The impending global chip shortage ..

 I was engaging the class on Sustainability for the sem 3 MBA students of Alliance School of Business today. We were discussing the impact of microprocessor chip on modern society. (click here for my write up.)

The case explains pretty well how in the modern world our dependence on the microprocessor chip is only going to increase the coming years and the highly water intensive manufacturing processes are a strain on the global water resources.

Semiconductor chip Fabrication plants are one of the modern day factories where the brains of the future are manufactured. With each passing day, humans need more and more of these brains to assist in a comfortable, advanced, hassle free life for human beings.

The sad part of the semiconductor chips is that they consume lot of water for processing. Water in it's purest form, called ultra pure water, almost 10x purer than drinking water, is needed for wafer cleaning and processing. A average sized fab uses approximately two to four million gallons of ultra pure water per day. Ultra pure water is considered to be almost 10x more cleaner than ordinary drinking water. That will give an estimate of the fresh water resources we need to tap to just run a fab facility. 

To add to the fire, our usage of these chips are only increasing day by day. Moore's law tells us about the miniaturisation happening, that the number of chips that can be accomodated on a silicon chip doubles every two years. So with increase in speeds, there should be a fall in the use of chips. But humans find more and more creative uses for these chips that our present global demand for chips is almost a trillion annually and it is increasing by leaps and bounds..

When I asked the class tosuggest some means by which the water consumption by these fabs could be reduced they came up with a couple of interesting points

1. try for an alternate for the modern day microprocessor chips. 

2, develop effective cleaning processes that can use pure streams of air than water

3. with increased capacity of thee modern microprocessor chips, the need for chip manufacturing will reduce, resulting in water savings.

India does not as yet have any semiconductor manufacturing Farbrication facility yet. How soon will one come, to what extent and will be manufacturing chips to what accuracy, on 6 nano metre technology or lesser ? Do we have enough manpower and freshwater resources for setting up such a facility ?

George..