"[A]n almost vanishingly small impurity mixed into silicon, having a net effect of perhaps one rogue atom of boron or phosphorus inserted among five or ten million atoms of a pure semiconductor like silicon, was what could determine whether, and how well, the semiconductor could conduct a current.
"That was just one of the many frustrating roadblocks that would take years of thought and experimentation to conquer."
Understand that boron and phosphorus (or arsenic) are not roadblocks, they are actually required if you want to convert silicon into transistors. Without them, and their ability in minuscule amounts to change the properties of silicon, silicon would not be at the heart of our integrated circuits.
Yes, cleanliness is required to make integrated circuits with high yields, where the majority--now more than 97% in a five year old process--of the parts on a wafer are functional. But cleanliness was known to be important before the first integrated circuit was made, and it is just one of many factors that have to be controlled to create working integrated circuits.
What about all of the unknown factors that came up between the theoretical work that made transistors possible and their successful implementation in silicon? Finding and fixing unknown roadblocks to making integrated circuits requires more ingenuity than solving the problems of cleanliness. We keep hearing about the coming end of Moore's Law precisely because a lot of ingenuity is required to continue making integrated circuits with ever greater density and ever lower power requirements.
"[A]n almost vanishingly small impurity mixed into silicon, having a net effect of perhaps one rogue atom of boron or phosphorus inserted among five or ten million atoms of a pure semiconductor like silicon, was what could determine whether, and how well, the semiconductor could conduct a current.
"That was just one of the many frustrating roadblocks that would take years of thought and experimentation to conquer."
Understand that boron and phosphorus (or arsenic) are not roadblocks, they are actually required if you want to convert silicon into transistors. Without them, and their ability in minuscule amounts to change the properties of silicon, silicon would not be at the heart of our integrated circuits.
Yes, cleanliness is required to make integrated circuits with high yields, where the majority--now more than 97% in a five year old process--of the parts on a wafer are functional. But cleanliness was known to be important before the first integrated circuit was made, and it is just one of many factors that have to be controlled to create working integrated circuits.
What about all of the unknown factors that came up between the theoretical work that made transistors possible and their successful implementation in silicon? Finding and fixing unknown roadblocks to making integrated circuits requires more ingenuity than solving the problems of cleanliness. We keep hearing about the coming end of Moore's Law precisely because a lot of ingenuity is required to continue making integrated circuits with ever greater density and ever lower power requirements.