Abacus | The takeaway from Taiwan’s chip bottleneck? Invest in software firms, teach your kids Python
- As home to the world’s most important semiconductor companies, Taiwan is critical to the global supply chain of both common and the most complex devices ever made
- There is a coming boom in tech financing and accelerated growth in semiconductor hardware and programming software, writes Neil Newman – who is off to learn code
Would you like chips with that?
Working out a rough global average of chip consumption per capita is simple: take semiconductor device shipments and divide that figure by the population. In 2020, that was a teeny bit over 1 trillion divided by 7.79 billion, or about 128 each. To be a little more accurate, you should probably take the number of chips and divide it by the number of people globally who are considered middle-income or higher, i.e., those who can afford to buy products with chips, or about 3.05 billion according to Pew Research. That would make it about 333 each.
The point he was making was that we are very heavily dependent on semiconductors whether we like it or not, and indeed these days they are found in even the most common household appliance.
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Taiwan’s worst drought in decades adds pressure to global chip shortage
Super hi-tech manufacturing
At the higher end of semiconductors, the kind of microprocessors that sit in all my top tech purchases over the past year are very difficult to make. In fact, it is fair to say that they are the most complex devices ever made by mankind.
