’t addressed by the video: why are silicon wafers spherical?
Reply: silicon ingots are shaped by the Czochralski technique, which principally entails melting an ingot and letting it unfold out from the middle. This leads to spherical wafers.
