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How does this industry actually work?

3 pages, in the order the Learn menu lists them.

Every figure links to its publisher What changed, and when →

01 · Explainers How chips are made, in 3D 20 explainers 02 · Reading guide What every page and axis means 03 · Who to read instead What we refuse, and who does it No affiliate links · nobody asked

On every page as well: Search and the calendar of results and statistical releases.

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3 films, newest first. Each plays here when you press play.

The film's first picture, drawn: a block of memory cells — Film · 1 November 2026 · 14:52 The memory cycle From a 1926 US Department of Agriculture bulletin on the price of hogs to the fab: why a new fab takes years, why makers order in a boom what arrives in the bust, which makers the busts took out, and why the memory AI needs takes three wafers for the bits one wafer of ordinary DRAM makes, at Micron's ratio. The interactive version is the explainer The memory cycle. The player is YouTube’s, from youtube-nocookie.com, and it loads only when you press play: until then this page fetches nothing from YouTube. Watch it on YouTube instead.

A drawing of a crystal puller beside a photograph of a silicon ingot — Blueprint 01 · 26 October 2026 · 3:49 From sand to wafer How the slice every chip starts on is made, drawn as a blueprint: quartz reduced to silicon metal, purified to eleven nines, grown into rods from a vapour, pulled into one crystal, sawn with a single wire and polished flat. The interactive version is the explainer From sand to wafer. The player is YouTube’s, from youtube-nocookie.com, and it loads only when you press play: until then this page fetches nothing from YouTube. Watch it on YouTube instead.

A drawing of a fab cut open, its air falling from the ceiling, beside a photograph of a cleanroom — Blueprint 02 · 19 October 2026 · 3:37 Anatomy of a fab What happens to a wafer inside a windowless building, drawn as a blueprint: the six layers of a fab, the railway on the ceiling, the air that falls like rain, the loop every wafer runs and the machines under the machines. The interactive version is the explainer Anatomy of a fab. The player is YouTube’s, from youtube-nocookie.com, and it loads only when you press play: until then this page fetches nothing from YouTube. Watch it on YouTube instead.

The Shorts, each under a minute, are on the YouTube channel.