Learn
This subject has a lot of jargon and most of it is avoidable. Here is what the words mean, how to read the tables, and the few ideas that make the rest of the site make sense.
- Explainers
- How this is computedCount of explainer files in content/learn, and of entries in the glossary.Method →Code →
- a few minutes each
- Terms defined
- How this is computedCount of explainer files in content/learn, and of entries in the glossary.Method →Code →
- in plain words, alphabetical
- Prior knowledge needed
- None
- that is the whole point of this section
01Start here
1 min read (Computed: Count of explainer files in content/learn, and of entries in the glossary.)
How to read the world view
Grey is not unimportant. Paint is coverage. Click a country to see rules, organisations, events — and the gaps.
02The ideas worth having
How this is computedCount of explainer files in content/learn, and of entries in the glossary.Method →Code → · start-here · method
Why follow one chain instead of a sector
Markets, policy, science and capital only make sense once you pick a bottleneck and walk it. This is how the rabbit hole is supposed to work.
How this is computedCount of explainer files in content/learn, and of entries in the glossary.Method →Code → · concepts · policy
How a state actually slows a technology
Not by banning it. By licensing one step, one layer below where anyone is looking, and letting the paperwork do the work.
How this is computedCount of explainer files in content/learn, and of entries in the glossary.Method →Code → · start-here
How to read this site
What the columns mean, what the three evidence states are, and which numbers are measurements rather than judgements. Five minutes, and the rest of the site opens up.
How this is computedCount of explainer files in content/learn, and of entries in the glossary.Method →Code → · concepts · capital
What money cannot buy
Capital is rarely the scarce thing. Capital with the right mandate and the right time horizon is — and most bottlenecks on this site would not move if you doubled the money aimed at them.
How this is computedCount of explainer files in content/learn, and of entries in the glossary.Method →Code → · concepts
Why a substitute that exists does not relieve a shortage
Qualification is the single most important idea in this subject, and the least discussed. It is why announcing an alternative and having one are years apart.
Want to work in these chains?
Skills and training: what each kind of work needs, and public programmes to learn it
Occupational records from O*NET and ESCO, the skills open postings name, and apprenticeships, colleges and academies, each on its official page. Open roles are on Careers.
03Every term, defined
- Advanced packaging
- Assembling several separate chips into one component. Increasingly this, rather than how many wafers a factory can make, decides how many AI accelerators exist.
- See alsoHBM
- Bottleneck
- The input that is actually holding something up. Not the most expensive one and not the most talked about — the one that, if you had more of it, would let you build faster. It is a relation rather than a thing: tin is not a bottleneck, but seven-nines tin qualified for one machine, made by three firms, is.
- See alsoSeverityQualification
- Call
- A dated prediction with the observation that would settle it and a deadline by which reality has to answer. The part of this research that can be wrong, and therefore the part worth judging it on.
- Crucible
- The container a silicon crystal is grown in, lined with extremely pure quartz. The lining is manufactured; the body is still made from sand from a very small number of deposits.
- See alsoWafer
- Dual-use
- Something with both civilian and military uses. It is the legal category that pulls ordinary industrial equipment under export control.
- See alsoExport control
- EUV and DUV
- Extreme and deep ultraviolet lithography: the machines that print circuit patterns onto silicon. EUV uses a shorter wavelength and is needed for the most advanced chips. One company in the world builds the machines.
- See alsoPhotoresist
- Event
- Something that happened to a bottleneck, on a date, with a sentence from the source that says so, marked as making things tighter or easier. Accepted by hand.
- See alsoSweep
- Export control
- A rule requiring government permission before something leaves a country. It is the main way states slow a technology deliberately, and it works on materials, machines and sometimes knowledge.
- See alsoDual-use
- GOES
- Grain-oriented electrical steel: steel grown so its crystals line up in one direction, which makes it lose far less energy as heat. It goes inside the core of a large power transformer. Few mills make it and a new mill takes years.
- See alsoTransformer
- HBM
- High-bandwidth memory. Stacks of memory chips bonded next to a processor rather than beside it on the board, which is what lets an AI accelerator be fed fast enough to be worth its price.
- See alsoAdvanced packaging
- Interconnection queue
- The administrative line a new power plant or data centre waits in to be connected to the electricity grid. In several markets it is measured in years and is the slowest step in building anything — and there is nothing to buy to skip it.
- See alsoTransformer
- Offtake
- A commitment by a buyer to purchase output for years ahead. It is usually what makes a new plant financeable, which is why it appears exactly when a buyer becomes frightened about supply.
- See alsoProject finance
- PGM
- Platinum group metals: platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium and osmium. They come out of the ground together, so how much of one exists is decided by demand for the others.
- Photoresist
- The light-sensitive coating on a wafer. Light projected through a pattern changes the resist where it lands, and the changed parts wash away, leaving the circuit. The chemistry is qualified per factory and is overwhelmingly Japanese.
- See alsoEUV and DUVQualification
- Polysilicon
- Silicon purified to eleven nines — 99.999999999% — and the raw material every wafer starts from. The electronic grade is a different product from the solar grade, and they are not interchangeable.
- See alsoWaferPurity grades
- Project finance
- A loan secured against one specific asset and the money it will earn, rather than against the company building it. The largest pool of money available to heavy industry and the fussiest: no contracted revenue, no loan.
- See alsoOfftake
- Purity grades
- The count of nines. 7N means 99.99999% pure. Each additional nine is usually a different production process and a smaller set of suppliers, which is why "the world has plenty of tin" and "three firms make the tin this machine needs" are both true.
- Qualification
- Proving that a material or tool works in one specific factory, for one specific product. It takes months to years and has to be repeated per factory. This is the single most important idea on this site: it is why a substitute that exists in a laboratory does not relieve a shortage.
- See alsoRelief time
- Rare earths
- Seventeen metals that are not actually rare in the ground but are hard to separate from one another. They make the strongest permanent magnets, and therefore most electric motors. Separation and magnet-making, rather than mining, are where the concentration is.
- See alsoSintering
- Readiness
- How close a technology is to being usable at scale, scored 1 to 9 on this site. Low numbers mean a laboratory, high numbers mean it is shipping. A judgement, with the reasoning next to it.
- REBCO
- Rare-earth barium copper oxide, sold as a coated tape. It carries electricity with no resistance when cold enough, which liquid nitrogen can manage, and it is the wire inside modern fusion magnets.
- See alsoSuperconductor
- Relief time
- How long it takes to loosen a constraint once somebody decides to. It is a property of the stage rather than of anyone’s effort or budget: minutes for software, years for a qualified material. This is why money often does not help.
- See alsoThe loopQualification
- Safeguard
- A temporary trade restriction a country may impose when a surge of imports threatens its own producers. Unlike an anti-dumping duty it does not require anyone to have behaved unfairly.
- Severity
- How hard a bottleneck binds, scored 0 to 12 by hand: four questions worth 0 to 3 each — how few suppliers qualify, how hard it is to replace, how long new capacity takes, and whether the buyer can walk away. Higher is worse for progress. It is a judgement and every page says so.
- See alsoBottleneck
- SiC and GaN
- Silicon carbide and gallium nitride. Semiconductors that tolerate higher voltages and temperatures than plain silicon, so they waste less energy converting power. Used in chargers, motors and increasingly in data centres.
- Sintering
- Pressing a powder and heating it until it fuses into a solid without fully melting. It is how a rare-earth magnet is made, and the step where the supply chain is most concentrated.
- See alsoRare earths
- Superconductor
- A material that carries electricity with no losses below a certain temperature. "High-temperature" ones still need to be very cold by everyday standards — just not as cold as the alternatives.
- See alsoREBCO
- Sweep
- An automated pass that searches for recent pages about each bottleneck and files them as candidates. It never publishes anything. A person reads a candidate before it becomes an event, and most candidates turn out to be market-research pages rather than news.
- See alsoEvent
- The loop
- Technology improving its own inputs: better tools make better tools. Its speed is set by whatever it waits on longest, which is what this site maps. The nine stages are the things it waits on, from research and data through compute, energy and materials to talent, capital and permission.
- See alsoBottleneckRelief time
- Transformer
- The equipment that changes electricity between voltages. A data centre cannot take grid power without one, large ones are built to order, and ordering one today means waiting years.
- See alsoGOESInterconnection queue
- Verified, source found, unverified
- The three states every row on this site can be in. Verified means a person opened a source that says so and the link is on the page. Source found means software located a page that appears to say so and nobody has read it yet. Unverified means neither. Only verified rows are findings.
- Wafer
- The polished disc of silicon that chips are built on, usually 300 mm across. A handful of companies make them; the five tracked here are listed on the wafer page, which says what that list does and does not establish.
- See alsoPolysilicon