Not So Fabless Wafer?
Vanderbilt called it 100 years before the science of semiconductor crystals?
Who’s calling it now?
Rough week for the microchip.
Or, is the market maker board on purpose tanking it a bit so they can get in for a better price before major expansion and innovation?
China’s Kimi moment and the election interference speech alongside the West vs. East broiling tension centered within the scraggly mountains of ancient Persia gives one pause.
The week was full of PR communication with multiple news interviews begging the public to see Data Centers differently.
“It just processes water, not takes it. The long term value and safety of having these massive energy sources built here is worth the hearing loss and real estate value of your house plummeting. The investment into your monthly power bill will be worth it. Of course, we understand $700 power bills are impossible while you pay triple for groceries since 5 years ago…. “
But, the sacrifice for the future is worth it they say.
Is it? Or should we be looking for new ways that accomplish this even better and with less impact to the environment and the people on the ground? Silicon is the 2nd most abundant element in the Earth’s crust and the discovery of semiconductor science changed the world.
MIT needs to work harder and faster. Before the rednecks take it all by force.
Wait, wait. Maybe they are a clue…..
Much like George Washington Vanderbilt’s unknowing intuitive response to the environment in the hills of Appalachia, our constant curiosity and adventurous spirit created smaller footprints for computers and therefore somewhere, someone has to be poised to get us past AI excessive data energy into the next improved era of environmental balance.
How did we get here?
High a top the hill overlooking the grounds of the estate is the statue of Artemis, Diana, goddess of the hunt, the woodlands, the forest.
She sits right at the edge of the green, at the start of the wood line in the ancient hills of Appalachia. 125,000 acre project of the baby son of Vanderbilt.
The great American Vanderbilt.
Much like youngest sons do, he rebelled. He wanted no part of New York City and the family fortune. So, he took his lesser inheritance and planted himself 700 miles south on a piece of overly-timbered vacated land that needed healing.
Much like him, I imagine.
He built the largest house in America. I guess he couldn’t get that part of Vanderbilt out of him. He hired the top architect and landscape professional. He had Biltmore mirrored after the great Chateaus of the Loire Valle of France where royalty descended for retreat in natural peace from busy Paris.
It seemed so odd where he decided to go. He didn’t build himself a fortress in Newport, RI or develop ocean front tropical paradise in sunny Florida.
He ended up in Asheville, NC, in the mountain town where wildcat miners and old Appalachian families lived off the land.
His goal was to develop an agricultural paradise. A place to live off the farming and woods. And to honor nature as a good environmental steward. He was well-read, sensitive, a deep thinker and a staunch environmentalist.
New York City was not in his destiny. But, this place with beautiful vistas of mountain ridges and long miles of green pulled him in. He felt the Blue Ridge Mountains filled his soul.
The funny thing is that he was actually right on time. Just at the turn of the century, the mining in those mountains became more corporate. Families and small businesses merged together to form larger entities. Outside sources took notice of the resources and invested.
Not long after, the growing American defense department needed crystals for their radar systems inside aircraft and submarine technology.
Vanderbilt, it is rumored, although never confirmed, wasn’t interested in the mining. He wanted farming operations and a healed soil and woods.
That’s why he put Diana a top that hill. To protect it.
She still stands there today under a pergola mathematically calculated perfectly so that when he walked out onto his second story balcony she and him gazed across to each other eye to eye.
Somewhere in that time period, Corning glass took notice of what was mined only 65 minutes away from the grand house project. Mitchell County had this quartz that most of the miners just threw in a pile as garbage and excess until a glass scientist realized that the quartz could develop into an even more elite product for them.
It withstood heat miraculously well. So, Corning took all that junk quartz and hauled it up to NYC.
They made a telescope with it, perfected their pyrex, and unbeknownst to them created the perfect bowl (boule) to grow pure crystal under massive heat.
The ancient tribes had used the abundant mica from the area, and the early industrialists used feldspar. Once Bell labs figured out the transistor and quartz, the race really began.
We, the general public, at the time, didn’t fully realize and mostly just enjoyed the classy new tech of a Quartz watch.
Luckily, because of coal mining north of the area, the railroads were already mostly in place from Southern Railroad to move product. So, hauling the purest form of quartz in the world from a little incognito place of Spruce Pine, NC was not a great feat.
Eleven nines, they call it. The most perfect form in the entire world.
We’ve spent our years in American puritanism boo-booing on the spiritualists and their crystals only to find out that indeed these pretty rocks are really good at electricity and frequency.
Which makes one wonder….
Was Vanderbilt just randomly drawn to that area of North Carolina? Or was he unknowingly psychic and his spirit guides pushed him to the exact place that would transform technology in the 21st century?
The scientists needed a way to get rid of the bulky vacuum tubes that ran their computer inventions. When one day, they figured out that this pure form of silicon that comes out of the quartz rock could become the microchip they needed to bring computer technology out of a big warehouse and into home and office desks across the globe.
Right there in the hills of Western North Carolina.
It looks like ice crystals. And Vanderbilt somehow knew the next historic location before the computer was ever even dreamed of…..
Two global giants run it now. Sibelco and The Quartz Company. The French and Belgiums maintain this high value commodity. Yes, yes, in America. The scandal if anyone was paying fully attention….
The world responded with technology that can grow pure silicon in a lab. However, that little spot of good ol’ Carolina still has about 100 years left of resource.
And, no one, as of yet has been able to naturally beat it.
Hurricane Helene put a bit of a damper on things but the Asheville area is clawing its way back to productive supply chain flow. (weather warfare or nature’s revenge?)
The current chips saga deeply embroiled in the American project working to re-configure its economics after Post WW2 status quo continues to dominate the headlines as the next frontier of energy and AI race towards domination.
Foundries and Fabs. Crucibles and EUV light…..
And a little island of Taiwan, off of the great giant of China, holding steady in its post-communist ideals….keeps the Senators on edge as they work to maintain the delicate supply chain that has built a generation of interconnected fiber cables across the ocean floor building trade and prosperity within the story of civilization.
The spiritualists call Quartz the master healer. The heart. A mineral made under extreme duress along the continental crust.
While the thinkers of the world look for answers to this current strain, has anyone made a list of where the Billionaire’s kids are building weird projects in isolated, random places?
Because, that might just be the next spot where the future of the world needs to be digging.
Short of following around Kanye or building our own nuclear bunker in Maui….our best use of energy is to learn the companies that are really putting in the work towards stabilizing the delicate supply chain of silicon from mine through ATP. (Assembly, Testing, Packaging)
And investing in them.
We are a part of the decision as to who does the future the best. Not just the sophisticated investors anymore. The more the big banks pay for market flow, the more our small gambles have power.
The big question is who is poised to dominate in the end of this internal struggle as the CHIPS act focuses in on re-shoring here in America in the best way possible.
Or, will we stagnate in beaurocratic red tape and political turmoil while Norway, Brazil, China, and Taiwan speed past us.
This is our crucible moment.
Privately held Sibelco, headquartered in the new finance capital of the US, Charlotte, NC, surpassing old Wall Street may have some answers…..
It would be easy to panic or worry. But, not since the integrated circuit in 1958 have we seen this level of cautious optimism in new technology.
Taiwan has been our Silicon Shield long enough now and with the ongoing threat of relations with China, the push is on to see who wins the next generation.
Our focus on South Korea and India may pay off but the real prize would be for the long flat stable desert of the American southwest to carry the build out needed for American industry. Can the Titans of Industry do it and still maintain the beauty and grandeur of the nature around it?
Historically, probably not. But, we can always dream.
For now, the semiconductor lives.
Quants don’t fail us now.
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