The Chip Age - Rakesh Kumar ***

The introductory chapter of this book, called 'there is something about chips' encourages a response of 'especially with salt and vinegar', but the reality we are presented with in this analysis of the importance of computer chips to technology and the world economy is more reminiscent of another edible delight: the banana.

Bananas are hugely popular, but the world supply is fragile because it is largely dependent on a monoculture. A single cultivar, the Cavendish, makes up over 99 per cent of exports to developed countries. These bananas have very little genetic diversity as they are propogated by cloning. This leaves them open to devastating attack, most likely by a fungal disease, which could wipe out the worldwide supply.

Similarly, when it comes to IT, more than 90 per cent of advanced chips are made by a single company, TMSC, based in Taiwan. Not only does this concentration put supply at risk, Taiwan's difficult political position, with the danger of being subsumed into China, makes chip production as much a political gambling chip (see what I did there?) as it a technological issue. Given our dependence on chips for everything from cars to washing machines on top of the more obvious computers and phones this is a serious point.

Rakesh Kumar does a solid job of informing the reader about the basics of semiconductor electronics and chip making, the particular issues around chips used for AI and the bottlenecks in the supply chain, whether it be raw materials or chip fabrication. This is put alongside the geopolitical tensions that are central to chip design (with plenty of industrial espionage going on) and potential problems with manufacturing.

Kumar makes a case for us being in the chip age, similarly to once having been in the steam age. I think a better parallel is the quantum age, but chips are certainly a significant part of this. Although there are ventures into historical context, this doesn't read like popular science and technology - it's fairly stodgy in approach. The facts are there, but the narrative lacks any lustre. It's a useful book, but could have been more interesting to read.

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