By Tech Brew Staff
less than 3 min read
Definition:
A semiconductor is a material somewhere between an electricity conductor (like metal) and an insulator (like rubber) that allows for the precise control of electricity flow. The most commonly used semiconductor material is silicon, which is at the heart of nearly all modern electronics and computing. Devices from digital clocks and LED lightbulbs to smartphones and AI data centers use semiconductors.
Semiconductors are the base for integrated circuits, or microchips, which are made up of millions, billions, or even trillions of transistors, or components that switch the current on and off. That property matches the binary nature of computing, allowing them to store data or perform logical operations through circuits known as logic gates.
Moore’s Law refresher
In 1965, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore observed and predicted that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit would double every year (he revised it to two years in 1975). Moore’s Law has served as a guide for the chip industry, though there’s been some debate over whether it still applies. Nvidia’s Blackwell processors feature 208 billion transistors.
The most important chip company to the AI revolution is Nvidia. The graphics processors the company created for video games and their ability to handle different tasks at the same time turned out to be useful for AI development. Nvidia made an early bet on AI that put it at the heart of the deep learning revolution of the 2010s, and now the generative AI era of the 2020s. The moat it’s built around this business has made it difficult for other companies to catch up, though there’s currently a race between rival chip giants and other tech companies to try.
