Comment by vardump
2 months ago
We're toast should we ever lose ability to make CPUs.
Perhaps there should be more research how to make small runs of chips cheaply and with simple inputs. That'd also be useful if we manage to colonize other planets.
2 months ago
We're toast should we ever lose ability to make CPUs.
Perhaps there should be more research how to make small runs of chips cheaply and with simple inputs. That'd also be useful if we manage to colonize other planets.
We as in civilization? We made it at least a few thousand years without it.
Or do you mean the circumstances that would lead to this (nuclear war perhaps) would make us toast
> We as in civilization? We made it at least a few thousand years without it.
Civilization is a continuity of discrete points of time.
We were able to enter (so-called) Dark Ages where things were forgotten (e.g., concrete) and still continue because things were often not very 'advanced': with the decline of Rome there were other stories of knowledge, and with the Black Death society hasn't much beyond blacksmithing and so was able keep those basic skills.
But we're beyond that.
First off, modern society is highly dependent on low-cost energy, and this was kicked off by the Industrial Revolution and easy accessible coal. Coal is much depleted (often needing deeper mines). Then next phase was with oil, and many of the easy deposits have been used up (it used to bubble up to the ground in the US).
So depending on how bad any collapse is, getting things up without easily accessible fossil fuels may be more of challenge.
>hasn't much beyond blacksmithing and so was able keep those basic skills.
That's an Anglo-Saxon black legend. How do you think boats and trebuchets were made? Navigation in the ocean without trig? Astrolabes? Yeah, sure. Year 600 wasn't the same as 1200.
Read about Alphonse X. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfonso_X_of_Castile
I'm not sure we can actually support 8 billion people's food production and distribution logistics without CPU's anymore.
Whatever makes us forget CPUs will make there be less than 8 billion people I'm sure.
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You don’t think we could do it with human computers?
As long as the algorithmic complexity of food logistics is O(n) or better with respect to population size, I guess.
No, but that's hardly the same as suggesting humanity would die off. We'd adapt, just at a much smaller scale.
>We made it at least a few thousand years without it.
We did that during a period of peculiar circumstances that won't ever be replicated. Relatively large, distributed population with many different ecological environments that we were already pre-adapted to. A far smaller single-point-failure population that can't just go out and hunt for its food among the vast wildlife might have it pretty rough if industrial civilization were to falter.
i just learned about the Haber process. This guy, Fritz Haber, realized we could suck nitrogen out of the literal air and make soil fertilizer with it. The population is like 4 times higher than it would be without it.
Scary how high up this tightrope is.
The civilization as it is.
I mean, the chips they're talking abt didn't exist until like 40 years ago I think we could manage.
But tbh I don't see it as at all likely short of something like nuclear war that would be the much bigger problem.
8 replies →
Be more concerned about whatever nuclear war or social breakdown led to that point. Massive industrial manufacturing systems don’t shut down for nothing.
It could also happen as natural decay over centuries. There's no guarantee we'll get more advanced over time.
That would be a pity, but I don't see why we'd be toast.
To have zero effort in attempting to reproduce even 70s-era silicon technology for 30 years implies some real bad stuff, if the entire chain has been knocked out to that level I doubt "silicon chip fabrication" would really be a worry for anyone during that time.
https://www.minimalfab.com/en/
Eh, there's plenty of small fabs globally that do smaller run "nowhere near cutting edge" (180nm or so) runs - you can make a pretty decent processor on that sort of tech.
Would be a pretty solid intermediate step to bootstrap automation and expansion in the cases where the supply of the "best" fabs is removed (like in a disaster, or the framework to support that level of manufacturing isn't available, such as your colony example)
Forth Deck and CPUs with TTL's from magic-1.org.