[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Best books to understand semiconductor busin...
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Ask HN: Best books to understand semiconductor business?
I've worked in tech a long time but always on software/internet
side. Looking for some good books or guides to understand the
semiconductor industry. Any suggestions?
Author : non_sequitur
Score : 98 points
Date : 2023-10-03 16:44 UTC (6 hours ago)
| [deleted]
| colinb wrote:
| If you're interested in the history then I recently read and
| mostly liked The Chip by TR Reid. I'd like to find something more
| up to date than that. Lots of buzz around Chip War by Chris
| Miller. I haven't read it.
| leet_thow wrote:
| American Experience did a great documentary about Bob Noyce and
| the founding of Intel.
|
| https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon/
| tshirttime wrote:
| Chip War (2022) by Chris Miller
| kqvamxurcagg wrote:
| After reading Chip War I read Conquering the Electron by Eric
| Brach and Derek Cheung. Very good book that goes into a bit
| more detail than Chip War. Chip War focuses more on the
| geopolitics than the science.
| leonardtang wrote:
| +1 on this; one of the best books to intro one on the subject
| champagnepapi wrote:
| I've read this and it gives a pretty good overview of the
| history as well as current events surrounding the semiconductor
| industry. I think it gives a good high-level overview so you'll
| have the foundation to dig deeper. I don't think that this book
| by itself would be enough to understand the semiconductor
| business, but it's a great place to start to get acclimated.
| Amorymeltzer wrote:
| Came here to say this. It's a fabulous history and easily one
| of the best and most informative books I read last year. It's
| not necessarily going to teach you much about the current
| "business" per se, but it's a must-read for the history and has
| quite a bit about the current global state of affairs,
| especially re PRC/ROC, and state of the technology.
| kvsrh wrote:
| +1. I have only finished around ~20% of the book - but it's
| been really informative covering a wide range of topics from
| early technical innovations, to to the companies involved like
| Fairchild, TI, Intel, Sony, TSMC etc (and by extension the
| nations involved US, Japan, Russia, Taiwan etc)
| frozenport wrote:
| -1: dude was wrong about everything, missed the role of
| software and computer engineering.
|
| 1. China rapidly catching up
|
| 2. Companies can produce competitive offerings with old
| manufacturing processes
|
| He took a manufacturing heavy view, but actually open archs
| like RISC-V or ARM's china division defecting provided avenues
| to make competitive offerings with last generation technology.
|
| fastest chip today runs on 4 year old silicon:
| https://www.eetimes.com/groq-demos-fast-llms-on-4-year-old-s...
| abatilo wrote:
| I'm about 90% through this book that I picked up based on some
| other HN comment I had read. I would highly recommend it
| thelastgallon wrote:
| Origin story, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of
| American Innovation
| mrcode007 wrote:
| Optical Lithography: Here is Why
|
| https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/ebooks/PM/Optical-Lithogr...
| mwbajor wrote:
| https://designers-guide.org/analysis/dg-spice/index.html
| akamaka wrote:
| Richard S. Tedlow's biography of Andy Grove.
| nektro wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh4QGey2zTk overview by Vox
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Andy-Grove-Life-Times-American/dp/159...
|
| This appears to be out of print. I read it a long time ago when
| it was new. I enjoyed the book.
|
| One of the things that I remember from it was how Intel really
| overestimated how quickly video calls would take off. They
| thought that video calls would be the "killer app" for desktop
| computers in the late 1990s / early 2000s.
| nwellinghoff wrote:
| The Idea Factory Book by Jon Gertner
|
| The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American
| Innovation is a 2012 book by Jon Gertner that describes the
| history of Bell Labs, the research and development wing of AT&T,
| as well as many of its eccentric personalities, such as Claude
| Shannon and William Shockley. It is Gertner's first published
| book.
| trevoragilbert wrote:
| Two that I found really helpful were The Big Score and The Intel
| Trinity by Michael Malone. Both cover the earlier years, but
| great history.
| eigenvalue wrote:
| Investment banks produce pretty decent industry "primers" as part
| of their equity research business (basically it's a service to
| bank clients). Someone on twitter recently shared a Dropbox
| folder filled with recent primers, and I see at least 2 in there
| about semiconductors:
|
| https://x.com/clarksquarecap/status/1703495357940822207?s=46
| natebleker wrote:
| anyone have leads on newer versions? many of these are over 10
| years old
| eigenvalue wrote:
| Try doing a google search like this:
|
| "semiconductor" "primer" "Important Disclosures" filetype:pdf
| eigenvalue wrote:
| Most of the stuff you'll find on the web is pretty old. In
| most industries it's not really a big issue-- waste
| management and industrial pump manufacturers don't change
| that quickly. But obviously in semis it matters more.
|
| If you know anyone who works at a hedge fund or investment
| bank, you can ask them to grab some primers for you. All
| the big banks produce them for the major industries they
| cover. But they usually watermark every page of the report
| with the name of the client to discourage people from
| sharing more widely.
| treme wrote:
| Asianometry
|
| https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKtxx9TnH76SXumAiJX3N7Y36...
| monocasa wrote:
| Adding that if you prefer to read (since the question is about
| best books), asianometry's patreon includes transcripts. Plus
| it's always good to support someone doing good work.
| whyczz wrote:
| thank you, that list looks like a beast. what do you think
| about john coogan's semiconductor / tsmc videos?
|
| TSMC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNwnyA_N9ZM
|
| ARM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXgBI8drB-k
| creer wrote:
| That ARM video is useful because it somewhat ties together
| lots of things in a short-ish video. But I hate the
| breathless style and the video confuses and mistakes many
| things. Also what's the point of that silly [the iPhone is
| british, Fitbit is british, DJI drones are British...]?
|
| In the end it is not about the semiconductor business - just
| hits several aspects of it at the periphery.
| [deleted]
| umutisik wrote:
| +1 on Asianometry. It's more in depth than Chip War; in a much
| shorter amount of time.
| aragonite wrote:
| Chip War focuses a lot on the personalities and comparatively
| little on the business/industry itself. It provides an
| entertaining read, I guess, but especially in the second
| half, I found myself reading on just to finish the book,
| rather than out of a desire/expectation to get informed.
|
| Some representative paragraphs from the book. Some people
| probably like this style, but it's not for me.
|
| > In 1985, Taiwan's powerful minister K. T. Li called Morris
| Chang into his office in Taipei. Nearly two decades had
| passed since Li had helped convince Texas Instruments to
| build its first semiconductor facility on the island. In the
| twenty years since then, Li had forged close ties with Texas
| Instrument's leaders, visiting Pat Haggerty and Morris Chang
| whenever he was in the U.S. and convincing other electronics
| firms to follow TI and open factories in Taiwan. In 1985, he
| hired Chang to lead Taiwan's chip industry. "We want to
| promote a semiconductor industry in Taiwan," he told Chang.
| "Tell me," he continued, "how much money you need."
|
| ...
|
| > Lee Byung-Chul could make a profit selling almost anything.
| Born in 1910, just a year after Jack Simplot, Lee launched
| his business career in March 1938, a time when his native
| Korea was part of Japan's empire, at war with China and soon
| with the United States. Lee's first products were dried fish
| and vegetables, which he gathered from Korea and shipped to
| northern China to feed Japan's war machine. Korea was an
| impoverished backwater, with no industry or technology, but
| Lee was already dreaming of building a business that would be
| "big, strong, and eternal," he declared. He would turn
| Samsung into a semiconductor superpower thanks to two
| influential allies: America's chip industry and the South
| Korean state. A key part of Silicon Valley's strategy to
| outmaneuver the Japanese was to find cheaper sources of
| supply in Asia. Lee decided this was a role Samsung could
| easily play.
|
| ...
|
| > Vladimir Vetrov was a KGB spy, but his life felt more like
| a Chekhov story than a James Bond film. His KGB work was
| bureaucratic, his mistress far from a supermodel, and his
| wife more affectionate toward her shih tzu puppies than
| toward him. By the end of the 1970s, Vetrov's career, and his
| life, had hit a dead end. He despised his desk job and was
| ignored by his bosses. He detested his wife, who was having
| an affair with one of his friends. For recreation, he escaped
| to his log cabin in a village north of Moscow, which was so
| rustic that there was no electricity. Or he'd simply stay in
| Moscow and get drunk.
| pottertheotter wrote:
| I'm cautious with Asianometry. I watched some about a year ago
| and he wasn't completely accurate. I don't remember which
| videos now, but letting people know they should consume more
| than just Asianometry to corroborate facts.
| 0xPIT wrote:
| Intel folks recommended "Chip War," by Chris Miller
| dewfaced wrote:
| Not a book, but Moores Law is Dead & Adored TV youtube channels
| and podcasts are a great resource.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| https://www.semianalysis.com/ is the best blog by far...all the
| YouTubers (Asianometry as well) get the analysis from that blog.
| alphabetting wrote:
| 2nd this. Great mix of journalism, criticism and deep technical
| insight while being accessible people not in the industry.
| jallmann wrote:
| For a stylized history of the early industry: The Tinkerings of
| Robert Noyce, by Tom Wolfe
| https://web.stanford.edu/class/e145/2007_fall/materials/noyc...
|
| I also read "A History of Silicon Valley" back in college (~2010)
| and really enjoyed it; looks like it's been updated continuously
| since then: https://www.scaruffi.com/svhistory/sv.html
| pjmorris wrote:
| Offering this title for asking opinions of it more than
| recommendation, as I've not yet read it:
|
| 'Crystal Fire: The Invention of the Transistor and the Birth of
| the Information Age', Riordan.
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