mburnamfink's review

Go to review page

4.0

The Chip is a humanistic look at one of the key inventions of the 20th century, the microchip which undergirds every digital change to our life. Thanks to chips, "just put a computer in it" has been a solution to almost every engineering problem, and the cause of a similar number of engineering problems.

In the 1950s, the electronics industry was carrying a blade with no handle. The silicon transistor had opened up vast possibilities by replacing large, power-hungry, and unreliable vacuum tubes. But the new solid state circuits were still built the same way, by wiring together discrete components like resistors, capacitors, and transistors, and the labor cost of hand wiring all these components was stalling future growth. Worse, as the complexity of circuits increased, their reliability went way down, a fatal flaw for aerospace and military applications.

Kilby at Texas Instruments and Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor hit on the key idea at roughly the same time. If you could lay down resistors, capacitors, and wires inside silicon, you could make a circuit as a monolithic unit. Kilby was first by several months, but Noyce figured out how to get the leads between the chip and world laid down, which is a very important step. Doing everything in silicon is counter-intuitive, by raw materials it's comparable to building a boxcar out of solid gold, but the advantage in not having to wire together components is incredible. Cue the digital revolution that we know, though from the perspective of decades on the revolution was slower than we remember. The first few years of production went entirely to the military. The consumer product which blew the world open was the pocket calculator, which came out in 1971, 15 years after the invention of the chip.

Reid follows the rise of Japanese firms in high tech, as well as the divergent careers of Noyce and Kilby. Noyce went on to become the patriarch of Silicon Valley and a billionaire investor. Kilby kept inventing, though never with the same success. He was finally awarded the Nobel Prize in 2000, but neither of the two are household names despite their impact as inventors.

Reid also makes some odd choices in the technical explanations. There's a lot on Boolean algebra and binary logic, which is key to how chips work, and precisely nothing on photolithography, which is key to how they're made. This is an older book, which is beneficial because there's nothing like interviews with your subjects to get the right feeling across, and Noyce and Kilby are no longer available for interviews.

jryanlonas's review

Go to review page

4.0

A very fine brief history of a product that most people on earth own at least one of (most Westerners probably have hundreds or thousands).

Reid does an excellent job of demystifying some of the technical aspects of computers. After reading this, you'll get why it has to be silicon, have a basic grasp of binary number systems, understand why so many of our high-tech products have Japanese names, and much more. Mostly, you'll know who Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce are, which was really Reid's goal in writing this book--he couldn't believe that no one knew the men responsible for ushering in the digital age.

afhwsmasb's review

Go to review page

inspiring medium-paced

4.5

Very interesting and I learned a lot!

x0pherl's review

Go to review page

2.0

Can you name the inventors of the microprocessor? I couldn't, in spite of the fact that I have a career that wouldn't even exist without the invention. So because of that, I'm glad I read this book, which focuses on the inventors (Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce fwiw).
However the book is frustrating in a lot of ways. It is neither a biography of the two inventors, or a technical text, but sort of attempts to do both. There's a chapter explaining how microprocessors work at a fairly technical level- a chapter that is probably tedious for anyone with a basic understanding of this (it was for me) and completely useless for someone who isn't grounded in the concepts. If you really want that, check out [b:Code The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software|44882|Code The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software|Charles Petzold|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328830222s/44882.jpg|44204]. There's a chapter that talks about how Japanese manufacturing was able to supplant US manufacturing in other areas.
As you might sense, this is not a terribly focused book.
Here's a passage I did enjoy quite a bit:
In a sense, this distinction between basic and directed research encompasses the difference between science and engineering. Scientists, on the whole, are driven by the thirst for knowledge; their motivation, as the Nobel laureate Richard Feynman put it, is “the joy of finding things out.” Engineers, in contrast, are solution-driven. Their joy is making things work.

vincentngo's review

Go to review page

adventurous informative inspiring medium-paced

5.0

ataraxiary's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging informative slow-paced

2.0

sarios's review

Go to review page

3.0

Not enough history and too many fumbled attempts at explaining the functioning and technicalities of computers. For a good layman's treatment of this Charles Petzold's 'Code' is the gold standard.

Only read if you are specifically interested in what Noyce and Kilby were like, and are also curious about how the nascent chip industry functioned. If the book focused more on these two aspects, it would've been a 4 or a 5.

niceread's review

Go to review page

4.0

Well written and interesting story about the inventors and the science behind the integrated circuit. Background on the patenting process helped me to understand how patents are granted and how they help and inhibit innovation.

marcosduran's review

Go to review page

4.0

The Chip, recounts a fascinating story of two relatively unknown men that changed the course of modern civilization... really. Although working for different companies, many miles apart, they simultaneously came up with the monolithic idea, a basic blueprint for the modern microchip. This concept overcame the last remaining limit in the advancement of processing power that was known as the tyranny of numbers.

The book also shows the importance of government support in new industries as the only way to overcome the chicken and egg problem. Libertarians who still don't seem to understand that even necessary investments may not be made by companies if they don't see a quick return, should tell me how much longer it would have take the microchip to become as common as apple pie, or if it had survived at all.
Accept and close

By using The StoryGraph, you agree to our use of cookies.
We use a small number of cookies to provide you with a great experience.

Find out more